Fathers are a resource in the fight to end child poverty (again)

The CSF's objection to Shared Parenting from the postings on here appear to rely on the misconceived notion that all parents need is their or similar organisations "holistic" care to see sense. Sadly, we know that mediation and therapeutic care is seldom successful unless both parents participate from an equal footing because the parent with control seldom wishes to (as they see it) relinquish that control, why would they.

This emphasis by the CSF on "high quality" relationship with both parents is fine but does not understand that a "high quality" relationship can only come about if there is substantial caring time by both parents and in an environment that values both parents as equally important to children.

The continued use by CSF of increasingly discredited terms such as "(children) possessions to be divided in two" are unhelpful and wrong and merely play well only to the ignorant and politicised rather than the child focussed.

Unless you have a Presumption of Shared Parenting as many forward looking countries have and are moving towards who are child focussed, you are left with a system that gives control to one of the parents with the result that significant numbers of those 'controlling' parents will abuse that responsibility with the consequence of harming many children.

Shared Parenting is not 50:50 or "dividing children in two" as the CSF mischeviously refer to it, it is about allowing children to see both of their parents as equally important in their lives and allowing children to have a "high quality" relationship with both of their parents, that might be equal parenting time or it will mean in most cases alternate weekends/mid-week and holidays. However, both parents will be seen and know they are equal in the eyes of the law and in their children's lives whatever the individual arrangements made for a family.

Please note the following in depth research from December 2008 which can be got from the University of Columbia if you email them:

JB

http://www.thespec.com/article/542365

"Especially devastating are the long-term effects of court orders that essentially cut one parent out of children's lives – usually the dad – in a misguided effort to foster peace between warring parents, the report says.

Citing a host of North American studies, Kruk's report points to the long-term dangers: Some 85 per cent of youth in prison are fatherless; 71 per cent of high school dropouts grew up without fathers, as did 90 per cent of runaway children. Fatherless youth are also more prone to depression, suicide, delinquency, promiscuity, drug abuse, behavioural problems and teen pregnancy, warns the 84-page report, a compilation of dozens of studies around divorce and custody, including some of his own research over the past 20 years.

"Parent-child bonds are formed through daily routines – preparing breakfast, taking the child to school, having dinner, getting ready for bed. Without that, it's very difficult for parents to have any real connection with their kids," Kruk said in a telephone interview from B.C. "It's so destructive for children to have a loving parent removed from their lives."

The effects of divorce on kids are now so well documented, significantly more couples separating today are opting for "equal shared parenting" – voluntary custody arrangements in which the children live with each parent roughly half the time, says Kruk. While a landmark federal study, For the Sake of the Children, recommended that approach back in 1998 and it has since been adopted by other countries, including Australia, it's still rarely used by Canadian judges and needs to be made law, except where there are extenuating circumstances, such as domestic violence or mental health issues that make one parent unfit, says Kruk.

Instead, most judges still rely on a "winner takes all" approach in custody battles. In some three-quarters of cases, judges grant sole custody to mothers, believing that it's impossible for warring parents to make shared custody work, Kruk's report finds. That's despite a growing body of research that shows animosity and even physical violence can increase "significantly" when one parent has sole control, says the report, Child Custody, Access and Parental Responsibility: The Search for a Just and Equitable Standard.

Even court-ordered "joint custody" is really a misnomer, Kruk's report shows. In fact, the non-custodial parent – usually the father – ends up with just a few days a month (typically every second weekend and every Wednesday) with the children. While research shows even that minimal sharing of time actually forces warring parents to lay down their arms and work together on "parenting plans" that work best for each of them and their kids, says Kruk, it makes it far more difficult for the non-custodial parent to develop a strong bond with their kids.

Research has shown that women and men work comparable amounts of time outside the home and now devote almost the exact amount of time – 11.1 hours a week and 10.5 hours a week respectively – to child care, with men playing a key role in their children's upbringing, says Kruk. Yet divorce lawyers openly tell fathers not to waste their time and money seeking equal custody, unless they can prove the mother is unfit.

All of which gives one parent a huge psychological advantage over the other, and incentive to fight to the death – in some cases actually alienating the kids from the other spouse – to win what comes to be seen as their "property," says Kruk.

