Family breakdown costs us billions

Comments left on site: Mike Murphy June 08, 2009 - 11:00 PM

The report glosses over why so many single parent female homes are in poverty but if you know anything about family law you begin to understand. Judges routinely award custody in a 9-1 ratio to mothers in contested and uncontested cases. They deem equal/shared parenting as alien. A conclusion could be then that this social engineering is the leading cause of child poverty in Canada. Perhaps some investments should be made to save marriages that are savable and make it less easy to get divorced. 75% of divorces are initiated by the female through choice. Very few relate to abuse. Change the law to a default of equal/shared parenting with bi-location and that will definitely reduce divorce. The fewer incentives the greater likelihood of giving the relationship more chances to survive. Wouldn't that be in the best interest of children. Just think if no one pays support there will be no need for that massive collection agency and the humiliating website the Minister was recently bragging about with respect to deadbeats. Belgium has done all the above why not here.

Calgary Herald, June 8, 2009

When discussion turns to root causes for many of Canada's social ills, the breakdown of the family is inevitably among them. Single parenthood is statistically a prime catalyst for the creation of more households living at poverty standards, and the resultant social and emotional turmoil among the children affected by it. That is not to say, of course, that single-parent families are all doomed to self-destruct and become a charge on the social welfare net, but rather that marriage offers the best blueprint for creating and maintaining the stability children need to thrive.

Of course, that is also not to say that people in abusive or otherwise destructive marriages should remain in them for the children's sake. But a report from the Institute of Marriage and Family Canada points to a disturbing trend in cohabiting, a trend which would indicate that for the purposes of raising children, living together is deemed to be no different than marriage.

The report's authors, Andrea Mrozek and Rebecca Walberg, point out that when parents live common-law or a single parent raises a child from birth, families are more likely to rely on welfare, low-income housing programs and day-care subsidies. They say a conservative estimate of these costs to the taxpayer amounts to about $7 billion a year. They're calling on the federal government to offer incentives to people to tie the knot, such as cutting off common-law couples from tax benefits married couples enjoy.

There is something about making a vow and sealing a commitment in a marriage ceremony that lends gravitas to a relationship and inspires the couple to work harder at it, than the mere decision to move in together. Four years ago, Statistics Canada reported that in 1981, about six per cent of couples were living together, but by 2001, the figure was approximately 14 per cent. StatsCan also reported in 2003 that 63 per cent of cohabiting relationships end within 10 years, while only 14 per cent of married couples split up in that time.

Finding ways to encourage people to marry is to the government's advantage. Marriage fosters a stable, nurturing environment for children who in turn grow up independent of the social safety net, and emotionally healthy enough to enter into and maintain stable marriages of their own.

Ottawa may have no business in the bedrooms of the nation, but it has a huge social and economic stake in the future of Canadian children. The federal government should use this report to say "I do" to looking into a host of ways, including reforming the tax structure in favour of married couples -- two-in-come or otherwise--that will be an incentive for people to make the bond between them official.

© Copyright (c) The Calgary Herald

In OZ ~ Lives torn asunder

It would appear Judges, if given the chance, will end up all over the map interpreting what constitutes "best interests" or under the Oz Shared Parenting regime defining what constitutes a "meaningful relationship". To some it would appear email is meaningful. Sadly they ought not have any discretion in these matters. A meaningful relationship has to be both parents are involved directly in the children's lives on a 50-50 time basis unless the parents agree otherwise.MJM

Caroline Overington | June 09, 2009

Article from: The Australian

MOST of what used to be called child custody cases are settled between divorcing parents well before the case gets to the Family Court. Those that aren't typically involve couples who loathe each other with such intensity that they cannot agree on even the smallest matters regarding their children.

They need a judge to decide where the kids will live after divorce, how often they should see the other parent, what surname the children should have and where they should go to school.

Then, too, there are the so-called relocation cases where one parent, usually the mother, wants to move and take the children with her. Sometimes it's because she escaping an abusive, violent marriage and wants a fresh start. Other times it's because she wants to move to be with her new partner. Sometimes she wants to be nearer to her own mother or to other family members who may be able to help her with the children; or to an area where there is cheaper housing; or where she's likelier to find work.

