In New Brunswick ~ Taskforce wants to keep more family cases out of the court, use mediation instead

Report recommends major family law reform

Published Wednesday June 3rd, 2009

A6

By Nick Moore
Times & Transcript Staff

FREDERICTON - Justice Minister T.J. Burke says a report calling for major reforms to the province's family justice system will completely change the face of how such cases are dealt with, adding that it's the most important initiative he's undertaken in his judicial portfolio thus far.

The taskforce report urges the family law system to approach cases outside of a traditional courtroom setting whenever possible, recommending greater mediation in such cases.

Many of the recommendations are based on a family law pilot program in Ottawa, where families are required to attend a 'triage' day without filing any affidavits for a day in court. In Ottawa, families fill out a form describing the type of relief they're requesting and meet with a mediator instead of a judge. Families only file a short-form affidavit and appear before a judge if no agreement can be reached. Afterward, if an agreement still can't be reached, the case moves on to the regular court process.

The taskforce offered 50 recommendations it said would create better access to family law in the province. Burke said his department would investigate every recommendation offered and carry out cost analyses for each one.

Burke said he was committed to overall reform.

Retired family court judge Raymond Guerette served as the task force's chairman. Guerette said the report's main priority is to elevate the well-being of families, particularly children. He said that neither families nor children are considered top priority in the current system because of the adversity of the entire family court set-up.

Guerette added the quicker the family law system is reformed, the better.

"The object is to keep the case moving through the system because, right now, it takes too long to get anything done," he said. "Sometimes a mediator will pick up the phone and resolve a visitation problem ... You don't need a notice of motion or an affidavit or a court hearing six months down the road for that."

Burke said efficiencies would certainly be found in a reformed system. The department's plan is to implement elements of the report in one of the province's judicial districts by the end of September, likely in place where the family court docket is severely backlogged.

Mary-Eileen Flanagan, a member of the task force, said their work wasn't done and they'd be continuing to work to see the reforms come to light. "We know the horizons are short and we said we'd be on (the minister's) speed dial between now and the end of September," she said.

Progressive Conservative MLA Tony Huntjens, the Opposition justice critic, said he was impressed with the report and its recommendations, adding that he hoped it wouldn't be "like other reports that end up collecting dust on the shelf."

From the CBC

Burke accepts report on N.B. family court system, promises action

Last Updated: Wednesday, June 3, 2009 | 11:01 AM AT Comments6Recommend5

CBC News

Justice Minister T.J. Burke said he accepts the findings of a scathing report that says the family court system is dysfunctional — and he is promising action.

'I have no doubt in my mind that we are make our best efforts to adopt as many of them as we possibly can over the next 24 to 48 months.'— T.J. Burke, justice minister

The Access to Family Justice Task Force report said families are facing unacceptable delays in seeing their cases resolved because the system is overwhelmed by paperwork and by procedure.

Burke said he is striking a committee which will look at how to implement the recommendations from the report. As well, a pilot project will start this fall intended to ease the pressure on the family court division.

"I have no doubt in my mind that we are make our best efforts to adopt as many of them as we possibly can over the next 24 to 48 months," Burke said.

Burke said he accepts the report's main point that spending a bit more on alternatives at the outset will cost the system less overall.

Justice Raymond Guerette, the task force's chairman, said in the report —which was released Tuesday and includes 50 recommendations — that the family justice system has deteriorated over the last 15 years.

The report attributed the worsening state of the system to a variety of factors, including an almost 50 per cent jump in people without lawyers, an escalation in the number and complexity of hearings in child protection cases, and "perceived procedural requirements."

"The object is to keep the case moving through the system, because right now it takes too long to get anything done," Guerette told reporters.

Court workers spend too much time on paperwork

The report said court workers, including social workers, spend most of their time on paperwork, rather than resolving family disputes.

'Being a single parent is bad enough as it is, without this family court adding to their problems.'— Judge Raymond Guerette

The best interests of children are secondary to what the report calls "excessive procedural demands."

The report proposed a triage model that would divert some cases to mediation or to other services to lower the court's caseload.

Guerette said that recommendation will save money in the long run.

"Our finding is that the longer a case remains in the judicial system, the more it costs," he said.

However, the province recently cut some of the very services in the recent budget that the task force report says are needed, such as mediators.

With the problems facing the court process, Guerette said the system is insensitive to what families are going through.

"It's insensitive, because it doesn't take into account the anguish and the anxiety of single parents who have to go through the system to obtain a remedy or some relief. Being a single parent is bad enough as it is, without this family court adding to their problems."

