AIBU to be a Feminist and support Fathers' rights?

[messyisthenewtidy]

Putting aside all the acrimony of this weekend, of the hurtful accusations that have flown back and forth regarding false allegations/ likelihood of child abuse, etc, etc....

It seems to me that, as feminists who believe that men should be sharing in childcare and housework and are raising our sons to be egalitarian husbands, that we should support an automatic 50/50 split of custody for their benefit and in the interests of equality (except in cases of DV and child abuse).

So I wanted to know how many here believe in that principle of automatic shared custody (but are just put off by FNJ's aggressive tactics and MRA's constant painting of women as false accusers)?

PS. so NOT a troll, been here for yonks , am just trying to sort this out in my head..

I support children's rights. Whatever is best for the child/ren should be the automatic principle.

I'm not sure that 50/50 for school age children is always best tbh - I can imagine splitting your life 50/50 down the middle would be pretty unsettling - but I would support that or something similar to that if it was in the best interest of the child. And of course I believe that children need fathers.

I don't think it is right to have any "automatic" principles when it comes to the care of children. Fundamentally, it has to be about what is in the best interest of the child or children involved. That may be 50/50 shared care between parents, some other split that fits within the needs of the child, also involvement of kinship carers can sometimes form a part. In some instances, limited or no contact with one parent may be in the child's best interest. It's not an exact science and in the not clear cut cases, can be tough to call. However, that's the danger of making any "automatic assumptions" and then working from there. They are quite likely to be the wrong ones, and the child may be stuck in a situation that's not in their best interest until it's proven other wise.

My friend's DSS has lived 50% of time with his mother and 50% with his father since they split when he was 5, and it has worked very well for all involved. All the family have shifted and juggled to make the arrangement work though, but all are committed to making things right for him, not engaging in petty power struggles, and there has never been a question of ensuring safety for anyone involved. He's just turned 13 and is a smashing young man. However, that kind of set up is not going to be in the best interests of every child, be logistically feasible or ensure the safety of all the people involved.

I don't believe in automatic 50/50 unless that was the model of parenting before the split.

All the research available shows that children deal with parental separation best when the status quo can be maintained as much as possible. So if they spent 70% of their time with mum before the split, that's what they should spend with her after.

Similarly, although there are lots of variables at play, many children seem to find 50/50 set-ups very unsettling. It seems to work best when the child stays in the same house and the parents change over. If that seems impractical and unreasonable, I think it should.be worth asking why a child would find it any different. Regardless of the accommodation arrangements though, the one thing that applies to ALL successful 50/50 arrangements is an amicable relationship between the two co-parents in which there are no communication issues. How often do we see that immediately post separation? I don't want to see children caught in the fall out in the name of being fair to the parents. What the child needs is paramount.

I also think we need to move away from the idea of a fair amount of time being 50/50. If you take out time spent at school or with another carer while the mother works and time spent sleeping, quite often mothers don't have time to actually spend with their children that much more than the involved father who has them one night in the week and every other weekend.

All that said, Ido support ideas to bring paternity leave in line with maternity leave, and I'd like to see flexible working encouraged across the board so that more men are able to juggle parenthood and work. If men really pushed for those rights and were more involved with their children, then I hazard a guess that 50/50 residency arrangements would be much more common (though I also suspect that as lot of it would be avoided since the divorce rate would drop also).

If it's really about children rather than men's rights, then why aren't groups like F4J pushing for increased paternity rights and more flexible working?

an automatic 50/50 split of custody for their benefit and in the interests of equality

The decision of how to split custody should not be for the benefit or either parent or to make a point about equality. It should be made according to what is in the best interests of the children. This may or may not be 50-50, depending on all sorts of factors.

Wilson, I guess that is a key issue. Is splitting the child's life 50/50 too unsettling? And if it isn't, then it is obvious that the main custody should go to the person who has been the primary caregiver whilst of course insisting that the non-resident parent has regular access.

