Women's groups balk at sitting with fathers' rights advocates
Calls to boycott talks on changes to divorce law
Chris Cobb, Ottawa Citizen, National Post, June 7, 2001
Anne McLellan
Justice Minister
OTTAWA - Outraged feminist groups have threatened to boycott nation-wide government consultations on changes to divorce law because they might have to sit at the same table as fathers' rights advocates.
The meetings, most of which are being held across the country this month, are part of a process expected to lead to changes in the federal Divorce Act and related provincial legislation, particularly child custody and visitation.
The National Association of Women and the Law and the Ontario Women's Network on Custody and Access say they will not be taking part in the meetings because they charge the process could lead to further "subordination" of women.
The women's groups, who announced their boycott at a news conference yesterday, say the process is adversarial because women and fathers' rights groups are being asked to appear together.
"Forcing women's and fathers' rights groups to sit at the same table to supposedly 'work it out' is not productive," said Ghislaine Siroris of the Ontario group. "We need a process that is clear in its commitment to women's equality."
The feminist groups are also angry because official documents for the meetings are gender neutral and do not mention women.
"This is an astounding omission given that women have overwhelmingly been, and continue to be, the primary caregivers of children," said Bonnie Diamond of the National Association of Women and the Law. "Women's organizations believe the outcome of this consultation will jeopardize the rights and safety of women and children."
The consultation process grew out of a joint Senate-Commons committee, which produced a report, For the Sake of the Children, two years ago after a series of hearings across the country.
However Roger Gallaway, the Liberal MP who co-chaired the special committee, has called the meetings an "affront to Parliament" and an effort to delay reform.
"It's an expensive joke," said Mr. Gallaway. "It's all rather discouraging because this isn't a consultation of ordinary Canadians, it's a consultation among interest groups -- it's consultants consulting consultants."
The whole process will cost up to $1.5-million, including $350,000 for the consultants and $780,000 for the provinces.
Virginia McRae, a lawyer for the Department of Justice and co-chairwoman of the consultations, called the boycott unfortunate.
"We had hoped to hear from as many people as possible," she said. "Our focus is on the best interests of the child and our objective is to explore options for kids."
Eileen Morrow of the Ontario Association of Interval and Transition Houses said Anne McLellan, the federal Minister of Justice, should uphold the equality rights of women and children.
"The best interests of children," she said, "can only be met by ensuring the well being of their mothers."
The media can be barred from the taxpayer-funded forums if any participants object to a reporter's presence.
Yesterday's meeting in Ottawa, organized by the federal Department of Justice and attended by a dozen representatives of father, grandparent and child welfare groups, was closed to the media after delegates complained that the presence of reporters would inhibit them.
The joint Senate-Commons committee spent a year holding hearings on custody and access. The cornerstone of its many recommendations is to replace the ideas of custody and access with a new concept called "shared parenting" under which both separated or divorced parents would have an automatic right to be involved in the raising of their children.
In cases where one parent alleges the other is unsuitable to be a parent, the committee recommended that charges would have to be proven in court before being used to determine a long-term parenting arrangement. False accusations, or deliberate denying of legally ordered access to children, should be punished, said the committee.
The National Association of Women and the Law claims that joint parenting will not work and will lead to harassment and emotional abuse of "primary residential parents" -- mostly women.
Men's groups complain that the family law system treats fathers as second-class citizens and routinely locks them out of the lives of their children.
Copyright 2001 National Post Online
Study denouncing fathers sends danger signals
By Kathleen Parker, The Orlando Sentinel, USA, on July 18, 1999
Now is the time for all good fathers to come to the aid of the family.
But you'd better hurry; your days are numbered. In fact, if you happen to be a heterosexual male (further doomed by Caucasian pigmentation), your days are already over, according to a cover article in the June issue of American Psychologist, published by the American Psychological Association.
