Can we DO something about the awful system in this country WRT courts and access to children after divorce?

[BertieBotts]

I've heard one too many awful story now. Why the hell are we letting children down, forcing access with abusive ex partners, even when the children don't want it, making it difficult to gain supervised contact when supervised has already been given, forcing the resident parent (mainly mothers) to make their children available for contact, getting their hopes up and doing NOTHING when the NRP breaks that same contact order by not turning up for weeks on end, causing considerable distress to the children involved. NRPs being allowed to refuse to bring children home if they are repeatedly showing prolonged distress at being away from their main carer. It being extremely difficult to reduce contact or restart it off slowly, regardless of the age of the child, even if the parent has good reason to want to do this.

I understand there are bitter ex-partners who will try to deny their ex access to the children because of personal differences or spats, but seriously? Are there that many that we need a court system which immediately assumes all resident parents are conniving and bitter and all NRPs are loving and involved? Or is this just another fucking media frenzy like how common so-called "false rape accusations" are?

OK sakura, I think you've made your point - you see fathers as second-class parents and children as the property of their mothers.

Thank fuck my DCs' social worker didn't hold the same view as you.

Sakura, I think I love you

See why do men always have to think in terms of "property"

Until recently both women and children were men's property until those dastardly feminists came along and messed up The Order.
Until 1992 in the UK it was legal for a man to rape his wife because under patriarchal law rape is a property crime and therefore raping ones own wife doesn't count. It only counted as rape if you trespassed in a vagina owned by another man.

No, snorbs, women do not see children as their "property". BUt thank you for giving us all an insight into how you think

oh thank you TBOM, it's not every day you receive a declaration of love

You can have one every day from me

I think what you wrote made it quite clear you view children as the property of the mother. Eg, "bloody men who are all up for taking women's children off their hands". I pointed that out. I did not say I saw it the same way.

I can't stop you if you want to make up stuff about how I think, no matter how laughably wrong it is, but I will call you on your bullshit.

what gets me, is that women, being full of emotional integrity because they're women, actually take the sides of these MRAs and feel sorry for them even as as these blokes are chipping away the few rights women have managed to gain.
It used to be the case in the UK that a man could decide who the children would live with after he died, and if he decided it wasn't going to be the mother then by law she had no rights to them. Because in patriarchies the children are the property of the father.
That's right folks. Men created a law which stated that the mother who risked her life to bring the children into the world had no say in where they went if their father died.
We have managed to fight for basic changes such as the children going to the primary parent "in the best interest of the child"

But there is No such Thing as mothers' rights.

And women are actually supporting men's right to overrule the mother.
Some people are in serious need of some history lessons.

snorbs, you put children and property in the same sentence.

not me.

I'm talking about women risking their lives to bring children into the world in pain

I don't know what part of that you don't get

Oops, that was for Sakura, btw. Although saf can have one too.

On a more serious note, I have a friend who, in her 40s is still traumatised by the memories of spending Saturday's sitting in her best clothes kicking her heels in her hallway waiting for her gobshite waste of space father to turn up for his weekly visit. Cue him only bothering maybe every few weeks, often enough and laden down with enough expensive shite to keep her hanging on hoping for his love, but not often enough to make her feel really loved and worthy of love. He treated her in the same callous manner as he treated her mother, years of running off with his latest fancy, boomeranging back when he ran out of money, just in time to dole out a few black eyes and broken ribs. Bastard never deserved either of them.

She actually went and poured piss on his grave a few years ago. I wish I could say it made her feel better.

the way I see it, snorbs' problem is that because he didn't risk his life to bring his children into the world, he can't envisage anybody doing it. THat's how patriarchies work. Men's worldview is THE worldview.

SO because men just have sex and the voila a baby appears 10 months down the line, they think that's exactly how it works with women.

They simply can't imagine the physcial and mental toll that pregnancy, childbirth and lactation takes. Men don't get pregnant, therefore the physical reality of it is irrelevant to them.

I do believe this is what men are on about when they say they deserve an equal say in what happens to the children.

It's farcical, chances are even in a good marriage with good parents where both work full time a woman will be residential parent, so (in theory) biased toward women.....and yet men have so many rights even when they beat the crap out of their wives and are abusive in the family home? It's so messed up.

I don't think that a child should lose it's parent even when the parent doesn't pay up, even though the non paying parent gains, the child is the key.

I have already explained why I wrote what I wrote. I have also explained why you were wrong to extrapolate from that to your ridiculous opinion that I view children as the property of anyone.

