I have spent the last few months or so looking at the wide variety of self-help and support organisations and groups that exist to help parents when experiencing family breakdown. For the last 7 years my work has been, and continues to be advising people on all aspects of family law, but mostly parents who are faced with issues relating to arrangements for their children, – that’s both mothers and fathers. My approach is simple; treat each person as an individual regardless of gender, regardless of whether they are the resident parent or not, and to tailor my advice according the emotional needs of the client – it’s both counselling and factual legal advice. I promote non-adversarial methods and encourage parents to use mediation services, use parenting agreements, and above all, keep everything focused on their children.
The main issue I found while looking at the various groups who support parents is that the vast majority of them are only offering support and help to one gender or the other – only Wikivorce really has an all-inclusive membership, and equal numbers of men and women members (and contributors) . While some groups do claim to open their doors to both mothers and fathers, it’s very clear that the main focus is on either mums or dads but not both.
The Fathers’ Rights lobby is NOT child-centric, it focuses on something that has never actually existed, and doesn’t exist for mothers either on the whole. For years, the disenfranchised fathers have been fed straw-man arguments; that mothers have rights and fathers don’t, that courts hate fathers, that mothers are wicked, evil people who will harm their children, and that ALL legal professionals are dirty money-grabbing self-interested crooks. The initial anger that fathers feel when they have been through the family justice system is harnessed and exploited – and the fathers wear that anger like a medal of honour, and are encouraged to do so. However, that anger is not healthy after a while; and when fathers are only (on the whole) conversing, discussing and socialising with other disenfranchised fathers, that anger breeds like bacteria. They live in a goldfish bowl world, where everything and everyone around them has been damaged by their own experiences in the Family Justice system, and they are prevented from moving beyond that goldfish bowl world. It is a very sorry and desperate state of affairs. I get my fair share of father’s rights flag-waving dads ranting at me down the phone. I explain that banging on about fathers’ rights is not child-focused and will only harm their own case. I have been called all sorts over the years, and have had a number of threats made; but mostly, I have helped Dads with their cases, and helped them to move forwards to a child-focused solution.
The self-help/support groups and organisations for mothers usually have a feminist structure to them, and help with the promotion of Domestic Violence programmes, that men are the enemy and are violent, nasty, abusive, manipulative and exploitative. One such website gives the very distinct impression that all women are victims of DV, that they will be free to live when they aren’t in a relationship and that fathers are not capable of looking after children. That isn’t empowering women, that is trapping them as victims.
Other than the issue of support, and the perpetuating of negative emotions and unhealthy, unbalanced perspectives, the other obstacle to progress is that certain issues are perceived as women-only or men-only issues, and that perception is encouraged by the single-gender organisations – i.e., Women’s Aid have become the “go-to” organisation for information and stats on DV – despite their stance that only women are victims and only men are perpetrators. Fathers4Justice are still the go-to group for quotes and information about fathers going through family breakup, despite the fact that their own stats are hopelessly out of date (since their researcher left in 2012, they have struggled to maintain any kind of credible statistics). While organisations like Women’s Aid have captured DV as being a women-only issue, the fathers’ rights’ groups (and there are many, fragmented groups) have captured shared parenting as a fathers-rights issue. That is part of the reason why there will not be a legal presumption of shared parenting for many years to come; because the politicians do not want the fathers rights groups to claim victory. Groups like F4J have done far more damage to the cause for shared parenting over the last 3 years than they would care to admit. Shared parenting is now a dead duck sinking slowly to the bottom of the murky pond. Change will never come about by Dads climbing on buildings or harassing professionals, change will only come about via a shift in societal attitudes – with more and more parents using parenting plans and avoiding courts, with more parents making their own arrangements for child maintenance and not using the CMS- in short, empowering parents to be parents, to give them the tools and support they need to be parents and jointly make the decisions about their children.
There are very few issues in family breakdown that are gender-specific; the only two I can think of are paternity fraud and parental responsibility for unmarried fathers. Everything else – be it false allegations, domestic abuse, parental alienation, homelessness, debt, being unable to access funds, depression and other mental health issues, the threat of the former spouse/partner absconding with the children, to name just a few – are all experienced by both men and women. Those issues don’t respect gender, social status or age, and no-one should pretend that these issues only affect one gender.
