Fathers’ Rights, Children Wronged…
Flood, M. (2010). “Fathers’ Rights” and the Defense of Paternal Authority in Australia Violence Against Women, 16 (3), 328-347 DOI: 10.1177/1077801209360918
I used to work across the road from the Family Law Court in Melbourne. Almost every day, a group of angry fathers would gather there to protest what they claimed to be the anti-male bias of that particular jurisdiction. In the 15 years since, there has been massive growth not so much in the fathers’ rights movement but in the power of that movement to get the ear of government. Notably, they were able to agitate for substantial changes to the Family Law Act in 2006, changes that enshrined in law an assumption of shared parenting. That effectively means that the safety and well-being of children becomes secondary to the ‘right’ of fathers to possess their children for at least 50 per cent of the time. As the evidence mounts to reveal that shared parenting is at best hit and miss, Michael Flood (2010) focuses in this article on the conservative ideology, twisted motivation and scary potential of the fathers’ rights movement in Australia. For me, most importantly, he correctly portrays that movement as being stacked with hurt and hateful men whose primary bent is revenge against their former female partners. Flood (2010) counters some of the bunk put out by the fathers’ rights movement, for example, with regard to statistics on who within the family perpetrates child abuse. He refers to the extremes that the movement will go to in pursuit of its own agenda, for some even blaming violence that is perpetrated by men against women, on women. The best response to the lies and misdeeds of the fathers’ rights movement, according to Flood (2010), is to confront and critically assess, deconstruct and oppose the falsehoods that they spout…
Update: The full text of Michael Flood’s article is available at…
www.xyonline.net/content/fathers-rights-and-defence-paternal-authority-australia
Update: When angry adults can shout out loudest to ensure that they get their way, what happens to the rights of children to be safe, cared for, protected, and loved? The debate on family law continues in Australia, as elsewhere…
Update: The following story from Tasmania (see link, below), Australia’s smallest and only island state, echoes like a screech in my ear what Michael Flood (2010) said about the need to take on that part of the fathers’ rights movement which wants to pretend that their violent acts against women and children are not really violent acts at all…
www.themercury.com.au/article/2010/03/14/133845_scalesofjustice.html
Would it occur to you that there are plenty of men that love their children, just like their mother loves them? Who has power, will abuse it. In the current system in a lot of western country’s, the women have more rights when it comes to children. So many women who are resentful towards their former partner will abuse that power to hurt the father. If you are suddenly barred from seeing you’re child, that hurts immensely, even if you’re a man. It’s not about “the ‘right’ of fathers to possess their children for at least 50 per cent of the time”, but about the power of mothers to keep children away from their fathers and the underlying assumption that mother does & knows best.
The courts here in Australia are much more lenient toward fathers who are violent than they are toward mothers who are violent. Morever, the real evidence shows that the vast majority of violence perpetrated within intimate relationships is by males against females.The parental alienation syndrome to which you refer has now been debunked as a myth.
Divorce and children’s access to their parents are not just heartrending emotional issues for the fathers (who regularly lose contact with their children as a result), they are also massive financial issues.
Fathers don’t think of their children as chattels and property but, in countries that still have the arcane mother-takes-all system, the status quo makes them so. It is the parent without residency (assumed to be the father) that has to pay to support the parent with whom their children live. Some mothers have unscrupulously and unashamedly made a living from this.
You neglect to mention that the countries that have adopted the 50:50 assumption were led by the Danes. As a rule, where they lead in civilized childcare, the rest of us follow… because they generally get it right.
Why is 50:50 right? because it removes property and money from the equation. The rights of the child remain paramount but the interests of the the avaricious lawyers in ramping-up conflict (and their fees) are diminished.
If each parent has the child with them for 50% of the time, then no-one has to subsidise anyone else, no-one loses more than anyone else and there is a much, much smaller incentive to screw the last dollar from the ex.
Where 50:50 exists, the hideous trauma caused by divorce and separation is reduced and more fathers (remember kids deserve good quality time with them, too) retain healthy contact with their offspring.