But there are signs even mothers are at risk, Kruk warns. He's now studying 14 Vancouver-area women who have lost custody of their kids to their ex-husbands, in some cases because fathers argued that demanding careers kept the women away from home too much. Surprisingly, those women are now teaming up with fathers' right groups to push for legislation making equal, shared parenting the norm.

"No court order can make people get along," says Justice Harvey Brownstone who wrote the book Tug of War on divorce in Canada. He has seen cases over the past 14 years in which courts imposed shared parenting, only to have one parent refuse to take the child to his hockey game or administer medication as a way to make their viewpoint known to the ex-spouse.

"Parents who are hell-bent on undermining each other's relationship with the child will inevitably find a way to create conflict, which most often results in further litigation, which in turn prolongs the child's exposure to a parental tug of war."

'• karenwoodall Yesterday (26th December 2009) 09:06 PM'

Karen yet again you restate your case for the present status quo in family law to continue, except that you ask for the CSF holistic care be offered across the whole of the UK. You again state your opposition to the notion of a presumption of Shared Parenting.

The substantial majority and increasing number of parents and would-be parents who believe and also action in their own lives shared parenting are interested in the 'real lives of children' and not campaigning soundbites. They know that when both parents are meaningfully involved with their children it is better for the children, which is why nowadays fathers care for their children near or many times more than mothers do within relationships.
- Equal Opportunities Commission Gender Index of July 2007, which reported that fathers spent on average just 16 minutes less each day than mothers in looking after their children. -

We all agree that the research shows that a high quality relationship with both parents after separation is best for children. However, where we part company is on the definition of that high quality relationship. I would say that high quality relationships depend on sufficient time for parent and child to spend ordinary and fun times with each parent - i.e. children sleeping, eating, working and playing in each home, each parent listening and talking to the children, the parents sharing the big decisions about the children's lives, each parent being involved in the children's schools, sport, music and other activities, each parent being fully aware of the physical, intellectual and emotional health of the children, and children being part of two extended families grandparents, uncles and aunts, cousins, friends. - This is what a high quality relationship is and it takes sufficient time with both parents to achieve the best environment for children.

Your anecdotes provided and sweeping statements from you that shared parenting only works when parents are flexible, cooperative and relaxed is in stark contrast to the experiences of many of us who work in family law and with children. The research would also conflict with your views.
- Children in joint custody arrangements fare significantly better on all adjustment measures than children who live in sole custody arrangements. The fact that joint custody couples also reported less current conflict is important because of the concern that joint custody can be harmful by exposing children to ongoing parental conflict. In fact, it was the sole-custody parents who reported higher levels of current conflict.
- Worth repeating '-In fact, it was the sole-custody parents who reported higher levels of current conflict.'
A Meta Analytic Review. Robert Bauserman, Journal of Family Psychology 2002; 16: 91-102 http://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/releases/fam-16191.pdf

Are you trying to tell us when you mention the 6,000 families you say you work with each year that most of them are in shared care arrangements as opposed to the present model you champion of primary carer and NRP, that would be extraordinary! Yet you say this experience ensures you 'know' what is best for children in the UK, again against the body of research that shows Shared Parenting is better for children in all areas of their lives.

It is ironic that you put yourself on the European Shared Parenthood Network, when you oppose Shared Parenting so vociferously.

It would appear that in your cheer leading for the status quo of one parent cares (usually mother) and the other is a visitor (usually father) in the lives of their children, that your holistic care is in reality just another way to persuade and pressure the children and father to accept limited time together while reassuring mother that she is in control.

Child Wellbeing / Education / Parental Inclusion

From a child wellbeing perspective, children achieve more academically and likely be better psychologically adjusted when both parents are encouraged to take an equal role in their development, day-to-day care and schooling. A policy of family law which marginalises or excludes one parent isn't in children's best interests. Below are a number of academic and scientific studies which support that shared care (meaning equal parental involvement, and not necessarily equal parenting time) is in children's best interests. To achieve this, both parents need to have involvement in midweek care as well as time during holidays and weekends.

1. ‘The Role of Father Involvement and Mother Involvement in Adolescents' Psychological Well-being’ - Dr Eirini Flouri and Dr Ann Buchanan, British Journal of Social Work (2003) 33, 399-406

This study of 2,722 British adolescents aged 14–18 years explored whether paternal involvement can protect against low levels of well-being even when maternal involvement and risk and protective factors are controlled for. Results showed that although both father and mother involvement contributed significantly and independently to offspring happiness, father involvement had a stronger effect. Furthermore, the association between father involvement and happiness was not stronger for sons than for daughters. There was no evidence suggesting that family disruption weakens the association between father involvement and happiness, or that father involvement is more strongly related to offspring happiness when mother involvement is low rather than high.