Story comments (6)

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Mike Murphy wrote:Posted 2009/06/04
at 11:47 AM ET'Being a single parent is bad enough as it is, without this family court adding to their problems.' — Judge Raymond Guerette"
__________________________________________________
This quote is telling and it is easy to see where this judge's sympathies exist. He, along with a cabal of other Family Court Judges across Canada, create these single parent homes. It is code for female headed single parent homes as that is what happens in 90% of cases. So this judge wants to make it easier on the single parent female and at whose expense? The dad, of course, who will remain the ATM, the visitor, the un-parent. Guerette, and his colleagues, through their social engineering creating these single parent female family units, are the leading cause of child poverty in Canada. According to all studies domestic and international single parent female units are also the least safe and most socially oppressive places for children. With judges like him involved these reforms will go no where. They are dealing with the edges. A presumption of equal shared parenting is needed in the children's best interest before anything substantive will occur. Look to the model created in Belgium, by a feminist Minister no less, to see where NB and the rest of Canada should be headed.

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nbcepa wrote:Posted 2009/06/04
at 10:19 AM ETThe report appears to be an exercise on “dusting off” and rearranging the court furniture and changing the “emperor’s new clothes”. In other words, it lacks true substance and brings in more bureaucracies and government agencies to the nation’s bedrooms. Note that in the task force there was a lack of equal gender representation, little emphasis on equal parenting as a presumption, fairness in child support payments, especially when the custodial parent makes more than the non-custodial or non-residential parent , and the mention of parental alienation was like a ”flash in the pan”.

The report may appear be a start in the right direction but not as impressive as the photo op of the task force members.

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NB_citizen wrote:Posted 2009/06/03
at 12:21 PM ETwhat is a government "promise" worth these days?

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LoneRanger wrote:Posted 2009/06/03
at 11:16 AM ETEver since trudeau the liberals have treated our Children like feeder stock. And nothing is about to change, like in Alberta!

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DanFour wrote:Posted 2009/06/03
at 10:52 AM ETTranslation: If you aren't rich, get ready for a new form of justice - where allegations need not be proven and personal rights are thrown in the trashbin.

Recall that not too long ago, hundreds of New Brunswick's troubled youth were systematically raped for decades in a prison system - one patsy was briefly imprisoned and a cover up ensued.

What has changed since then that social workers and foster homes (much more likely to result in abuse and forced psychiatric medication than the biological home) should be handed cart blanche to take away kids?

This is what happens when the debt-slavery system disintegrates - children of the poor are stolen and shipped off so that the awful truth of our societal pyramid scheme is not so evident.

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In OZ ~ Flaws' in John Howard's parenting law

It looks like the eunuchs in OZ are coming out in full force now that dad's have a more equal playing field. It would appear they are patriarchs who believe the moms are mere children and because were ruled against by the courts need the hand of the nanny state to fulfill their true destiny - whatever it is in their minds that particular day. The mom can't run home to mommy and apparently is unemployable so the bad judges are at fault. Note also the last statement there is "indisputable" damage but no attribution is offered to this statement. Is it, as is mostly the case when defending victim feminism - opinion - or are there peer reviewed studies?MJM

Caroline Overington | June 03, 2009

Article from: The Australian

THE shared-parenting law introduced by the Howard government is deeply flawed and must be either amended or thrown out and replaced with something new.

That is the view of Patrick Parkinson, who was chairman of the Family Law Council when the legislation was being developed, and the council's current chairman, John Wade.

Professor Wade said the Family Law Amendment (Shared Parental Responsibility) Act of 2006, designed to give children access to both their parents after divorce, was incoherent, "filled with gobbledegook" and failed to give judges "the clear signals they need to make good decisions".

"So there have been some horrible decisions," Professor Wade added. He said it set up false expectations for fathers, who believed it would guarantee them a 50-50 time split with their children, and it condemned other children, including infants, to a damaging cross-country "shuttle life" between warring parents.

Professor Parkinson said the amendment did not give clear signals, nor give judges enough guidance on when shared parenting was appropriate and when it was not.

"There have been some cases where children under the age of two are doing week-about (one week with the father, one with the mother) and often travelling long distances," Professor Parkinson said. "Young children often do well with frequent contact with both parents, but it is important to avoid long separations from the primary caregiver.

"If you've got mum and dad living around the corner it might be fine because frequent short visits are possible."

He said the law needed "tweaking". "It's sometimes that the parliament needs to send clear signals," he said. "This is not a coherent piece of legislation."

The Australian has recently reported on Family Court decisions that have troubled some family law experts. In one case, known as Irish and Michelle, the Family Court ordered that two Tasmanian children be removed from the care of their mother, with whom they had lived all their lives, to live with their father, who had moved to Melbourne to be with his new girlfriend. There was no abuse or neglect.

