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The Fathers' rights movement is a loose network of groups, primarily in western countries, established to campaign for an increase in the relative importance given to the concerns of fathers in family law issues such as child custody after divorce, child support, and paternity determinations. Underlying principlesNearly everyone in the fathers' rights movement has spoken of personal experiences of how the law in their circumstances granted primary control over children following divorce or separation to the mother. Invariably, these people claim that these determinations were inequitable and were not in the interest of the child or children involved. Their purported interest in seeking a restructuring of family law to be more favorable to children is that children should benefit from the love and care of their natural father in addition to that of their mother, and that the current state of family law does not give enough consideration to preserving the relationship between the father and the child. Fathers' rights advocates characterize their position as that the current law favors giving control to women over men and generally seeks to reduce the involvement of men in their families after divorce to providing financial support, both by routinely entering custody decrees that do not allow fathers to fulfil their parenting role, and also by frequently failing to enforce those components of divorce decrees which preserve the interests of the children to maintain their relationships with both parents. Critics claim ignorantly that fathers' rights groups are less concerned about the interests of children, and rather more concerned about protecting unspecified interests of fathers in divorce, whether those interests be continued access to children, or more commonly, decreased financial responsibilities, which in the UK is not the case because the CSA collects money out of father's pay packets. Whilst the fathers' rights movement has been around since the 1970s, it was not until 2004 particularly successful at countering the state bureaucracy that is in place to take difficult decisions in child custody disputes. The view has traditionally been that there are a small minority of cases where a judge, who is assumed to be high-minded, must make decisions that will affect children's lives drastically. Rather than being criticised, these judges should be commended for performing this undesirable role. For users of the system, i.e. parents involved in litigation, there is frequently the perception that the system is a monstrous bureaucracy of Kafkaesque proportions. Government ministers have been loathe to intervene in this area, tending to exhort people to believe that family court judges know best and should be left to get on with their difficult job. Fathers' rights campaigners are following in the wake of other democratically based movements which have tended to question the notion of anyone else knowing best, particularly when that claim is made by a politician. When it comes to children it is claimed that the people who know best in their regard are their parents, and therefore the government is failing in its duties by allowing it to be otherwise. A part of attaining credibility for the fathers' rights movement cause has been the avoidance of confusion between the anger which parents can feel toward each other in the aftermath of a relationship and anger against the system for being so inhumane. That is why the support of an international celebrity like Bob Geldof has been very welcome. Whilst claiming merely to be an iconoclast, Geldof has used the language of rant to express his feelings towards the system itself, and his family's own tragic circumstances leave little room to interpreting his claims as mere personal bitterness. A traditional idea has been that children are generally better off if their lives do not have to be arbitrarily cut in half in order to satisfy their parents' foibles, and this results in the notion that the child should "live" with one parent and "visit" the other. Some commentators point out that fathers generally are still the main breadwinners in most homes and that it is frequently impractical for them to perform mothers' traditional caring duties as well, particularly when the children are little. Fathers' rights campaigners do not dispute this, but do point to social trends showing that the fathers' caring role in many families increased considerably during the latter part of the 20th Century, i.e. that gender equality has led to a reduction in the extent of the division of labour in families. This issue draws parallels to that of working women, who, generally, earn less than men[1] (http://www.statistics.gov.uk/articles/labour_market_trends/Patterns_of_pay_Dec2002.pdf), even when doing the same jobs[2] (http://www.now.org/nnt/05-98/wagegap.html) (though sex discrimination policy in many countries legislates they earn similar wages to men working in the same position); and the quasi-paradox of "having it all", both a stable work and home life in balance. It can then be argued that a push for equitable parenting reform would aid mothers and fathers in managing this problem for both parents in this situation. However, it is claimed that the judicial system in general does not acknowledge the role of working men, and that the child's normal cognitive development (particularly of very small of