That's the latest news from the employment front.  It seems that, of the over 600,000 jobs saved or created by the federal stimulus spending so far, over half have been in the field of education.  For reasons this article explains, the figures are not entirely reliable, but the gist is correct (New York Times, 10/30/09).  Obama's stimulus plan has so far benefited teachers and school administrators far more than anyone else.

Months ago, feminists were exultant that they had been able to convince the Obama administration to direct 42% of stimulus spending toward jobs held mostly by women despite the fact that some 80% of job losses had been incurred in male-dominated industries like construction and manufacturing.  Now, apparently because of a time lag in actually spending stimulus money on construction, the lion's share of job creation has occurred in the female-dominated field of education.  Some 89% of primary-school and 62% of secondary-school teachers in the United States are women.

Of course no one objects to job creation or retention in education.  But in purely economic terms, service-sector jobs like education do little to create what Marx called surplus value.  Construction and manufacturing do a lot to create surplus value.  And it's surplus value that creates the standard of living to which we've become accustomed in the U.S.  Stated another way, an economy that creates surplus value can then redistribute that wealth to those, like teachers, writers, musicians, doctors, etc., who don't create it themselves.  If everyone in an economy were a teacher, economic activity would be a zero-sum game of swapping finite money among people.  Surplus value expands the pie.

So while there's certainly nothing wrong with paying teachers, it doesn't contribute much to expanding surplus value.  And that's what we need to do to get the economy rolling again.  Any sensible stimulus program would concentrate on manufacturing and construction and activities related to them.  That would expand the economy and everyone would benefit.  So far we haven't done that. 

As Monty Python says in The Meaning of Life, "I expect they'll get to that in the next bit." 

Help for Michigan Dads Michigan family law attorney Mindy L. Hitchcock has experience fighting for noncustodial parents against Michigan's abusive FOC. Her holistic approach to divorce gets results for her clients while avoiding the scorched earth approach to law that leaves families emotionally and financially devastated. Lady4Justice.com

The Global Gender Gap Report is at pains to avoid any admission that men may fare worse than women in some parts of the world or in certain aspects of life.  So in addition to defining anti-male bias as "equality" (see my previous post on the subject), it carefully chooses categories in which men tend to outperform women.  In other words, it addresses areas in which it can demonstrate anti-female inequality and scrupulously ignores those in which it can't. 

Therefore, you won't find categories entitled "Killed in War," "Killed on the Job," "Homeless," "Incarceration," etc.  You won't find any references to disparities in child custody, sentencing for crime or crime victimization.  Military impressment of boys as young as eight likewise gets a pass.  And of course you will find statistics for things like female genital mutilation which, from my perspective, is barbaric, but is also unknown to the vast majority of women and girls in the world.

Still, try as they might, apparently the authors couldn't avoid certain categories in which men's outcomes are worse than women's.  One is education, and in that category they simply define any anti-male inequality as equality and let it go at that (see my previous post).

But health is another category they apparently felt they couldn't leave out, and inconveniently for the authors, men tend to have shorter lifespans than do women.  Indeed, according to the report itself, the ratio of women's lifespans to those of men is 1.04, meaning that, on average worldwide, women live longer than do men.  So the authors were presented with a problem - how to spin better female health as worse female health. 

Not to worry, though; they were more than equal to the task. 

They divided the category Health and Survival into two subcategories and gave each a weighting.  The first subcategory is life expectancy, which is an obvious measurement to use when rating health. 

But strangely enough the second subcategory is sex at birth.  Now, what precisely does the sex of a child at birth have to tell us about its health?  Not anything that I can see.  Of course boy babies are statistically likely to live shorter lives than are girl babies, but that's captured in the subcategory for life expectancy.  So what gives?

More to the point, why do the authors accord that second subcategory more than twice the weight (0.693 : 0.307) they give to life expectancy?  The answer should be obvious; they do that in order to arrive at an overall score for Health and Survival that indicates anti-female inequality.