In almost every case, if she gets permission to go, it will mean her children will be able to spend much less time - sometimes hardly any time - with their father, who naturally enough will fight to stop the relocation.

Not for nothing, then, did former Family Court judge Richard Chisholm describe relocation cases as the "San Andreas fault" of family law. They are cases that lead to rupture and ruin in families.

There was some hope in 2006 that this might change. In July that year the Howard government introduced what is known as the shared parenting amendment to the Family Law Act. The idea behind the amendment was simple: it was in the best interests of children that they had a meaningful relationship with both parents after divorce and that usually meant spending significant time with both parents, during the week, on weekends and during the holidays. On the subject of relocation cases, the amendment was silent. It didn't say that mothers couldn't move with their children after divorce; it didn't say that they were still allowed to move after divorce.

There was a feeling, however, that the amendment would make it more difficult for mothers to relocate after divorce because it was difficult for a child to have a meaningful relationship with their father, if they lived in, say, Colorado, and he lived in Melbourne.

Three years on, it's clear that the law has made it more difficult for parents to relocate after divorce. Two academic studies have independently reached that conclusion, and both agree that an international relocation is harder still. As far as the Shared Parenting Council of Australia is concerned, that's a good thing.

After all, before the law came in, mothers were generally allowed to go wherever they wanted after divorce. They could meet someone on the internet who lived in the US, for example, and as long as they were the primary carer of the children there was a good chance the Family Court would let her leave the country to pursue that relationship, in the process rupturing whatever relationship they had with their real dad, who most likely loved them very much and was a critically important person in their lives.

That kind of thing is now less likely to happen but it's still not impossible for mothers to leave the country with their children, as fathers are finding out.

In one recent case, known as Bletch and Douglas, a mother was allowed to move with her nine-year-old son to the US after developing a "unique communications skill" that landed her a media profile, a $450,000 book advance and interest from talk shows. The father, who has fought for years for greater access to his son, was told that he could have access during the school holidays, and make use of emails and webcam. The father could not believe the shared parenting laws would support such an arrangement. He flew to the US and tried to see the boy there, landing himself in trouble with local police.

In another case, known as Bradley and Bradley, a mother was permitted to return to her native Sweden with her two children after her marriage ended. She alleged child abuse. It was never proven and the judge did not accept that it had occurred. He acknowledged the distress the relocation would cause the children's father, saying "communication with the children will be difficult" since they would be living on opposite sides of the world. But he thought the father could stay in touch by email. The judge said the mother would have access to superior child care and affordable acommodation in Sweden. She also would be close to her family. The children would fly out to visit or else the father could visit them in Europe.

Groups such as the Shared Parenting Council were stunned that such decisions were possible under the law.

As lawyer David Alexander told a seminar in March, the laws didn't introduce a specific presumption against relocation. Instead, Alexander explained, the starting point for the court was that a child's best interests were served by having parents who had equal shared parental responsibility after divorce.

But that didn't mean a 50-50 time split was the automatic outcome. It would sometimes mean that the mother was restrained from moving the children too far from the father, but not always. To illustrate, Alexander used several recent cases in which the mother wanted to move the children, but was restrained by the Family Court. In one such case, the mother had in mind a move from Sydney to the NSW Hunter Valley. She thought it would be better for the children to live a rural lifestyle and she'd be able to afford a larger home. The judge restrained her, saying such a move would make it "impractical for the father to spend substantial and significant time with the children".

In another case, two children aged six and three were living with their mother on the south coast of NSW. She moved to a town 144km from the children's father. The court ordered her to return the children, saying they were entitled to significant time with their father and that was best achieved by having them live nearby.

Alexander concluded that there was a "fresh approach to the involvement of both parents in the lives of their children" and it "seems likely that the court will find it easier to deny an application to relocate".

"It's now a relatively simple matter for the non-residential parent to claim that even a short-distance relocation will preclude substantial and significant time (with the child)."

It's not always the case that a mother won't be able to move overseas or interstate.