Two of my friends have recently divorced from each other and have successfully managed a split down the middle, because they have remained on a friendly basis and are both committed to shared parenting and living near each other. So it really can work and IMO should be the model that the law should adopt. I think that's the law in Scandinavia and it seems to have worked.

The trouble is, I don't know how to express support for genuine fathers who are in pain without endorsing all those horrible allegations that all a woman has to do is make a false allegation of DV/child abuse.

why aren't groups like F4J pushing for increased paternity rights and more flexible working?

For the same reason that anti-abortion groups aren't pushing for free contraception and better sex education, probably (because that would be the best way to bring the abortion rate down, make it so that people who don't want to get pregnant don't get pregnant in the first place). Their actual agenda is different to their professed agenda.

I think there should be flexible working for everyone, male and female, with or without children. And a provision for the right to take a certain amount of unpaid leave (if your child is sick, or if you just don't fancy going in). That way employers will have no reason to assume that a woman with small children is any less "reliable" than a man without children.

"If men really pushed for those rights and were more involved with their children, then I hazard a guess that 50/50 residency arrangements would be much more common (though I also suspect that as lot of it would be avoided since the divorce rate would drop also)."

Sunshine, yes you are so right! I don't know if you remember it but there was this recent survey showing that the more a husband did in terms of housework and childcare the less likelihood of a divorce. When I read it I thought "finally, something that is common sense!" I also remember when I split from my ex I actually experienced a lessening of the childcare load because there were actually days that I had free.

Trills this is the problem I have too - the hypocrisy of right wingers who seek to restrict abortion but offer no support to single mothers, is the same as what stops me completely sympathizing with fathers' rights activists. Although they proclaim to believe in equality (as a footnote) let's not be naive about it - IMO they would be the last people to campaign against the gender pay gap, objectification of women and the unequal division of housework. So I feel a bit surly about supporting them, although that is obviously not a very mature attitude!

It's difficult to articulate that you support the rights that they are (or claim to be) asking for while not actually supporting the individuals who are doing the campaigning or the way in which they are going about it.

I'm opposed to the idea of treating kids like possessions that must be divided equally between parents, with neither getting 1 minute more of the child's time. IMV that isn't putting the child first, it's putting the parents first.

SmellsLike, of course you are right that children are not possessions to be divided up.

But when I think about the pre-Caroline Norton days when the children were quite literally the possession of the father who could divorce the wife and deny her access to the children, no questions asked, I feel not only for the heartbreak of the children but also for the mother, who has dedicated her life to those children only to have them taken away from her.

I can't help but also feel this sympathy to fathers who have a genuine attachment, but through no fault of their own (eg. AbsentFather), have been denied access to their children.

The problem is I don't know how often this happens in reality or how much of it is conflated allegations on behalf of MRAs. I have only personally known one man that this happened to. He had been "wrongfully" accused of stalking his ex who subsequently denied him access. At first I had incredible sympathy for him until I had to get the police onto him to stop him stalking me!

So I really don't know what the truth is here

messy, you might like to take a look at this thread which discusses contact arrangements, as well as the numerous Louis de Bernieres threads around at the moment.

I think what scares me is that the public perception seems to be generally that men don't have adequate father's rights (see the guardian poll link at the beginning of that thread).

That in itself wouldn't be as bad if it weren't for the fact that nowhere near the same amount of outrage has been generated about fathers who abandon children, mess about with contact, or refuse to pay maintenance.

Rights should not be promoted over responsibilities. Lone parents currently have several rights but all the responsibility, which they cannot fail to meet (quite rightly) or they will end up losing their children or being imprisoned. Non-resident parents are having their rights increased without any mention of being made to live up to their responsibilities. That's not fair on the children - let alone the resident parent.

absolutely sunshine, on this thread, somebody had the stupid suggestion that in the case of an unreliable father who may or may not come to pick his children up, the mother should arrange quiet craft activities for that day, so that the children would be ready and available should the father decide to turn up.