That's because in many countries, there are more boys born than girls.  (The overall ratio of girl babies to boy babies is 0.93)In a few countries like China, that's because female fetuses are often aborted due to a preference for boys.  Somehow, in the authors' minds, that has something to do with the health and survival of living children and adults, which it transparently does not, but they needed something with which to overbalance women's greater longevity.  Apparently that's the best they could do.

(As an aside, I'd point out that, in many countries in the West, abortion is not only legal but a woman's right.  That means that, in the legal systems of those countries, a fetus is given less moral and legal standing than is a person who's been born.  Roe v. Wade, for example, makes that clear.  But in the scheme of the Global Gender Gap Report, the opposite is true - the unborn, or at least unborn girls, are statistically given over twice the importance of those already born.)

Given the radically-unequal, and inexplicable, weighting given to the two subcategories, the fact that men live shorter lives than women is easily overbalanced by even minor statistical differences in percentages of girls and boys at birth.  And presto, the fact that fewer girls are born than boys magically obscures the fact that women live longer than men. 

On the planet most of us occupy, how long you live is surely the most important single factor in assessing "health and survival."  But for the authors of the Global Gender Gap Report it's what sex you are.  Fewer girls at birth mean poorer women's health even though they live longer than men.  Got that?        

But wait.  Serving him with the order?  Isn't he the one protected by the order?  Why would they serve it on him?

This article explains (ArtForum).  It was a simple matter of Stone's filing the request and providing the court with all the proper documentation for an order of protection against himself.  Apparently it all went like clockwork too.  Ben Stone went to court and got an order of protection against himself.

Come to think of it, I could use one of those.  So the next time I cut myself in the kitchen or slip on a step I can get the police to arrest me.  That'll show me!  I'll have to stop talking to myself.  Better yet, I'll have to stay away from me altogether.  I won't be allowed to call myself on the phone or interfere in my finances, and believe me, that's probably a good idea.  Seriously, I feel safer just thinking about it. 

I don't know if Ben Stone's taking out an order of protection is more ridiculous than Colleen Nestler's taking one out against David Letterman, a man she'd never met and who lived many states away from her.  I call it a dead heat.

But whichever one you prefer, both give a pretty good idea of how seriously we take people's rights to things like freedom of speech and association.  I've discussed this before, but honestly, imagine the court hearing in which a woman in New Mexico can get a TRO against a star like Letterman.  Was the judge even awake? 

Ditto the Ben Stone hearing.  How is it possible that Judge Miranda was so out of it that he didn't notice that the name of the person requesting the order was the same as the name of the person he was requesting it against.  I mean, did the judge ask him a single question?

The Stone and Letterman cases are absurd, of course, but the principles are anything but.  Restraining orders are acts of the state abridging the liberties of people who supposedly have rights to due process before that can happen.  How much more blatant does a case have to be before we realize what we've given up?

Thanks to William for the heads-up.

Help for Houston Fathers The Law Offices of Thomas A. Martin helps fathers with Family Law and Criminal Defense in Houston and surrounding areas. Martin handles divorce, child custody, alimony, domestic violence, restraining orders and a wide variety of issues fathers face. www.thomasamartin.com

A group of 50 mental health experts from 10 countries are part of an effort to add Parental Alienation to the 2012 edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the American Psychiatric Association's "bible" of diagnoses. According to psychiatrist William Bernet, this "would spur insurance coverage, stimulate more systematic research, lend credence to a charge of parental alienation in court, and raise the odds that children would get timely treatment."

Few family law cases are as heartbreaking as those involving Parental Alienation. In PA cases, one parent has turned his or her children against the other parent, destroying the loving bonds the children and the target parent once enjoyed.

Numerous misguided feminist groups oppose recognition of Parental Alienation in court or in DSM. Some of these opponents raise legitimate concerns. For example, Janet Johnston, a feminist-oriented clinical sociologist/justice studies professor, fears that PAS could be invoked by an abusive parent to gain rights to a child.