In Godfrey and Sanders, for example, the Family Court allowed a mother to move from Melbourne to Brisbane, over the objections of the father. The court said the shared parenting law promoted a child's right to a meaningful relationship with both parents, but meaningful didn't mean optimal and while it obviously wasn't ideal for the children to be living in one state while their father lived in another, there was still opportunity for them to have a meaningful relationship on school holidays and by email.

That different judges in different states are making difficult decisions under the law is vexing for lawyers, who are finding it difficult to advise their clients. But the case that really has brought confusion about the law is that known as Rosa and Rosa, which came before the Family Court last month.

Mr and Mrs Rosa (pseudonyms) were married in Sydney in 2000 and had a daughter in 2002. In early 2007, when the child was five, the couple moved to a remote town in Queensland so the father could take up a job as a mining engineer. Six months later, the marriage ended. (Under law it's irrelevant for the purposes of child custody who ended the marriage, but for the record, the father told the mother it was over, packed up her things and put them out on the deck.)

The mother took their daughter back to Sydney, but the Family Court ordered her to return the child to the remote town where her former husband lived, while the parents fought over where their daughter should be reared. The mother wanted to move her back to Sydney, for good reason. In the remote town, where rents were high and men outnumbered women by a considerable degree, she could afford only to live in a caravan park. She had no family in the area and few friends.

The mother told the court she was isolated and broke, and wanted to go home to Sydney, where she would be able to find a job and would have the support of her own mother.

Federal magistrate John Coker, presiding over the initial hearing, asked the mother whether she would go to Sydney without her daughter. She said she would not, and in fact said she would never leave her daughter.

Coker asked the father if he would go to Sydney, if that was where his daughter was living. He said he would not because he wanted to keep working at his job. Asked whether he could find work elsewhere, the father said that yes, but he enjoyed this job in Queensland and wanted to keep it.

Given that the father would not leave Queensland and the mother would not leave her daughter, Coker decided that the only way the child could have a meaningful relationship with both parents was to have her live with her mother in far north Queensland in a week-about arrangement with her father.

The decision effectively ties the mother to the father's job, which itself presents an interesting condundrum for the future. What, for example, should happen if the father decides to take a new job in another mining town? Will he be allowed to take his daughter with him and, if so, must the mother follow? It seems likely that parliament did not intend to hobble women in this way.

Zoe Rathus is a senior lecturer in law at Griffith University. She is cautious about reading too much into the Rosa decision, saying it may not be precedent-setting.

"Playing the devil's advocate here, there are some cases that have gone the other way," she says.

"Whatever has been decided in this particular case, it doesn't mean that every parent in Australia who needs to relocate after a divorce should assume that they won't be able to do it. There is nothing in the (new) law that says that. And another judge might have made a completely different decision in this case." But, she says, the laws "create a complex set of ideas, and it's a set of ideas that crash into each other and there is a great deal of confusion at the coalface of family law about what the new law says and what it actually means, and how it is working, in practice, and it's usually not a good idea for confusion to reign".

The federal Attorney-General's Department is believed to have an appetite for change to the shared parenting law but is proceeding with caution. Before it does anything, it wants to see the results of a review of the law by the Australian Institute of Family Studies, a review that was built into the original law. That report is due in December. Attorney-General Robert McClelland has commissioned his own report, which is due by the end of the year.

The Australian has put questions about the shared parenting law, and the confusion it seems to be creating, to Family Court Chief Justice Diana Bryant.

Her office says there are three points for separating parents to keep in mind.

First, each case will be determined on its unique facts, and judges must consider the best interests of the individual children in each case.

Second, there is no particular pattern that can be relied on to predict a decision and, therefore, it makes no sense to go to court, believing that a particular outcome is certain.

Third, an appeal court may be comprised of judges who will have decided a matter differently at the first hearing and who may indeed believe that the lower court's decision is an awful one, but they can't overturn a decision unless there has been an error of law.

Amnesty International ~ Dine Out to Help Stop Violence Against Women ~ When do we do it for Men in the interests of all gender Human Rights

Amnesty International
312 Laurier Avenue East
Ottawa, ON
Canada
K1N 1H9

From your web page: http://www.amnesty.ca/tasteforjustice/dine_out.php

"Form (SIC) June 1 to 15 restaurants in select cities across Canada will be supporting Amnesty International's work to stop violence against women by donating a percentage of their sales proceeds to Amnesty."

