Give fathers their rights back
National Post
Wednesday, September 22, 2010
Barbara Kay (bkay@videotron.ca )
In the name of changing social mores and social justice, Ottawa's 1998 Special Joint Committee on Child Custody and Access recommended equal parenting as the default custody presumption (in the absence of abuse) after separation. The report then fell into a political black hole. Today, a tip of a ladder reaches up from that hole, and clanging footsteps can be heard on the rungs. At least three recent developments in the field of family law are hopeful signs that social justice and common sense may finally prevail in post-separation custody issues.
We have British Columbia's first review of family law in B.C. since the Family Relations Act came into force more than thirty years ago. Their July "White Paper on Family Relations Act Reform" (accepting submissions until Oct. 8) contains progressive draft legislation and policy proposals: It recommends stepping away from courts and the adversarial model in order to "adopt a conflict prevention approach to family law disputes" and urges making "children's best interests the only consideration in parenting disputes."
Advocacy in the equal parenting movement has moved well beyond fathers' rights groups, and is now a broad-based coalition of both mothers and fathers. More and more women realize that excluding fathers from their children's lives is unethical and psychologically counter-productive for everyone involved. Fathers want more input than just offering suggestions that their ex-wives can ignore. They want to truly share in parenting, including all its responsibilities
Indeed, the current president of the Canadian Equal Parenting Council is a woman. Kris Titus took up the EP cause when she saw how much her children suffered from the absence of their father after their divorce. She became an activist in the family law reform movement when she actually had to fight with a judge to change his award of sole custody to shared parenting, a move that benefited everyone in her family.
For many years Canadian justice ministers from both governing federal parties seem to have been more concerned with protecting the interests of the divorce industry, which takes up 40% of Canadian courts' time, rather than serving the needs of children. Read More