Unsurprisingly a new radical feminist study has concluded that the UK family courts do not discriminate against divorced fathers when it comes to access to their children, but the experience of many men suggests otherwise!
As someone who has been helping dads navigate the complexities of the family courts for over a decade, I was both shocked and unsurprised at the findings.
I was shocked, because when you repeatedly see discrimination against dads with your own eyes, it can be baffling when professionals claim it doesn’t exist. And then I’m not surprised, because the gender political world of family breakdown has long produced an endless list of “experts” who claim that the courts don’t discriminate against separated dads.
When such claims are made, many people read the headlines, such as “Anti-father bias is a myth” or “Men are treated fairly by courts”; but few of us ever look at the actual research.
When such claims are made, many people read the headlines, such as “Anti-father bias is a myth” or “Men are treated fairly by courts”; but few of us ever look at the actual research.
If we did, this is what we could learn from the latest “evidence” on the way men are treated by the family courts.
• We must stop turning children against divorced fathers
According to the report, in 96 per cent of cases, the parents who apply to court for “access” to their children are men, with the average case taking between six months and two years to complete. In just under half of these cases, dads will win the right to have their children stay with them overnight, with the most common arrangement being every other weekend. Just under a quarter will be restricted to seeing their children in the daytime and the remaining quarter will be given little or no opportunity to be the daddy.
According to the University of Warwick, the lead researcher on the project, Dr Maebh Harding, looked at this data and “concluded that contact applications by fathers were in fact overwhelmingly successful”.
The basis for this claim is that 88 per cent of dads who applied to court for contact with their kids were awarded some kind of access. For example, 10 per cent were restricted to “indirect contact” with their children via phone, post or Skype; a further five per cent were only allowed to see their children in the company of a supervisor and 23 per cent were permitted to spend a few daytime hours with their children.
I don’t know about you, but when I think of an “overwhelmingly successful” parent I don’t picture someone who is neither trusted to be alone with their children, nor allowed to wake up in the same house as them.
And herein lies the problem. Our expectation of the role a separated father should play in his children’s lives is so low, that when half of dads who win “access” to their kids can’t even sleep under the same roof as their offspring, academics declare this to be an overwhelming success.
Is our opinion of fatherhood really so low, that we think this sorry state of separated parenting is acceptable? Surely an ambitious, progressive and caring society should be striving to help every child to have a great relationship with their dads and aspire to have every separated parent fully involved in their children’s lives?
If 96 per cent of separated parents who had to apply to court to see their kids were women and half of them weren’t allowed to have their children sleep in their same house, would we deem this a success. Of course we wouldn’t.
And any system that produces such unequal outcomes for men and women and not only considers that output to be acceptable, but deems it “overwhelmingly successful” cannot be anything other than sexist, biased and discriminatory.
'The main issue for separated dads is that the rules that shape family life are unfair' (Photo: Alamy)
The fact is, we live in a society where it is the accepted norm that women should demand equality in the public sphere, while maintaining special privileges in the private sphere.
And probably the most sacred of those privileges is motherhood, where the reproductive slogan, “my body my rights”, gives birth to a deep sense of lifelong entitlement that can be summed up in the maternal mantra, “my baby my rights”.
This presumption that women own their children obviously has a biological basis, which has become hardwired in our collective psyche and written into our laws. In 2015 it is still the case that mothers and fathers do not have equal rights. As the former Equal Opportunities Commissioner, Duncan Fisher, explains:
“In UK law, a father can only be a father if the mother approves him. She can do this in two ways – marry him or invite him to sign the birth certificate. If neither of these happens, he is not the father until the family court approves him. A man has to be vetted by the mother or the state before he is allowed to be a father.”
• 'I know how "Kafkaesque" the family courts can be'
The entire system of parenting in the UK is set up around the presumption that mother knows best and that when parents separate there should be a primary parent (nearly always the mother) and a secondary parent (nearly always the father).
The role which is reserved for the secondary parent is unfair, unequal and for many, a deeply unfulfilling way to experience parenthood.
The family courts may well apply their rules fairly, but this is not the point. The main issue for separated dads is that the rules that shape family life in the UK are unfair and unequal and any system of law based on those rules can only ever be biased against men.
Glen Poole is the news editor of online magazine insideMAN and author of the book Equality For Men
Source
Double dare to the radical feminists purveyors of gynocentric drivel known as Maebh Harding and Dr Annika
Newnham:
F.A.O. Maebh Harding and Dr Annika
Newnham,
(Clueless radical feminist M Harding: right) I think the title pretty much covers it, but I would add that your information could easily be interpreted to reveal the truth. The truth which we see on a daily basis and is the reason for an organisation with a nearly 50,000 strong membership that flies in the face of the misandric gynocentric propaganda that you have produced at our expense.
There are government edicts issued to the police and an entirely gynocentric attitude at the secret kangaroo family courts in our country none of which you have covered in addition to the fact that you have misrepresented your own data. That you have conned so much money to report such drivel and the damage you have done to our society with your sexist misrepresentations is despicable.