The judge thought the mother had not encouraged the children to maintain a relationship with their father after he left home.

In another case, known as Rosa and Rosa, heard in Townsville last month, a mother was told she could not leave a remote mining town in northwest Queensland with her five-year-old daughter because her ex-husband wanted to stay there and work. The couple had lived there less than a year before they broke up and the mother, who said she would not leave without her daughter, is now confined to poverty, and life in a caravan.

Professor Parkinson said judges in different states were interpreting the law differently. In Victoria and Western Australia, for example, parents were more likely to be allowed to relocate with a child after a divorce than in NSW.

The Family Law Council - a statutory body established in 1976 to give the attorney-general advice on whether family law is working, and which comprises judges, lawyers and family law academics - recently compiled a paper on shared parenting that found a "new breed" of family disputes had cropped up in the Family Court since the shared parenting amendment was enacted, "namely attempts to stop the primary residential parent from moving within or across a city".

Some members of the council are also concerned about the "undisputed damage to young children engaged in shuttle lives".

ABC Online

The World Today - Family law experts say 50-50 rule doesn't work

[This is the print version of story http://www.abc.net.au/worldtoday/content/2008/s2587963.htm]

The World Today - Wednesday, 3 June , 2009 12:38:00

Reporter: Jennifer Macey

PETER CAVE: Family law experts are calling for the shared parenting law to be scrapped or radically overhauled, saying that the 50-50 parenting rule doesn't always work.

The law was introduced by the Howard government in 2006 and put greater emphasis on children spending equal time with both parents.

But the head of the Family Law Council says this often gives fathers a false expectation that they will be granted equal time, when this isn't true for the majority of cases.

Jennifer Macey reports.

JENNIFER MACEY: The Howard Government introduced changes to the Family Law Act three years ago, claiming that equal time with both parents would be in the best interests of the child.

But the chair of the Family Law Council, Professor John Wade from Bond University, says the changes were hastily written gobbledegook.

JOHN WADE: The amendments appear to have been bought in very hurriedly and pasted together at the last moment, with a lot of compromises of wording with the result that you need a PhD in statutory interpretation to understand what the amendments mean when they talk about shared parenting and presumptions.

It's extremely difficult to understand and I think it's placed a very unfair burden on judges, to in the few cases that get to court, to try to interpret what this means.

JENNIFER MACEY: Professor Wade says the laws create two problems, firstly, the children aren't always best served by being split between two homes and secondly, that many parents are wrongly given the impression they are entitled to a 50-50 shared arrangement.

JOHN WADE: And they begin negotiations with arguments that, "Oh but I'm entitled to 50-50" as a starting point in the bidding, and that's led to some very unfortunate settlements where people have agreed to young children being substantial equal time between parents and shuttling them across cities or across the country.

And that's not the judges' fault, that's because people use the words as levers in negotiations.

JENNIFER MACEY: Since the law was introduced there's been much debate about whether equal shared parenting is in fact the best thing for children.

Clive Price is the director of Unifam, the family and relationships counselling arm of the Uniting Church.

CLIVE PRICE: From my experience in talking with children, living in two households is always going to be more complicated than living in one. Kids complain about never knowing where their homework is, about only being able to play sport every second weekend, and lots of practical things.

But much more importantly it's the conflict that kids are witnesses to and are caught up in, the tug of war between two parents that has the biggest impact and effect on children.

JENNIFER MACEY: He believes separated or divorced couples should be given more support in how to actually manage the shared parenting arrangements.

CLIVE PRICE: 'Cause a lot of money and a lot of resources goes into sorting out what the arrangements are going to be, but I think we need to have more resources into equipping parents after separation to know how to manage these new and often complex arrangements.

JENNIFER MACEY: While the rhetoric of the equal custody laws was that the presumption of courts would be to share parenting, in reality, judges seem to be reluctant to grant a straight 50-50 split in most cases.

Figures released by the court from more than 1,400 cases finalised in 2007 and 2008 show that only 15 per cent of cases actually resulted in equal time.

But Professor John Wade says the reality is that divided custody is hard to maintain.

JOHN WADE: The stats can be very misleading 'cause they're not giving you the picture of the other 95 per cent of, or 96 per cent of cases that settle, and they're not telling you what happens a year later.

And the initial research says a year later these arrangements just aren't working.

JENNIFER MACEY: The Government has commissioned the Australian Institute of Family Studies to review the Shared Parental Responsibility Act and report back in December this year.

But Professor Wade says that's too late.

JOHN WADE: I think you should act sooner rather than later, you shouldn't fiddle while Rome burns.

