Divorced Dads get their own virtual quality time with their kids
An article printed in New Media Age entitled DCSF in 1m push to help divorced dads engage with their kids online (page 11 by Alex Farber) caught my attention for a number of reasons. The Department for Children, Schools and Families are tapping in to the web in a positive move to help Dads and their kids come closer together. I can hear the cynics from a mile off saying “well nothing will replace the real thing so how can a virtual dad help?”
Divorce, parental separation where children are concerned, can be the toughest ordeal any family has to go through. The courts in recent years have always come down on the side of the mother when it comes to custody battles, the rights and wrong of this has to be on a case by case basis but often is still the case that mothers have some kind of unwritten right of passage. Social, political and economic changes based on gender roles has radically changed since post war Britain, whilst it can be argued that change for women in the work place coupled with child rearing has still some ways to go, there can be no denying that most fathers, whilst they take an equal part in the raising of their children do still seem to end up with the short end of the straw.
Obviously, there are going to be cases where by it really is not in the interest of a child to remain in the custody of an abusive or neglectful or inability to cope et al, parent regardless of gender. But it’s fair to say that most fathers are just as nurturing and have equal interest in their children just as much as mothers do, which has been highlighted in the recent months through high profile cases and causes like Fathers for justice.
This is not an issue about women’s rights, this is an issue about equality and there seems to be a pattern of a patriarchal approach to women, which ironically does fall in favour of the mother, having child residency rights and the father only having access rights. As a woman who believes in equality, I should rejoice that my sex comes out on top were it not for the way the judicial system treats women and crime over all. In this instance I can still see this law as telling women your place is still in the home and bringing up the children, men should still be out at work and bringing home the bacon. Here is my reasoning; if we look at women, crime and punishment you only need to look at the number of women in prison deprived of their children for petty theft and fraud crimes by contrast some male sex offenders have walk away from court with a lesser sentence. If you look at like for like crime amongst men and women, the judicial system will always come down harder on the female of the species for the very reason that we are more often then not given residency rights to our children. Women are perceived as the carer, the nurturer, mother earth. How many women make up the caring profession? The contradictions in our law re gender is shockingly imbalanced, unfair and a lottery. The judicial system is still patriarchal, old school tie, elitist, antiquated and run by bunch of educated old misogynists. So I can’t rejoice as some one who believes in equality.
Without going into the law, residency means the child/children live with the mum or dad (who ever the courts award them to) access means the partner has a right to visit, be with their child for a set time every week/month/year.
These divorce battles (you don’t have to be married) can range from simple mediation to full out parental tug of war with poor junior being caught in the cross fire. So what happens if one of the parents decides to move away?
Whilst I think this is a really good use of using the internet for some thing so positive and I support it, perhaps we ought to be looking at some of the root causes for the break up of families, like poverty, addictions, perhaps more money could be invested into more public mediation groups. My dad space will be popular Im sure and good luck to them.
Good fathers should be given joint residency, if that’s what they seek, if little junior had 50% quality time b4 the split, then little junior should still have 50% after the split. It’s a sad day when there is a need for a website where by fathers can spend a bit more quality time with their children online, it’s no substitute for the real offline experience, but.. its one step closer to a solution that lots of dads find themselves in. There is no ideal scenario to family separation other then both parties recognise ,value and respect each others feelings when it comes to bringing up their children, but more importantly work together for the sake of junior to minimise their anxiety. We would like to think that the family courts do what’s in the best interest of the child but often is the case fathers are more inclined to have to argue their case then mothers have to defend theirs.
Food for thought on a Friday
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Interesting that you attribute the extraordinary bias against men in the law to patriarchal judges. The old cry of ‘the children need their mum’, assuming that mum is interested in forgoing a high profile career for low profile childcare, really belongs to loving intact families: once the family is broken the beneficence of the mother seems to be challenged. She needs to prove that the break is justified and is liable to suck the children into a jaundiced view of the father which can spread to all men and all authority. 46@ of children of single mothers show some form of delinquency whereas children who live alone with their fathers are even more law-abiding than the average (See the study of delinquency by Hathaway and Monachesi). The rise in crime and the breakdown of society is directly traceable to the bias in the law at divorce (97% of children awarded to the mother in a society wherever over 50% of marriages end in divorce).