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http://www.ParentalAlienation.Ca

Tel 905-481-0367

My ex is a wonderful father, which BTW, I tell him all the time. And I applaud fathers who want to spend time with their kids, and I think the system should support them to do so more often.

But I have several other friends, whose kids also have Autism, and those ex’s are just, well, jerks. There are five other moms in my divorced autism moms group; these men have either abandoned their kids, or think that all of the kids’ problems are because of the mothers.

One isn’t paying child support at all; he is unemployed, won’t go to his daughter’s school concert because he puts his two “new” (read: not disabled) kids to bed at night. (I guess his 2nd wife can’t put them to bed one night so that he would be there to support for his daughter.)

Another father has tons of family money, used it to buy a boat that he painted with the Autism puzzle signs and he calls the boat “my little buddy.” Oh, wow, doesn’t that make him a great dad? But he refuses to pay for his son’s therapies, and doesn’t think his son his non-verbal because he is 6 and can say a few words.

Another father took his bipolar son off of psychotropic meds for a week, didn’t tell the mother and she of course gave her son his meds when she returned. Luckily he didn’t have a horrible reaction, which can happen if you don’t taper on and off those kinds of meds. Oh, and the legal system — clearly not a justice system — didn’t grant her medical decision-making power. Every day I get another email from these women with another story of these men being neglectful in nurturing and financing their children.

How do we create a true “justice” system that actually supports children? When we have a legal system that may favor mothers for custody, but not for anything else that I can see.

My perception is that the problem is wrong thinking. Our society has come to think that fathers do not nurture their children – even in intact marriage – but mothers do inately. All parenting skills are learned.

Judges aren’t making custody decisions unless a couple will not come to an agreement. The attorneys are driving the agreement. They are not interested in what’s best for the children involved. They are interested in making sure that niether attorney comes out looking like they’ve lost. So they work together to do what is easiest – coercing the father to let mother have custody and accept that father will have to provide money while only seeing their children 4 to 6 days a month. So father isn’t present when school work needs attention, or when the school bully attacks, or to tuck them in. How can anyone be an effective parent in just a few days/month?

Fathers are often labeled “deadbeat” when they don’t provide the child support ordered. There are numerous reasons why they may not be. Is it any better if a mother is spending the support funds on more television sets, refurnishing rooms in her house several times a year, continually landscaping her yard, or paying $200/month to have her hair done? However, most states have precendent against auditing use of child support funds. Shouldn’t both parents support their children?

In the end, it shouldn’t be about the parents. It’s still a family, even if broken. To remove one parent from a child’s life begins the alienation thought process in the child’s mind. The children are the biggest losers from the fallout of the current thinking. Children want and need BOTH parents.

Here’s some ideas father’s could actually apply instead of playing the victim and blame game. (Be part of the solution instead of the problem)

1. Call and check on your kids, ask how their day went, did they get their homework done.

2. Every weekend doesn’t have to be about play. Anytime or activity can be quality time, whether it’s teaching table manners, or doing yard work toghther or reading a book or guess what sometime kids bring their homework home over the weekend you could participate then. Couldn’t you?

3. Attend school events. Kids like to see you there.

4 Stop playing the victim and take control over your life. Your ex can only do so much. Are you a man or a cope out. You decide

This, at least in California, ends up in resulting in higher child support orders because visitation is a big factor in calculating the child support amount. The logic behind the formula is not to punish the parent that does not see the child, but to account for the fact that when the child is in the care of the non-primary caregiver (usually the father) he/she is supporting the child in kind.

And there seems to be a correlation between high child support orders and likelihood that a parent will not pay.

Look forward to reading more.

It has taken some time to heal and establish our new relationship, but with the dismissal of Ex’s attorney (read fired), we have begun to work out 50/50 living arrangements. I see where the children are blossoming and engaging in both households. I encourage every father to pursue an arrangement “for the children”.

You will find they have questions about divorce – after one year my son asked me “are you and mommy going to move back in together?” Gut wrenching, but I had the opportunity to speak with him and talk through it with him. If I were a weekend Dad, with our weekends packed, I guarantee you that I never would have gotten to this level of understanding with my son.

