Do Not Pull Your Child Into Your Fight

A father and mother argue in the kitchen. The voices carry. After ten minutes, the father walks into the living room and says to his twelve-year-old: "You tell me. Was I wrong, or was she?"

A grandmother disagrees with how her son and daughter-in-law discipline their child. She pulls her granddaughter aside and says: "Your daddy is too strict with you. He does not understand. You know Grandma is the one who really gets you, right?"

A couple separates. The mother tells the children, "Your father abandoned us. He does not care about you anymore." The children stop calling him.

None of these adults think they are doing harm. They think they are telling the truth. They think they are protecting the child, or seeking fairness, or finally being honest about a situation everyone already knows about.

What they are actually doing is asking a child to choose between two people they love — and then paying for that choice for the rest of their life.

What loyalty conflict actually looks like

Loyalty conflict is not a clinical term invented by researchers. It is a real experience: the feeling of being asked to stand with one parent against the other, or with one grandparent against both parents, and knowing that whichever side you pick, someone you love gets hurt.

A study published in the Journal of Family Psychology surveyed over seven hundred adults about their childhood exposure to loyalty conflicts — situations where one parent made negative comments about the other, asked the child to keep secrets from the other parent, or tried to turn the child against the other. The findings were clear: adults who reported high exposure to these behaviors had significantly lower self-esteem and higher psychological distress, even decades later. The damage was not just about divorce. It showed up in intact families too, wherever one adult used a child as a weapon against another.

The study also found something that should stop any parent mid-sentence: about 80 percent of the adults surveyed reported some exposure to loyalty conflict behaviors as children. This is not a rare problem. It is a common one that most families do not recognize because it feels so normal.

Why it feels like fairness

If you have ever pulled your child into a disagreement, you probably did not think of it as loyalty conflict. You thought of it as being honest, or giving your child the full picture, or letting them decide for themselves who is right.

That framing makes sense to the adult who is hurting. When your spouse or your child's other parent has done something that upset you, telling the child about it feels like telling the truth. Why should you protect the other person's reputation when they did not protect your feelings?

But the child is not a judge. They are not equipped to weigh adult disputes. They are equipped to love both of the people in front of them. When you ask them to pick a side, you are not giving them information. You are giving them a burden they cannot carry without damaging one of their most important relationships.

The question is never "Who is right?" The question is "Why is a child being asked to answer that?"

What grandparents do that hurts just as much

Parents are not the only ones who create loyalty conflicts. Grandparents do it too, often without realizing the weight of what they are saying.

A grandmother who tells her grandchild, "Your mommy is too hard on you," may think she is offering comfort. She is actually telling the child that the person who raises them every day is the problem — and that Grandma is the safe alternative. That message undermines the child's trust in their own parent, and it makes the child feel like they need to hide their love for that parent when Grandma is around.

A grandfather who says, "Your dad does not appreciate us," is doing the same thing in a different direction. The child hears that their father is ungrateful, and they feel caught between loyalty to the person they live with and loyalty to the person who just said something negative about them.

The result is the same either way: the child learns to split themselves. One version of themselves for Mom's house, one for Dad's, one for Grandma's visit. That splitting does not teach flexibility. It teaches dishonesty, anxiety, and the habit of shaping your personality around whoever has power over you in that moment.

What happens when the child grows up

The long-term effects are well documented. Adults who experienced loyalty conflicts as children report higher rates of self-doubt, difficulty trusting others, and persistent guilt about their relationships with both parents. Many describe a feeling of having "chosen wrong" — even when they were children who had no real choice at all.

Some carry the pattern forward. Research reviewed in Psychology Today found that roughly half of adults who experienced parental alienation as children became alienated from their own children later. The cycle repeats because the person never learned how to stay connected to two people who disagree. They only learned how to pick one and cut off the other.

What to do instead

If you are angry with your child's other parent, your child is not the person to talk to about it. That sentence is simple, and it is hard to follow when you are upset. But it is the rule that protects your child from the damage you did not intend.

Some alternatives:

Talk to another adult. A friend, a sibling, a counselor, a support group. Adults are equipped to hear your frustration and respond to it. Children are equipped to love you and love the other person, and asking them to stop doing one of those things is asking them to break something inside themselves.

Keep your observations about the other parent between adults. If your ex made a decision you disagree with, discuss it with them directly. If that is not possible, discuss it with your own support system. The child does not need to hear that their other parent is selfish, irresponsible, or unloving. They need to be allowed to keep their own relationship with that person — even if that relationship looks different from what you would choose.

If you must explain something, keep it neutral. When a child asks why Mom and Dad are not living together, or why Grandma is upset, give them facts without verdicts:

"Mom and Dad disagreed about some things, and we decided we would live in different houses. Both of us still love you. You will see both of us."

"Grandma had a different idea about how things should go, and she got frustrated. That happens between adults sometimes. It does not change how any of us feel about you."

Those answers are honest. They also leave the child's relationships intact.

If you have already done this

Many parents reading this will recognize something they have already said. A comment made in anger. A complaint shared with a child who was just sitting there, looking up, ready to listen. The first step is not to pretend it did not happen.

"I said some things about your mom that were my frustration, not facts. That was wrong. You deserve to have your own relationship with her, and I should not have tried to change that. I am going to do better."

That apology does not require you to change your view of the other parent. It requires you to change your view of what your child should be asked to carry.

Then follow through. The next time you feel the urge to complain about the other parent to your child, stop. Write it down. Call someone. Say it out loud to an empty room if you need to. But do not hand it to your child. They have enough weight already.

The boundary that protects everyone

Adult disagreements stay between adults. That is not a therapy concept. It is a family rule that works whether you are married, divorced, or navigating a multigenerational household. The child's job is to grow up. Your job is to handle your own conflicts without making them part of their growing up.

When you keep that boundary, you are not hiding the truth. You are protecting the relationships your child needs in order to become a person who can handle disagreement without destroying connection. You are teaching them, by example, that adults can be angry and still not pull a child into the middle of it.

That lesson will shape every relationship they have for the rest of their life.

AI-generated editorial illustration for Still Talking.