Unless you were under a rock and completely unplugged, you know that Alec Baldwin recently left an anger-filled message on the cell phone belonging to his 11-year-old daughter, Ireland. The recording has been played ad nauseum by news outlets as the cult of celebrity hit its full voyeuristic swing – and the audio received more than a half-million runs on YouTube.

It exposed a custody situation at its utter worst – when a child becomes the mis-directed target of a frustrated parent’s venom. So Baldwin trotted onto “The View” to make amends to America – when really the only person he should be concerned about apologizing to is his daughter. Plopped on a sofa between Rose O’Donnell and Barbara Walters, Baldwin blamed his ex-wife, Kim Basinger, for driving him to dastardly behavior.

He didn’t hesitate to lob a few bombs at the tabloid media – why anyone would release and play repeatedly a voicemail message that was obviously harmful and humiliating to a child is beyond all sensibility. Being a kid about to hit teenhood is tough enough – having this happen had to be the ultimate awful for Ireland.

Baldwin said that everyone working in tabloid media was suffering from wounds in their pasts and is hell-bent on destroying others. It’s a bit extreme to assert that everyone involved in a particular industry can “always” fit into such a mold. Far be it from me to defend the tabloid media, but it seems a bit of a leap to say that all of these reporters are working through their personal pain by unleashing it on celebrities. I would think they would be motivated by something far more superficial – money.

The entire episode had a titillation factor. The fact that there were so few calls to stop playing the voice mail message says something regrettable about our society. Unfortunately, many stepfamilies dealing with hostile ex-spouses who talk to others know all too well on a micro-level this sense of raw exposure – when you feel like your life is on display and people can poke about in it and don’t fully understand it.

Baldwin told O’Donnell and Walters how he is a victim of parental alienation (he is writing a book about it for St. Martin’s Press) and says he has a “wonderful” relationship with his daughter, which doesn’t entirely make sense – since the two things can’t go together. If he has a wonderful relationship with his child, how can she be alienated from him?

Parental alienation is a form of relational aggression where a hostile parent negatively influences a child about the other parent. In extreme cases, it can involve brainwashing, false allegations of child abuse, accusations of drug addiction or substance abuse, and enlisting relatives to badmouth the other parent. There is debate in the psychological community over whether Parental Alienation Syndrome is a legitimate condition, or bad parenting taken to an extreme.

Baldwin said that he has been contacted by thousands of dads and their new wives, who identify with his struggle to connect with his child and being manipulated by the other parent. The hostility between Ireland’s parents is palpable – and the real story that’s not getting reported is what will all of this conflict do to Ireland?

There’s reams of research stating that children don’t benefit from hostility between their parents. As a stepparent myself, I believe that a parent can play an influential role in affecting a child’s relationship from the other parent. I’ve heard my husband’s ex-wife say, “Your dad thinks you are worthless,” to my middle stepson. What a complete and horrible lie to tell a child.

Although my husband has a strong bond with his other children, his relationship with his middle son is up and down. By causing her son to question his father, she makes him turn to her, but she also makes him question himself. Seeds of self-doubt are a powerful and destructive force for a parent to place within a child.

Let’s hope that there’s a ceasefire in this war of words and that Ireland is given a gift from both of her parents – the opportunity to be a child who has a loving and caring relationship with both parents.

Dawn Miller writes a column on life in blended families at thestepfamilylife.com. 
Visit Dawn's blog for a daily dose of life in the blender.
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