I read your web page, complete with typos, and its campaign with selected Canadian Restaurants favouring 50% of the population involved in Domestic Violence. DV is a serious issue but do you have plans for a similar campaign for men who suffer from this same affliction perpetrated by the gender you favour today? Somehow I think not. I will personally be boycotting these restaurants and asking my fellow men who are victims of female perpetrated violence to do so as well. In fact I would encourage them and all fair minded women to picket these restaurants for active discrimination. I will also be advising all fair minded men and women to avoid making any donations, support or "sweat equity, to Amnesty International in the future. If this is the level of research you carry out before starting a campaign you have no credibility with me at all.

You are obviously unaware that DV is pretty much equal in most western democracies including Canada. You may be unaware that female perpetrated violence in some age categories exceeds that of men in the same age category. I point you to Stats Can studies, Family violence in Canada: A statistical profile, 2005. An estimated 7% of women and 6% of men representing 653,000 women and 546,000 men in a current or previous spousal relationship encountered spousal violence during the five years up to and including 2004, according to a comprehensive Statistics Canada report on family violence. http://www.statcan.gc.ca/Daily/English/050714/d050714a.htm

US department of Health studies showing women as the main killers and abusers of their children, www.acf.hhs.gov/.../index.htm and several peer reviewed studies that will obviously surprise you. Australia's most recent stats also show mothers in concert with their boyfriends as the predominate killers of their children. Unfortunately Stats Can will not break out this data for Canada and, as a result, their information is less reliable.

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — Women are more likely than men to stalk, attack and psychologically abuse their partners, according to a University of Florida study that finds college women have a new view of the dating scene.

DURHAM, N.H. -- A 32-nation study of violence against dating partners by university partners found that about a third had been violent, and most incidents of partner violence involve violence by both the man and woman, according to Murray Straus, founder and co-director of the Family Research Laboratory at the University of New Hampshire. The second largest category was couples where the female partner was the only one to carry about physical attacks, not the male partner.

When it comes to nonreciprocal violence between intimate partners, women are more often the perpetrators.

These findings on intimate partner violence come from a study conducted by scientists at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The lead investigator was Daniel Whitaker,
Ph.D., a behavioural scientist and team leader at the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control (which is part of the CDC). Results were published in the May Journal of Public Health.

Regarding perpetration of violence, more women than men (25 percent versus 11 percent) were responsible. In fact, 71 percent of the instigators in nonreciprocal partner violence were women.
This finding surprised Whitaker and his colleagues, they admitted in their study report.

Martin Fiebert maintains the most up-to-date bibliography in the English speaking world on peer reviewed studies showing DV is not a male only perpetrated offence and it can be viewed here. http://www.csulb.edu/~mfiebert/assault.htm. SUMMARY: This bibliography examines 249 scholarly investigations: 194 empirical studies and 55 reviews and/or analyses, which demonstrate that women are as physically aggressive, or more aggressive, than men in their relationships with their spouses or male partners. The aggregate sample size in the reviewed studies exceeds 241,700.

I want to repeat DV is a serious issue but it is not a single gender female problem. It will never get resolved by castigating males and placing females as martyrs. Those of us who have been attacked with 4.5' rake handles, 10 lb water jugs, had heavy objects thrown and been physically attacked with fists flailing and been financially and emotionally abused at the hands of females are not impressed. We are a larger population than you would have thought and we can also become "battered men." Most of us are too ashamed to report it when it happens and go public after the fact due to social mores. Only about 10-18% of males report DV to the police. Hardly any report emotional or financial abuse. At least in my community the police do arrest females and there is less to fear by men in reporting DV when it happens. In many communities the man gets arrested even though the female was the perpetrator.

I am also including an article by Don Dutton, in the National Post from 2006, to demonstrate an example of DV designed to capture the essence of the problem and its optics.

