Time for a shift in thinking
As the Family Justice Review closes for evidence, I was struck by two conflicting articles. The first was in direct relation to the Review and appeared in The Guardian. It said that “there is growing evidence that family law has spectacularly failed to keep up with the changing role of men within the home and that children are suffering as a result. Judges are accused of stereotyping, making a legal presumption in favour of the mother and awarding meagre access [sic] rights to dads.”
It highlighted one father’s experience of separation:
When Paul returned home from a six-month tour of duty in Afghanistan, he found his key no longer fitted his front door. “My wife had changed the locks on the house I was paying the mortgage on, and my kids were inside with her new bloke,” he said. “I can’t tell you what I felt, trying to make sense of it all. It was a bad dream. She had a lawyer lined up to talk about money and they seemed stunned when I said I wanted contact.”
The next day, Family Law ran an interview with Baroness Deech, Chair of the Bar Standards Board, about a lecture she had given on co-habitation. Apart from a slightly bizarre suggestion that women only co-habit in the hope that men will marry them, she stated:
“[T]he behaviour most likely to make society unhealthy, that damages these children more than anything else, is their father – it is usually the father – walking out and leaving them with no support. Nobody says a word about that.”
The Children Act (1989) is a completely gender neutral piece of legislation. It favours neither mothers nor fathers but states simply that the child’s welfare shall be the court’s paramount consideration. Similarly, the various child maintenance acts don’t say that fathers will pay mothers, simply that the so-called non resident parent will pay the so-called parent with care.
The problem that many fathers face is that the attitudes of those who form policy and pass judgement have, as The Guardian article suggests, failed to move with the times. Contrary to what Baroness Deech believes, women are just as likely to end relationships as men are. We need to dispel the myth that every separated family equals an abandoned wife and a philandering, feckless husband.
As Adrienne Burgess points out, “in the past 30 years, men’s involvement with their children has gone up 800-fold”. It’s probably about time that this shift in social behaviour was recognised.
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Time for a shift in thinking
30/09/2010 Leave a Comment
As the Family Justice Review closes for evidence, I was struck by two conflicting articles. The first was in direct relation to the Review and appeared in The Guardian. It said that “there is growing evidence that family law has spectacularly failed to keep up with the changing role of men within the home and that children are suffering as a result. Judges are accused of stereotyping, making a legal presumption in favour of the mother and awarding meagre access [sic] rights to dads.”
It highlighted one father’s experience of separation:
The next day, Family Law ran an interview with Baroness Deech, Chair of the Bar Standards Board, about a lecture she had given on co-habitation. Apart from a slightly bizarre suggestion that women only co-habit in the hope that men will marry them, she stated:
The Children Act (1989) is a completely gender neutral piece of legislation. It favours neither mothers nor fathers but states simply that the child’s welfare shall be the court’s paramount consideration. Similarly, the various child maintenance acts don’t say that fathers will pay mothers, simply that the so-called non resident parent will pay the so-called parent with care.
The problem that many fathers face is that the attitudes of those who form policy and pass judgement have, as The Guardian article suggests, failed to move with the times. Contrary to what Baroness Deech believes, women are just as likely to end relationships as men are. We need to dispel the myth that every separated family equals an abandoned wife and a philandering, feckless husband.
As Adrienne Burgess points out, “in the past 30 years, men’s involvement with their children has gone up 800-fold”. It’s probably about time that this shift in social behaviour was recognised.
Like this:
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