Protecting Children Means Safeguarding Their Minds, Their Bonds, and Their Right to Both Loving Parents
Family law reform must begin with one non-negotiable truth: children deserve safety, stability, and meaningful relationships with both fit parents. At FRMF, we support strong protections against abuse. But reform must also recognize the profound and lasting damage caused by psychological abuse — including coercive control, chronic denigration of a parent, loyalty conflicts, and forced rejection of a loving caregiver.
Research in developmental psychology consistently shows that persistent emotional manipulation can alter a child’s stress response system, distort attachment patterns, and contribute to long-term anxiety, depression, identity confusion, and relational instability. When a child is pressured to fear, hate, or abandon a parent without legitimate safety cause, the harm is not theoretical — it is neurological, emotional, and often lifelong.
Proposals such as Canada’s Keeping Children Safe Act (Bill C-223) remove any presumption of shared parenting and restrict court tools designed to address parental alienation. While child safety must always be paramount, eliminating balanced parenting frameworks risks overlooking psychological maltreatment that occurs in high-conflict separations. Dismissing alienation concerns outright may silence children whose rejection of a parent is rooted not in abuse, but in chronic emotional conditioning.
True child-centered reform does not choose between physical safety and emotional integrity. It recognizes that both matter. Courts must be equipped to screen for violence — and also to identify manipulation that fractures healthy parent-child bonds.
FRMF stands for reform grounded in research, fairness, and the full spectrum of child wellbeing.
Children deserve protection from harm — and protection from being deprived of love.
Bill C-223, An Act to amend the Divorce Act (Keeping Children Safe Act)FRMF opposes Canadas view.