by Betty Sims
Go to Betty's Home Page
Atlanta Christianity Examiner
On Sunday, June 21, people all over the world will commemorate Father’s Day, a day set aside to honor men who have sacrificed to raise offspring. But, I often wonder about how children that don’t have fathers really feel. In the twenty-first century with our modern-day ideologies about responsible parenting, a lot of men fail to “father” their children. Not unlike males in the animal kingdom, they “hit that,” and go on to the next victim of unbridled passion and unprotected sex. Many men may never know the woman has conceived; and sadly, some women couldn’t identify their baby’s daddy without a paternity test! Anonymous absentee dads have become more the norm than the exception, far removed from the Biblical genealogies that recorded who begot whom with accuracy and aplomb.
While we honor those fathers that elected to honorably marry and rear children, my heart aches for children that don’t know their dads. That missing link can make the difference between a child that is self-assured and feels secure and one that fails to connect emotionally and spiritually to those that offer love. A mother or grandmother, uncle, cousin, or older brother can never replace a birth father’s love, given freely, self-sacrificially, and without reservation. Mothers are not meant to be both Mom and Dad. Grandparents are not meant to raise children when they ought to be retired and rocking in their favorite easy chair. As a people—saved or unsaved – we must stop the madness of childhood abandonment, emotional and physical abuse, and alienation absentee fatherhood causes. As responsible adults, we must begin teaching our children the Biblical way to become parents: waiting until marriage and waiting until maturity before bringing innocent babies into the world.
As saint and sinner alike, we need to become bold enough to tell our young men to pull their pants up instead of down and put their genitals “on ice,” before risking ruining another young girl’s life and saddling her with an infant they have no intention of helping to support. We need to take a stance against premarital sex and teen pregnancy and teach our young ladies that they are of much value – both in the sight of God and in society. We’ve got to tell our girls that teen pregnancy is not a play thing, boosting a baby on your hip is not cool, and a welfare check can never replace a college education and a chance at a better life. Parents need to demand more discipline at home; teachers must demand more respect at school; and the pulpit must demand and more importantly, demonstrate sound Biblically-based family lifestyles that young people will want to emulate.
Instead of babies having babies and children trying to rear children, we who do know the way cannot afford to turn away and bury our heads in the sand as if the problem doesn’t exist, or whisper behind closed doors when it’s someone else’s child that’s “in trouble.” As Secretary of State Hillary Clinton once stated, “It takes a village to raise a child;” and we, especially Christians, are that village that God is calling for to help our future generation realize the importance overcoming the throes of puberty without pregnancy. It’s our job, it is our divine commission, and it is our utmost duty, as parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, and clergymen to wage a serious and ongoing battle against teen parenting, absentee fatherhood, and premarital promiscuity. Can we do it? Yes, we can; and the challenge is before us. On June 21st, let us honor those who helped bring us into the world, for they are worthy of the sacrifices made and the unconditional love they shared. But let us not forget to teach, to admonish, and to exhort our young people to wait until they are fully mature, married, and mentally ready to become parents. I dare you to take the challenge, and have a Happy Father’s Day!
Source: http://www.examiner.com/x-7327-Atlanta-Christianity-Examiner~y2009m6d11-Fathers-Day-a-challenge-to-absentee-fathers
Friday, June 12, 2009
Minister Ronald Smith. Why do states/courts promote divorce and rip children apart from their parents?
Ronald Smith of Children Need BOTH Parents, Inc. on the importance of children having EQUAL time, love, guidance with BOTH fit parents.
Justice department playing "reindeer games"
Lawyers, lobbyist and liars make crazy, unfounded claims as to why men should not have their equal rights restored.
Family justice reform urgently needed in N.B.
Published Tuesday June 9th, 2009
By Mary-Eileen Flanagan
The Access to Family Justice Task Force
There are few people in our province who have not experienced directly or indirectly the pain and confusion, rage, powerlessness and despair that accompanies the tragic breakdown of a family.