Michael Murphy

Sault Ste. Marie ON P6A6J8

http://parentalalienationcanada.blogspot.com/

Cc Lucie Ogrodnik, Manager, Family Violence Program, Stats Canada

Wednesday, June 14, 2006

Domestic violence isn't one-sided

Don Dutton, National Post Published: Wednesday, June 14, 2006

A few years ago, a woman arrived home from work in Saskatoon to find her husband, who had obviously spent the day drinking, complaining of irritation with their fractious child. She insisted she needed to rest before making dinner. She awoke to find him in a rage straddling her and brandishing a kitchen knife, which he used to cut her abdomen. Bleeding, terrified, she managed to call 911. The police arrived within minutes. They observed her plight, spoke to her husband and then, responding to the unspoken but powerful institutional guidelines routinely applied in such cases, arrested ... her. In spite of her wound, she spent the night in a jail cell, and was released the next morning.

As it stands, this story makes no sense -- and indeed would have aroused national indignation if it were completely true. But I deliberately misled the reader on one particular. In the real story, by no means a unique one in police archives, the genders were reversed: The man arrived home after a 12-hour shift; the child's mother was drunk; the man lay down; the woman stabbed him in a rage; the police didn't take his injuries seriously; they accepted the woman's explanation -- probably self-defence -- and arrested the man.

Unfortunately, such gender bias in the law-enforcement system and beyond is typical, not exceptional. A double standard for men and women, applied in cases of intimate partner violence (IPV) -- as well as in family law, including spousal support and child custody cases -- has become commonplace in most Western societies over the last 25 years. And in spite of a widening stream of incontrovertible statistical evidence to the contrary, the myth persists that it is women, and only women, who are the victims of IPV.

The stereotype that unprovoked men purposefully assault women, and never the reverse, is so ingrained in our public discourse that participants in research on IPV -- not just lay people but health professionals as well -- presented with a scenario in which one partner abuses another, perceive it as abuse only if the assaulter is identified as male.

The reality, borne out by independent peer-reviewed studies as well as StatsCan, is that women commit more severe IPV, and more IPV in general, than men. For all kinds of relationship types, females are unilaterally more violent than males to non-violent partners. More females strike first in IPV (men are conditioned not to strike first in our society) and, contradicting received wisdom, fear of their male partner is rarely a factor amongst violent women. Actually, both male and female victims of IPV report equal fear levels of "intimate terrorism".

Of course, some battering males abuse passive women -- about 3% annually, far fewer than implied in skewed studies by women's groups. But in spite of sensationalized cases, spousal homicide perpetrated by either sex is extremely rare. As many mothers as fathers practice child abuse alone or in tandem, and far more women than men murder their children.

Interestingly, IPV occurs more frequently in lesbian than in heterosexual relationships, supporting the view that relationship dynamics, not gender, fuel domestic violence. Honest research points to a norm of "assortative mating": The violence-prone tend to seek each other out for anti-social behaviour.

And yet our government, our social services and our judiciary prescribe remedies based on a false and simplistic view that denies not just the unprovoked violence committed by women in relationships, but the number and severity of the assaults engaged in by both partners in mutually violent couples.

Indeed, it is fair to say that no other area of established social welfare, criminal justice or public health depends on such weak and biased evidence in support of mandated practice as does IPV. The model of "treatment" for IPV that flows from this false understanding is not the kind of therapy that could benefit both male and female perpetrators. Instead, our system prefers "intervention" -- against men, never women --and a "psychoeducational" model of behaviour modification that essentially amounts to inculcating the radical feminist political viewpoint.

Where does the gender bias come from? Ideology. Radical feminism insists that men -- all men -- by their nature pursue power and control for its own sake. As a result, we become complicit in the myths of gender politics. So when a crazed individual male with a bizarre personal back story shoots women, we hold candlelight vigils. But when a vengeful woman cuts off a man's penis, he becomes fodder for standup comedians, while she is hailed as a symbol of female empowerment.

IPV is a serious issue in our society. Responding to it through the default demonization of one sex and victimization of the other is an insult to scientific integrity, a stumbling block to rehabilitation, a strong contributing factor in many arbitrarily ruined lives, and a shameful blot on our human rights record.