JENNIFER MACEY: But Patrick Parkinson, the former chair of the Family Law Council and Professor of Law at the University of Sydney, says there's no need to scrap the current law.

But he says it may need some tweaking.

PATRICK PARKINSON: Courts need further guidance and lawyers need further guidance on when shared care is and is not appropriate.

You've got to be very careful with shared care arrangements under about five-years-old because of the attachments that very young children have to their primary carer. You don't want to have long gaps between the time they see mum.

It's better to have frequent short visits from dad rather than to have long separations from mum.

So there's some clarification needed, I think it's important to give further clarification around the issue of relocation.

But it would be a grave mistake to think that the whole legislation is deeply flawed, it would also be a grave mistake to amend the law on the basis of anecdotes or horror stories. We need proper evaluation, proper research and careful thought.

PETER CAVE: Professor Patrick Parkinson from the University of Sydney ending that report from Jennifer Macey.

© 2009 Australian Broadcasting Corporation
Copyright information: http://abc.net.au/common/copyrigh.htm
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CBC Radio 1 ~ The Current for June 01, 2009 ~ Parental Alienation

Rhonda Pisarello was eight years old when her parents divorced. Her sisters were seven and one. Rhonda's father was awarded custody of the three girls. And her mother was granted the right to see them a few days each week. A year after the divorce, Rhonda's father remarried. Rhonda is an adult now and she picked up the story from there. We aired a clip.

Rhonda's story has all the hallmarks of what we now call Parental Alienation. The number of court cases that involve Parental Alienation is getting more attention these days but it is not new to our court system.

Nick Bala has just completed the first study of how Canadian courts and judges have handled Parental Alienation over the last 20 years. He's a professor in the Faculty of Law at Queen's University and he was in Kingston, Ontario.

When you click on the following link it will take you to the CBC site. Look to the bottom of the page and click on the same link again. You will need the Adobe Flash Player installed.
Listen to Part Three:

Professor Bala's Summary of the study follows my remarks on the broadcast.

"Bala seems to have picked up on the notion that Parental Alienation is real and has negative consequences 20 plus years after it received currency in the pyschological community. He even noted he found a 2-1 ratio of female/male perps but then quickly falls all over himself by indicating females have greater custody. Is he playing identity politics just trying to placate his feminist followers and acolytes by making excuses or is this an objective inference. He does not quote the actual statistics of gender custody.

His comments on the legal side seemed balanced but he still subscribes to the feminist notion that Dr. Gardiner may not be credible. He has done his homework with respect to the impact on children and almost sounded like Dr. Richard Warshak but he is a lawyer not a clinician and no more qualified (perhaps less so) than someone like me who is a target. Nevertheless, he seems to be applying more equanimity but he has a long way to go.

His comments in the newspaper with respect to the little girl who was alienated from her Toronto Father and allowed to go to Saudi Arabia with her mother are beyond the pale as were Judge Leonard Ricchetti's in Elwan v el taher one of the most egregious of dysfunctional decisions rewarding a child abuser in recent memory.

His recommendations are logical and reasonable. Will it take the lawmakers another generation to change the system or will judges work within their current framework and implement the necessary changes immediately while we get shared and equal parenting legislation passed along with new rules relating to conflict? Reducing the incentives to divorce will reduce couple separation and increase the likelihood of counselling.

Gene Coleman, a Toronto based lawyer, did an original study of PA in Canadian court cases and presented it publicly at the Canadian Parental Alienation Syndrome Symposium in late March 2009 in Toronto. I was in attendance. Bala may be exaggerating his claim that his is the first such study. Gene's presentation is available for review here. http://www.4famlaw.com/P.A.%20Research.htm#COLMAN%27S MJM"

May 12, 2009 - Summary

Parental Alienation - Myths, Realities & Uncertainties:
A Canadian Study, 1989-2008

Nicholas Bala, Suzanne Hunt & Carrie McCarney
Faculty of Law, Queen’s University

Alienation cases have been receiving a great deal of public and professional attention in the past few months in Canada. As with so many issues in family law, there are two competing, gendered narratives offered to explain these cases. Men’s rights activists claim that mothers alienate children from their fathers as a way of seeking revenge for separation, and argue that judges are gender-biased against fathers in these cases. Feminists tend to dismiss alienation as a fabrication of abusive fathers who are trying to force contact with children who are frightened of them and to control the lives of their abused former partners. While there is some validity to both of these narratives, each also has significant mythical elements. The reality of these cases is often highly complex, with both fathers and mothers bearing significant responsibility for the situation.