The disputes that arise at those times are complex, emotional and very personal; yet we as a society have historically used an adversarial, procedural and impersonal process to find solutions for these family disputes, a process which the participants do not understand and over which they have little or no control.
The rules of the process have been crudely adapted from rules of civil procedure which were created long before the modern family system and which were originally intended for commercial disputes, not disputes involving family members. The huge family justice system and its processes are applied to every situation no matter how big or small.
Our system is profoundly broken. We each have a story which illustrates the dilemma -- a parental alienation which was not given priority, adjournments, lack of mediation services, child protection matters take too long, no easy way to vary child support, wait times, large legal fees or inadequate legal aid services.
No one aspect of the system is to blame. The dysfunction and collateral damage suffered at the hands of this system is not solely due to lawyers or judges, or court staff or mediators. Each of these groups of professionals have attempted their own damage control but the reality is that only wholesale change -- a paradigm shift -- is going to alleviate the damage which the system does to families in crisis.
The problems in our family justice system were well known in February 2008 when our Minister of Justice, T. J. Burke, Q.C., struck the Access to Family Justice Task Force. Access to Family Justice is an unfortunate title because we all know that justice has precious little to do with how families reconfigure and heal following breakdowns.
Our group spent 10 months meeting, interviewing, studying, researching, reviewing, reading, collaborating, brainstorming, advocating and envisioning the best possible dispute resolution process for all families in our province -- be they big, small, rich, poor, urban, rural, sophisticated or not.
Sadly, in the course of our work, we have confirmed that the problems are as bad as we all feared. The stories were as compelling as we instinctively knew. The stakeholders and front line workers were as generous and as candid with their experience and advice as we could ever have imagined. We are indebted to every social worker, psychologist, court clerk, regional director, mediator, lawyer, judge, prosecutor, grandparent, and parent who gave us insight and advice.
The report has been tabled in the legislature (www.gnb.ca/justice). The Minister of Justice has set an incredibly ambitious agenda to revolutionize the way families in crisis in our province access solutions for their very particular situations. He and his staff cannot do this alone. We (the parents and grandparents, professionals and stakeholders) cannot stand back and passively or critically dare his success. We must all be active participants in delivering the family focused, empowering and efficient system our province deserves.
We are only 750,000 people, for goodness sake. There are only three degrees of separation between all of us. Surely we can have a system to support and educate our citizens and neighbours during the absolute worst time in their lives and surely we can do this in a way that restores hope and preserves dignity and protects children.
The cost of the existing system is too huge in time and money and children, whose innocence and relationships are irreparably damaged.
Undoubtedly there are situations that do absolutely require trials and individuals who are unable to participate in child focused and/or interest-based dispute resolution. For those individuals, our Family Courts must exist, but every other sacred cow must be challenged and must be available to be sacrificed and it has to happen immediately.
Modernizing, personalizing and revolutionizing our system of dispute resolution for families in crisis is not a spectator sport. Our province cannot ever be self-sufficient if our most vulnerable children and the most tragic family matters continue to be dealt with using the most adversarial, time consuming and expensive dispute resolution mechanism.
The system must change and our minister of justice is prepared to lead the change. He requires support from all MLAs, all judges, all lawyers, all families, all New Brunswickers. Each and every one of us has been and will be impacted directly or indirectly by the failure or success of our family court system.
Mary-Eileen Flanagan is one of the seven members of the Access to Family Justice Task Force. She practices law in Saint John and is the current chair of the Family Law Section for the New Brunswick Branch of the Canadian Bar Association.
Sources: http://timestranscript.canadaeast.com/opinion/article/693342
By Mary-Eileen Flanagan
The Access to Family Justice Task Force
There are few people in our province who have not experienced directly or indirectly the pain and confusion, rage, powerlessness and despair that accompanies the tragic breakdown of a family.
The disputes that arise at those times are complex, emotional and very personal; yet we as a society have historically used an adversarial, procedural and impersonal process to find solutions for these family disputes, a process which the participants do not understand and over which they have little or no control.
The rules of the process have been crudely adapted from rules of civil procedure which were created long before the modern family system and which were originally intended for commercial disputes, not disputes involving family members. The huge family justice system and its processes are applied to every situation no matter how big or small.