She is correct--this can happen. One example is the Joyce Murphy case in San Diego--to learn more, see my post Feminist Opponents of Shared Parenting Get It Right in Parental Alienation/Abuse Accusation Case. The solution to Johnston's concern is to have courts make thorough, unbiased investigations into abuse claims.

It also true, as some opponents of recognizing Parental Alienation assert, that there are fathers (or mothers) who have alienated their own children through their personality defects or lack of parenting skills, and who attempt to shift the blame to their children’s mothers (or fathers) by falsely claiming PAS.

However, some opponents of recognizing Parental Alienation are on the lunatic fringe, denying that Parental Alienation exists at all, and spinning fantasies of masses of mothers losing custody to molesting fathers. In most of the cases put forth in the media by these extremists, no abuse occurred and the mothers only lost custody of their children after going way out of their way to destroy the relationship between the children and their fathers. Some examples of these frauds include the Genia Shockome, Sadia Loeliger, and Holly Collins cases

Even if many claims of Parental Alienation were false--and there's no evidence to suggest this--it still would not mean that opponents' assertions that PA doesn't exist are credible. In family law cases, false accusations of any and all types of maltreatment, including PA, are used to gain advantage. Since false accusations of domestic violence and child sexual abuse are common, should we then conclude that battering and molestation don't exist?

Another issue opponents of recognizing Parental Alienation have latched on to is the debate over whether Parental Alienation should by considered a syndrome. They then argue that if it's not a syndrome, it can't be real. I believe the assertion that Parental Alienation is a "syndrome" is defensible, but regardless, the key fact is that alienating behavior and Parental Alienation campaigns exist and are a major problem in divorce.

Johnston also asserts that in teens, a level of parental rejection appearing similar to Parental Alienation might be a developmentally normal response. This assertion is questionable. Johnston is correct that many teens reject their parents to various degrees. However, there's a difference between this and active alienation.

Several of my wife's male friends have been alienated from their teenage children, and many of them try to mask their pain by shrugging and saying, "You know how teenagers are." Well, I do, and I don't buy it. For example, my 17-year-old son is convinced that I'm a hopelessly out of touch old loser, and I certainly don't disagree with him. Still, he clearly loves me, and will sometimes (grudgingly) acknowledge it. That's not Parental Alienation, which is far more visceral.

The new U.S. News & World Report article Parental Alienation: A Mental Diagnosis? (11/2/09) covers the efforts of Parental Alienation experts to get PA accepted by DSM. I suggest that readers comment on the piece by sending Letters to the Editor at letters@usnews.com.

In it, author Lindsay Lyon writes:

From an early age, Anne was taught by her mother to fear her father. Behind his back, her mom warned that he was unpredictable and dangerous; any time he'd invite her to do anything—a walk in the woods, a trip to the art store—she would craft an excuse not to go. "I was under the impression that he was crazy, that at any moment he could just pop and do something violent to hurt me," says Anne, who prefers that only her middle name be used to guard her family's privacy.

Typical of a phenomenon some mental-health experts now label "parental alienation," her view of him became so negative, she says, that her mother persuaded her to lie during a custody hearing when the couple divorced. Then 14, she told the judge that her dad was physically abusive. Was he? "No," she says. "But I was convinced that he would [be]." After her mother won custody, Anne all but severed contact with her father for years.

If a growing faction of the mental-health community has its way, Anne's experience will one day soon be an actual diagnosis. The concept of parental alienation, which is highly controversial, is being described as one in which children strongly attach to one parent and reject the other in the false belief that he or she is bad or dangerous.

"It's heartbreaking," says William Bernet, a child and adolescent psychiatrist and professor at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, "to have your 10-year-old suddenly, in a matter of weeks, go from loving you and hiking with you...to saying you're a horrible, ugly person." These aren't kids who simply prefer one parent over the other, he says. That's normal. These kids doggedly resist contact with a parent, sometimes permanently, out of an irrational hate or fear.