The 50:50 assumption is a recognition of the equality of parents before the law. You ought to congratulate your legislature for adopting it. Would that we had it here!
Ideally, couples who split should reach amicable arrangements such that the care and support needs of their children are best met. Most couples, of course, do that. However, ‘shared parenting’ as it has been realised here in Australia, puts the presumption of equal access ahead of all other considerations, even the safety and well-being of children. You talk about the ‘hideous trauma’ caused by separation and divorce. Few events can be more traumatising to a child’s long-term emotional development than bearing witness to their father’s violence against their mother. Hopefully we will gravitate toward a more reasonable approach to shared parenting but always, the primary focus must be on protecting the children involved from harm. I know of cases where men who continue to be violent toward their ex-partners, post separation, are still allowed equal access to their children, since the court will run with the nonsense that the children can be shielded from this violence. They cannot. The recent story in the Australian media (see link, below) gives some indication of the challenges that lie ahead.
http://www.theage.com.au/national/judge-seeks-revamp-of-family-law-20100224-p3my.html
Not all men are fit to be fathers. The same would apply to women as mothers of course. 50:50 care and sharing of costs is fine – provided of course that the father (or mother) is not violent or abusive. Something else to be considered in the equation I suppose.
A colleague of mine who has been a mediator for many years, recently told me that the violence of the father against the mother is often overlooked when determining shared care, if the child or children seem strongly attached to the father. This is an ideological, not a factual stance, and assumes that children can somehow be immunised from the trauma that such violence brings. They cannot. And you are right, not all men or women are fit to be parents, a fact that we struggle with here in Australia.
Please note that you can find the full text of the article at xyonline.net.
Best wishes,
michael.
Thanks!
I think it’s very much beside the pointe who perpetrates the violence. Violence is wrong, so those who commit violent acts should suffer the consequences. It is indeed a fact that men are more violent, but as i said, it’s beside the pointe here.
We can agree that violence is wrong. As for suffering the consequences, I have worked therapeutically with many men who have been violent and who have taken enough responsibility to stop. As much as women, men and children all suffer when violence is present, people can heal, and move on.
I agree with you – where the abuser or person who is violent (separating the two since abuse can take many forms including mental abuse and neglect) takes responsibility then there is room to move on. The trouble is not all involved take responsibility – they are quick to blame anyone else to avoid doing so even when there is vast amounts of evidence to the contrary. It would be nice to know that our children do not have to continue to live in such an environment, that they are removed to a safe place. I would argue that it is their right to be protected, and that right supercedes any ‘parental rights’ over time. Of course, we need to be certain that the right decisions are being taken to protect our children too.
An assumption of shared parenting does not put the rights of parents before those of children at all. All the evidence in the world states that children do best when involvement with both parents occurs; irrespective of separation. The assumption of shared parenting is also based on ‘all things being equal’. If a misguided judge/magistrate forces a child to visit an abusive parent this does not make shared parenting as a concept wrong. It makes the individual handing down the decision wrong.
In 80% of contested custody battles sole custody is granted to the mother. How are the courts favouring fathers here?
In most cases when parents reach court there is no good outcome for the child. Parents are there because they can’t put their relationship grievances behind the welfare of the child/ren they share.
As biological mothers are twice as likely to abuse children as biological fathers I fail to see how fathers are getting overtly criticised here. Mothers are not forced to ensure fathers see their children but there is hell to pay for fathers if they miss child support payment. While ‘parental alienation’ as a concept is debatable mothers are far more likely to be critical of their ex than vice-versa; especially to their own children.
Ever since those angry dads pestered Philip Ruddock to change the legislation, the courts have indeed been putting the presumption of shared parenting ahead of the safety and well-being of children. Children are being harmed because of that presumption. As for your normative assumption that children do best when both parents are involved in their care, the fact is that children thrive with any combination of care, so long as there is quality and constancy. That would account for same-sex couples, extended families, grandparents who take on the parenting role, etc…
I would agree that parents need, wherever possible, to put their relationship grievances behind them to ensure the safety and well-being of their children. Thankfully, most separating couples respect that essential requirement. For those who do not, we are in part stuck with that old maxim that courts cannot easily legislate against complicated human behaviour. However, by ‘stretching’ to maximise contact with both parents, the courts are displaying a poor understanding of the impact of violence (in all its forms) on the developing brain. Some evidence-based practice here would not go astray.
