The Narcissistic Parent: A Guidebook for Legal Professionals Working with Families in High-Conflict Divorce

by C.A. Childress

In divorce litigation, family law professionals can play a crucial role in supporting children’s healthy emotional and psychological development following the break-up of the intact family structure, and in helping the family transition into a new separated family structure. Children love their parents, both parents, and all children want the love of both parents in return. However, in the context of high inter-spousal conflict children are often compelled by the pathology of a narcissistic parent to choose sides in the spousal conflict against the other parent. In these circumstances of high-conflict divorce, minor’s counsel, guardians ad litem, and family law judiciary become crucial to helping resolve the child’s triangulation into the spousal conflict and restoring the child’s healthy developmental trajectory. Recognizing and helping to resolve the influence of the narcissistic parent’s pathology on the child is crucial to the role of the legal professional in supporting the family’s successful transition to a new post-divorce separated-family structure of independent families and shared co-parenting. In The Narcissistic Parent, Dr. Childress provides a brief primer on the features of the narcissistic personality parent that impact the role of legal professionals working with children and families surrounding divorce and child custody issues.

50 pages, Paperback

Published June 2, 2016

Reviews

[Lisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

A venerable resource for professionals, with countless citations to studies and academic literature asserting that high conflict divorce and parental rejection is almost always owing to manipulative abuse by a parent with narcissistic personality, with extensive detail about what that entails - low capacity for empathy and sadness, propensity for revenge and anger, outward appearance of being a protective/loving/caring parent, but with common destructive behavioral traits emerging behind closed doors. If you are in a high conflict custody/alienation situation, give your legal team this book and ensure that any involved legal and mental health professionals are familiar with this information.

[Miriam · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great clinical resource and a very easy comprehensive read.