Recognising April 25 as Parent Alienation Day

April 25, 2017

Sameera* has met her son and daughter for 52 hours and 37 hours respectively since the past five years. She has counted the number of hours to put in her paperwork to submit to the court when she visits next. The fight has been endless for her. After her divorce from her husband, she applied for access rights to visit her children. By the time the court granted these rights, her children did not want to see her. “There was a delay in granting me the access rights. My children had been fed lies and they have been alienated against me. As a mother, I spent all my time with them but after the divorce, I haven’t been able to meet them at all,” she explains.

April 25 is recognised as Parent Alienation Day, a day that seeks to understand the alienation faced by parents who do not have custody of their child. “The child stays with the parent who has the custody. In most cases, a lot of hatred is filled in the child against the opposite parent. As a result, the child doesn’t want to meet the parent and becomes alienated from him or her. Even though the opposite parent has visitation rights, most of the time the children aren’t able to spend enough time with the parent due to several reasons. This severely affects the child’s personality as he or she grows up,” says Manoj Gandhi, a member of Non-Custodial Parents Association, which organised a rally on Tuesday from the Family Court in Mumbai to the one in Pune.

According to an RTI filed by Gandhi, there are 30 applications in a month which go to the family court that involve children. Only one parent, in the last three years got the joint custody of his or her child, “This isn’t about men’s rights or women’s rights. A parent is a parent. The child is the main interest here. We have been holding this rally since the past four years to spread awareness about this issue. There is a parent who has not been able to visit his daughter for the past 14 years. After these many years, the judge at the Bombay High Court told him that he need not meet his daughter as she is growing into a lady. Such matters are still pending in the courts.”

Sameera adds that earlier, all divorce cases were accompanied by parental plans, “If children are involved, then you have to go to court. Children are safeguarded. This is a whole future generation that we’re talking about.” She also mentions that the fight for these rights is tougher for women as most women do not have the resources and backing to keeping fighting in courts, “Most of the women fighting are not very independent and lack the financial backing when compared to their male counterparts. They don’t hold any leverage against the ones they are fighting as they have no bargaining stake. In such cases, unfortunately, neither the media nor women’s groups are of any help. Everyone just wants to pick on the fence.”

*name changed for reasons of privacy