I think that ‘parental alienation syndrome’ has bitten the dust, at least when it comes to being a sound clinical concept. Still, any parent or alternate caregiver who plays a child by badmouthing the non-present parent or alternate caregiver is setting that child up for unnecessary emotional and other problems in the future…
And the reason fathers were angry? Because they were being made to pay child support for children they didn’t see, they had false allegations of DV leveled at them with an assumption of guilt attached. We may have to agree to disagree that courts are putting presumption of shared care above child safety and the closed nature of the family court makes it difficult to hold people accountable. I feel you are using isolated incidents – which can be used to identify violence perpetrated by mothers or fathers (or both) – to make your argument. I’d hazard a guess that noone is really knowledgeable about how many cases of shared parenting do work as opposed to those where the children are put at risk. Any magistrate in family law will tell you that were it up to them in most cases they would rather the child/ren don’t wind up with either parents because of the dysfunction.
Regarding where children do best; this is based on empirical evidence. In terms of developmental indicators children do best with both parents. This is the general rule; it doesn’t mean it applies in all circumstances but just because other family dynamics can and do work doesn’t detract from the general way of things. Obviously having love in the home is the most vital aspect of a healthy family. Boys and girls need positive male and female role models and this is the reason ‘where children do best’ applies. This is why it is important for single parents/same-sex couples to ensure children in their care have access to both genders for mentoring and learning how to be a man or woman. With only 7% of primary school teachers being male, and 1,000,000 children in Aus spending the night away from their non-custodial parent (usually the father), this is why we need to find ways to have males involved with raising children. A social constructionist/feminist view of the world may dispute this but so it does about any view on gender issues that challenges its assumptions of female disadvantage.
I agree with you that the courts will always find it difficult to legislate against complicated human behaviour; but that is what the law must do. We could argue any number of human phenomenon is poorly mediated by the legal system. Your comment about maximising contact with both parents and an understanding of the impact of violence assumes that in all cases of maximising contact there is violence! This is absurd. The courts use psychologists who have a perfectly clear understanding of the impact of violence on children. What would be your solution? Should we just grant sole custody to the mother in every case and remove contact with fathers? What do you think that does to children? This is not about fathers’ rights at all; it is about the rights of children to have involvement with their fathers for healthy development. If you wish to dispute this please provide evidence as to how fathers are unnecessary in the lives of children.
Personally I’ve never believed there is a condition experienced by children called ‘parental alienation syndrome’ but it came about because parents would enact power over their children to alienate them from the other parent. This does occur but at least we can agree that it is damaging to children. My point is, however, that so is excluding fathers from the lives of children.
Children do best when they are loved, and through that love are made to feel safe, strong and nurtured. Normative concepts of the nuclear family with stay at home mum, go to work dad, and two happy kids in the crib, only took shape in Western nations during the Industrial Revolution. Prior to that, and in other nations to the present, multiple forms of childcare arrangements have been practiced. The crucial issue, always, is attachment. Whenever a child is separated from a carer with whom that child has a strong, positive attachment, emotional problems are likely to ensue. However, retaining contact with a carer who is violent toward a child or violent in the presence of that child will cause immense harm.
The courts do not have a clear understanding of the impact of violence on children. Lawyers, judges, and magistrates are generally speaking, untrained in what is a highly complex and contentious field. Like the rest of us, they are influenced by the context in which their work is being carried out and so, they are vulnerable to bias, pressure, and simply not having a clue. Their difficult job is frustrated by the inability of the health professionals who inform them and government to reach consensus about what damage violence, direct or indirect, causes children. The evidence says, unequivocally, that it causes heaps. For those cases where violence is an ever-present factor for one or both separating partners, the courts need to be tough and unrelenting in upholding the present and future wellbeing of the child, or children.
