Really? we think that "that organisation" are representative of fathers in general? really?

[NormaStanleyFletcher]

"They are already telling us that F4J (and by association every dad in the land) are bullying and intimidating them in this latest campaign, a stance that completely ignores the decades of intimidation that has been suffered by fathers at the hands of women?s organistions and which attempts to control the space around the campaign..."

Do they think we are as mad and misguided as them?

Intimidation by women's organisations?

From http://karenwoodall.wordpress.com/2012/03/18/on-the-tyranny-of-the-weak-a-mothers-day-musing/

Who is this handmaden person?

OptimisticPessimist, his ex likes him to have contact, but only on her terms, when she fancies a night out at the bingo, or wants to party all night. Even if he had court-mandated contact it can't really be enforced either; there are no consequences for mothers like her.

Some people are just shit.

Xenia - do you actually understand what you are writing?

You are justifying abusive, violent men being allowed to bully, stalk, harass and physically threaten any woman who disagrees with them.

I don't generally agree with your opinions but I have never seen you write something so stupid.

OLKN that's a very important point, about feeling/being trapped. Will ponder.

xenia if after her partner buggers off with another woman she has the choice between live in a poxy flat in a crappy area where she knows no one and there are no job opportunities OR she could move back to her hometown with extended family on tap providing childcare and support and there is a job opportunity which will allow her to provide well for her child etc i know which option would be better for the child.

When I first left my DCs dad I swore that as long as he was prepared to be involved in the DC's life, I would not move away from him. Over the years things have deteriorated. He now sees them (supervised) for a few hours every 6-8 weeks (frequency is his choosing). We have had to have conversations about the importance of not turning up barely able to stand up with tiredness/hangover from the effects of the night before and not just putting the TV on and slumping on the sofa while DC do their own thing and ignore him. TBH if I were to emigrate and contact was a once-a-year visit and skype conversations every week, that would be an improvement on what the DC have at the moment. Which is why if the right job offer/circumstances presented themselves, I would no longer turn down the opportunity out of deference for his fatherhood status. Especially since I alone have the responsibility of providing for their needs (and therefore will do whatever best meets that responsibility).

I think that's fairly representative of most separated parents. THose who want to move probably have good reasons and have weighed it up against the negatives of moving away from the other parent. I don't think resident parents whose separated partner wants to play an active role in the DCs life and actually contributes something positive would want to move away unless it were for overwhelmingly strong reasons. Let's not forget that most cases do not end up in court or with parents being issued with PSOs.

old lady, sorry but itis simply not right to say that your ds is as trapped as a mother who is prevented from moving by a court order. that's like saying that a catholic woman in london is as trapped with an unplanned pregnancy, as a woman who lives in a country where safe termination is outlawed. legalities matter.

So does a father's love for his child.

And a mother trapped by a POS could simply give up her dc to their father. But she won't, because she loves her children and wants to be with them.

OLKN: I am having difficulty understanding how your son is any more 'trapped' now than he was in the relationship. Presumably before he parted ways with the mother of his child, he wanted to live with the child and now he still wants to be near. So unless you are making a wider point about parents being 'trapped' by children, I fail to see how his situation has changed. Am I missing something?

Well, he has far less contact with his son than he had when they were together. Had they remained together and he wanted to move (for a better job, perhaps) that's something they could have discussed and agreed between them. Friendly discussions are currently off the table.

Interesting conversation. I have some difficulty in working out what a better system would look like.

Intellectually I see the merits of 50/50, but it just so happens that I'm doing battle with it in my own life at the moment. I have an ex who is fighting for 50/50. He is very attentive to DD and already spends quite a lot of time with her based on the court order. He has never not turned up for contact (although I have had on occasion needed police intervention to get DD back).

He was emotionally and (to a minor extent) physically abusive towards me. He is keen to establish his "ownership" of DD. He loves the way she adores him, but reacts with rage if she shows an emotion he doesn't like, eg. wanting me when she is with him. Throughout our time together, he would punish me by withholding her - from the time as a newborn when he shut himself in the kitchen with her all night and wouldn't let me breastfeed, from the time shortly before I left, when he physically held her to his chest and held her head turned with his hand so she couldn't look at me. He wouldn't let us physically touch each other for 24 hours. That's when I left. And so many times when he would disappear with her for hours on end to make me worry. So his current quest for 50/50 residence feels like part of a wider effort to take possession of her, so I feel I have to fight it. I'm not convinced he's good for her. Plus, he has two foreign passports, and I don't trust him not to take her out of the country. Plus, he's bloody impossible to deal with, and any negotiations (eg. time and date of handover after a holiday) are highly fraught.

BUT - it's my word against his. Why should a court believe me or have a presumption in my favour? There are limitations on the fact-finding a family court can do.

What would a better system be? A better-resourced CAFCASS, yes, clearly. More mental health assessments of parents? I'd like it in our case, but it might be overly intrusive as a general system, and of course abused women can demonstrate distress, depression, etc, and it would be wrong for that to count against them.

The family courts are in a hugely difficult position. Anyone got a vision for what the perfect system would look like?

we'd all protect ourselves as best we could. that's all i can envisage.

of course i can appreciate the position of men but i am a woman and a mother and i would do anything to protect my child from being at risk of being used as a porn in an abusive relationship or from being taken away from me or basically just anything that meant i couldn't protect him and raise him as i wanted to.

no one expects their partner to turn abusive/nutty/controlling/a danger to them or their children so best to err on the side of caution.

i don't think the courts will or can protect us - we have to protect ourselves for now.

and i don't think women should feel ashamed or be told off for having strong protective instincts towards their children - we carry them, give birth to them, feed them etc etc etc of course we feel massively protective of them. if we start to feel guilty for that we're fucked.

people can do as much dv and abuse denial as they like the fact is that some men are a risk to women and children and i don't want women and children to be forced into a position of being in the control of such a man. i would advise any woman who got pregnant in a violent or abusive relationship to do whatever it took to make sure that man's name did not appear on the birth certificate. the auto parental responsibility just can't be risked with a dangerous man.

