The
CPC at their recent convention finally got around to modifying their
policy as follows. The lower of the two clauses below has new
wording added: "and/or shared parenting, "
This is a step
forward but I get the impression from this and our CEPC President's recent
contact with the PMO they don't understand the difference between
"shared" and "equal" parenting. Shared could be divided as 90% mom % 10%
dad. Joint is a legal fallacy which states mom gets sole physical
custody but dad has some legal say. In practice this does not work.
Possession is 10/10 of the law.
We will continue our lobbying
effort to get a government bill for equal parenting. There are two main
opponents. Feminists and Feminist who are lawyers, in addition to the
Canadian Bar Association (CBA), who of course have a vested interest in
the winner take all status quo as they will lose business.
Those who think feminists are
all about equality haven't read some of their misandric briefs full of
mendacity and misleading statistics, some imported from similar
feminist briefs in Australia, who do have a watered down shared
parenting law. In fact Tasha
Kheiriddin a colleague of Ms. Kay at the National Post
uses some of those same spurious statistics to oppose equal parenting.
Google the name of Pamela Cross for the lead Feminist Lawyer who uses
ideology not fairness in her role fighting Equal Parenting.
I was
a stay-at-home dad for 10 years running, and a damn good one, until my
heart was torn out by the gender apartheid used in the social
services/justice system that cares not one whit for good fathers having
equality in parenting even when they were the parent who raised the
children. They also cannot care for the newly fatherless children.
I
was watching "The Game of Thrones" on Sunday and one of the players
tried to explain the pain they felt. To paraphrase: "It was like
someone tore out my heart and then squeezed it before my eyes." It
summed up, in a short phrase, what it felt like to lose my children as a
legal parent and the squeezing was done over a period of 4 years by the
court system and their apparatchiks until a Judge decided I was
stronger emotionally than my ex, therefore there was a power imbalance
and I was unfit for equal parenting. He did what most chivalrous judges
do, and yes it is misplaced chivalry even by conservative judges, in
Canada without any reference to what is really best for children. I
went from a full time legal dad to a visitor of 3 hours a week and every
other weekend, which is the standard sentence for fathers who are
guilty of nothing more than being male.
The system will adapt
despite the misandry by feminists like Pamela Cross and her legal
cohorts and the vested interests of lawyers represented by the CBA.
The Conservative party of Canada recently modified section 69 of their policy on shared parenting to the wording in the lower version.
RESOLUTION A – 051
EDA
– Oshawa; Whitby-Oshawa; Ajax-Pickering; Pickering-Scarborough East;
Durham; Northumberland-Quinte West; Haliburton-Kawartha-Brock;
Peterborough
Section K – Social Policy (MODIFICATION)
69. Shared Parenting
The
Conservative Party believes that in the event of a marital breakdown,
the Divorce Act should grant joint custody, unless it is clearly
demonstrated not to be in the best interests of the child. Both parents
and all grandparents should be allowed to maintain a meaningful
relationship with their children and grandchildren, unless it is
demonstrated not to be in the best interest of the child.
69. Shared Parenting
The
Conservative Party believes that in the event of a marital breakdown,
the Divorce Act should grant joint custody and/or shared parenting,
unless it is clearly demonstrated not to be in the best interests of the
child. Both parents and all grandparents should be allowed to maintain a
meaningful relationship with their children and grandchildren, unless
it is demonstrated not to be in the best interest of the child.
Barbara Kay
Jun 15, 2011 – 7:30 AM ET
|
Last Updated: Jun 14, 2011 4:36 PM ET
Shania Twain recently published a memoir detailing her anguish at
her ex-husband’s affair with her best friend. In the end, Shania found
happiness with the friend’s betrayed husband, by her account a
straight-arrow guy, a terrific father to his own daughter and a
much-admired step-father to her sons.
She writes, “What attracted me to Fred was his selflessness. He was
going through the same agony as I was — maybe even worse, because as a
father, he would have to battle his soon-to-be ex for the right to see
his own daughter. At least that was something I never had to face.”
Reflect on Shania’s words a moment, and perhaps you will be struck,
as I was, by this statement’s lack of critical introspection or even
indignation.