I am not sure about all this separatist stuff to which you refer…
My and ex I managed (under difficult circumstances) to reach an agreement to jointly parent our children under a canadian regime that — at the time — had an extraordinary bias against men. My children have spent the last 12 years going back and forth between our two homes. I can’t imagine a better system for parenting after divorce.
My children and spend the morning of Father’s day every year marching on the steps of Canada’s parliament hill with the hurt and hateful men who are — for the most part — hurt because they been denied a role in parenting their children, and hateful of a system which denies them a role in parenting their children by default.
I can’t speak about the Canadian family law system, of which I have no knowledge. However, I can speak about the Australian family law system, where the presumption is in favour of shared parenting and practice has shown that if anything, the courts have at times pushed this ideal, in spite of obvious harm to the children involved. Clearly, when it works, shared parenting is great. In fact, as I have commented elsewhere on this blog, to deny a child access to a primary carer with whom she or he has a strong, positive attachment, is akin to child abuse. Sadly, too many of the men here in Australia who protest outside courts, congregate in the men’s movement and who end up in anger management or DV perpetrator groups, are driven by such pure, unbridled hate toward their ex-partners that they fail to see the harm that that hate causes to their children. Many men in our society are too quickly given to anger and lack an emotional repertoire comprehensive enough to deal effectively with life’s many challenges. We’d save a save a lot of relationships and spare a lot of grief if we started teaching boys and men how to think, feel, act and react appropriately, rather than them instantly resorting to ramping it up as the generic solution to everything.
Noone is doubting the impact of violence on children; I don’t understand why you continue to stress this as though it is not self-evident.
Whether the court is trained or not in the ways you articulate (your implication that courts are knowingly putting children in violent situations due to their lack of understanding of the outcomes is, in my mind, quite dismissive of their expertise) you seem to come back to a notion that shared parenting equals abusive situations. This is rather naive.
Child care arrangements have differed across many cultures forever; this is indisputable. As you say multiple people may be charged with the care of children and the existence of love is the most important thing. I don’t see how it is separatist to want children to have positive influences from both genders.
With the family breakdown of the last few decades fewer and fewer children have enough contact with males and we see the results in drug and alcohol use, violence, teenage pregnancy, youth suicide and poor educational attainment.
For as long as some may seek the complete disintegration of the traditional family and the removal of men from family life, children will continue to suffer. Shared parenting may not play out perfectly all the time but an assumption of parental input from both parents is essential to promote healthy development of children. Of course this is, as mentioned a few times, with ‘all things being equal’ – there may be any number of considerations such as violence, drug/alcohol use, employment and so on.
What I don’t understand about lobby groups seeking a roll-back of family law is how they can have such a simplistic notion of what shared parenting is. Singular examples of fathers being deploring parents does not constitute an argument for abolishing shared parenting. After all mothers are the main perpetrators of child abuse! We don’t actively prevent mothers from having contact with their children after separation! Why is it so abhorrent to people that we promote involvement from both parents in the lives of their children?
Have you read Michael Flood’s excellent report, ‘Fatherhood and Fatherlessness’ (2003)? You can find a copy via this link…
Fatherhood and Fatherlessness 2003
Dr Flood pretty much deconstructs and defuses most of the outlandish claims made by the men’s movement with respect to ‘fatherlessness’. As he points out in that document, there is no hard evidence to support the argument put out by the men’s movement that the ‘breakdown of the traditional family unit’ has led to an increase in the social problems to which you refer. What we have instead is a collection of cobbled together and misreported statistics, for example, linking substance misuse by teenage boys with having come from a sole parent (single mother) family. I have to say, what a mightily bleak way to promote a cause! I would much rather hear about all the positive contributions that men make as carers of children in various settings: as parents, teachers, coaches, etc…
With due respect to Michael Flood, his views on gender issues are informed by feminist theory and as such rest on assumptions of male perpetrated oppression of women. I utterly reject feminist notions of social constructionism which I believe ignore any and all socio-cultural and biological realities. Feminist theories appear to want nothing more than the advancement of females; as distinct from gender equity, while the radicals actually desire the disempowerment of males to achieve their goals. At least the moderates are ambivalent about the status of males in today’s society. After all, we still need to men to do the dangerous, dirty work that women commonly don’t do. This is all far from the suffragettes who acknowledged what males did for society and sought that to continue. I wish modern feminists actually understood their true heritage in this regard.