Many high conflict separations are characterized by both parents denigrating their former partners and failing to support their children’s relationships with the other parent. While all children suffer from such parental behaviour, only a minority of children become “alienated” from a parent as a result of it. When a child resists visits with a parent, all children in the family and both parents must be assessed. Some cases involve emotionally abusive "pathological alienation," caused by the conduct of an alienating parent and resulting in a child having negative beliefs and feelings (such as anger, hatred or fear) that are not consistent with the child's actual experience with the rejected parent. In other cases, however, the child may be "justifiably estranged" due to conduct of the rejected parent, such as abuse or poor parenting. In some cases a child independently decides to disengage with a parent, perhaps due to tensions with a step parent.

We are undertaking a study of reported Canadian cases between 1989 and 2008 dealing with claims of parental alienation.

Some of the key findings of the study:

• A total of 145 cases were found in this period in which the court made a decision about whether or not there was “parental alienation”, with 18/34 in 1989-1998 having a finding of alienation, and 71/111 in 1999-2008 having a finding of alienation. Thus there was a significant increase over time in the number of cases raising the issue of parental alienation and in the number of cases in which there were findings of alienation, though the increase in the rate of findings (53% to 64%) was not statistically significant.
  
  
• Although courts continue to use the concept of “parental alienation,” starting in 2005, Canadian judges began to recognize that the issue of whether this is a “syndrome” is controversial, and that mental health professionals should resolve this issue, not judges.
  
  
• Mothers are twice as likely as fathers to alienate children from the other parent, but this reflects the fact that mothers are more likely to have custody or primary care of their children; in only 2 out of 89 cases was a parent with only access able to alienate a child from the other parent.
  
  
• Fathers made more than three times as many unsubstantiated claims of parental alienation as mothers, but this too reflects the fact that claims of alienation (substantiated and unsubstantiated) are usually made by access parents, who are usually fathers.
  
  
• In close to half the cases in which the court declined to make a finding of alienation, it found that the child was understandably estranged from the rejected parent due to abuse or poor parenting; in about one quarter of the unsubstantiated cases the court found that the child was not “alienated” from the other parent, but simply wanted less contact. In 11 of the 56 cases where an unsubstantiated, the court declined to order access of a parent who had made a claim unsubstantiated claim of alienation; these were mainly cases of justified estrangement, where there concerns about the safety or welfare of the child in the care of that parent.
  
  
• Court-appointed mental health experts testified in 83% of these cases, and if they expressed a clear opinion about whether or not there was alienation, the court agreed in over 90% of the cases.
  
  
• Party-retained experts testified in less than a fifth of cases; judges are much less inclined to agree with these experts; in only 2 cases did the court prefer the opinion of a privately-retained expert to that of a court-appointed expert about whether alienation occurred.
  
  
• Where the court found parental alienation, the most common response was to vary custody to either give the rejected parent sole (47/89=53%) or joint custody(14/89=16%); whether the father or the mother was found to be the alienating parent, there was not a statistically significant difference in the rate of variation of custody.
  
  
• In more severe cases, courts may both change custody and suspend contact with the alienating parent; this occurred in 9 out of 89 cases (10%).
  
  
• The court ordered counselling or therapeutic intervention in 37 of 145 cases in this study (26%). These orders were made both in cases in which alienation was found, and in cases in which the court rejected the claim of alienation. The most common orders were for court ordered counselling for the children (19 cases) and for the entire family (12 cases).

Thus, while there are gender differences in both rates of alienating children (mainly by mothers) and in making unsubstantiated claims of alienation (mainly by fathers), this reflects the fact that alienation is almost always done by the parent with custody or primary care. There is no evidence of gender bias in judicial responses to these cases.

Changes should be made in the family justice system to ensure that alienation cases are addressed in a way that better meets the needs of children, including:

• Education programs for parents on the effects of separation on children;
• Early case management by one judge of high conflict family law cases;
• Early assessment by a court-appointed mental health professional;
• Detailed court orders that are effectively enforced;
• Prevention of delay in resolving cases where alienation is alleged; and
• Provision of effective counselling and support services for children and parents involved in high conflict separations and cases where alienation issues arise.

Although there is clearly a need for more research about the best methods of intervention in alienation cases, there is a growing body of literature that documents the long-term emotional harm to child from being alienated from a parent.

Nicholas Bala is a Professor Queen's University, specializing in Family and Children's Law. He can be contacted at bala@queensu.ca . It is hoped that the full paper will be published in the Family Court Review (January 2010).

Legal Aid Eligibility in Ontario

Note to File: Ruminations on Family Law (FLAW)

June 1, 2009


The ex apparently ran out of legal aid funding and so at a Trial Management meeting the scheduled trial to commence the week of April 20/09 was postponed until tentatively the last two weeks of August 09. This was premised on the ex somehow being able to tap back in to legal aid funding.


