Fathers for Justice

[Uhu]

I agree with the principles of their campaign and I think their antics are actually doing society a favour by exposing just how easy it would be for terrorists to attack key elements of the establishment. I bet the IRA, Al-Qaeda etc are taking notes .

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I agree with you secur, each case should be viewed individually, but in order to do that one HAS to start with the premise that both parents are equal and innocent.

I disagree with your figures MeanBean. I don't think that OneParentFamiiles is an impartial institution and they would hardly be collecting statistics on fathers who don't have access to their children, since without their children, they don't fit into the remit. I personally know more than a handful of mothers who are denying access to the fathers of their children. I suppose it's possible that the ones that I know are the only ones in the entire uk, but I think this is unlikely.

I had understood from the news (though of course this could always be incorrect) that in fact last night's batman has been awarded visitation by the court, but the mother has thwarted it and the courts have no power to enforce it. There is a basic problem in a system that doesn't do this just as there is a problem with a system that doesn't force fathers to provide for their children. Or perhaps, there should be a means of providing incentives for fathers to participate in their children's lives and disincentives for mothers to alienate the fathers. At the moment, the opposite incentives are there. My dh's ex gets more money if he doesn't have the children very often, gets more money if he doesn't give her maintenance officially, gets more money if she has more children (she's so far had 6 with 5 different fathers..3 of whom are in prison). I realize that she is an extreme, but the current system still considers her the better parent and gives her more rights to the upbringing of their children. In theory, my dh should have a say over the children's education and medical issues. The reality is that both the mother, the schools and the doctors have ignored everything my dh has had to say and he has no viable recourse to prevent this. His ex gets Legal Aid, which we are not entitled to and he can't afford to fight her.
sorry i have to go back to work.

But the general principle, that you can't legislate for difficult and rare cases, applies, I think, SA. Yes, there may be some personal tragedies, but changing the law to give fathers more rights will put many more families at risk through forcing contact with dangerous men. Domestic violence is a widespread phenonemon, what evidence is there that 'evil woman stops doting father from seeing kids' is anywhere near as common? Look at the threads on MN about the pathetic excuses for fatherhood who are currently allowed access; the FFJ agenda is frankly alarming.

and it's not fair on the children to start from the presumption that both parties are equal - there is usually one parent who is the primary carer and, in our society right now, that's usually the woman.

Exactly. When men and women are both given equal maternity and paternity rights, and both take them up equally enthusiastically, and the pay gap is closed so that economically, it doesn't nearly always make sense for the woman to be the primary carer, then I think you can go from the starting point of both parents being equal. But atm in the real world, that just isn't the case. Even where parents live together, how many fathers don't have a clue what their children are like because they don't spend any time with them? I'm not blaming those individual fathers particularly - they didn't invent the long hours and high living costs culture - but the issue of shared parenting cannot be solved until those other issues are solved.

Ah, MB, don't start me on the long hours culture - sorry, Tom and Fathers Direct but frankly, boys, just leave work on time and take the knock to your career prospects like we all have to

I don't know about the individuals concerned in the protests and accept that there are far too many fathers who do little or nothing to maintain contact with their children after the parents separate but I do think that there are genuine cases out there where the fathers are unreasonably being denied access and they, rightly, wish to protest about it. Whether these are a tiny minority or more of the fathers who no longer live with their partners and children is not a very relavant factor, as far as I am concerned.

The point is, the have a valid point and wish to highlight it in order to change things for the better for themselves and their children. They are using these publicity stunts precisely because they work - a bit like the suffragettes did when they chained themselves to railings etc . Yes, it is a drain on the resources of the police but I'm not sure if there is an alternative that does not unduly curtail freedom of movement/expression to an unacceptable degree and as I understand it, the individuals involved in the protest are still being held by the police.

edam, but at a minimum, shouldn't the presumption be that the primary carer doesn't necessarily have to be the woman.