How does this relate to fatherlessness? Well it does in multiple ways. When an aspect of society is majorly altered; such as the introduction of no-faults divorce for example, it is logical for there to be repurcussions – some of which will be negative. This is not to say that it should not have happened in the first place; just that it needs to be managed carefully.
In the case of no-faults divorce there was justifiable reasons to allow people to exit marriage for reasons other than just the death of the partner, gambling or alcohol problems or violence. However, this also had a dramatic impact on how marriage and the responsibilities of maintaining families was conceptualised. Women gained more options thankfully, yet men’s responsibilities remained the same. The protect role may be less pronounced than it once was but the provider role has not changed; whether the man lives in his family’s home or not.
The traditional family was a functional environment; the raising of children coupled with the breadwinner to ensure survival and development of the children (primarily). This worked for 1,000s of years until factions of western societies decided it needed to be changed.
When you take a scenario of equally important but different gender roles that function in the family context, then completely alter this dynamic by offering more varied roles, for one gender only, how can you honestly believe this would have no impact on children’s development and wellbeing? You are completely changing the way society functions! This is not to say that any or all changes should or should not happen (that’s value laden and not the purpose of this writing); but it is to say that there is fall-out and not all of it is positive.
Boys and girls both need input from both genders; you can use any outliers or singular examples where a different dynamic works but it does not take away from the general rule. While the Aus data is indeed thin on the ground US data exists that does link fatherlessness to negative outcomes. I’m not aware of similar work that looks at motherlessness but I would imagine the results to be similar.
There are multiple points to having the ‘traditional family’. For boys they learn how to be a man from their father, learn how to treat women by how their father treats their mother, and how to be loved (and love) from their mother. For girls simply reverse the gender. When children do not have role modelling from one or both of the genders they generally seek it for themselves and this can be exceedingly dangerous. This where the substance abuse, violence etc as a result of unsafe risk taking manifests.
The reason fatherlessness is so prevalent in discussions of impacts on children is clearly because the vast majority of single-parent families involve the mother.
I bet if mothers had a harder time in the courts getting access to their children and fathers were the main custodians of children in separated families, Dr Flood would find ample ‘evidence’ of the impact of motherlessness on children.
There is more than just one type of ‘feminist theory’. The type I know promotes the politics of liberation, along the lines of gender, culture, sexuality, disability, and class. In that regard, it has much good to offer many women, children, and men. The men’s movement here in Australia likes to poo-poo all things feminist because these are angry women haters who want their power back.
As much as it aggrieves the men’s movement, we are never going to return to a time, pre Whitlam, when women were raped, bashed, or murdered by their husbands within marriage. Nor are we obliged any longer to buy the lie that the traditional family unit is the only place in which a child can be raised. The real evidence tells us otherwise.
Tragically, there are so many pressing issues confronting men in Australia today that require urgent attention. Resolving those issues cannot be achieved by pouring heap and scorn upon women. Putting the brakes on men killing and harming themselves, each other, and others, requires the commitment of many decent people. The men’s movement has no genuine interest in improving the health and well-being of men.
Whilst I cna see your argument that children need a father (and a mother) from whom they learn about roles, I still cannot see that children need an abusive parent – of either sex. Surely access to children is denied by the courts for good reason. Surely you do not wish for children to learn how to abuse others through being exposed to an abusive parent. Yes, a simplistic view, and yes it is often complicated by other issues, but I cannot see how it is best for children to be exposed to parents found guilty of assault or abuse.
Yeah this will be the last post; clearly what I’m saying isn’t getting through and responses are merely emotive and subjective rants. Nowhere have I suggested that children should be exposed to violence, that the traditional family is the only option (I’ve outlined why it existed in the form it did) or that I or the ‘men’s movement’ seek a return to pre-1950 society.