- Don Dutton is Professor of Psychology at the University of British Columbia and the author of Rethinking Domestic Violence.

Copyright © 2007 CanWest Interactive, a division of CanWest MediaWorks Publications, Inc.. All rights reserved.

Manufactured Fatherlessness in America

Fathers 4 Justice US®

F4J-Today

This Issue of F4J-Today focuses on raising awareness of Manufactured Fatherlessness in America as explained in the first article.

As many of you are aware we will be hosting the Second Annual ***NATIONWIDE*** Fatherless Day at the State Senates and House of Representatives across the country on Friday June 19^th 2009. There will be lobbying from 9:00AM until 12:00PM and rallying from 12:00PM until 3:00PM.

Click here for the Fatherless Day Flyer.

To find out more about what is going on in your state, or to help organize join your state yahoo group listed here .

If you are an active participant please send stories and pictures to action@f4j.us

Can’t Make it?

Support the people on the ground and in the lobbies by sending an e-mail mentioning Fatherless Day and Manufactured Fatherlessness to your State Senators, State Representatives and local media. Be sure you mention that you support the people that are there in person lobbying and rallying.

To find your state legislators go to www.congress.org and enter your zip code in the “My Elected Officials” box. Feel free to send the same message to all of them.

We would like to see what people are saying and doing so please send a copy of your letter to action@f4j.us

Institute of Marriage and Family Canada ~ Report on Cost of Family Breakdown "PRIVATE CHOICES, PUBLIC COSTS, How failing families cost us all

Institute of Marriage and Family Canada
130 Albert St., Suite 2001
Ottawa ON
K1P 5G4

I have had a chance to review the entire report and have come away with a feeling of incompleteness. That feeling is likely directly related to my being a former full time dad having raised my two youngest girls for 10 years and then, thanks to the family court, some false accusations, and the fact I'm not female relegated me to the ash heap of being a visitor to my children. I am an absentee father according to your report and columnist Lorie Goldstein, by decree of the court and an un-parent having no legal status. The family court judge has sentenced me to see my children about 14% of the time in addition to paying child support, dental, additional medical, extraordinary expenses as well as a host of other items. My ex then went on welfare and became one of your statistics. Because of systemic impediments, perceived entitlements, reinforced by a host of female support services she was not interested in reconciliation, counselling (family or for the children), mediation, or even in basic communication. She was convinced the grass was greener and her alienation of the children pretty much assured her of having complete control of the situation. She has, thus far, assessed it correctly despite the fact she is a convicted criminal, child and spousal abuser. All of this information and detailed background is available on my blog which your organization visits periodically. http://parentalalienationcanada.blogspot.com/

Nowhere in your report is there any mention of family law and the judges who make the decisions to award custody in a 9-1 ratio to women. Some judges will say it is due to the fact the female was the primary care giver and it is in the best interest of the children but that is pure bunkum when it comes to my circumstances. It does not hold up to analytic scrutiny in the vast majority of cases. One might then conclude these family court judges, through this social engineering, effectively removing fathers from their children are the leading causative agent for child poverty in Canada. That is certainly my conclusion. Most assuredly the 90% of dads removed in this manner cannot all be guilty of being so bad they are relegated to 14% visitation and then, if the ex is vindictive, cannot see their children at all. Access agreements are not enforced by the courts but many dads end up in jail if they cannot pay their child support.

The implications from your study are that men are bad, they walk away from their children and the poor mother is left in poverty. This is not the reality of the Canadian experience for fathers. This was picked up on by Lorrie Goldstein who compares a cultural enclave in Toronto to men walking away from their obligations. These are myths and your study has been most unhelpful in dealing with them. In Goldstein's case it has reinforced his pretty obvious bias. He states "Indeed, "marriage breakdown" today essentially means absentee fathers." "http://www.torontosun.com/comment/2009/06/04/9673856.html#/comment/columnists/lorrie_goldstein/2009/06/04/pf-9670071.html

Figure 3 on page 12 appears to be wrong. It shows about 78% married when it should be 68% then by adding in the roughly 16% for the other two types you get 100%. The actual Stats Can #'s are: 68.6 married, 15.9 lone parent and 15.5 common-law.