When mothers and fathers are divided into these two separate gender camps, they can end up with a rather warped view of their own situation; there is little to no balance offered, no differing perspective, no real understanding of why their former spouse or partner may be acting in a particular way. When an organisation has an all-inclusive membership, which is gender-neutral, and includes those affected by family break-up indirectly as well as directly, it enables contributors and members to give a wide range of views, thoughts, shared experiences and perspectives. Often it is it hearing differing or opposing perspectives and thoughts that can make a real difference to how an individual understands and deals with their own situation. Being part of a balanced and gender-neutral environment aids the understanding, and offers a holistic approach to emotional healing and recovery.
Lost souls swimming in a fish bowl, year after year,
Running over the same old ground.
What have we found?
The same old fears.
Quantum Valeat 
Reblogged this on ExInjuria and commented:
Really excellent blog post on keeping gender (and some of the heat) out of post-separation parenting support’
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Hello, QV, so nice to read you again. My comment is not aimed at you.
The title of this blog posting is “Taking the gender out of family breakdown”, you’d think by reading then that it would deal equally with the genders as they experience the ordeal of the family courts and trying to hang on to their children. it does not! Evidently most of it deals with explaining, if not castigating, the fathers lot, in that the fathers lobbies seems to have got their family court experiences muddled in some kind of other dimension that exists on another planet, this is not true, and most fathers that have been through the fighting pits of the courts know it. If this posting was really about explaining the little bias existing between the genders in the courts, then surely why is two thirds of it dealing with what fathers allegedly perceive as their fantasies, as their wrongful sense of injustice, yes they are imagining things… not!
Private law statistics in the family courts in no way confirm what this posting maintains, it is a fact that the vast percentage of children end up in the custody of mothers, and fathers have to apply for “contact”, hate that word, there can be no disputing this. I’d like to ask one question: if I were to believe that there was no gender bias, then logic tells me that every father I have met (thousands of them) who have told me that they have been ousted from seeing their kids MUST be lying, is that the case? Am I to believe that not ONE of these father is innocent? That NOT one complaining father has been shafted by the family courts?
I say with the sincerest honesty that I can muster, that I am completely innocent of anything in regard to harming my son. Therefore, I must be one OF THOSE FATHERS THAT COMPLAIN THEN, if this blog posting is correct, and yet I WAS unjustly cut out of my son’s life, that is a fact! I am guilty of nothing, I am guilty of one thing, and that is loving too much. This blog posting, with respect, is a complete illusion, an absolute setting aside of the vast majority of fathers experiences in family courts. It is a lie and it MUST be! For I am not dreaming, nor am I feeling sorry for myself. The originator of this blog posting does not live in the real world and I suggest she is totally biased, why else would she spend most of it dwelling on we whining lying fathers? I can’t agree with one word of it. Sorry. (Not sure if this will be posted, might be due to do with gender? But if it is then it might not be) Respectfully yours. Paul Manning.
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Paul – the blog isn’t about bias in the family courts (that blog is over on Ex Injuria’s blog), nor is it about the experiences of family courts that parents have. It is about the need for balance and a non-gendered approach to supporting parents when going through family break-up.
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You obviously haven’t read the post, Paul. Your witless comment appears to apply to some imaginary post that QV did not write.
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With respect,the title I read was “Taking the Gender out of Family Breakdown” my posting relates to that, and that only. I see what I wrote as totally applicable and don’t see how it does not apply.
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It is always helpful to read the content of a blog before commenting – and never to comment only on the title. Can you imagine the outrage if people had raised issue with the slaughter of an innocent songbird before actually reading “To Kill a Mocking Bird” – and before realising that in fact no birds were killed in the novel?
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Well, it’s difficult to know how else to take someone who comments only on the title of a post and doesn’t bother to read the substance. Not a good approach, I would imagine, for a litigant.
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I think this is relevant here
Reblogged from “Are the Family Courts Biased against Fathers?”