children) and the formation of their identity, is dependent on having familiarity with traditional significant others, including the father, particularly when the parents have parted. Longitudinal studies, such as that researched by Dr Eirini Flouri [3] (http://www.apsoc.ox.ac.uk/Biographies/Biography14.html) and Dr Ann Buchanan [4] (http://www.apsoc.ox.ac.uk/Biographies/Biography6.html) at the University of Oxford, have provided strong statistical evidence to show that fathers' involvement in their children's lives has a positive bearing on outcomes when they reach adolescence and adulthood. Fathers' rights campaigners indicate that the scale of relationship breakdown is of such an extent that proactive initiatives are required if we are not going to have a whole generation of feral children [5] (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/1958237.stm). The issuesMany people fail to understand the fathers' rights movement as such, rather seeing it as the reaction of individuals who have had unfortunate judgments made against them in family courts, or who have found that, even when a court established that it is in a child's interest to maintain a relatinship with the father, this does not occur because the mother obstructs this. A UK family court judge declared in 2004 that material provided by Women's Aid had unnecessarily caused a mother to express fear about a father's involvement with the children. This has led to speculation by fathers' rights campaigners that there are elements in society that would rather have a child brought up in a single parent household by the mother even when the father is available to share in the upbringing of his child. The idea that a father provides advantages to his offspring, which is supported by research, is discounted by what a judge has described as a "group of obdurate women" on the grounds that mothers should be able to choose to bring up their children alone if they want to. Such a view is not acceptable in a UK family court and therefore women who hold this belief have to adopt other means to achieve their aims. Abusive relationships and implacable hostilityMost problems arise when there has been a relationship which has become abusive. Aside from any allegations made by the parties concerned it becomes apparent to certain observers that the abuse effectively continues even after the partners have separated, perhaps in reaction to the hurt they feel. Any negotiations which should be taking place to ensure that the children are properly taken care of have to occur in an atmosphere where one or both ex-partners are in an emotional turmoil. Situations go awry when there is implacable hostility between the partners, or implacable hostility expressed by one partner against the other. That hostility frequently, it is claimed, manifests itself in a way that affects the children, with one partner obstructing the children's right to family life[6] (http://www.unicef.org/crc/crc.htm) in respect of that child's relationship with the other parent and extended family. One parent may initiate the use of the legal system for purposes for which, it is claimed, it is ineffective at achieving. This, it is claimed, is mainly because it is the nature of an adversarial legal process itself to increase hostility further in such circumstances, and thereby be counter-productive. Parental alienationThis is a term, sometimes called parental alienation syndrome (after Stockholm syndrome), referring to the situation where it is alleged that one parent has caused the child to express hatred toward the other parent. Lady Justice Hale (in Re K (Contact: Psychiatric Report) [1995] 2 FLR 432) stated:
Since The Children Act requires that the views of the child need to be made known to the court, fathers' rights campaigners claim that the mother sometimes alienates a child against his or her father and that this then supports the mother's case in court to banish the father. Lady Elizabeth Butler Sloss, President of the Family division, (the top UK family court judge) stated (in Re L, V, M, H (Contact: Domestic Violence) [2002] 2 FLR 334 at 351):
There has been much legal argument about whether the term syndrome should be allowed in connection with this distressing abuse of children, but fathers' rights campaigners have argued that it doesn't really matter what the condition is called, just that there should be adequate resources available to recognise the condition and to ensure that their children are protected against this form of emotional abuse. Parenting timeFlexibility seems to be one of the keys to success in bringing about social change in this area. For instance, in at least one case in the US, an order has been made that the children should remain in the family home and the parents should alternate their presence there. In the UK, the contact model is that most usually adopted and pursued by the courts in private law cases. Whilst it is acknowledged that a system that gives one parent the limited opportunity, but not the obligation, to remain involved in the children's lives after separation might suit some situations (perhaps where the father's circumstances do not permit him to provide a full range of care for his children) this model does not suit all cases. Fathers' Rights campaigners argue that shared residency agreements or orders should become the norm. Getting on with one's childrenThe relationship between a child and a parent is not always