PR is easily gained, even if the father's name is not on the birth certificate. And of course PR can be abused if a parent is abusive; my son's ex is another example. While nowhere near as bad as NicknameTaken's ex, she has tried to exclude my ds from decisions about medical care, education, baptism... and every time they disagree, she says, "You'll never see him again." Most recently she witheld contact for nearly three weeks, telling the child "daddy is on holiday" simply because she was offended by a Tweet he made (which wasn't about her.) My DS normally has 3 overnights a week, and with daytime hours almost 50/50, paid almost twice what the CSA would have ordered in child maintenance...

I don't know what a better system would look like, maybe we need to educate children about power games and head-fucking from both sexes?

And a mother trapped by a POS could simply give up her dc to their father. But she won't, because she loves her children and wants to be with them.

OLKN, No that's not true, as there are many men who would refuse this responsibility. We have been talking a fair bit on this thread about men who cannot manage to stick to an every-other-weekend contact order, let alone agree to bring up children full-time. And they can't be made to.

exactly for the vast majority of single mums leaving their child would literally mean abandoning their child to the system or leaving them solo in a house - for men in the majority it would just mean continuing to let their mothers raise them.

my son's father abandoned him - it hasn't left ds alone in any way. if i abandoned him he would seriously be abandoned

that really IS a major difference.

for most men buggering off and not bothering to see their children ever again means their children living the same life as before pretty much with just as good a quality of care as before.

for most women it means children being traumatised by abandonment, taken into care, left without any parental care, losing their home, school, extended family relationships etc.

not the same is it?

No, saf, it's definitely not the same.

I have worried myself stupid over the years that if I ever have to go into hospital, my children would end up 'in the system', as their father would just keep parroting, 'It's your responsibility to make arrangements. I've got work.' (I have work, too, but that seems irrelevant to him and the family court tbh.)

despite all the 'rights' there's no responsibillity is there?

i must get round to making a will - unless i set legal guardians ds would be put into care rather than my family being allowed to care for him.

Re: wills. Also make sure any money/assets are protected for your DC; don't let an adult be in a position to help themselves as 'expenses'. I've seen a friend's DD's trust fund obliterated by a trustee's 'expenses' and the girl is only 15 now - if it had been sealed till she was 18 it would have been better all round.

Same here. It's not just because women love their children that they want to be with them; it's because they know that the fathers of their children, simply wouldn't look after them.

In many cases, a 50 50 presumption would simply mean their ex-MILs or the new girlfriend of their children's father looking after their children.

It's just madness to ignore that. If the majority of fathers were doing an equal amount of parenting as mothers, this would be a sensible conversation. But until they are, this is really esoteric and sorry but hard cases make bad law. The law can't be framed to pretend that a situation that actually, feminists want far more than F4J do - fathers to genuinely do 50 50 parenting of their children as a norm, when they are living with the mothers of those children as well as when they're not - is actually happening now. All that would do, is take children away from their mothers and give them to their grandmothers or whichever woman is currently in their father's life. It's crazy talk.

However surely most of us accept that most fathers, the husbands of mumsnetters andthe like and even ex husbands are loving and good, even if the marriage has broken up. Most of them love and want to be with their chidlren and most parents agree contact amicably. Thus we must accept it is as important the child sees and is with the father as the mother in those cases, which are most cases and a system which provides that a child does not see much of one or other parent regardless of gender is a wrong system.

The problem is the law assumes father do nothing and then they give them every other weekend. Imagine as a mother being allowed only every other weekend. It's dradful, really dreadful. Whereas in fact many many fatrher particularly where both parents work full time are as close to and do as much for the children as the mother.

Xenia, you're forgetting that 90% of separating parents do not go to court. Possibly some because they don't want to alienate the other parent, but even so that would still imply that the majority of so-called weekend dads are more than happy with the arrangement. Meanwhile, in relationships where parents are still together, study after study shows that women are doing the lion's share of childcare.

So it isn't true to say that judges are assuming that fathers do nothing and it's unfair, because it's actually based on evidence.

"The problem is the law assumes father do nothing and then they give them every other weekend."

Er, the problem is that that is generally true. Study after study after study shows that women still do the lion's share of parenting. The law assumes nothing - it merely maintains the status quo and guess what, the status quo is that er...fathers don't do as much as mothers.

Poor menz eh.

I went to see a friend today and she was stressing over childcare arrangements. Her ex is a teacher and is at home for the next two weeks, my friend works in an office and isn't. They have worked out an arrangement that as well as weekends, he will have them over the holidays - this was what happened before the separation and it made sense to continue afterwards. Ex has now got a new girlfriend, wants to spend his holidays with new girlfriend, wants to go to the lakes for a few days, wants to go out drinking on the weekends, doesn't want to be hampered by his kiddies. He's dropped my friend in it by announcing as of today that he can't have the kids next week, he'll have them this week 'as a favour'.

They're his kids but he doesn't see looking after them as his responsibility, he's doing it for her so she can work. They're not a priority to him, seeing his kids is a 2nd best after sending time with his new girlfriend. It's incredibly sad and the kids are aware of it because they resent this other woman and think she's taking their dad away from him. They should be resenting the dad but I guess it doesn't work that way.