Aussie AG Urged to Replace Shared Parenting with Canadian Model
According to this article, Australian Attorney General Robert McClelland has been “urged” to recommend the “Canada model” of child custody to replace Australia’s shared parenting statute that is barely three years old (The Australian, 10/26/09). Just who’s doing the urging, the article doesn’t tell us.
But whoever it is, it’s clear that the writer is all for it. She suggests that Canada requires courts to decide what form of custody would be in the best interests of the child, rather than presuming that shared custody would be. Under that approach, courts would consider factors such as “the roles played by each party before separation.” That’s code for “since Mom worked less and did more childcare, she gets custody.”
Don’t believe me? In Canada, according to the country’s official statistics agency, Statistics Canada, 9.1% of fathers get primary custody following divorce. That’s even worse than United States courts that grant custody to fathers a whopping 16% of the time. In short, whoever is urging Australia’s Attorney General to recommend Canada’s model of child custody post separation or divorce, must think the radically anti-father conditions that prevail in so many country’s are just grand.
As usual, those systems penalize fathers for working and supporting their families by depriving them of real relationships with their children post divorce. They also encourage mothers to file for divorce. In the U.S., some 70% of divorce actions are filed by women, and studies such as the massive one done by Margaret Brinig and Douglas Allen show that the main encouragement to do so is the almost certain knowledge that they’ll get custody. So the type of custody system being urged on Mr. McClelland is the same type that results in high divorce rates. I wonder if they mentioned that.
And of course it’s also the system that results in high separation of fathers and children. Whatever the anti-dad crowd may claim, the existing system in Canada overwhelmingly tends to make non-custodial parents into visitors in the lives of children. Since so many non-custodial parents are fathers, that mostly means children miss out on paternal relationships and influence. But the fact that mothers usually aren’t the non-custodial parent doesn’t mean the same thing doesn’t happen to them. As Dr. Susan Stewart showed in her 1999 study, non-custodial fathers and mothers alike become what she called “Disneyland” parents. The great irony of course is that this all occurs under a system that supposedly looks first to “the best interests of the child.”
Apparently all that’s fine with whoever is whispering in McClelland’s ear that shared parenting is not good for kids.
But let’s not forget first principles. Fathers, mothers, children and society generally do better when children have two parents involved in their lives. On a whole range of social indicia, children are happier, healthier, better adjusted and more productive. Mothers whose children have an active father in their lives have more money and are more able to participate and advance in the workplace than are those without. Fathers who are actively involved in their children’s lives are more likely to be employed, out of jail and off drugs and alcohol than are those who aren’t.
The reason that there’s a massive movement toward shared parenting is because the child custody systems in the U.S., Canada, the United Kingdom, etc. are failing everyone – children, fathers and mothers alike.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – those who oppose equally shared parenting have the obligation to explain to the rest of us why they believe the current system that shuts children off from their fathers and vice versa, is acceptable. It’s worth noting that they never do.
Intoning the mantra of the “best interests of the child” won’t change obvious facts.
|
| More from Robert Franklin, Esq.
Stumble It!
