When Parents Kidnap

What happens when a child is kidnapped from home by his or her own parent? What are the emotional and psychological consequences of living in hiding for weeks, months, or even years for a child? How does the parent left behind cope with having no knowledge of the child's whereabouts or well-being? And what could lead a parent to inflict such a painful existence on his or her own child? This text provides a look at the problem of the abduction of children by their parents, portraying the experiences of both the parents searching for their children, and the abductors who have taken them. The reader is given depictions of life on the run and learn, how children who have been in hiding for months and sometimes years cope with moving from town to town and from school to school, and how reunion with the searching parent affects them. Greif and Hegar set the stage for policy change by identifying five common scenarios that end in abduction, and point out how changes in custody and divorce law could help to eliminate, or to more quickly resolve, abduction of children. Geoffrey Greif has also written "The Daddy Track and the Single Father" and "Single Fathers".