Agenda, much?

[Malificence]

I don't usually wander onto the MN facebook page but I was pretty horrified to find what looks very much like an MRA agenda posted on there.
I'm trying very hard to see what relevance the photo used for their site has regarding the voices of unheard children. Looks more like how they would like to see their women to me.

www.facebook.com/#!/mumsnet?sk=wall

They're really full of themselves aren't they?

And they're still not admitting that the main reason that a lot of men who have hardly done any childcare in the run-up to a split, but who want 50-50 custody is because of money.

They don't want to pay out for their children. It was the CSA that precipitated the rage of all these father's rights groups.

love that they want to get the police involved because people are saying things they don't like on their facebook page.

yep, that's a real police priority that.

They're desperate to paint themselves as victims.

They conduct a bullying intimidatory campaign for years, which showed everybody what sort of people they were and what they stood for and then they whine when people point out the obvious.

christ, imagine if everyone on MN did that...

Police would never get any work done...

They are deliberately being obtuse I think. 3.8 million children (which is about a third of all children in the UK) live in a single mother family, which is their 3.8 million fatherless stat.

In a different statistic, 1 in 3 children whose parents have separated lose contact with their father. I think this comes from research from the Centre for Social Justice, reported here: www.telegraph.co.uk/relationships/divorce/6575997/Third-of-family-break-up-children-lose-contact-with-fathers-in-failing-court-system-poll.html
which is a survey of 4000 people whose parents have split over the last 20 years, not really a picture of what is happening right now.

So the two statistics are not the same.

A friends ex husband thinks nothing of bringing back his kids after only seeing them for a couple of hours if he has a better offer - and by that I mean, one of his friends wants to go out drinking.

I've been there when he's supposed to have come and got them but hasn't turned up, they were stood by the window looking for him, getting excited when they saw a car the same/similar to their dads. My friend told me that later on that day he phoned up obviously pissed to say that 'something had come up'.

'I wrote to them last night as the posts were becoming more libelous and I am sad to say that we are taking legal advice this morning on this matter as the posts continue to come in and have become even more serious.'

I must be missing the thread with all the libelous posts on

They seem to be getting upset when we quote them and laugh.

I am currently laughing at the one who thinks that men with full residency aren't classed as single parents.

I think there is another reason why some men pretend to be badly done by re: contact with their children, and it is to 'explain' to the people in their lives (especially new partners and of course their own families) why they don't seem to be doing much parenting.

'I'm being denied access,' is so much better for keeping the harpies off your back, than saying 'To be honest, I'm just not that committed.'

yes, note as ever it's all about rights not responsibilities.

the thing with kids is we don't have 'rights' over them as such - we have responsiblities and the person who takes on the bulk of the responsibility becomes the primary caretaker who in the event of a split continues to be the primary caretaker for continuities sake not because of her rights but her active responsibilities. then she also has the responsibility of having her children ready sat by a window crying for a dad who can't be arsed to turn up but is making his point that he has the 'right' to do so if he wishes to do so.

I spent too much of my childhood sitting by the window waiting for my dad to rock up.

Still, my mother was probably stopping him from coming over...

what they're fighting just doesn't exist does it?

they're having to make up lies to be against because there's nothing real.

so these are just angry men who don't like the decisions of the court or who resent paying maintenance or no longer having control over their ex's lives?

I'm a horrible vindictive ex. I have stopped my X from having contact apart from on my terms. Why? Because he kicked our then-just-turned-four-year-old son. So I took steps to ensure that he could never be abusive to our DC or me ever again.

But apparently that makes me an evil bitch who is treating him unfairly and denying him fair contact. Incidentally, I offered him supervised contact once a month at my organisation and unlimited supervised contact of his own organising at a contact centre. The rate he's taken it up as? Once every two months.

I will say this for my ex, he does see seeing his kids as a responsibility which comes before all other things. Even when he was courting, he never cancelled his contact arrangements so he could spend time with his girlfriend as other men of my acquaintance have done.

Apropos of nothing, I asked DD1 if she considered herself fatherless because her dad and I are no longer together. She said ''nuh, he's not dead''. She sees him frequently, and chats to him frequently on the phone or on skype.

I think F4J smell the scent of 'MN the organisation' [as they interestingly specified] having a few bob. After all, it's all about the money, isn't it?

swc, I heard that organisations like F4J are partly responsible for driving up legal costs, and the amount spent on divorce and custody disputes. They encourage an attitude of hostility and entitlement which makes mediation almost impossible, and forces court involvement when 10/15 years ago a couple might have resolved things peacefully. Is that true?

they certainly seem to encourage the waste of tons of legal aid funding by men who use the courts as a way of continuing to harass and abuse their ex's.

using up resources that are meant for those who have genuine need.

F4J are now advocating not to use solicitors at all as they have released their own handbook on family law a few of them are McKenzie friends too.

Yes, a lot of it is about the money unfortunately. It doesn't take long for the F4J website to get down to the crux of it, does it? Some of the comments regarding csa payments say it all.

Interestingly they're claiming no responsibility for the intimidating and aggressive targeting of Gingerbread - even though the instructions to do so were plastered all over their FB page yesterday. For shame.