plain sailing, and to frame such a delicate matter in terms of rights may seem inappropriate to some people. One might say that in some circumstance it really would be better for all concerned certainly that children should not be forced to be looked after by their father when they are upset at the prospect. Although such considerations can play a a part in making compassionate decisions about children in the aftermath of a family break-up, the law as it currently stands takes on a wider remit. In a case in the UK in 1999 (RE K (Contact: Mother's Anxiety) [1999] 2 FLR 703) the father of a six-year-old was granted permission by a court to see his child and things were going well. The mother found this contact very stressful and her distress was very apparent to the child, who felt guilty for enjoying being with his dad - with the result that court then ordered that the father should be disallowed from seeing his child again. Court judgments not open to public scrutinyA full analysis of facts on the issues is made difficult by the in camera rule that prohibits any reporting [7] (http://www.guardian.co.uk/child/story/0,7369,1180238,00.html) of family law cases in England, Wales, Ireland and Australia. The Court of Appeal, however allows the reporting of certain cases, provided the family remains anonymous. Fathers' rights campaigners argue that extending proceedings yet further by taking a case to the Court of Appeal is undesirable and hence rare, and that, whilst it is important to preserve the anonymity of all people involved in a case, there would be better protection against abuses if family court judgments could be published in the same anonymised fashion as Appeal Court judgments, and as is allowed in Scotland, which has slightly different family laws. See Father and Mother Appeal Court Judgment (http://www.courtservice.gov.uk/judgmentsfiles/j2253/father&mother.htm) for an example of an English Appeal Court judgment and for some insight into what can go wrong and eventually be put right in a typical case. Statistics are not published about cases that pass through the courts, leading to claims that abuses of the system are not identified and that there are effectively no quality controls. Those who wish to see this rule lifted claim that justice must be seen to be done, and this is not applied to family law cases. It is observed that a rule which was put in place to respect the sensibilities of children involved in distressing circumstances may have become a cloak behind which considerable inhumanity can go unnoticed by society at large. Early intervention and lawyers' vested interestsOne claim is that early intervention (http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,3604,1149787,00.html) is a far more effective approach, and that shared residency should be the presumed outcome of any agreement by consent or court order. Judicially led initiatives, such as have occurred in parts of Florida [8] (http://www.floridafamilylaw.com/parent.htm) and elsewhere, have demonstrated that where clear guidance is provided at the outset by the court about what the expected outcome will be, then this results in less hostility and therefore in a reduced workload for the courts. Fathers' rights campaigners claim that vested interests in the legal trade are politically operative to preserve lawyers' revenue streams from this type of business. Judicial powers already exist to endeavour to ensure that continuity is maintained in relationships between children and fathers. Interim contact orders can be issued before the establishment of a routine that excludes the father from the children's lives. TerminologyFathers' rights campaigners argue that parenting time should be used indiscriminately to replace contact and residence. The reasoning here claims that there is a stigma associated with treating one parent as resident and the other as non-resident. The term absent parent is felt by many to be particularly pejorative, since it implies that their absence from their children's lives is voluntary when it isn't. There is much strong feeling about language usage in the context of parental disputes and it is believed that the principles of political correctness can usefully be deployed to alter people's perceptions in much the same way that other groups, including feminists, have used these principles to good effect in their quests to eliminate discrimination. Other terms which have raised the hackles of fathers' rights activists include single parent family - the preferred term here being single parent household, based on the truth that there are always two parents to a child. Male role model and father figure are other terms which campaigners feel are used as unacceptable euphemisms for father, pointing out that step-fathers and casual partners might come and go, but natural fathers retain a unique position in the eyes of their children. One seldom hears the term mother figure. Some have also called into question the term biological father because the term natural father means the same thing, has been around for a long time, and doesn't have the clinical associations that the former has, though it may be that the association this term has with paternity testing will make it catch on. Adversarial court systemThe current adversarial system, also dubbed winner takes all, such as exists in the UK encourages each parent to identify their fears, real or imagined, about what will affect their