Also, you say "Yes, there may be some personal tragedies, but changing the law to give fathers more rights will put many more families at risk through forcing contact with dangerous men." I don't think that there is any evidence at all that this would be true. And in fact, in the usa for the most part fathers have equal rights to mothers in terms of access to their children. That doesn't mean that a violent father is any more likely to get custody of his children in the usa than in the uk.

In any case, I think that mediation should be free and mandatory whenever there are children involved. However, true mediation can't really take place if one of the two parents is entering the discussion believing that he doesn't have an equal chance.
I agree with you, MeanBean, that there are many societal issues regarding the roll of women that need to be resolved. However, that doesn't mean that a father isn't just as important to a child as a mother.

Sorry motherinferior, but I don't HAVE to take the knock to my career. I CHOOSE to take the knock to my career because I enjoy spending time with my children. And by the way to what someone said earlier. I don't view the weekdays as the not fun days and the weekends as the good days. I love every minute that I spend with my children, but would not want to spend every minute with them...hence why I work.

Sorry, SA, I worded that wrong. I agree both about making a choice, and about enjoying my job (I work four days a week and would hate it any other way). I do however stand by my point that the work/career structure that assumes 150 per cent commitment won't change - and become more accommodating to all our other priorities - until men do what women have done, and take action for themselves.

I disagree that that is the point sis - imo the point is, there is a whole other big story out there which is not being told, and the media ought to be telling it. There is so much emphasis on this marginal issue, with so little emphasis on the much bigger story, that people are being given a distorted image of the issues involved in custody. Women can't tell their stories because they are too busy doing the job of raising their children, and because they wouldn't expose their children to potential damage by going public in this way. I would love to put on a silly cloak and get a banner campaigning for justice for mothers and children, but there is no way I would use my children's case as a public example because they have a right to privacy. Batman just hasn't considered his children in all this has he? Can you imagine what other kids in the playground will say if they/ their parents recognise him? How many mothers would do that to their kids? I'm really not in favour of children being used as weapons, either by custodial or absent parents, but these superhero types are doing exactly what they accuse their exes of - using their kids in a battle with their xp's.
And he's been denied access because he is a bad father. He is violent.

motherinf- agree on the work thing. I'm the one who has put career/promotion on back burner so that i can be athome with dd. unfortunately i still have the wrench of leaving her 2 days a week to work (at insistence of h who insists I keep a career path open). From my own personal experience I don't think that MY h feeld the same for dd as i do. eg he can sleep through her crying- i can't. I don't think that men are programmed the same as women- I carried my dd for 9 months and feel that I have more of an affinity with her than my h does. Just my opinion

MB - I agree with you - women seem to be far more dignified about stuff like this - I was driven to the edge by x2b with him not letting me see DD for nearly 2 years but I kept on and I won - I did not try to stop him seeing her and I never used her as a pawn - he completely scuppered his chances in court when he said 'I let you have her blah blah and blah' - the judge clearly saw that he was using her to control me still and also thought that his parents and mine were so nasty about me that it would damage DD!!

As for these men look at so many women on here and what they have to put up with, stress, depression, poverty the list is endless but we donl;t resort to the kind of dangerous shite that these men do.

He would have been a fuck lot of good to his kids he so badly wanted contact with (he actually has 4 by 3 different women and he is campaigning about 1 of them!) if he had fallen saying nothing too about the danger he out others in who had to try and get him down in the course of their days work!!

And you know what - we give up a career and prospects and the bastards say that we are supposed to get fuck all when it is all over because we did not contribute!!

AAARRRGGGHHH!!!

while I do agree entirely with the main thrust of what you are saying, women don't always like it when men take the knock to their career. One of he key reasons my dh's ex left him because he didn't want to go back into law and become a barrister (she actually said this in court). He works as a very poorly paid hack, but is home early every night, is very much a co-parent and takes at least three days off a month (usually a day a week) to care for ds while I work - my mum does two days. The downside of his being present as a parent is that he earns a lot less. She is now married to a very rich man who works very long hours and often travels away. She much prefers this as she no longer goes to work herself.