Our system is profoundly broken. We each have a story which illustrates the dilemma -- a parental alienation which was not given priority, adjournments, lack of mediation services, child protection matters take too long, no easy way to vary child support, wait times, large legal fees or inadequate legal aid services.
No one aspect of the system is to blame. The dysfunction and collateral damage suffered at the hands of this system is not solely due to lawyers or judges, or court staff or mediators. Each of these groups of professionals have attempted their own damage control but the reality is that only wholesale change -- a paradigm shift -- is going to alleviate the damage which the system does to families in crisis.
The problems in our family justice system were well known in February 2008 when our Minister of Justice, T. J. Burke, Q.C., struck the Access to Family Justice Task Force. Access to Family Justice is an unfortunate title because we all know that justice has precious little to do with how families reconfigure and heal following breakdowns.
Our group spent 10 months meeting, interviewing, studying, researching, reviewing, reading, collaborating, brainstorming, advocating and envisioning the best possible dispute resolution process for all families in our province -- be they big, small, rich, poor, urban, rural, sophisticated or not.
Sadly, in the course of our work, we have confirmed that the problems are as bad as we all feared. The stories were as compelling as we instinctively knew. The stakeholders and front line workers were as generous and as candid with their experience and advice as we could ever have imagined. We are indebted to every social worker, psychologist, court clerk, regional director, mediator, lawyer, judge, prosecutor, grandparent, and parent who gave us insight and advice.
The report has been tabled in the legislature (www.gnb.ca/justice). The Minister of Justice has set an incredibly ambitious agenda to revolutionize the way families in crisis in our province access solutions for their very particular situations. He and his staff cannot do this alone. We (the parents and grandparents, professionals and stakeholders) cannot stand back and passively or critically dare his success. We must all be active participants in delivering the family focused, empowering and efficient system our province deserves.
We are only 750,000 people, for goodness sake. There are only three degrees of separation between all of us. Surely we can have a system to support and educate our citizens and neighbours during the absolute worst time in their lives and surely we can do this in a way that restores hope and preserves dignity and protects children.
The cost of the existing system is too huge in time and money and children, whose innocence and relationships are irreparably damaged.
Undoubtedly there are situations that do absolutely require trials and individuals who are unable to participate in child focused and/or interest-based dispute resolution. For those individuals, our Family Courts must exist, but every other sacred cow must be challenged and must be available to be sacrificed and it has to happen immediately.
Modernizing, personalizing and revolutionizing our system of dispute resolution for families in crisis is not a spectator sport. Our province cannot ever be self-sufficient if our most vulnerable children and the most tragic family matters continue to be dealt with using the most adversarial, time consuming and expensive dispute resolution mechanism.
The system must change and our minister of justice is prepared to lead the change. He requires support from all MLAs, all judges, all lawyers, all families, all New Brunswickers. Each and every one of us has been and will be impacted directly or indirectly by the failure or success of our family court system.
Mary-Eileen Flanagan is one of the seven members of the Access to Family Justice Task Force. She practices law in Saint John and is the current chair of the Family Law Section for the New Brunswick Branch of the Canadian Bar Association.
Sources: http://timestranscript.canadaeast.com/opinion/article/693342
Tuesday, June 9, 2009
Don’t exclude the grandparents
From The TimesJune 9, 2009
Don’t exclude the grandparents
Almost half of grandparents lose contact with their grandchildren after family break-up — but when Susannah Hickling lost her French partner, she found that she needed her in-laws’ help more than ever.
(SUZANNA HICKLING)
by Susannah Hickling
I had known about Richard’s death for all of one minute when his mother started to scream repeatedly: “She’ll go back to England and we’ll never see the baby again!” Submerged in an ocean of grief with an icy numbness already creeping over me, I can honestly say that the thought of taking our 15-day-old son from our home in France back to London had not even entered my head.
In the weeks and months that followed, my mother and sister urged me to do just that. I did eventually go back — but not for another four years and not before I was satisfied that my son had built a meaningful relationship with his father’s family.