Bernet is leading an effort to add "parental alienation" to the next edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the American Psychiatric Association's "bible" of diagnoses, scheduled for 2012. He and some 50 contributing authors from 10 countries will make their case in the American Journal of Family Therapy early next year. Inclusion, says Bernet, would spur insurance coverage, stimulate more systematic research, lend credence to a charge of parental alienation in court, and raise the odds that children would get timely treatment.

But many experts balk at labeling the phenomenon an official disorder. "I really get concerned about spreading the definition of mental illness too wide," says Elissa Benedek, a child and adolescent psychiatrist in Ann Arbor, Mich., and a past president of the APA. There's no question in her mind that kids become alienated from a loving parent in many divorces with little or no justification, and she's seen plenty of kids kick and scream all the way to the car when visitation is enforced. But, she says, "this is not a mentally ill child"...

In any case, divorcing parents should be aware that hostilities may seriously harm the kids. Sometimes manipulation is blatant, as with parents who conceal phone calls, gifts, or letters, then use the "lack of contact" as proof that the other parent doesn't love the child. Sometimes the influence is more subtle ("I'm sure nothing bad will happen to you at Mommy's house") or even unintentional ("I've put a cellphone in your suitcase. Call when everyone's asleep to tell me you're OK")...

"The long-term implications [of alienation] are pretty severe," says Amy Baker, director of research at the Vincent J. Fontana Center for Child Protection in New York and a contributing author of Bernet's proposal. In a study culminating in a 2007 book, Adult Children of Parental Alienation Syndrome, she interviewed 40 "survivors" and found that many were depressed, guilt ridden, and filled with self-loathing. Kids develop identity through relationships with both their parents, she says. When they are told one is no good, they believe, "I'm half no good."

Now 23, divorced, and a parent herself, Anne has recognized only recently that she was manipulated, that her long-held view of her father isn't accurate. They live 2,000 miles apart but now try to speak daily. "I've missed out on a great friendship with my dad," she says. "It hurts."

Lyon did a pretty good job with the article but her assertions about Parental Alienation and the American Psychological Association are incomplete. She wrote "The American Psychological Association has issued a statement that 'there is no evidence within the psychological literature of a diagnosable parental alienation syndrome.'" Yet the APA has given mixed messages on PAS--to learn more, click here.

The controversy over Parental Alienation is largely political. Children are vulnerable and impressionable, and parents in emotionally-charged divorces are quite capable of using them as tools of their anger. It is true that family courts must weed out false claims of PA made by abusive or manipulative parents. It is also true that courts must act decisively to protect children from the emotional abuse inflicted by alienating ones.

Singer/songwriter Don Henley was a founding member of the Eagles and a seven time Grammy Award-winner in his solo career. In 2008, he was ranked one of the 100 greatest singers of all time by Rolling Stone magazine.

In my humble opinion, he wrote one of the greatest songs about divorce ever, "Heart of the Matter" (audio here). Another favorite of mine is the powerful, sad "New York Minute" (audio here).

While in college in Texas in the late 1960s, Henley left to spend time with his father, who was dying from heart and arterial disease. Henley's father was a farmer in Texas. Of his father, Henley says:

My father was an avid gardener. On many a summer morning he rousted me out of bed well before sunup and handed me a hoe. We had more than an acre to tend, and the objective was to get as much as possible done before the sun rose too high in the sky and the temperature rose above 100.

The humidity in that region, while good for the skin and for growing vegetables, is oppressive, and heat exhaustion is always a possibility in the summer. On several occasions my thoughts turned patricidal.

But as the years have passed, I have grown to appreciate what my dad taught me, not only about growing things in the earth but also about responsibility and the value of hard, physical work.

I now derive physical and spiritual pleasure from gardening. All this galls me a little, because my dad always said it would turn out this way.

Help for Colorado Dads As someone who has personally experienced the heartbreak of divorce and family breakup, Brett W. Martin, Esq. works to advance the interests and concerns of fathers in domestic and family law litigation. Personal attention is given to clients to help them through a very difficult time in their lives. www.brettwmartin.com

The Global Gender Gap Report is a publication of the World Economic Forum which is based in Geneva.  However neutral its title, the Report's authors have no intention of impartially informing us about relative gender disparities around the world.  As Canadian journalist Barbara Kay has said in another context, "when [they] say 'gender' they mean 'women's interests.'  Just so.