What's even sadder is that she's spent her whole adult life with men just like her father. That's the lesson we teach girls when we don't cut off abusive fathers access to their kids, we teach them to spend their lives chasing the love of men who don't deserve it, dooming them to repeat the cycle of abuse over and over again. We could do a lot to end dv I think if we just took these children away from any contact with men who abuse their wives, girlfriends. The girls aren't taught that they should love men who don't deserve it, the boys are taught to respect women.

Yes, that's closer to the reality TBOM

I know two male family members who both fought the mothers of their children (one was a batterer) and both "won". It ended up being my grandmother who looked after the children , or when she wasn't available one of them palmed his child off onto his new girlfriend. But they were adamant they were going to claim their "right" to take the children away from the mothers though. I'm guessing this happens quite often--where the men don't actually end up doing the day to day care
[there's a thread going at the moment where some alcoholic ex has run off with a woman's son while on a visit and she doesn't know where the baby is. He was supposed to be having supervised contact with his parents]

NOT SAYING all men do that, but I'm just showing that women have no rights to their kids.
WHat does happen (QUITE RIGHTLY) the mother is the one who takes the children if she was the primary carer. THIS INCLUDES maternity leave. It also includes breastfeeding and pregnancy.

Amazing that these MRAs want to magic away the pregnancy and the (life-risking) childbirth

It's common for someone to hate their father so much they poor piss on his grave?

I don't think there are any MRAs on here, just some fathers who have been through child residency issues, and I don't think anyone is advocating abusers should have contact.

It doesn't matter what you "think" Truck, abuser do have contact by law
As that bloke on page 2 said, it is very rare for a parent not to be allowed contact
you'd have to be an axe-murderer before the courts would even consider it

run of the mill rapist and owman-batterer? Yup, equal rights.

"the way I see it, snorbs' problem is that because he didn't risk his life to bring his children into the world, he can't envisage anybody doing it."

If you want to know what I think sakura I suggest you ask me because, quite frankly, your attempts at guessing are very badly wrong.

Is it common for fathers to mess their daughter's heads around to the point that pouring piss on his grave feels cathartic?

I could mention the fact that there are abusive Mothers out there too but that would be counter-productive and cause a cycle of stats to ensue.

I think you'e attitude towards Men is lousy Sakura but I do understand that it's coming from personal experience.

I differ from you there Sakura, possibly because I come down more on the side of equalist that liberationist, because I don't believe that either parent should have more rights than the other, regardless of their gender or biological abilities.

The flaw I see in your argument about physical risk (although i grant you it should be considered) is that it risks it becoming a permanent stick to beat men with. If a couple split when their child is 10 and have until that point proven to be fully equal parents, it seems to me to be almost criminally unfair for the mother to suddenly be able to call the shots with regards to residency and access because of 9 months that happened 10 years ago.

However in the early years at least, I do believe that biology should play an important part in determining which parent it would be in the child's best interests to live mainly with. If the child is breastfed,it is a no-brainer. Even if they are not, evolution has provided women with lots of handy little coping mechanisms for dealing with babies that men simply don't have. for example uterine contractions caused by hearing the baby cry, making it impossible to ignore it. You have to be a supremely shit mother to leave a baby cry with hunger, whereas you only have to be a deep sleeping father to do the same.

Where I think the current system falls down is that it is still rooted in patriarchy and the 'he changed a nappy? Oh isn't he good' past which assumed that mothers do all the work automatically and without reward, whereas everything a father does for his child should be praised because he doesnt have to do it. That the courts can consider not beating his child as a marker of a good father, or turning up to see them once in a blue moon is enough to keep in place a contact order forcing weekly unsupervised contact is a travesty but sadly, the only way I can see it changing is if there are enough studies which show a negative impact on children who are subjected to sporadic contact or witnessing power games played out over contact, and i can't see that happening. For a start, it is really hard to quantify 'lowered self esteem' as an outcome so it would fall back on stats of children suffering actual physical harm while in the care of the NRP, which would be all but useless as it requires the NRP to actual turn up in the first place, the RP to allow the contact and potential harm to come to their child and proof that the harm was the direct result of attack or neglect on the NRPs part.

While I don't doubt examples of that exist, there aren't enough to form a reliable study and to attempt it would mean the child and RP having to sit through extra examinations and answer detailed questions on their lives to reduce confounding factors after what would already have been a traumatic event.