Even amid the most terrible sorrow, something told me that it was important for Joshua to get to know his paternal grandparents, his aunt and uncle and his half-brother and half-sister — people I barely knew myself, as a relative newcomer to their small village in Provence. They were a close family in an area where blood ties are so strong that they often exclude friendships. Joshua would also need to speak French, as Richard’s relatives spoke no English. And, anyway, having lost my soulmate, who was shot accidentally by a game hunter on a hillside near our home, when our child was barely two weeks old, I reasoned that I would be unhappy wherever I was.
The Grandparents’ Association estimates that more than a million children in Britain are not allowed to see their grandparents because of divorce or family tragedy. And a recent report published by pressure groups including the Family Matters Institute and Families Need Fathers pointed out that, while the law grants an automatic right to step-parents who have lived as part of a family for three years to apply to the family courts for contact, the same right is not given to grandparents.
In contrast to the UK — where 42 per cent of grandparents lose contact with their grandchildren after a family break-up — grandparents’ rights are enshrined in French law. I never wanted it to come to that, not because I thought that Richard’s family would take me to court but because it seemed clear to me that a mother has to act in the best interests of her child.
But I’d be lying if I pretended that it was easy. There were big differences in our views on child-rearing and in our cultural attitudes. I was in a village that even locals from nearby towns derided as “backward”. The advice from friends, family and parenting books was in stark contrast to the accepted practices there. It is common for the wider family to help to bring up the children in Provence, and mine interfered as only a Mediterranean family could. I was often a lone dissenting voice against their collective belief system.
When they urged me to put sugar on Joshua’s dummy to stop him crying, I told them that it was bad for his teeth. “But he doesn’t have any,” said his grandmother. “They’re there in his gums,” I insisted politely. Later, I saw the tell-tale sugary sheen around his mouth and felt the stickiness on his dummy. “Who did this?” I asked. My mother-in-law and sister-in-law looked sheepish. “You don’t want him to have sugar on his dummy — you deal with it,” warned my sister-in-law when we took a bawling Joshua out in his buggy later. I will, I thought. He is, after all, my baby.
It infuriated me that I could be entrusted to manage a team of people and a six-figure budget in the job I gave up to move to Provence, yet apparently I was an incompetent mother. But I kept my usually big mouth shut. I was trying to build a relationship, not engage in active warfare. And I was well aware that my partner’s family, like me, were mad with grief.
They were adamant that the good old ways were the best. These dictated that, for example, you should never let a baby take a nap under a fig or walnut tree (I had both) for fear of toxins in the leaves, but that you should feed him lambs’ brains.
I realised that being undermined was par for the course, but some of their ideas were terrifying. Richard’s mother and sister told me that if Joshua misbehaved he would be punished with the martinet, a whip with leather lashes. This was kept for disciplining their dogs but Joshua’s halfsister had once been hit with it as a little girl. Only once, mind you, they said. “I think that’s barbaric,” I said.
At one stage I was too frightened to leave Joshua alone at his grandparents’ home for more than a few minutes in case he was naughty — yet soon I saw that, far from being strict disciplinarians, the family doted on my son and spoilt him rotten. It helped that he was the spitting image of Richard, right down to the fair hair and the little triangles under his eyes when he was tired. Richard’s mother and sister even enjoyed changing his messy nappies.
Although they wanted to look after him all the time, it always had to be at their house, the hub of the family. A few months after Richard’s death I decided to return to the local drama group — but it started at 9pm, and getting both of us fed and out of the house with all the baby paraphernalia took two hours. By the time I had dropped Joshua at his grandparents’ home, I was too exhausted to be theatrical in French. And after I had collected him at 11pm and driven him, tired and cranky, back home, I was a shell. After two sessions I gave up drama and the hope of a life outside my home and my partner’s family. This is my life now, I told myself grimly. But it won’t always be like this.