Indeed, read the Global Gender Gap Report from cover to cover and, apart from being terminally bored, one would never guess that men or boys suffer unequal treatment or outcomes anywhere on earth.  And that's because, in the Report, anti-male inequality is simply defined out of existence.

Here's how they do it.  The Report uses four categories to determine the relative gender "equality" score for particular countries or regions - economic participation and opportunity, educational attainment, political empowerment, and health and survival.  Each of those categories is then broken down into subcategories and each subcategory is weighted.  For example, the education category has subcategories for percentage of males and females in primary school, secondary school and tertiary school, and literacy among males and females. 

Each category is scored on a 0 - 1 basis with '0' signifying total inequality and '1' signifying complete equality of the sexes in that category.  Categories are then combined to give an overall score for each country.  The closer to 1 then, the better, at least according to the authors.

But there's a slight problem with that (actually there are several).  Any score under 1 signifies not simply gender inequality, but specifically anti-female inequality.  So obviously, any score over 1 signifies anti-male inequality, right?  Wrong.  There are no scores over 1.  You see, according to the Global Gender Gap Report, any time a nation favors men, it's called gender inequality, which is bad, and any time a nation favors women it's called "equality" which "from a values and social justice perspective... is long overdue." 

In short, anti-male inequality is specifically defined as equality.  In the world in which the authors live, there's anti-female inequality, equality and nothing else.  That's why I used the word 'Orwellian.' 

Here's an example.  Turn to page 184 which is where the figures for the United States are to be found.  Under "Educational Attainment," we see the four subcategories I mentioned previously.  Men and women are equal in the literacy subcategory, but in each of the other three - primary, secondary and tertiary education - there is a higher percentage of girls and women than boys and men.  So clearly, according to the criteria laid down by the Report, girls and women do better than boys and men in education in the United States.  Ergo, the country's score in this category is 1 which signifies "equality."  Inequality equals equality.  See how it works?

According to that scoring methodology, if a nation sent only girls to school and denied boys any form of education at all, male and female education would be considered equal.  That nation would receive the coveted score of 1.

Now, I know I don't have to point out the obvious, but I will anyway:  scoring the way the Report does totally misrepresents the relative equality or inequality of the sexes.  It's like a basketball game between a girl's team and a boy's team in which each basket scored by a girl counts two points and each by a boy counts zero.  The final score won't tell you much about which is the better team.

When anti-female bias counts for something and anti-male bias counts for nothing, don't be surprised when not a single nation is found to be gender equal.  And that of course is precisely what the Global Gender Gap Report finds.  How could it be otherwise?

I'll do more on the Global Gender Gap Report soon.

Thanks to Greg for the heads-up.   

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In this case, it's high profile TV anchorman Dominic Carter of NY1 television (New York Daily News, 10/29/09).  He's one of their most-watched news anchors, but he's been yanked off the air.  Why?  Because over a year ago, his wife accused him of DV.  Never mind that she sent a letter to prosecutors a month later saying,

"I have to set the record straight.  My husband never put one hand on me."

Marilyn Carter backed up those words in court on Thursday, October 29th, telling Justice Arnold Etelson that she had lied in claiming Dominic had attacked her.  But despite her withdrawal of her claims, Dominic Carter was taken off the air and placed on an extended leave of absence the same day his wife gave her testimony exonerating him.  "Dominic will not be appearing on New York One," said general manager Steve Paulus.

Reading the whole article, Marilyn Carter's backup story - that she was beaten by a day laborer - doesn't sound overly plausible either.  So when Dominic responded to a question about exactly what had happened this way,

"There are certain things that I can't say because it's personal and private and I don't want to destroy my wife's character,"

it suggests a lot, but says little.  Of course his wife may have been telling the truth in the first place and thought better of it when she cooled down and figured out that she was in the process of destroying her husband's career.  That's the same career that may be her meal ticket.