The peculiar thing was as soon as she went off legal aid she bought a brand new Toyota Matrix and clearly indicated to the judge would not be able to self-represent herself at trial. This is true as she cannot think things through logically and reasonably when under pressure due to mental health issues. That was aptly displayed with her convoluted answers to questions Judge McMillan raised during the trial management. She made it perfectly clear she would not resolve to take the house as a financial settlement or do shared parenting as she was in her own words, "wanting her entitlements." Yes she said those exact words!


If you are new to the divorce arena, and it is indeed an arena, pitting parent against parent with children as the winner take all prize, then entitlements is what causes most women to initiate a divorce. In Canada females are initiators in 75% of cases and for good reason. In 90% of cases they achieve physical custody of the children, irrespective of time spent as the caregiver. Don't believe what the judges tell you as they have one mantra and that is a form of gender apartheid. They play it safe and award custody to the female and all the entitlements to go with it. I digress a tad from the matter at hand due to an irritating illness currently absorbing my body in pain and discomfort causing me to want to rant a little.


How does someone use up legal aid (about $12,500.00) and then buy a new vehicle and then purport to reapply. I have no money, no cash flow, and in great debt but I was told I don't qualify. Is there one rule for females and one for men? We shall see because if she somehow miraculously re-qualifies for legal aid I will raise a stink from here to Queen's Park where our law makers sit on their hands ruminating over family law (FLAW)



M. J. Murphy

Dissident Fathers Rights Advocate (with annoying upper respiratory infection making me "testy" today.)

From OZ ~ Dads on the Air ~ FATHERHOOD AND POLITICS

| www.dadsontheair.net

Local Sydney Time: 10.30am to 12 midday Tuesday June 2 2009
USA Eastern time: 8.30pm to 10pm Monday June 1, 2009
USA Pacific time: 5.30pm to 7pm Monday June 1, 2009
UK GMT time: 12.30am to 2am Monday night (Tuesday morning) June 2, 2009

Listen live on 2GLF 89.3FM in Sydney
or online via live streaming at www.893fm.com.au/On-Air
or in MP3 format at www.dadsontheair.net
or subscribe to our Podcast here

With special guest:

• Ray Barry.

Ray Barry is the Religious Affairs Co-Ordinator with Fathers 4 Justice (F4J) and Party Leader for the Equal Parenting Alliance (EPA) in the UK. This is a must-listen interview, succinctly summing up the state of Family Law in the UK and the challenges that lie ahead.

Ray joined F4J shortly after it was formed. At present he co-ordinates all campaigns and correspondence relating to Religious Affairs and has a 2:2 Degree in Theology after spending just over a year at priest training college. He has also worked on press liaison for the group and was involved in the initial planning for the York Minster and Buckingham Palace protests. As well as planning, he has taken an active role in protests, including climbing on to the roof of his local church, and holding a Family Law Lotto poster in front of TV cameras during the National Lottery draw.

The civil rights group Fathers 4 Justice was founded in December 2002 by Matt O'Connor after he experienced first hand the injustices of the secret family courts as he struggled to see his two boys Daniel and Alexander after a traumatic divorce. Started as a vehicle for social change, F4J quickly became the high-wire act of protest groups, whether powder-bombing the Prime Minister in the House of Commons, scaling the balcony at Buckingham Palace in a Batman Costume, invading the Pulpit at York Minster during a General Synod Service or taking the National Lottery Draw live off air on BBC1 in front of ten million viewers.

But behind the headlines and dramatic protests is a new creed for family law enshrined in their documents "Family Justice On Trial - Opening The Door On Closed Courts" and "Blueprint for Family Law in the 21st Century." These pioneering, ideas-led documents set out radical and visionary frameworks for a fair, just, open and equitable system of family law.

F4J campaigns not just in the name of the father, but in the name of all parents, grandparents and children seeking equality in family law. The achievements of F4J to date are best described by the Times Newspaper who in January 2006 wrote:

"F4J caught the spirit of the times: they reflected the zeitgeist, and they changed it... for all the flaws within F4J, the issue of fatherhood has a currency that would have been unimaginable three years ago... when historians look back on British Society at the start of the third millennium, they will accord a small but important chapter to the men in tights."

In just a few years F4J has not only effected "climate change", but it has also succeeded in discrediting the secret courts and undermining public confidence in them. The result has been to force the government to advance proposals to open up the secret family courts to greater scrutiny and propose tougher enforcement of contact orders.