Gradually things got better. As time passed, Richard’s family and I came to understand each other. They realised that I could care for a baby despite all that had happened, and our total misery at Richard’s death mellowed into the dull pain of missing him. We all became a bit more sane and Joshua, now 5, grew into a sociable and well-balanced bilingual child.
By the time I moved back to London 18 months ago, I knew that I had done the right thing by staying so long. I had proved that it is possible to maintain a relationship with your partner’s family even when that partner is no longer there. That proof is in the birthday card that his sister sent me a few months before I left: “To a wonderful sister-in-law who came into our family like a gift.” I felt guilty for all the mean things I’d thought over the years and was glad that I’d left them unsaid.
“Grandparents act as a link with the past,” says the sociologist Clifford Hill, research director of the Family Matters Institute. “They are very important to a child’s identity and stability. The absence of grandparents is a major reason why so many children are unstable.”
The Family Matters Institute, Families Need Fathers and the Grandparents’ Association are campaigning for a simplification of the tortuous and costly legal process that grandparents in the UK have to endure to see estranged grandchildren. A letter-writing campaign is urging MPs to include the issue in their party manifestos.
My son adores his father’s family and particularly his grandmother, who has always had the time to play with him that I, as a lone working parent, have not. He goes to a Saturday school to keep up his French, we Skype the in-laws every Sunday and go to see them in Provence twice a year. They, in turn, make an annual pilgrimage to London. Thanks to their love for Joshua and my ability, for once, to see the bigger picture, we have created an unbreakable link to the father my son never knew.
Source:rom The TimesJune 9, 2009
Don’t exclude the grandparents
Almost half of grandparents lose contact with their grandchildren after family break-up — but when Susannah Hickling lost her French partner, she found that she needed her in-laws’ help more than ever
(SUZANNA HICKLING)
Susannah Hickling
I had known about Richard’s death for all of one minute when his mother started to scream repeatedly: “She’ll go back to England and we’ll never see the baby again!” Submerged in an ocean of grief with an icy numbness already creeping over me, I can honestly say that the thought of taking our 15-day-old son from our home in France back to London had not even entered my head.
In the weeks and months that followed, my mother and sister urged me to do just that. I did eventually go back — but not for another four years and not before I was satisfied that my son had built a meaningful relationship with his father’s family.
Even amid the most terrible sorrow, something told me that it was important for Joshua to get to know his paternal grandparents, his aunt and uncle and his half-brother and half-sister — people I barely knew myself, as a relative newcomer to their small village in Provence. They were a close family in an area where blood ties are so strong that they often exclude friendships. Joshua would also need to speak French, as Richard’s relatives spoke no English. And, anyway, having lost my soulmate, who was shot accidentally by a game hunter on a hillside near our home, when our child was barely two weeks old, I reasoned that I would be unhappy wherever I was.
The Grandparents’ Association estimates that more than a million children in Britain are not allowed to see their grandparents because of divorce or family tragedy. And a recent report published by pressure groups including the Family Matters Institute and Families Need Fathers pointed out that, while the law grants an automatic right to step-parents who have lived as part of a family for three years to apply to the family courts for contact, the same right is not given to grandparents.
In contrast to the UK — where 42 per cent of grandparents lose contact with their grandchildren after a family break-up — grandparents’ rights are enshrined in French law. I never wanted it to come to that, not because I thought that Richard’s family would take me to court but because it seemed clear to me that a mother has to act in the best interests of her child.
But I’d be lying if I pretended that it was easy. There were big differences in our views on child-rearing and in our cultural attitudes. I was in a village that even locals from nearby towns derided as “backward”. The advice from friends, family and parenting books was in stark contrast to the accepted practices there. It is common for the wider family to help to bring up the children in Provence, and mine interfered as only a Mediterranean family could. I was often a lone dissenting voice against their collective belief system.
When they urged me to put sugar on Joshua’s dummy to stop him crying, I told them that it was bad for his teeth. “But he doesn’t have any,” said his grandmother. “They’re there in his gums,” I insisted politely. Later, I saw the tell-tale sugary sheen around his mouth and felt the stickiness on his dummy. “Who did this?” I asked. My mother-in-law and sister-in-law looked sheepish. “You don’t want him to have sugar on his dummy — you deal with it,” warned my sister-in-law when we took a bawling Joshua out in his buggy later. I will, I thought. He is, after all, my baby.