You state "In short, the poverty that results from family breakdown is to a large extent a women's issue. If we are serious about improving the standard of living of women, especially mothers, we must reduce family breakdown. That would be beneficial but not always possible." This statement is loaded with a host of implications again suggesting the mothers are the martyrs and the dads to blame. There are tens of thousands of marginalized fathers, cast aside by the family law system across this country, who would disagree.

Given Family Law court judges give females sole physical custody in a 9-1 ratio a change in the law to shared/equal parenting with residential bi-location would help children considerably. No support would be paid by either party and dads would be treated equally and stay in their children's lives. The child support collection agencies would no longer be necessary freeing up resources for more useful purposes. Look to the Belgium model, introduced in 2006, for the impact their family law reform has achieved for children and keeping dads in their lives equally. Some information on these changes is available here in a presentation entitled "Benefits of post-divorce shared parenting and the situation in the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany" by a Dutch Psychologist to a conference in Greece in January this year. http://fkce.wordpress.com/2009/01/03/13/

The premise that two parent family units are better places for our children is valid. Many studies point to the negative consequences of single parent female homes. Systemic changes are required including de-incentivizing divorce by women. Seventy five percent of divorces are initiated by the female in Canada and 66% in the USA. One way to help this is to implement equal shared parenting with bi-location of residency for the children. Where this has been implemented divorce rates have dropped. Other systemic changes are also required but too detailed for this email. One such study can be observed here by a California PhD., Dr. Jayne Major, who is very immersed in family breakdown. http://f4j-soo.blogspot.com/2009/04/macabre-dance-of-family-law-court.html. She presented this at an International Conference on Parental Alienation in late March in Toronto.

Michael Murphy, FRA,
A disenfranchised dad
Sault Ste. Marie ON P6A6J8

'Pub law' on 50-50 access for dads debunked

Caroline Overington | June 08, 2009

Article from: The Australian

SHARED parenting laws introduced by the Howard government in 2006 do not guarantee divorced fathers the right to a 50-50 time split with their children because such an arrangement is not always in the best interests of the children.

Instead, the legislation requires the Family Court to "consider" whether equal time with both parents suits a particular child, and can decide that in some cases it does not.

The Australian last week reported that fathers are overwhelming staff at the new Family Relationship Centres, where all separating parents must now go before approaching the Family Court, demanding to know why they can't have a 50-50 time split with their children.

Staff at the centres say a "pub law" belief about a father's right to a 50-50 time split has taken hold in the community.

But retired Family Court judge Richard Chisholm says the shared parenting laws, introduced in 2006 and now under review, never guaranteed anybody a 50-50 time split. In a paper titled Shared Care and Children's Best Interests at the Legal Aid NSW family law conference, Professor Chisholm said there was "a lot of evidence to support the idea that children will generally benefit if they experience a loving and involved relationship with both parents" after separation.

"There is also evidence that children care a lot about their parents and generally want to remain closely involved with both of them."

Professor Chisholm said the Howard government amendment "envisaged the non-resident parent participating in various aspects of the child's life, for example being involved in the child's daily routine".

But the provisions about equal time did not reflect what most expert researchers believed was important for children.

"What seems to matter most to children, and what seems most important for their healthy development, has more to do with what happens when they are with each parents, and in particular whether they feel loved and cared for," Professor Chisholm said.

"The idea of equal time makes a lot of sense in terms of adult entitlement.

"As far as I can tell, it does not reflect what research scholars believe is important for children's development."

He urged academics to do more research into the benefits of shared parenting, particularly in cases where parents are in conflict, saying: "We need to know much more about the nature of conflict, the extent to which children are being exposed to it, and the extent to which parents and the courts might be treating the legislation as requiring some form of shared parenting, even when it is damaging to the children."

The Australian Institute of Family Studies is conducting a review of the Howard government amendments, which have been the subject of mounting complaints from separated mothers and fathers.

If the review recommends changes, Professor Chisholm said: "I hope the focus will be on how it impacts on families, rather than how it impacts on voters and lobby groups."