children now that the parents have separated. Some hold that when a parent expresses these fears about the other parent in this circumstance, even when fears are unfounded, they can nevertheless be treated as fact. Courts tend to be very particular about taking account of mothers' expressed fears, and then the father has somehow to demonstrate that he presents no risk to the children, and that the advantages that he will confer on them are real. Fathers' rights proponents say that in such circumstances, the case can easily become a witch-hunt. Any aggression that the father may have manifested in the past is claimed to be treated as justification for limiting his involvement in his children's upbringing. If he is a man who is inexperienced at parenthood, perhaps due to value judgments about his background, or because this is a first child, the result may be that he is initially not trusted to provide basic care. In one case, for example, a father was restricted to visiting his child in a contact centre for six years, seeing his son for two hours a week without missing a single occasion, because of the mother's fears that he would otherwise abduct the child abroad. Even when he is able to demonstrate that he presents no risk, the mere fact of the mother expressing imagined fears can be used to argue that her fears affect the child and that the father's involvement should be restricted or eliminated [9] (http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,3604,961940,00.html). Most fathers' rights campaigners have had experiences that follow a similar pattern, and they are aiming that the law should be changed to prevent situations such as theirs arising. It is further claimed the whole idea of adversarial court cases to resolve family disputes has led to a sub-culture considered by people who have encountered it to be completely absurd. A typical outcome might involve a father who is a teacher, and therefore trusted to teach a class of children, but who is nevertheless not allowed to see his own children. Fathers' Rights campaigners question the assumption that it can ever be legitimate for the state to collude in disrupting a loving and natural relationship between a father and his children. Bob Geldof has written eloquently and emotively on this subject: I cannot even say the words. A huge emptiness would well in my stomach, a deep loathing for those who would deign to tell me they would ALLOW me ACCESS to my children—those I loved above all, those I created, those who gave meaning to everything I did, those that were the very best of us two and the absolute physical manifestation of our once blinding love. Who the fuck are they that they should ALLOW anything? REASONABLE CONTACT!!! Is the law mad? Am I a criminal? An ABSENT parent. A RESIDENT/NON-RESIDENT parent. This Lawspeak which you all speak so fluently, so unthinkingly, so hurtfully, must go.' DelayBob Geldof has written on this subject:
quoted from The Real Love that Dare Not Speak its Name: A Sometimes Coherent Rant Fathers' rights campaigners point to cases where flimsy or dishonest arguments have been allowed by courts to result in unnecessarily long separations occurring between fathers and children during and after lengthy periods of court hearings. It is argued that effort would be better spent dealing properly with the trauma of the parents' initial separation and allowing the children to maintain their relationships with both parents continuously. Legal issuesThe new system in the UK whereby the amount of child support that, in the vast majority of cases, the father pays, is acknowledged to be less fair than the old because it has ceased to take into account the other household's income. This is justified on the grounds that it saves administrative cost for the government agency concerned. DistressFathers' Rights campaigners consistently note a higher rate of suicide amongst fathers who are forcibly separated from their children. Allegations of domestic violenceA government initiative was started in the UK in 2003 to reduce the incidence of domestic violence. Fathers' rights campaigners have been concerned to clarify the definition of that term in a non-gender political context. They have argued that situations where assault has occurred should be dealt with by traditional courts, and only actual convictions taken into account in child proceedings. Social policy reformers have pointed out that domestic violence can be an insidious phenomenon and that evidence other than that of convictions might also be valid. It will be of interest to observe developments in this area, particularly now since the working definition of domestic violence in certain countries, including the UK, requires neither that actual physical violence has occurred nor indeed that any violence has been proven in a criminal court. Since it is acknowledged that domestic violence can be perpetrated by either party, observers are keen to see how relationship dynamics will be interpreted when assessed against the domestic violence paradigm. Fathers' rights campaigners believe that the lowered thresholds for what types of conduct can be construed as violent will be used in child proceedings to make allegations of violence against them on more tenuous grounds than would have been acceptable previously. Fears about the system held by some fathers are deeper rooted even than this, because a report called Contact and domestic Violence: the Experts' Court