But the fact is, we'll never know what happened.  That's because only two or possibly three people were present and the day laborer won't be found because Marilyn Carter says she doesn't remember his name.  That leaves her and her husband, and they're not talking.

What we do know is that, in a case in which the complainant has recanted both in writing and under oath in court, the accused has at least temporarily lost his job.  Perhaps more important to Carter, though, is his reputation.  A highly-respected newsman, his reputation as trustworthy is all-important to him.  As he told the court, "In the court of public opinion, if I leave here without an opinion, my career is over."

Would an allegation of car theft that the alleged victim admitted was made up be sufficient to place Dominic Carter under a cloud?  What about a DUI that the officer admitted he fabricated?  Would anyone even notice?

But an allegation of DV - even one that's been recanted twice - is enough to ruin a man's career.

It's the society we live in.  Is it the society we want?

Thanks to Jeremy for the heads-up.

The most recent figures are for 2008.  They show that, in a nation of about 34 million, there were a total of 611 homicides, which the Glossary of Terms says corresponds to the statistics in the U.S. on "non-negligent" homicides.  In other words, they're excluding accidental deaths.  That means that, on average, about 1 in 55,000 Canadians was a victim of homicide last year.  That's less than one-third the rate of non-negligent homicide victimization in the United States.  Still, it represented a 2% uptick since 2007.

Some 138 of those 611 victims were gang-related.  Only 24% of victims were women which is the lowest rate of female victimization since 1961.  Homicides by spouses and former spouses totalled 62 with 45 victims being women versus 17 men.  StatsCan doesn't include in its report whether it counts murder by proxy as spousal murder or a "multiple offender" crime as is done in the U.S.  Because wives tend more than husbands to hire out the murder of their spouse, in the States, murders of husbands are often obscured in the "multiple offender" category.

Whatever the case, the spousal homicide rate was the lowest in over 40 years.  Homicides with a female victim dropped by 17 to 146, or 0.87 per 100,000 population.

But domestic violence advocates weren't buying it.  This article quotes Lori Rudniski of the Family Violence Consortium of Manitoba as saying,

"Does it mean domestic violence incidents are down? I don't think so.  At the agency levels, we're seeing more complex needs from the women and the families, (and) we're seeing the impact of longer-term incidents of domestic violence (680 News, 10/28/09)."

That last sentence presumably means something, but neither Ms. Rudniski nor the article explained. 

Help for Colorado Dads As someone who has personally experienced the heartbreak of divorce and family breakup, Brett W. Martin, Esq. works to advance the interests and concerns of fathers in domestic and family law litigation. Personal attention is given to clients to help them through a very difficult time in their lives. www.brettwmartin.com

Times are hard.  People are out of work and cold weather is just around the corner.  In some places, it's arrived.  And for homeless people, that makes their already-hard lives all the harder.  This article talks about the hardships of the out-of-work and homeless in the Tucson, Arizona area (KOLD, 10/28/09).  There, people who have never been homeless before are living in their cars because shelters are bursting at the seams.

But the article raises more than just the usual issues surrounding the fraying social safety net.  In Tucson at least, if you're a single father without a home, you're almost certainly out of luck and so is your child.  There are lots of shelters in the area, but only one, Primavera Foundation, accepts single men with children.  Others will accept a man with children if there's also a woman present, but the rule in all Tucson shelters but one is "No Single Dads Allowed."

It occurred to me to ask why that's the case, so I called Primavera to see if they knew.  Their response: "That's a good question."  Have they ever had any problem with accepting single fathers?  No.  They get very few of them, but they've never had a problem. 

I spoke with Pastor Danny Hansen, Associate Executive Director of Gospel Rescue Mission in Tucson.  His mission has a women's and children's shelter and a men's shelter.  If a family with children comes to them for shelter, the mother and child are sent to the women's and children's shelter and the man is housed in the men's shelter.  A single mother with a child is housed in the women's and children's shelter, but a single father with a child is simply turned away.  Why?  Pastor Hansen said "That would not be appropriate." 

