Crikey it feels a bit like a war zone at the moment!

absentfathers

The NSPCC have produced a more recent report on the same themes. It is here you should have a read.

Looking at the appendices, and generally through it, it looks to be a much more thorough document. And is, of course, more up to date.

There are 6 or 7 main conclusions. One of them is:

"The high proportion of males reported as perpetrators of severe child maltreatment supports the need for gender sensitivity and effective engagement with both fathers/male partners and mothers in child protection and early intervention."

If you believe that the NSPCC are a reliable organisation, as you must do as you cited them in the first place, then presumably you will be able to look at this more thorough, current report with quite clear findings, and reassess your stance.

Both of the children by the same parents.

They put the argument in court that I was safe to be around my daughter (who needs more care) than my son, but the judge dismissed it immediately telling them there was no way they could implement an arrangement that saw one child go without.

The whole process as I stated earlier is a farce. The judge can hear completely contradictory evidence from one parent and yet still follow guidelines rigidly against another parent who is falsely accused.

That sounds a bit odd. Apologies for prying, but do you share your one year old daughter and five year old son with the same Mum? It would be interesting to see how a solicitor could justify contact with one child, but not the other?

I am not choosing to believe anything.

I am pointing out a large hole in the statistics (time actually with the child/ren) which, when factored in, means that father are more likely to be violent towards children than mothers.

I also think it is wrong to pick one part of a survey and ignore the others. The same study shows that of all sexual abuse, a tiny number said that their abusers were women. Strangely you draw on this study but pick and choose bits of it that you think (incorrectly) show women in a worse light than men, but not vice versa. You paint an incomplete picture and expect support? I don't think so.

So you would still choose to believe that men make up more than double the instances of child abuse in a family?

Yet in most cases before the breakdown of the parents relationship the male was more often than not trusted to look after the children. Suddenly at divorce men become bad fathers.

My wife and her solicitor alleged that I was mentally ill. They could not specify what but said that I was safe to look after my 1 yr old daughter but did not want me around my 5 yr old son unsupervised.

I got a written letter from my GP stating no history of mental health issues, I got a psychiatric assessment done but the court still went with my wifes allegations. It became clear that there was nothing I could do that could prove that I was not mentally ill.

it's why I use AbF

I don't hold the copywright on the intitials AF though

bloody hell, that's happened before, sorry messy

Let's not forget that F4J was a splinter group that broke away from FnF and there are many fathers that are members of both groups. A number of years ago a FnF research officer signed a petition from a racist American fundamental christian group that called for the repeal of the 19th Ammendment that gives women the right to vote.

Some mums may make allegations that can't be substantiated but some dads make allegations of parental alienation that can't be substantiated either.

vile hatred?

Did you miss the bit where all the feminists said they wanted the best for the children and a fair hearing for the parents and some have concerns about the secret nature of the family courts?

AF=absent father in that post

unless you have (c) the initials!

I believed that the family court would be pro-Mum and anti-Dad, but in reality it was much more fair than I expected. I can't complain with the way my particular case was handled. I think that things have improved significantly from the way the courts treated Dads in the past. I hate the way discussions about parental responsibility always seem to descend into debates about other issues. I don't see the need for such vile hatred from feminists, they're just intent on muddying the waters. Lots of children grow up with a single parent, but having two parents sharing responsibility must be best for children and their parents.

not following you, messy

"Almost all had someone to turn to for help and advice, mothers being most commonly mentioned (69%), followed by fathers (40%) and teachers (21%)."

That's nice, isn't it

AF, so did you wife make a false allegation against you then?

Why are you ignoring the parts of the survey which show a majority of male abusers, out of interest?

*yet not yes

AbsentFather you seem to be conflating two different sets of stats here and wrongly assuming that because they don't say the same thing there must be something dodgy going on.

But surely the abuse cases which are discussed in contact/custody hearings only make up a small proportion of the total number of cases of abuse and there is no reason to suppose it would be representative.

Thus it is possible that a higher proportion of the cases in which a man is the abuser, come up in court at contact hearings, than the proportion of the cases in which the woman is the abuser.

Given that so few men compared to women are caring for children as single parents, it is likely that the majority of the abuse perpetrated by men will be in two parent families, while with there being so many women raising children completely alone with no father wanting to get more involved, the abuse perpetrated by those women will not feature in the statistic for custody and contact hearings.

F4J say there are 4 million children growing up "fatherless" in the UK.

There are 11.5 million children in the UK.

That means that 1/3 of all children are "fatherless"
Yes fathers still manage to perpetrate 40% of the violence against them.

Would you like some further calculations? Because I think you can see that clearly that survey shows that fathers commit the majority of violence against children.

I was the primary carer for my son from birth to age 3. My wife was out at work week days 8-8.

But yes in the last year I have had no contact, no phone conversations, no correspondence.

The study you have linked to found as one of it's "surprising" findings that step-parents were not particularly likely to be abusive.

Have you read the whole study?

The study does not take into account how much time the children are with each parent.

Given that many father have little or no contact with their children (surely the reason you are here) then the stats will be skewed. A father who does not have much contact, does not have much chance to abuse. They really should have looked at that and adjusted figures accordingly.

That is possibly both.

Step fathers I would have thought would tend to push up the instances, therefore making biological fathers would even less of a risk than mothers.

AbF...are you talking about bio fathers or stepfathers in your stats ?

you need to be more specific, or the stats do

Sardine Queen if you even accept that abuse it equal by both partners (you dont I take it?) then how do you explain the fact that twice as many women accuse men of abusing the children in custody/contact hearings?

What is going on? Is the legal system encouraging false allegations or do men stay quiet about their wifes abuse of the children?

Given the different amounts of time that mothers and fathers spend with their children, the results are startling, yes. Incredible, really.

Without knowing the amount of time that the children in the survey were spending with each parent (hard to be abused by your father if he left before you were born) the statistic is meaningless.

What you need to do is get an expert in stats on that. I think I know one

It also shows that women and men both abuse children. Well shocker. You couldn't make it up.

Nice to see that MN leading (and yes I say leading ) radical feminist is rigth there shoulder to shoulder with you on the family courts - secrecy issues. As are many others. Shame you can't all get together with a common aim, isn't it.