Stating that there was a time that women were bashed, raped etc within marriage and inferring that this was a result of marriage as a construct is simply offensive and vulgar. Violation of people’s rights to safety has and does occur universally and has nothing to do with marriage at all. It has never been seen as acceptable for a man to abuse a woman in Western societies. Just because intimate partner issues were kept quieter in the public realm in past decades does not imply it was seen as acceptable.
Up until quite recently, there was no law to cover rape within marriage in the UK. Here in Australia, police still treat violence by husbands against wives as much less serious than violence, just say, by one person against another on the street.That’s why governments are obliged to introduce specific laws, policies and public education campaigns, to address this glaring omission.
The men’s movement in Australia is proudly sexist, racist, homophobic and traditionalist. Arguably, in a free and democratic society, you can be as loopy as you want. However, that does not mean that others will refrain from challenging your views. The men’s movement uses textbook fascist techniques to aggressively try to silence its critics, including persistently denigrating the standing of the other.
It was telling when Warwick Marsh and Barry Williams, two icons of the men’s movement here, were outed as contributors to that rancid pool of vomit, ’21 Reasons Why Gender Matters’. Thankfully, Warwick Marsh was forced to stand down as one of Minister Roxon’s handpicked, ‘Men’s Health Ambassadors’. What I loved was how the men’s movement, caught out for being homophobic to the core, tried to turn that debacle around, as if they were the ones who had been victimised! Seriously…
Have you read ’21 Reasons Why Gender Matters’?
Just wondering who has been doing the most ranting …
Just thought I would share this information on what happenened to me recently. For the past 12 years I have had an ongoing battle with my expartner to spend quality time with my son. We have had several attempts at having orders put in place and as my son gets older he has different needs and wants. When we first parted company it took me nearly six months to finally have contact with him because his mother would not let me see him unless orders were in place. This is because I took my older son from a previous relationship from his mother because I was concerned for his safety. He was only 10 months old. He has been with me ever since and is now 15. This was used as an excuse for her to not let me see my second son untill we had orders in place. To cut a long story short, after 8 sets of orders which were not adhered to by my ex I decided to attempt again.
We went through the process of mediation which she disagreed with on every issue so I was provided a 601 certificate to take her to the Federal Magistrates Court. I had paid all costs and submitted all neccesary paper work to have a hearing. She sent no paper work at all. On the day of the hearing I asked the Magistrate if I could read a short statement to explain our situation and was denied. He held up my parenting plan which was submitted with my paper work and asked both of us if we agreed with its contents which we both did. He said good I wish they were all that simple. Case closed!
Well so I thought, aftyer I left the court my ex returned after realising her blunder and asked to see the Magistrate again and convinced him to change the orders to what she wanted without me being there to defend myself.
Two weeks later I recieved the orders in the mail, to my suprise they were not what I had submitted to the court. The orders informed me that if I was not happy with the Magistrates decision that I could relist the matter at a later date. I thought that if my ex was not happy with the outcome wouldn’t she be the one to have to relist after the decision was made and I had left the court, apparently not.
I contacted the Ombudsman and explained my dilemma which I was told that the Magistrate can make any changes he sees fit without me being there to defend myself.
This was an injustise and I hope this information will make other parents weary of the legal system.
I think it is wrong for either parent to keep their children away from the other parent. I have a daughter who will be 12 years old in July and her father has kept her away from me for almost 3 years now, it kills me because my daughter feels like I have walked out on her, I would never do that and I am always looking for a way to get into contact with her, but her father has changed their number. Because of money and laywers he is being allowed to do so, what can I do to see my daughter?
I hope that everything works out well for you and your daughter.
well i have a same problem over here in uk i have seen my daughter only for 4 hours since she was born she was 9 month then my girl is 11 now so i need to wait tills she is 18 to contact her
but i think its is very hurtful even if you are a mother or father, i am thinking about my girl now for 11 years ,,yes i am hurt to i can only apply to european court
Wherever possible, and where the safety of the child is not an issue, any parent or other primary carer who has established a positive relationship with a child should be able to maintain that relationship. The literature on attachment is irrefutable in concluding that children are psychologically harmed by being separated from a parent or primary carer who they love.