I also agree that I chose to change my career because I wanted to be with my son. I really, really enjoy being with him which is why I've turned down reasonably high-status fulltime jobs. Some men wouldn't dream of doing anything like this, of course, but others would genuinely love to but know it isn't an option for them because their partners have chosen to do it.

pixiefish, I agree that men are programmed differently than women, but your dh sleeping through your dd's crying doesn't mean that he loves her less than you do, it just means that he is lucky enough to be able to sleep through a baby crying. I wish I could.
Also, could I add, even though this is a little off the topic, that it sounds like your dh is thinking of you if he is encouraging you to keep your career path open for the future. However, if you feel that he if forcing you to do something that you don't want to do, I would highly recommend going to a marriage counsellor (relate is great) and talking it through because the resentment will only grow. I speak from experience, having let lots of little resentments grow in my first marriage because we didn't deal with them, while now in my second marriage, the second we see an issue that isn't getting resolved, we pop down to the marriage counsellor and she usually gives us a way of setting it straight so we are both happy.

MeanBean, what I meant was that from the point of a father who is unfairly being stopped from having access to his children, it must be hugely frustrating. I am not saying that all the individual protesters have a valid complaint but that some fathers do and they must find it very difficult to be denied access and the opportunity is lost forever as their children will grow up all too quickly without an input from their caring fathers.

Ironically, it would seem that only the really caring fathers probably agree that these stunts would be 'bad' for their children so the only way their 'cause' gets any publicity is through the individuals who are not such a good advert!

I agree totally with the other points you have made about society needing to re-evaluate the role of both parents, especially in relation to the long hours work culture.

Sorry, I have to disagree. I'm sure that if my children (and stepchildren) saw their father dressed up as batman hanging out at Buckingham palace, they would be thrilled. And I think it's an amazing testament to his passion for his children that he would go that far to fight for his right to see them, having exhausted all the conventional methods.

I think if it was your dh Sofia, that would probably be true. But if the reports are correct, this particular man is not a good person, let alone a good father.

All of these nutters need locking up and forgetting about. As far as it seems, none of them deserve access to their kids anyway - which is backed up by the fact that they think its a better idea to dress up and make a fool of themselves than to try something more constructive - ie, going back to court, writing to an MP, sorting themselves out so their exes will actually trust them etc etc. After all, their main aim should be to see their kids and how will behaving like a twat help??

Their behaviour backs up their reputations as idiotic prats who care more about the 'principle' and their 'rights' than they do about their own kids - so IMO they don't deserve any pity or support.

Plenty of people suffer far worse injustices than these men are supposed to be suffering from - yet you don't see a mother accused of MSBP dressed up as Wonder Woman in the news do you??

If they were behaving 'well' and taking things seriously I'd be much more sympathetic but this guy was even taunting the police FFS!!! He's not suffering - he's just an idiot!!!

But that's the problem aloha. If you spoke to my dh's ex (and your dh's ex too probably), she would tell you my dh was violent (she once accused him of showing up at her house with a knife and threatening her...luckily the date that she picked was one where he was safely tucked up in bed with me, 2 hours away from her), she constantly says that he gives her no money, she says that he never calls the kids (he calls her mobile almost daily as that's the only way of reaching them and she rejects the calls), she says that he never visits them (we used to have them regularly until she put a stop to it), she frequently tells them that he doesn't love them....etc. etc. If the press and or a court were to do an interview with her, she would present my dh (who does by the way have a criiminal record unrelated to her or the children) as an awful, violent unfit father which is most certainly isn't. And under the current system where he is alreday viewed as a parent of lesser importance my dh would have very little ability to contradict that.

We have never had the awful situation you have, but yes, she did lie endlessly in all the court stuff. Even silly things like saying he wouldn't help with or supervise his daughter's homework when her schoolbooks were full of stuff she'd done at our house. It made me cry to read it.

Meanbean, MI, Edam et al have said it all for me, agree with them completely

Have to say that scummy has summed up how I feel.