The Equal Parenting Alliance is a relatively new UK political party, formed in February 2006 which aims to promote a system of family justice in the UK that puts the needs and interests of children first. It can hardly have escaped anyone’s attention over the last few years that there is a great deal of disquiet about the operation of the family justice system in the UK. Indeed, the EPA shares the view that there is an awful lot to complain about.

The EPA thinks the family justice system should respect the right of children to normal parenting by their two parents above the rights or wishes of either of their parents alone. The current system does not do this. To give the most obvious illustration of this, it allows one parent to easily eliminate the other parent from a child's life, if they wish. The EPA believes this is fundamentally wrong and bad for children. The EPA will lobby until family law is changed to operate fairly and for the benefit of children.

For more information about Dads on the Air, click here

Despite wealth, health and opportunity, men still more content says study by US National Bureau of Economic Research

Comments left on the Times site:

I'm not quite certain how women can ever be happy. The dominant flavour of feminism is "Victim Feminism," By its very nature it subscribes to the notion all women are victims of the patriarchy and, therefore, can never be equal.

This article even skirts around some of the mythologies associated with Victim Feminism such as the wage gap. This gap exists because of choices women make not the patriarchy. Check the recent studies of female Doctors in Canada who, would you believe make less than their male counterparts.

Mike Murphy, Sault Ste. Marie, ON, Canada

From The Sunday Times

May 31, 2009

Women less happy after 40 years of feminism

Richard Woods

On the long and winding road to having it all, Helen Parker is making good progress. At 27 she’s forging a career as an executive with a transport company in London, she has a steady boyfriend, and together they are buying a flat. One day the prospect of starting a family will beckon.

By many standards, she’s thriving. So is she happy?

“Um, I’m reasonably happy,” she said. “And I’m optimistic about the future. But there will always be sacrifices.

“There’s plenty more opportunities for women than there used to be — but then again, that means you are always questioning whether the moves you have made are correct, or whether you should have done something else.”

Like many women, her sense of wellbeing and life satisfaction do not match up with advances in social circumstances and material comforts. After 40 years of fighting for equality, it seems that women are no happier. In fact, women in many countries have been growing steadily unhappier compared with men, according to a study published this month by the National Bureau of Economic Research in the United States.
In The Paradox of Declining Female Happiness, Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers of the University of Pennsylvania, begin by noting the gains.

“By many measures the progress of women over recent decades has been extraordinary: the gender wage gap has partly closed; educational attainment has risen and is now surpassing that of men; women have gained an unprecedented level of control over fertility; (and) technological change in the form of new domestic appliances has freed women from domestic drudgery,” they wrote.

Yet Stevenson and Wolfers have found that in America women’s happiness, far from rising, has fallen “both absolutely and relatively to that of men”. Where women in the 1970s reported themselves to be significantly happier than men, now for the first time they are reporting levels of happiness lower than men.
In Europe, people’s sense of happiness has risen slightly, but less so for women than men. In 12 European countries, including Britain, the happiness of women has fallen relative to that of men.

The authors readily admit that measuring happiness is necessarily a subjective task, but the overall trend from the data, compiled from social surveys conducted over many years, is clear and compelling.

The work builds on earlier research by Andrew Oswald, professor of economics at Warwick University, who has a particular interest in the study of happiness. He said: “What Betsey and Justin have done, which is a valuable addition, is to show that the trend is found rather widely. For most of the post-war era, happiness surveys showed women noticeably happier than men. That difference has now eroded to zero.”

The big question is: why?

When measures of women’s happiness started to dip, some sociologists reached for a simple solution known as the “second shift”. Women’s opportunities in paid employment had increased, but their domestic load had not correspondingly reduced. The belief was that they were going out to work then doing a “second shift” at home — no wonder they weren’t ecstatic.

Sorry, that won’t wash, say Stevenson and Wolfers. Surveys of how individuals spend their time show that for both men and women total work hours (combining paid or domestic) have declined since 1965.

Yes, women’s hours of “market work” have increased, but that has been offset by “large declines in their non-market work”. At the same time “men are now working fewer hours in the market and more hours in home production”.

On a purely statistical basis, women can’t argue their burden has got worse or is now drastically unequal.

However, more subtle influences should be considered, argues Dame Joan Bakewell, the broadcaster, because women’s emotional responses to the change in circumstances are different from those of men.

“Women do stub their toes on the work-life balance much more than men,” she said. “Even if they have solved it (in practical terms), they worry about it.

“So they are probably going to say, ‘Well, I’m not as happy as I could be because I’m carrying this burden of worry’.”

Others suggest that the pay gap between men and women, even if it has narrowed, is still a grievance.