The mother would have the legal responsibility to make sure her kids are ready, and certain fathers rights group would like it so that she would be severely punished by fines, prison sentences and even losing custody of the children if she fails in that legal responsibility. The father only has the right to turn up, he doesn't have to and nothing would happen to him if he didn't. No fines, no prison sentences, nothing.

Fathers rights push for a mother refusing contact to be classed as a form of child abuse, they are highly resistant to the idea of a father refusing to see his children, as a form of child abuse.

So for me, it's not just the tactics used by certain fathers rights groups, it's the fact that what they're pushing for is not equal treatment for mothers and fathers, but for mothers (who are usually the resident parent) to be lumped with all the legal responsibilities and very few rights, and for fathers to have all the rights and very few legal responsibilities.

''I can't help but also feel this sympathy to fathers who have a genuine attachment, but through no fault of their own (eg. AbsentFather), have been denied access to their children. ''

I thought AbsentFather chose to discontinue contact because he disliked being made to go for a psychiatric assessment.

How many men are denied access through no fault of their own?

I agree with SGM. Again.

My sister and I were subject to a custody arrangement when my parents split up. It wasn't 50/50, it was every other weekend with our father. We would have been devastated if we had been forced to spend half the time living with our dad, even though he was (and, indeed is) a perfectly nice man and was a benevolent presence in our lives. But my mum did the lion's share of the child care while they were together, so that's what we were used to and what we preferred (besides, neither my sister nor I were very keen on my dad's new partner).

Even with that arrangement, my sister became depressed and hated going to stay with my dad - eventually my dad agreed with my mum that she didn't have to stay with him if she didn't want to - it was making her ill (she was prescribed with anti-depressants for a time). As I got older, I got fed up with having to up-sticks every other weekend when I preferred to be near my friends, so I stopped going regularly as well.

Automatic 50/50 care would have been the last thing we would have wanted at that time.

I think the children's preferences have to be respected and each case should be judged on its merits.

Immaculada I think that's a really good point, often when people split when the children are young an agreement gets put in place that then doesn't work when the children become older and want to spend the weekends doing their own thing. Whatever the agreement is at the point of the split, it needs to be able to adapt to the DCs changing needs too.

When I mentioned on here a few years ago that dh would be a sahd, I was told by a number of posters it was a bad idea as it meant if we split, dh would probably get custody and I would have to pay maintenance. That did, and still does , piss me off.

I think the primary carer will tend to get increased custody in a split, and that is right for children. But the other parent shoykd still be able to be involved. And that parent still has both rights and responsibilities. I never cease to be amazed when I hear of families where the man barely wants to help his previously sahw cover basic costs, never mind additional costs. But he still wants the kids every weekend. Wtf?!

Yanbu, all the hysteria over the past few days has been thoroughly depressing.

I'm also on the children's rights side.

I was a child of divorce, a 50-50 split in my case would have been disastrous. Why would you want to put men in front of children? I can't really understand that. Children aren't possessions that can be divided equally, they have their own lives which need to be respected.

I was involved in a 50-50 split after divorce. It worked for a number of reasons. I was 16. My parents lived close together. Neither was abusive. They both wanted it and worked at it. It was a pain in the arse remembering school uniform and the like though.

However, my mother was far and away the primary carer. She organized us, cooked for us, picked us up when we fell, was our rock. Yet she sacrificed having us with her more permanently because she thought it was best for us. I think that is a much more common scenario than women preventing access to perfectly good fathers.

I don't see it as a Feminist issue - and yes, people can lose sight of the fact that it's not about the fathers or the mothers, it's about the children.

I had shared custody of my oldest 3 with their father for years and it worked very very well - but only because we liked and talked to each other, and worked hard at the communication. It must be a bloody nightmare for kids where the parents can't talk to each other.

dh and i don't work 50/50 in all aspects of our lives, even wrt the children so I don't think if we split him having 50% custody would work at all tbh