Further discussion elicited the information that the board of directors of the Gospel Rescue Mission perceived that children in a men's shelter would be in greater danger than children in a women's shelter.  Pastor Hansen went on to explain that the Gospel Rescue Mission is considering establishing a family shelter that would accept any parent or parents with children.  But if that happens at all, it won't be soon.

The bottom line?  If you're a single dad, keep your job and keep your house.  If you don't, it's the street for you and your children.
 

This article is a serious discussion of Parental Alienation Syndrome and parental alienation generally (U.S. News and World Report, 10/29/09).  Although it tends to elide the difference between the two, it's balanced, doesn't promote an agenda, but does understand the reality of PAS and the pain it can cause.  As the article shows, parental alienation can come in a variety of forms, from the unintentional and trivial to the malicious and psychologically damaging.  As to whether a discrete syndrome can be manifested by children of alienating parents, the article takes no stand.  Clearly, that question has yet to be decided by the community of mental health professionals. 

And the caution expressed by former American Psychiatric Association president, Elissa Benedek, is commendable.  Ever-increasing diagnoses of mental illness inevitably result in the ever-increasing treatment thereof, often by psychotropic medication.  Mistaken diagnoses of PAS in cases of appropriate anger on a child's part about divorce, or the simple preference for one parent or the other would be inevitable.  As always, there is behavior that is appropriate to trying circumstances and behavior that's not.  Knowing the difference can be tricky and not all mental health professionals will get it right.

And other diagnoses can look suspiciously like societal preference for controlling obstreperous masculine behavior.  After decades of diagnoses under a variety of names, Attention Deficit Disorder was first included in the DSM in 1980 and changed to Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder in 1987.  And, as Dr. Christopher Lane of Northwestern University has written,

But since ADHD was officially defined as a mental disorder in 1980, the number of diagnoses each year has skyrocketed—there's simply no other word for it. When a mental disorder mushrooms by hundreds of percent each year, as in this case, it's in everyone's interests to pay attention—even to ask what's going on, and why. Is there a major uptick due to recognition, finally, of a once-hidden, underrecognized phenomenon? Or does the issue also involve a bandwagon effect, where aggressive direct-to-consumer marketing, patent cycles, media interest, "diagnostic bracket creep" (Peter Kramer's term in Listening to Prozac), and even in this case education policies and practices seem to prioritize certain disorders and treatments over others.

Vastly more boys than girls are diagnosed with ADHD.  And therefore, vastly more boys than girls are treated with psychotropic drugs for the condition.  The psychological profession wonders why that should be, but generally fails to look at the possibility of anti-male bias in society.  As a colleague of Dr. Lane's once put it, "We used to have a word for sufferers of ADHD; we called them boys."  The implication is that what was once understood as acceptable masculine behavior is now considered unacceptable masculine behavior.  Are we entirely surprised that the skyrocketing diagnosis of ADHD coincided with the rise in the general societal distaste for behaviors identified as masculine? 

So I, like Dr. Benedek, am nervous about expanding diagnostic categories in the behavioral sciences.  But I'm all in favor of recognizing parental alienation when it occurs.  In short, I'd prefer to place the emphasis on the person doing the alienating rather than the one alienated.  After all, if we want to control or alter someone's behavior, let's go to the source, the cause.  And the cause of an alienated child is not the child, but the parent.   That, of course is not to say that alienated children shouldn't receive appropriate care.  Obviously, they should, but we must never ignore the alienating parent in favor of psychotropic drug therapy to control understandable behavior in alienated children.

Whatever the process of the PAS diagnosis in the future, it's good to see sane, balanced articles on the subject.  With the trend toward recognizing the phenomenon, whether it's finally defined as a "syndrome" or not, articles like the recent op-ed in the Christian Science Monitor that seek to deny the existence of alienation altogether will, I suspect, finally fade to black.