Why is it that Shania accepts with such fatalism that the custody of
her daughter will never be at issue, whereas this selfless man will have
to “battle” for access to his child? Because that is the way things
still are in family courts in the West, and even celebrities with the
clout to arouse public outrage have absorbed the received wisdom that if
one parent resists shared parenting for any reason whatsoever — it is
usually the mother, and the reasons can be trivial or non-existent — the
mother is awarded sole custody. (In reality, nobody is awarded anything through such judgments; on the contrary, one parent and his children have been taken away from each other).
In 1995, 49,000 American men were primary caregivers to their
children. In 2010 154,000 men were. Pampers is now using fathers in
their diaper ads. Almost 10 years ago, in a sample of 32,000 parents,
Health Canada found that working fathers and mothers spend virtually
equal time on child care.
So gender convergence is the rule for non-divorced parents, and equal
parenting is now the rule for divorces that don’t go to trial. Why is
it not the presumptive norm for those that do go to trial, after which
mothers get sole custody nine out of 10 times?
It is clear to any disinterested observer who immerses himself in the
subject that almost the only opponents to equal parenting are misandric
ideologues and those financially invested in the family court system
itself, which would see a drastic reduction in revenue from the
professional gold mine all-or-nothing custody battles represent.
Reliable surveys tell us that over 70% of Canadians want a
presumption of shared or equal parenting in law (in the absence of
abuse). But family courts have not caught up with reality. Many judges
are still in thrall to stubborn myths: that men demand custody rights to
punish their ex-wives or to avoid child support; that they easily
disengage from their children; or that awarding men equal rights
represents a “patriarchal backlash” (even though few men ask for sole
custody, only shared) and children do just as well with one parent as
two. Wrong on all counts.
Edward Kruk, associate professor of social work at the University of
British Columbia, has been studying the changing role of fathers and the
problems of father absence for 30 years. His latest book, Divorced Fathers: Children’s Needs and Parental Responsibilities,
illuminates the tragic toll on fathers first removed from their
children’s lives by a biased legal system, and then unsupported by a
social services network that is almost wholly indifferent to fathers’
rights and feelings.
According to multiple studies, displaced fathers are overwrought at
the loss of contact with their children. They are far more likely to
become depressed or unemployed. Worse, suicide rates amongst fathers
struggling to maintain a parenting relationship with their children are
“epidemic.” Divorced fathers are more than twice as likely to kill
themselves as married fathers. But since men tend to suffer in silence,
the depth of their despair goes unnoticed.
Kruk calls the crisis of father absence — for both fathers and the
children they are torn from — “one of the most significant and powerful
trends of this generation.” Children now form primary attachments to
both parents. Losing their father’s active participation in their lives
is enormously consequential. Trustworthy research demonstrates that
children deprived of a meaningful father role are at far greater risk of
physical, emotional and psychological damage than those actively
parented by their fathers. Children fare better with equal parenting
even where there is conflict between the parents; it is only
child-directed conflict that hurts children.
Kruk’s findings reveal that ironically, precisely because they have
taken on equal responsibility for parenting before divorce, men who lose
their parenting role now suffer far more grievously than they used to
20 years ago when he wrote his first book, Divorce and Disengagement. He
argues for a paradigm shift, away from a rights-based discourse to a
framework of “responsibility to needs,” in which both children’s needs
and parental and institutional responsibilities to them would be
enumerated.
Kruk rather poignantly asks: “Why are parents with no civil or
criminal wrongdoing forced to surrender their responsibility to raise
their children?” and “Is the removal of a parent from the life of a
child, via legal sole custody, itself a form of parental alienation?”
Good questions, especially since equal parenting has been part of the
Conservative policybook since the party’s rebirth. What’s the delay?
Over to you, Mr. Harper.
National Post
Posted in: Full Comment, Social Issues
Tags: Barbara Kay, child custody, court, courts, custody, divorce, Family Law, fathers, fathers rights, Shania Tawin
8. Sets up a ‘truth and reconcilliation’
commission to investigate serious allegations of child abuse by the
system, the failure to keep records on the outcomes for children, the
use of violence on children authorised by Judges, Cafcass and NYAS to
make them comply with court orders and the cover up of serious
allegations of child abuse by professionals working within family law. 
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