Report by Sturge & Glaser in 2000 indicates that contact can be denied even when no domestic violence had actually occurred, but where there was fear that it might. It is such recommendations that venal lawyers can latch upon and which father's rights campaigners feel will lead to even more good dads being driven away from their children. But it gets worse, the Sturge & Glaser report indicates that it is a risk to allow a parent-child relationship to continue where the application for contact results in stress to the child or child's carer: Proceedings often mean a standstill in the child's development while his or her carer's emotional energies are taken up with the case and the child is only too aware that he or she is the centre of attention and somehow responsible for this and the resulting distress. In other words, going to court to obtain parenting time with one's children can be used as a reason to deny it. Some fathers rights campaigners hold that the falsification of domestic violence claims consists of a large trend - from an Australian perspective, there is evidence to disprove arguments that falsification of domestic violence claims are rampant and not genuine: the Domestic Violence Legislation Working Group of Australia have stated that there is no "firm evidence that misuse of the legislation is rampant", in the New South Wales Bureau of Crime Statistics evaluation report of the apprehended violence order (AVO) system have concluded that a majority of women taking out AVOs in situations of domestic violence have done so genuinely. Furthermore, if evidence of perjury has become clear, they are punishable severely by laws in many countries, though perjury in family court cases is very seldom, if ever, followed up by family court judges in the UK, where the police will not usually act in cases of alleged criminal perjury without the say-so of the judge in whose court it was alleged to have occurred. Counter-claimsThere are as yet unsubstantiated claims that publicity for fathers' rights, such as this article in wikipedia, are just advertising space for F4J and others. Apart from veiled references in the British Court of Appeal to Women's Aid material being used disingenuously to whip up a mother's fears, there have been no criticism made about any anti-woman tone that many people expect would be adopted by fathers' rights organisations in the highly charged atmposphere that surrounds the issues. See shared residency for more information about possible complications arising from fathers' rights campaigners claims. The scale of the issueOne can only really gauge the size of the problem that these issues present by the size of the fathers' rights movement itself. In 2003, a new group, F4J started an awareness campaign and obtains considerable publicity [10] (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/3475979.stm) for this issue by organising colorful demonstrations and acts of civil disobedience.
There is a suspicion that the current situation is the result of what people have observed as widespread, systematic and persistent abuses of human rights, resulting in financial gain for lawyers. There is also considerable fear of what are viewed as heterophobic and feminist state-funded bodies [11] (http://www.familieslink.co.uk) are obstructing what many would consider to be humane arguments made by aggrieved fathers. Fathers' rights and supportAt the local level, many father's rights groups spend a high proportion of their time providing support for newly separated fathers, most of whom are highly distraught and even suicidal due to missing their children, uncertainty, sometimes over long periods, about what the outcome will be, as well as loss of family home and their future income. In many cases these groups also campaign for a greater consideration of grandparents and women in second marriages. Some resources are provided in the UK by the government in an attempt to 'soften the blow'. When agreement can't be reached about a father being with his children at home, contact centres, sometimes staffed by volunteers, are frequently ordered as a neutral location at which supervised parenting time can occur on specified occasions. Such centres are intended to be transitional, though where mutual or unilateral hostilities between the parents persist, it can require further court appearances in order to 'move on' from the contact centre. Fathers' rights campaigners argue that shortages of places at contact centres are used as reasons to prevent them seeing their children and that frequently the only reason given for using a contact centre in those cases is that the mother demands it. Rather than devoting funds to extend the network of contact centres, some fathers' rights campaigners argue that contact centres should only be used for a specific small minority of cases, such as where there are health reasons why the father cannot care for his children unaided. Political lobbyingThe pace of reform in the UKWhilst the line of government ministers has for a long time been one of denial that there is a problem, with no plans for new legislation, Lord Filkin[12] (http://www.politicallinks.co.uk/politics2/biog/LD_Biogs/bio.asp?id=2441), the family justice minister announced at the beginning of April 2004 that there will be a green paper outlining proposals intended to improve the methods used to settle child custody disputes[13] (http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,3604,1184913,00.html). See 2004 Green Paper. The November 2004 Queen's Speech before Parliament contained this:
The publication of the Green Paper together with the item in the Queen's Speech may not deliver much immediately, but if it can be established early on in the process which aspects of any proposed new legislation will become retrospective then there is opportunity for it to start having an immediate social impact. There was a debate on the topic of Family Justice on 13th December 2004 in the House of Commons. [14] (http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200405/cmhansrd/cm041213/debtext/41213-22.htm#41213-22_head0). The motion:
was defeated by with 168 Ayes and 283 Noes voted by MPs. A brief history of recent reformCase 1In 2001 Mr Justice Wall (now Lord Justice) chaired a Children Act Sub-Committee (known as CASC). They reported in March 2002 in a document called "Making Contact Work". It called for "urgent reform". It was a sort of Hutton Inquiry of family law reform. It is well known that Wall LJ was very vexed that nothing happened for a long time. In fact a "Stakeholder Group" was created to discuss the CASC report, the "Facilitation and Enforcement Group". Stakeholders included a couple of district judges, a solicitor, a barrister, CAFCASS, Women's Aid, various academics, mediators... The report went to Minister Margaret Hodge in June 2003 and the response was a Green Paper in 2004. CASC, and the stakeholder Group could be called Prong No. 1 of reform, which was started off by the politicians, after pressure from several directions, including from the campaigning charity FNF. The impression formed by many involved at the time was that the government had no true appetite for reform, and hoped that the problem would just go away. Case 2Fathers 4 Justice have had remarkable success in bringing the whole subject to the nation's attention at a bottom-up grass-roots level, (rather than at the top-down political level of the CASC group, and the stakeholder group.) Case 3This is the work of Oliver Cyriax. He has run two conferences about early interventions in 2001 and 2002. These were attended by high ranking members of the judiciary, including from overseas, where schemes that promote retaining both parents' involvement in childcare, but leave the courts as last resort, have been very successful. Notably in Florida and California. He has a strong alliance, made up of senior members of the Solicitors Family Law Association (SFLA), Family Law Bar Association (FLBA), Hamish Cameron (the child psychiatrist with the President's ear), Fathers Direct and the campaigning charity Families Need Fathers. President of the UK Family Division of the courts Dame Butler Sloss has said she supports this plan. Observers indicate that there is currently a tug-of-war between Oliver Cyriax's early interventions pilot project — which would be run by PESF (Parenting and Education Support Forum) in a low key way, probably at Wells Street (the family court in central London) — and another plan, created by the civil servants. The worry about the civil servants is that they are not expert in family matters at all, and their pilot plan might fail. The civil servant behind it, Bruce Clark, comes from a child protection background. He is said to be the man who drew up the discredited Munchausen's guidelines, and not a natural champion of fathers rights' campaigners demands, in particular to ensure that children will have adequate parenting time time with their fathers. Fathers' Rights campaigners urgently want an "Early Interventions Pilot Plan" to test and develop compulsory mediation and parenting plans, etc. backed up by a strict enforcement regime, "Facilitation and Enforcement" as the stakeholder group was called. It is not clear who will win the tug-of-war[15] (http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,3604,1173919,00.html), and campaigners argue that both initiatives are worthwhile. Duncan Fisher of Fathers Direct says Oliver Cyriax's PESF scheme could start immediately, although it is known that that civil servants and politicians are prone to call for numbers of rounds of committee meetings and consultations, sometimes indefinitely. Updates
SupportersSupporters of the movement, which is particularly strong in the United Kingdom, Republic of Ireland, Italy, United States and Australia, include divorced (and subsequently widowed) Live Aid founder, Bob Geldof and Irish writer and journalist John Waters. Waters fought a legal case for access to the daughter he had by Rock star Sinéad O'Connor, and highlighted what he saw as injustices in the treatment of men in his weekly column in The Irish Times. In the UK, the Home Secretary, David Blunkett's resignation on 15th December 2004, following his attempts to remain in touch with his youngest son, and the response of his ex-partner, which he mentioned in an interview with the BBC [16] (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/4099581.stm), have unwittingly made him a champion of the fathers' rights movement. Mr Blunkett said about his son, "He will want to know not just that his father actually cared enough about him to sacrifice his career, but he will want to know, I hope, that his mother has some regret." The most prominent Fathers' rights group in Ireland is called A-men.
See also
External linksUK
Canada
USA
Australia
Italy
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