If you have the gumption to stand by the guff you have referred to as 'how do the county courts share the care of children between parents', I challenge you to a completely open public debate online. You are merely safeguarding traditionalism and your biological imperative privilege and that is altogether self serving and loathsome.
Shame on you! I double dare you. Yours sincerely.
Angelo Georgiou Agathangelou Esq.
Update 9th June: Still waiting, they must be clucking.
According to the report, in 96 per cent of cases, the parents who apply to court for “access” to their children are men, with the average case taking between six months and two years to complete. In just under half of these cases, dads will win the right to have their children stay with them overnight, with the most common arrangement being every other weekend. Just under a quarter will be restricted to seeing their children in the daytime and the remaining quarter will be given little or no opportunity to be the daddy.
According to the University of Warwick, the lead researcher on the project, Dr Maebh Harding, looked at this data and “concluded that contact applications by fathers were in fact overwhelmingly successful”.
The basis for this claim is that 88 per cent of dads who applied to court for contact with their kids were awarded some kind of access. For example, 10 per cent were restricted to “indirect contact” with their children via phone, post or Skype; a further five per cent were only allowed to see their children in the company of a supervisor and 23 per cent were permitted to spend a few daytime hours with their children.
I don’t know about you, but when I think of an “overwhelmingly successful” parent I don’t picture someone who is neither trusted to be alone with their children, nor allowed to wake up in the same house as them.
In 2015 it is still the case that mothers and fathers do not have equal rights
Is our opinion of fatherhood really so low, that we think this sorry state of separated parenting is acceptable? Surely an ambitious, progressive and caring society should be striving to help every child to have a great relationship with their dads and aspire to have every separated parent fully involved in their children’s lives?
If 96 per cent of separated parents who had to apply to court to see their kids were women and half of them weren’t allowed to have their children sleep in their same house, would we deem this a success. Of course we wouldn’t.
And any system that produces such unequal outcomes for men and women and not only considers that output to be acceptable, but deems it “overwhelmingly successful” cannot be anything other than sexist, biased and discriminatory.
'The main issue for separated dads is that the rules that shape family life are unfair' (Photo: Alamy)
The fact is, we live in a society where it is the accepted norm that women should demand equality in the public sphere, while maintaining special privileges in the private sphere.
And probably the most sacred of those privileges is motherhood, where the reproductive slogan, “my body my rights”, gives birth to a deep sense of lifelong entitlement that can be summed up in the maternal mantra, “my baby my rights”.
This presumption that women own their children obviously has a biological basis, which has become hardwired in our collective psyche and written into our laws. In 2015 it is still the case that mothers and fathers do not have equal rights. As the former Equal Opportunities Commissioner, Duncan Fisher, explains:
“In UK law, a father can only be a father if the mother approves him. She can do this in two ways – marry him or invite him to sign the birth certificate. If neither of these happens, he is not the father until the family court approves him. A man has to be vetted by the mother or the state before he is allowed to be a father.”
• 'I know how "Kafkaesque" the family courts can be'
The entire system of parenting in the UK is set up around the presumption that mother knows best and that when parents separate there should be a primary parent (nearly always the mother) and a secondary parent (nearly always the father).
The role which is reserved for the secondary parent is unfair, unequal and for many, a deeply unfulfilling way to experience parenthood.
The family courts may well apply their rules fairly, but this is not the point. The main issue for separated dads is that the rules that shape family life in the UK are unfair and unequal and any system of law based on those rules can only ever be biased against men.
Glen Poole is the news editor of online magazine insideMAN and author of the book Equality For Men
Source
_________
Double dare to the radical feminists purveyors of gynocentric drivel known as Maebh Harding and Dr Annika
Newnham:
Misandric gynocentric feminist traditional mindless bigoted interpretation of family court outcomes.
l.page@warwick.ac.uk 
F.A.O. Maebh Harding and Dr Annika
Newnham,(Clueless radical feminist M Harding: right) I think the title pretty much covers it, but I would add that your information could easily be interpreted to reveal the truth. The truth which we see on a daily basis and is the reason for an organisation with a nearly 50,000 strong membership that flies in the face of the misandric gynocentric propaganda that you have produced at our expense.
There are government edicts issued to the police and an entirely gynocentric attitude at the secret kangaroo family courts in our country none of which you have covered in addition to the fact that you have misrepresented your own data. That you have conned so much money to report such drivel and the damage you have done to our society with your sexist misrepresentations is despicable.
If you have the gumption to stand by the guff you have referred to as 'how do the county courts share the care of children between parents', I challenge you to a completely open public debate online. You are merely safeguarding traditionalism and your biological imperative privilege and that is altogether self serving and loathsome.
Shame on you! I double dare you. Yours sincerely.
Angelo Georgiou Agathangelou Esq.
Update 9th June: Still waiting, they must be clucking.
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