I know exactly what a father going through a divorce will tell me about access to his children: “Wednesday and every other weekend.” It is a mantra and it is the court’s default position as if fathers weren’t important and mothers know best.
In the article “Man Down” in the June/July issue of Sharp, Alex Nino Gheio tells the stories of fathers who fight for the right to be with their children during and after divorce. It isn’t easy and it isn’t pretty and in my opinion it’s gender biased. He quotes Dr. Edward Kruk, a leading Canadian expert on family policy: “There is a documented anti-father bias in the court system. Many fathers today manifest symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder when they suddenly lose their children.” He added “The argument that mothers are the primary care-givers doesn’t hold water anymore.”
I recently heard about a 13 year old young girl who wants to live with her father; for many good reasons including the fact she wants to go to a prestigious high school which happens to be in her father’s neighbourhood. Her mother visited the school and gave her consent. All the reports from the school and the therapists that were involved agreed she should now live with her father. All that information was given to the court, including the young lady’s request. But at the last minute her mother took away consent. And the judge, in her infinite wisdom, said, “No.”
What’s wrong with her father? We don’t know. No reason. Just no. Can you imagine what it is like for this young lady to live now with her mother? And what of the father? He’s appealing, again.
In 2006, Jeffrey Rosenberg and W. Bradford Wilcox compiledThe Importance of Fathers in the Healthy Development of Children, for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services,which recognized the increased vital role that fathers play in all aspects of their children’s lives. The manual examines methods to “strengthen the roles of fathers within their children’s lives and their own.”
Ditta M. Oliker, Ph.D.,a clinical psychologist in Los Angeles referred in 2011 to the report Fathers and Their Impact on Children’s Well-Being: “Even from birth, children who have an involved father are more likely to be emotionally secure, be confident to explore their surroundings, and, as they grow older, have better social connections.” She added that many fathers expressed the feeling that they are second-class citizens in the world of their children.
Ronald Rohner, professor emeritus of family studies at the University of Connecticut, wrote in the June 2012 issue of Society for Personality and Social Psychology: “A father’s love contributes as much — and sometimes more — to a child’s development as does a mother’s love.”
While fathers are fighting for the right to be with their children there is a group of women doing the same. Called Leading Women for Shared Parenting (LW4SP) of which I am member, the organization advocates for shared parenting because “far too many good, willing and fit parents are pushed to the margins of their children’s lives by unfriendly family courts, government policies and laws that undermine family integrity and autonomy.” We believe “Forced separation from one’s own flesh and blood in the absence of abuse is morally wrong and socially irresponsible.”
Instead of Wednesday and every other weekend as the court’s default position regarding fathers when families restructure due to divorce, it is time that shared parenting be the norm.
This Father’s Day keep this in mind:
“It should be alarming to women everywhere to know, as they look at their son’s, there is a significant likelihood our government will turn him into a visitor to his children in the event he no longer resides with his kids’ mother.”