It infuriated me that I could be entrusted to manage a team of people and a six-figure budget in the job I gave up to move to Provence, yet apparently I was an incompetent mother. But I kept my usually big mouth shut. I was trying to build a relationship, not engage in active warfare. And I was well aware that my partner’s family, like me, were mad with grief.
They were adamant that the good old ways were the best. These dictated that, for example, you should never let a baby take a nap under a fig or walnut tree (I had both) for fear of toxins in the leaves, but that you should feed him lambs’ brains.
I realised that being undermined was par for the course, but some of their ideas were terrifying. Richard’s mother and sister told me that if Joshua misbehaved he would be punished with the martinet, a whip with leather lashes. This was kept for disciplining their dogs but Joshua’s halfsister had once been hit with it as a little girl. Only once, mind you, they said. “I think that’s barbaric,” I said.
At one stage I was too frightened to leave Joshua alone at his grandparents’ home for more than a few minutes in case he was naughty — yet soon I saw that, far from being strict disciplinarians, the family doted on my son and spoilt him rotten. It helped that he was the spitting image of Richard, right down to the fair hair and the little triangles under his eyes when he was tired. Richard’s mother and sister even enjoyed changing his messy nappies.
Although they wanted to look after him all the time, it always had to be at their house, the hub of the family. A few months after Richard’s death I decided to return to the local drama group — but it started at 9pm, and getting both of us fed and out of the house with all the baby paraphernalia took two hours. By the time I had dropped Joshua at his grandparents’ home, I was too exhausted to be theatrical in French. And after I had collected him at 11pm and driven him, tired and cranky, back home, I was a shell. After two sessions I gave up drama and the hope of a life outside my home and my partner’s family. This is my life now, I told myself grimly. But it won’t always be like this.
Gradually things got better. As time passed, Richard’s family and I came to understand each other. They realised that I could care for a baby despite all that had happened, and our total misery at Richard’s death mellowed into the dull pain of missing him. We all became a bit more sane and Joshua, now 5, grew into a sociable and well-balanced bilingual child.
By the time I moved back to London 18 months ago, I knew that I had done the right thing by staying so long. I had proved that it is possible to maintain a relationship with your partner’s family even when that partner is no longer there. That proof is in the birthday card that his sister sent me a few months before I left: “To a wonderful sister-in-law who came into our family like a gift.” I felt guilty for all the mean things I’d thought over the years and was glad that I’d left them unsaid.
“Grandparents act as a link with the past,” says the sociologist Clifford Hill, research director of the Family Matters Institute. “They are very important to a child’s identity and stability. The absence of grandparents is a major reason why so many children are unstable.”
The Family Matters Institute, Families Need Fathers and the Grandparents’ Association are campaigning for a simplification of the tortuous and costly legal process that grandparents in the UK have to endure to see estranged grandchildren. A letter-writing campaign is urging MPs to include the issue in their party manifestos.
My son adores his father’s family and particularly his grandmother, who has always had the time to play with him that I, as a lone working parent, have not. He goes to a Saturday school to keep up his French, we Skype the in-laws every Sunday and go to see them in Provence twice a year. They, in turn, make an annual pilgrimage to London. Thanks to their love for Joshua and my ability, for once, to see the bigger picture, we have created an unbreakable link to the father my son never knew.
Source: http://women.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/women/families/article6457471.ece
'Pub law' on 50-50 access for dads debunked
Caroline Overington | June 08, 2009
Article from: The Australian
SHARED parenting laws introduced by the Howard government in 2006 do not guarantee divorced fathers the right to a 50-50 time split with their children because such an arrangement is not always in the best interests of the children.
Instead, the legislation requires the Family Court to "consider" whether equal time with both parents suits a particular child, and can decide that in some cases it does not.
