Alienation in Society

The issue of alienation has become a rapidly growing problem in our modern everyday society. Directly or indirectly, we are all targeted by this term which certainly has lived up to its infamous reputation. Alienation is used as a broad term to describe situations in which people have been affected in various ways with negative outcomes. These outcomes occur as the result of ill-treatment within a society.
Targets of alienation are distributed along a wider range; therefore to narrow this broad range of targets down to children is a crucial task. This is so because to understand the minds of children is a sensitive effort due to their vulnerability to the influence or corruption of the outside world. That is, the world of adults, the world in which their innocence and youth do not belong. To complete this task successfully we must first investigate the unique elements of the mind which are then linked to destructive emotions, as well as the significance and impact of human relationships.
Let us begin with the home. Due to the madness of the 21st century the values of the home are continually degrading in such a way that the necessary contributions each family member owes are being overlooked. It is up to the parents to create and provide the children with a safe environment in which to live. A safe environment is one in which the parents do what they can to protect their children from harm. They give value to the home, and raise their children in a trusty environment. In an ideal home, children feel free to express and discuss important things with their parents thus creating an unconditional bond which cannot be broken. However, in some unfortunate cases, the bonds that link the members of a family can be broken.
Divorce has become a norm in the western world but its consequences must not be overlooked by society. Parental alienation arises from the wish to divorce. The Parental Alienation Syndrome (P.A.S.) refers to the efforts of one parent to spoil the child’s perception of the other parent. In other words, P.A.S. refers to the efforts to turn a child against the other parent. These efforts would obviously have long-term effects on the child who must suffer from the selfishness of such a parent. Do you find yourself asking what kinds values a selfish parent might have? Parents constantly have to give something of themselves in order to make their children’s lives as good as possible. In this case a parent that has given too much might in the end lose or forget the values of his or her own life. In such cases, we cannot blame parents for making a decision which would benefit their own lives. However, those parents, whose lives’ intentions are to benefit themselves only, are indeed selfish. Children are pushed aside feeling unwanted and unloved. Money, jealousy, fear and revenge are all factors which contribute to self-centered decision making.
Children tend to have complex internal emotions which can often lead to guilt. Maybe they were the reason why their parents divorced? It is mere exposure that sparks curiosity in children’s minds and leads to painful emotions. Negotiations between the parents and children must be made in order for a healthy transition to take place. We must never underestimate the effects of divorce on children because divorce is often a reason why children develop social problems. If parents make their children feel unwanted, then these children would naturally reach the conclusion that they are not wanted by anyone, resulting in societal difficulties.
Yet how can this possibly be a healthy transition? The alienating parent intentionally risks the health of the relationship of the child and the other parent. Such domestic problems lead the child to experience such emotions as fear, anger, or increasing insecurity which have an effect on the roles children play in society and most importantly in large social institutions such as school. In school, their insecure states of mind could become the targets of bullying.
Domestic problems may or may not cause children to become insecure. In such cases when this does occur, insecurity could lead children to have certain behavioral problems through which they easily become outcasts in society. Domestic problems could lead to behavior problems such as increased anger, violence, or in some cases emotional detachment, depression, self conscience or isolation.
It is known that people in society today either consciously or unconsciously steer away from the company of people who are not very open towards others. Children with bad approaches to society become emotionally isolated from the rest because they do not feel anybody else understands them. We have to understand that divorce causes children to undergo a drastic change in their lives. When people in general undergo such changes, they focus only on the pain that the change brings to their lives. Focusing on the pain, children fear that it could get worse which is what causes them to draw back from society. Emotions can cause us to act in irrational ways; this is why emotional isolation can prevent the freedom of expression in children suffering from alienation due to divorce.
Personally, I have a friend who has suffered from the emotional pain resulting from her parents’ divorce. Although we have never been as close as we might’ve been, I assume she indulged herself in her interests as a way to escape this problem when we were little. When I moved back, others told me she was strange and unsocial, yet when we talked, she was about one of the nicest people I stumbled upon. The view a society has of a person has a lot to do with how they are treated. In small societies, domestic problems are so often talked about that they no longer remain domestic. The mere knowledge that someone has a specific problem naturally causes people to treat that person differently. So how can children fit in societies in which they already know what is spoken of them? I hold the belief that children can find ways to heal, but it is tragic that they should be put in such positions in the first place as a result of ignorance.