Karen Pine, professor of developmental psychology at Hertfordshire University and author of Sheconomics, said: “When I have talked to women about their emotional relationship with money, for many there was still a feeling that they didn’t deserve more.

“Women have been socialised to be people-pleasers. They don’t want to appear greedy or grabbing. When they have to adopt an assertive attitude to money — asking for what they are worth — many of them experience a conflict.”

Studies do show that money is an important factor in happiness: the well-off are happier than the very poor.

However, that effect tails off once basic needs are met. The phenomenon is reflected in a recent study by Pine of 700 women and their attitudes to shopping and spending money.

“Years ago women didn’t have independent incomes, and now many of them are financially independent,” she said. “What I found was that 79% — an alarming statistic — told me they would go on a spending spree in order to cheer themselves up.

“Many women are using shopping and spending as a way of regulating emotions.”

Spending, however, doesn’t buy happiness. “Many of them described a buzz at the time, but it was short-lived,” said Pine. “Then they experienced buyer’s remorse and came down to earth with a bump.”

Stevenson and Wolfers also point out that over the past two decades many men, as well as women, have experienced financial concerns. “The real wages (after inflation) of many men fell during much of this period,” they said. Yet it is women whose happiness has notably changed.

If money is not the key, what about families? Divorce rates and cohabitation have soared over the time in which women’s happiness has fallen. However, if they are important factors, say researchers, more unhappiness should be found among single mothers and the separated.

Stevenson and Wolfers concluded the relative decline in women’s happiness “is irrespective of the age, marital, labour market or fertility status of the group analysed”.

There is, of course, the possibility that women are simply being more direct about their happiness than they used to be. As the authors note: “Women may now feel more comfortable being honest about their true happiness and have thus deflated their previously inflated responses.”

However, the international scale of the trend seems to militate against this.

Though nobody has isolated a convincing reason for the decline in women’s happiness, there is a consensus of sorts. As Oswald put it: “The lead theory is that women’s lives have become more complicated in many dimensions, unlike men who have to balance a smaller number of balls.

“It is probably still true that men do fewer things well.”
Pine agreed: “One can always point to increasing pressures on women. We are now trying to have careers and families and look good for longer. It may be that in trying to have it all we are feeling that we may have set ourselves an impossible goal.”

Complexity is stressful — and women’s supposed skills at multi-tasking are no remedy.However, critics of feminism take a more sceptical view. Complexity is not the problem, they say: it’s more to do with women discovering that “equality” with male life is not all it was cracked up to be.

To the writer Neil Lyndon, author of No More Sex War, it is a vindication of his view that feminists have long been blind to the stresses of male life. “(Feminists) are so determined to insist that women are in a position of inequality and disadvantage, they cannot see that to repair the disadvantages of women you also have to address the inequalities of men,” he said.

“Men who are in work and have young children want to spend more time with their families. Feminists cannot see that. The ideology itself requires you to say that women are in a position of disadvantage, that it’s a society run by men for the benefit of men, and that there can’t be disadvantages for men.”

Women have got themselves into an impossible position, Lyndon suggests, and it won’t be remedied until there is proper equality and until no parent — man or woman — is expected, as many men are, “to go to work at 7am and get back at 9pm”.

Amid all this hypothesising and argument, what should a pragmatist do? Siobhan Freegard, founder of the website Netmums, discovered her own measure of how women’s happiness has declined. A survey of her site users indicated that levels of the “baby blues” experienced by new mothers have risen sharply since 30 years ago. So she set about asking experts to formulate a programme to help.

“In our research one key problem that emerged was that we all move around a lot now,” said Freegard.

“About 60% of women no longer live near their extended family and the same proportion of women haven’t replaced that family support with a new social network. The whole breakdown of community is a factor.

“So we set people tasks. Be part of networks. Join groups. Speak to an old lady. Talk to your shopkeeper. Phone someone you haven’t had a good chat with for ages and so on.”

The happiness of participants was tested before and after the programme — and at the end they were on average 16% happier.

Might such ordinary, everyday connections be more important to happiness than impossible dreams to have it all? Freegard suspects that might be the case.

“We pushed so hard for equal rights, for having the right to work, for having equal status, we pushed hard to have choice,” she said. “But what we hear back from many mums is: I have no choice, I have to work, I don’t love my career, my childminder is taking half my salary and I’d rather bring up my children myself but I can’t afford to.

“I’m not saying women shouldn’t work. If you enjoy your job and it’s a fulfilling career, that is a positive choice. But if it’s not . . . it's almost in some ways that we got it all, then found that actually it wasn’t quite what we wanted.”

Copyright 2009 Times Newspapers Ltd.