The Australian last week reported that fathers are overwhelming staff at the new Family Relationship Centres, where all separating parents must now go before approaching the Family Court, demanding to know why they can't have a 50-50 time split with their children.
Staff at the centres say a "pub law" belief about a father's right to a 50-50 time split has taken hold in the community.
But retired Family Court judge Richard Chisholm says the shared parenting laws, introduced in 2006 and now under review, never guaranteed anybody a 50-50 time split. In a paper titled Shared Care and Children's Best Interests at the Legal Aid NSW family law conference, Professor Chisholm said there was "a lot of evidence to support the idea that children will generally benefit if they experience a loving and involved relationship with both parents" after separation.
"There is also evidence that children care a lot about their parents and generally want to remain closely involved with both of them."
Professor Chisholm said the Howard government amendment "envisaged the non-resident parent participating in various aspects of the child's life, for example being involved in the child's daily routine".
But the provisions about equal time did not reflect what most expert researchers believed was important for children.
"What seems to matter most to children, and what seems most important for their healthy development, has more to do with what happens when they are with each parents, and in particular whether they feel loved and cared for," Professor Chisholm said.
"The idea of equal time makes a lot of sense in terms of adult entitlement.
"As far as I can tell, it does not reflect what research scholars believe is important for children's development."
He urged academics to do more research into the benefits of shared parenting, particularly in cases where parents are in conflict, saying: "We need to know much more about the nature of conflict, the extent to which children are being exposed to it, and the extent to which parents and the courts might be treating the legislation as requiring some form of shared parenting, even when it is damaging to the children."
The Australian Institute of Family Studies is conducting a review of the Howard government amendments, which have been the subject of mounting complaints from separated mothers and fathers.
If the review recommends changes, Professor Chisholm said: "I hope the focus will be on how it impacts on families, rather than how it impacts on voters and lobby groups."
Source: http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25602241-5013404,00.html
Article from: The Australian
SHARED parenting laws introduced by the Howard government in 2006 do not guarantee divorced fathers the right to a 50-50 time split with their children because such an arrangement is not always in the best interests of the children.
Instead, the legislation requires the Family Court to "consider" whether equal time with both parents suits a particular child, and can decide that in some cases it does not.
The Australian last week reported that fathers are overwhelming staff at the new Family Relationship Centres, where all separating parents must now go before approaching the Family Court, demanding to know why they can't have a 50-50 time split with their children.
Staff at the centres say a "pub law" belief about a father's right to a 50-50 time split has taken hold in the community.
But retired Family Court judge Richard Chisholm says the shared parenting laws, introduced in 2006 and now under review, never guaranteed anybody a 50-50 time split. In a paper titled Shared Care and Children's Best Interests at the Legal Aid NSW family law conference, Professor Chisholm said there was "a lot of evidence to support the idea that children will generally benefit if they experience a loving and involved relationship with both parents" after separation.
"There is also evidence that children care a lot about their parents and generally want to remain closely involved with both of them."
Professor Chisholm said the Howard government amendment "envisaged the non-resident parent participating in various aspects of the child's life, for example being involved in the child's daily routine".
But the provisions about equal time did not reflect what most expert researchers believed was important for children.
"What seems to matter most to children, and what seems most important for their healthy development, has more to do with what happens when they are with each parents, and in particular whether they feel loved and cared for," Professor Chisholm said.
"The idea of equal time makes a lot of sense in terms of adult entitlement.
"As far as I can tell, it does not reflect what research scholars believe is important for children's development."
He urged academics to do more research into the benefits of shared parenting, particularly in cases where parents are in conflict, saying: "We need to know much more about the nature of conflict, the extent to which children are being exposed to it, and the extent to which parents and the courts might be treating the legislation as requiring some form of shared parenting, even when it is damaging to the children."
The Australian Institute of Family Studies is conducting a review of the Howard government amendments, which have been the subject of mounting complaints from separated mothers and fathers.
If the review recommends changes, Professor Chisholm said: "I hope the focus will be on how it impacts on families, rather than how it impacts on voters and lobby groups."
Source: http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25602241-5013404,00.html
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