And, I am not a feminist, I am not pro men, anti women, I am anti a parent with defacto control abusing that power for no child focused reason.
Hi (Nick isn’t it?)
I must thank you for this piece and I also echo your thoughts about F4J, they do themselves no favours by making such vitriolic comments and are no better than the diametrically opposite feminist who do the same against men. I fear that F4J founder and his other half have somehow lost the plot. When it all started they had such good and novel ideas that engaged with the debate, raised awareness of mens/fathers plight, and started to get a momentum going. Alas they have fallen into a trap and I for one no longer support their methods or methodology.
Moving onto bias
“are courts biased against fathers?”
There was a panorama (I think) programme about “family” contact centers, in the programme there was an interview with (forget her now title) Baroness Butler Sloss. If I remember correctly when this very question was raised about biased her answer was quite vehemently put she said that it was his (the interviewers) perception that was at fault and that the courts are definitely not biased against fathers.
At the time I was very angry about this comment and realised that BBS could have been a closet feminist but then I started to really think about not only what she said but more importantly what she did not say (thems meanings between the lines which judges are so good and to give double interpretations).
On balance I think the courts are not biased directly against fathers (because that is the perception, which BBS is correct in saying) BUT and its a big BUT, the courts are definitely giving the parent with care, or resident parent the control of the situation to act as gatekeeper to the childs contact time with the other parent (notice I have written this in a non gender biased way!) If the Non resident parent dares to take matters into their own hands the all manner of bad things happen to them, doesn’t it? NRP’s have ended up arrested and in jail for breaching non mol orders etc (no talk about it affecting the NRP’s relationship with the child(ren) in question of the NRP’s other child(red)
However, if RP breaches the courts orders then what happens? Nothing, nada, zippo, zilch, under the guise of you cant “punish the RP without punishing the RP’s child and/or the RP’s other children”
Now if that is true and I rather think it is the courts ARE biased, but they are biased in favour of the resident parent, who most times is the woman and by default biased against the NRP who is normally the man. Its all about deciding who is the gatekeeper and who begins with the control and that then sets the “status quo” to which the courts then take from there.
So BBS is correct but quite clearly and deliberately misses the point
So lets re-denominate the language to take gender issues out of the debate and talk about the parent with control, who seeks to use the system to their own advantage and manipulate and exert (by proxy) control of the situation to frustrate and harass the other parent because that is what they are ALLOWED to do.
In my opinion.
Russell
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I meet a dozen or so Dads who are struggling to re-establish parenting opportunities with their kids every month. They are generally at their wits end with the family courts which they perceive have a gender based interpretation of the law against men and I don’t blame them.
Generally it is not the law that is gender biased but the fact that there is a default position that most magistrates/judges adopt regarding parenting arrangement which include 1. the primary carer will be the mother, 2. any concern about the parenting capacity of the father offered by the mother is taken as a read and largely unquestioned 3. that courts will not enforced contact orders 4. that mothers can get legal aid (and other social benefits including housing) by alleging domestic violence yet are never charged with perjury when the allegations are proved wrong 5. that a father needs an extended period of minimal contact with his own children, observed by a social worker to ‘establish’ a relationship, 6. that the court process is so long and drawn out that opportunities for parental alienation are rife.
This bias extends to Doctors and schools who will refuse to talk with the fathers and also social services who regularly provide considerable social support to mothers who are the primary carers and none to fathers trying to re-establish their parenting opportunities.
A recent FOI request ffrom Simon Hughes came up with the following stark statistic. 42,000 ex-parte non-molestation orders were taken out by women between July 2011 and September 2014, while 2.400 were taken out by men. Clearly there certainly is something gender specific about all this. You may call it cultural, philosophical or even biological, but in a more equal society fathers would have not just the same opportunities and mothers but it would be accepted as such by all agencies. And it’s not. The primary carer has all the cards and that is generally the mother.
This does not mean that the idea of a non-gender specific solution to family breakdown can’t be ironed out but in the world of equality and feminism it is odd that the last bastion of female slavery, single parenthood and benefit living has to be fought through the courts by men with the balls to do it. It’s not just men that need to change here.
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