I vehemently disagree with most of the Family Court rules (mom is always best parent), the misapplication of Deadbeat Dads sins as criminalization of the father’s parental rights, and the general fervor of “Family” Lawyers for attacking the assets of a family who has lost its way by “running up the bills.”

Fathers are truly the ones who lose in divorce; Especially when all they really want is to be Dad and spend time with their children as they grow.

BTW, yes women can get caught up in this too, but the 80-20 rule applies. Where is the fairness in that?

However, and here’s the rub, despite the legal presumption for joint custody and equal physical custody/visitation (where possible given the logistics of the situation), the social workers do not like to recommend equal physical custody. They say that equal time between the parents is ultimately not good for the children for a number of reasons, including (the two most-often cited reasons) that (1) the children never really have a sense of where “home” is if they’re “bouncing back and forth” from week to week, and (2) only parents who don’t really need the court system to tell them what to do in the first place are really willing and able to make a 50/50 arrangement work.

Thus, because of the predilection against 50/50 time between parental households, even where joint custody is recommended (which is most of the time), the parents are seldom given equal access to the children. Instead, most families end up in the situation where one parent (the domiciliary custodian) gets the bulk of the children’s time, while the other parent (which is often, but not always, the father) gets the “Standard Visitation Schedule” of one evening per week and every other weekend, with alternating or shared holidays, etc.

The “mediation” system in our jurisdiction is very successful at settling many cases outside of the courtroom (which is, at least in the short term, good for everyone including the children), but the system has an inherent prejudice of sorts against allowing divorcing/separated parents to have equal access to their children. And I would be very interested in seeing studies that tackle that angle directly — that is, whether 50/50 arrangements are more often good or bad for the children, and comparing those results to other “standard visitation” arrangements.

Great post, and I look forward to reading more on the subject!

First, there is an incredibly strong presumption that the mother be given custody, even when there are other circumstances that suggest that’s not a good idea. In situations where the father is connected with his child, that gives the mother an incredible amount of power because everything else in the agreement begins from a baseline where the mother has control over access to the child.

This power is, in practice, essentially unchecked. As Hans notes above, and as has been the experience of my friend, there is very little sanction to the mother for not cooperating. This is very frustrating for good fathers, and makes them feel like they’re constantly beating their heads against the wall. On top of that, the “Disneyland Dads” phenomenon is real – you can’t really develop a parental relationship in 2 hour chunks of time or in time periods separated by long lapses.

So Solangel, it may be the case that some class of fathers separate because society has made it acceptable to do so. But I think there’s a large group of fathers (probably a lot larger than generally acknowledged) who consistently get the short end of the stick in the system and give up.

Many fathers who want to be involved in their childrens’ lives can’t owing to interference with visitation rights by their ex-spouse.

They are reluctant to use their power to hold the custodial parent in contempt when she refuses to comply with court orders providing for visitation.

Criminal sanctions for even blatant defiance of court visitation orders are often nominal at most; the law often treats systematic refusal to comply with visitation orders as at most a misdemeanor, while treating failure to pay child support as a more serious matter, even it results at least in part from the the loss of a job and related income.

Prosecutors very seldom bring criminal charges for interference with visitation even when there is a criminal law on the books. They are much more interested in pursuing payment of child support.

And in many states (certainly not all), courts can’t revisit their grant of sole custody to the mother based on her refusal to permit visitation, even though refusal to comply with the law and permit a continuing relationship between the child and the other parent can be provide circumstantial evidence of unfitness to have sole custody, and logically should be grounds for reconsideration of who has custody as an example of a material change of circumstances since the original custody order.

So that avenue for encouraging compliance with visitation rights is also absent in many states.

(Note: I am not, and never have been, divorced).

The interaction between law & norms here is also very intriguing. Should there be economic incentives for expanded parenting roles for fathers? I.e., less demand for monetary support from fuller time fathers than from “Disneyland dads”?