| In the western world,
the media has established Divorce Reporting as a profitable branch
of the entertainment industry. What is rarely reported is the suicide epidemic amongst boys who are raised without their fathers. Ozzie prime minister, John Howard, is now leading the debate on the introduction of rebuttable joint parenting legislation by December. |
|
GIVE DAD A GO
By MICHELLE CAZZULINO and ANGELA KAMPER YOUNG
boys need a male role model in their lives, Prime Minister John
Howard said yesterday, paving the way for broad-ranging changes to
child custody laws. He said this was exacerbated where there were no close uncles or relatives because there were now fewer male teachers. It is a view that has led him to consider allowing immediate joint-custody to divorced dads and mums. He said that too often young boys were growing up without a significant male role model until well into their teenage years. While still happily married, Chris Richard yesterday said playing a major part in the life of his three-year-old son Nicholai was important to him. Mr Howard said the proposed review would consider whether joint custody should be awarded automatically in cases where both parents are deemed fit and able to continue caring for their children. "We should be willing to have another look at it," Mr Howard said. "If a boy lives with his mother, sees little of his father, has no older brothers or close uncles or close family male adult friends and typically might go to a primary school where there are very few male teachers, it's often not until the boy is 15 or 16 that he comes across a male role model with which he can identify," he said. The Family Court currently determines custody on a case-by-case basis, according to the best interests of the child. In cases where the mother was the primary caregiver and the father rarely saw his sons, they were more likely to miss out on spending important time with one another, Mr Howard said. Mr Richard, from Alexandria, said if he were a single dad it would be important for him to see his son regularly. "A father figure is important to make them feel loved and give them extra strength when they need it," he said. "If the father's happy because he is seeing his kids then the kids are happy too." While the proposal was criticised by the Federal Opposition, it was welcomed by the Shared Parenting Council, a lobby group comprising several men's rights organisations. Federal director Geoffrey Greene, who shares custody of his two children with his former partner, said his son, in particular, was "thriving" under the arrangement. "He's at the top of his class at school and I'm able to be there for him when he needs me," Mr Greene said. "Parents who separate haven't committed a crime, so the fact that they're in a court scenario [to determine custody of their children] doesn't make sense at all. "We'd like to see a system of mandatory mediation put in place as well, so that the best interests of the child can be served . . . by allowing them to have day-to-day interaction with both parents." Statistics showed the Family Court ordered joint custody in only 3 per cent of cases. In 76 per cent of cases, the mother was awarded custody, while the father got custody 21 per cent of the time. But Labor's legal affairs spokesman Robert McClelland said it was the responsibility of judges, not politicians, to decide which parent was best placed to care for their children. His arguments were endorsed by Sole Parents Union president Kathleen Swinbourne, who said factors like finances and the distance between the parents' homes had to be considered before a single resolution was applied to all cases. "We would all like fathers to take more responsibility . . . but this is not the way to do it," she said. "Joint custody is not in the interests of the children in every situation." For 30-year-old Surry Hills first-time father Ian Cuttance, the thought that he might not have access to his 10-month-old daughter Tamara Grace every day was completely unthinkable. Mr Cuttance described his only child as "the love of my life" and said he had taken a year off work as a chef so he wouldn't miss anything during her first 12 months. "She gets up at 6am every morning, and I get up with her," he said. "People think I'm crazy for doing it, but I don't mind it's excellent. "She took her first steps a fortnight ago she was just watching the pigeons in the park and then off she went. "She really is the best thing that's ever happened to me and I can't imagine what my life would be like without her." |
| Julian Fitzgerald,
International Contact for Fathers-4-Justice, wrote: "There are no doubt many lessons to be learnt by us, and many developments which will arise over the coming months in Australia and here in the Uk as a result of this breakthrough. One thing is already for sure, once the dam is broken through this legitimising of the public debate by politicians and opinion formers, those professionals who have illegally ruled our family lives look strangely naked in the glare of publicity, their ideas threadbare and worn, seething with patent contradictions. Another important point to note is that even Geoffrey and all the other family rights activists over in Australia have been knocked out by the enormous public interest and outpourings in the media. It has quite literally been on and off the No.1 spot in almost all the media down there, throughout the week. It is my belief that this is due to the psychology of suppression, the subject has literally been taboo over there, just as it has been here, off-limit in many circles, but the number of people direly touched by family rights abuses inflicted by the state is in fact HUGE. Once the debate is legitimised from the top, the flood waters break. In this context, all credit has to go to F4J in England (www.fathers-4-justice.org) for achieving massive media interest and coverage without such support from the top so far. I believe that help will be coming our way, both through tie-ups with the Murdoch press, and through bilateral contacts between Australian and British MPs, over the coming months. However one way we can all help spur on and globalise this initiative ourselves is to write to our own MPs with information, copies of the Australian Hansard and useful press reports from Australia, so that they are aware both of the importance of the issue in Australia, and its political feasibility - opinion polls are showing percentage support for the rebuttable joint parenting proposals in the high seventies and mid eighties - this has got to mean something to any politician, and was again not something that politicians were aware of prior to the prime ministerial announcement. One of the convincing arguments at Cabinet level in Australia was apparently that the proposals would result in AUS$55 billion of benefits to the Australian economy over a ten-year period, which when scaled up to the size of the British economy, is more than a trifle. In human terms, this means more money to families, less money to professionals and institutions raking around the detritus of family breakdown, induced by the present discriminatory family law." Julian Fitzgerald, Fathers 4 Justice, 24jun03 Julian can be contacted via Email: julianf@fathers-4-justice.org |
Archive material:
Equal
Opportunities for children - "A
good man is hard to find" in The Guardian 20mar96 ;
" How will Tommy
learn to care if he has no access to male role models?"
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