In their article, "Deconstructing the Essential Father," researchers Louise B. Silverstein and Carl F. Auerbach challenge one of the core institutions of our culture -- fatherhood. Read More .. less, fathers, as we've known and loved them, are obsolete.
The article makes numerous breathtaking assertions, but basically the researchers state that fathers aren't essential to the well-being of children Read More ...
REPORT: Children Need Dads Too: Children with fathers in prison
Quakers United Nations Office
July 2009
Children are heavily impacted by parental imprisonment and greater attention should be given to their rights, needs and welfare in criminal justice policy and practice. Due to a variety of reasons such as mothers often being the primary or sole carer of children, complicated care arrangements, the likelihood of women prisoners being greater distances from home and a host of factors explored in detail in other QUNO publications, maternal imprisonment can be more damaging for children than paternal imprisonment. However, it is important not to underestimate the damage that paternal imprisonment can have on children.
Children with incarcerated fathers experience many of the same problems as those with incarcerated mothers, including coping with loss, environmental disruption, poverty, stigmatisation, health problems and all of the difficulties involved in visiting a parent in prison. It appears that there are also some difficulties specifically associated with paternal imprisonment, such as a higher risk of juvenile delinquency and strained relationships between the mother and child.
The numbers of children separated from their fathers due to imprisonment is far higher than those separated from their mothers due to the vast majority of prisoners being men (globally over 90 per cent of prisoners are male. To ignore this group would, therefore, be to neglect the vast majority of children affected by parental imprisonment. Read More ..
Hammering it home: Daughters need dads
USA TODAY, June 10, 2003
It's widely recognized that boys benefit from having dads around as role models and teachers about manhood.
But does having a father at home make much difference for girls?
But even in affluent families, girls become sexually active and pregnant earlier if they don't live with fathers, according to the largest and longest-term study on the problem. It was released in May.
Compared with daughters from two-parent homes, a girl is about five times more likely to have had sex by age 16 if her dad left before she was 6 and twice as likely if she stops living with her dad at 6 or older.
The study of 762 girls for 13 years took into account many factors that could lead to early sex, says Duke University psychologist Kenneth Dodge, the study's co-author. Still, there was an independent link between teenage sex and girls not living with their biological fathers.
Divorced Dads:
Shattering the Myths
Dr. Sandford L. Braver and Diane O'Connell
This is the result of the largest federally funded 8 year study of the issues confronting parents and their children in the United States.
Shattering the Myths. The surprising truth about fathers, children and divorce.
Children seeing more of their fathers after divorce
The Sydney Morning Herald
February 3, 2005
Divorced fathers are Read More ..volved in their children's lives than conventional wisdom would have it, a new study shows.
It shows surprisingly varied and flexible care patterns among separated families, with "every other Saturday" contact giving way to Read More ..ild-focused arrangements.
Australian Institute of Family Studies research fellow Bruce Smyth has produced the first detailed snapshot of parent-child contact after divorce anywhere in the world. Published today in the institute's journal Family Matters, the analysis has implications for children's emotional and financial wellbeing.
Other research indicates children of separated families do best when they have multifaceted relationships, including sleepovers, sharing meals and doing schoolwork, with both parents.
Fathers 'have key role with children' after families split
The Telegraph, London, U.K.
Researchers say they found a direct relationship between children's behavioural problems and the amount of contact they had with their natural father.
The effect was more pronounced in single-parent families, particularly where the mother was a teenager. In such cases, children were especially vulnerable emotionally if they had no contact with their father.
Where's Daddy?
The Mythologies behind Custody-Access-Support
When 50 percent of marriages end in divorce and 43 percent of children are left with one parent, everyone is affected: uncles, aunts, grandparents, and friends, but mostly, the children. The devastation from our divorce practices is our most public secret scandal. Everyone whispers it, the whispers never acknowledged. It seems that as long as a villain can be created, society is content.
After three decades of research universally pointing to more productive options, why does Custody-Access-Support remain?