2. ‘The role of father involvement in children's later mental health’ - Dr Eirini Flouri and Dr Ann Buchanan. Journal of Adolescents (2002) Published by Elsevier Science Ltd.

Data on 8441 cohort members of the National Child Development Study were used to explore links between father involvement at age 7 and emotional and behavioural problems at age 16, and between father involvement at age 16 and psychological distress at age 33, controlling for mother involvement and known confounds. Father involvement at age 7 protected against psychological maladjustment in adolescents from non-intact families, and father involvement at age 16 protected against adult psychological distress in women. There was no evidence suggesting that the impact of father involvement in adolescence on children's later mental health in adult life varies with the level of mother involvement.

3. ‘Early father's and mother's involvement and child's later educational outcomes’ - Dr Eirini Flouri and Dr Ann Buchanan. British Journal of Educational Psychology (2004)

BACKGROUND: Few studies have investigated the individual long-term contributions that mothers and fathers make to their children's schooling. AIMS: (1) To explore the role of early father involvement in children's later educational attainment independently of the role of early mother involvement and other confounds, (2) to investigate whether gender and family structure moderate the relationship between father's and mother's involvement and child's educational attainment, and (3) to explore whether the impact of father's involvement depends on the level of mother's involvement. SAMPLE: The study used longitudinal data from the National Child Development Study. The initial sample were those 7,259 cohort members with valid data on mother involvement at age 7, father involvement at age 7, and school-leaving qualification by age 20. Of those, 3,303 were included in the final analysis. METHOD: The measures were control variables, structural factors (family structure, sibship size and residential mobility), child factors (emotional/behavioural problems, cognitive ability and academic motivation), and father's and mother's involvement. RESULTS: Father involvement and mother involvement at age 7 independently predicted educational attainment by age 20. The association between parents' involvement and educational attainment was not stronger for sons than for daughters. Father involvement was not more important for educational attainment when mother involvement was low rather than high. Not growing up in intact two-parent family did not weaken the association between father's or mother's involvement and educational outcomes. CONCLUSION: Early father involvement can be another protective factor in counteracting risk conditions that might lead to later low attainment levels.

4. ‘Life satisfaction in teenage boys: The moderating role of father involvement and bullying’ – Dr Eirini Flouri and Dr Ann Buchanan. The International Society for Research on Aggression (2002) Aggressive Behaviour published by Wiley Interscience

It has been suggested that bullying at school and low social support are related to relatively poor mental health in schoolchildren. Based on data from 1344 adolescent boys aged 13-19 years in Britain, this study explored whether father involvement, as an underestimated - in the related research - source of social support, can protect against low levels of satisfaction with life. Multiple regression analysis showed that low father involvement and peer victimization contributed significantly and independently to low levels of life satisfaction in adolescent boys. There was also evidence relating to a buffering effect of father involvement in that father involvement protected children from extreme victimization.

5. ‘Involved Fathers Key For Children’ – Dr Eirini Flouri and Dr Ann Buchanan for The Economic and Social Research Council (2002)

Girls whose fathers are involved in their upbringing are less likely to have mental health problems in later life whilst good father relations can prevent boys from getting into trouble with the police says new research released during National Science Week 2002 which runs from 8 -17 March.

'Good father-child relationships are associated with an absence of emotional and behavioural difficulties in adolescence and greater academic motivation too' say Dr Eirini Flouri and Ann Buchanan co authors of the research. 'Teenagers who have grown up feeling close to their fathers in adolescence also go on to have more satisfactory adult marital relationships' she adds.

The ESRC funded research at the Department of Social Policy and Social Work, University of Oxford aimed to discover whether it could back up previous US research showing positive outcomes for children whose fathers were more 'involved' in their care. 'An involved father is one who reads to his child, takes outings with his child, is interested in the child's education and takes an equal role in managing his child' explains Dr Flouri. 'That does not necessarily mean that he lives with the child's mother or is even the biological father of the child' she adds.

The research also shows that a good relationship with the father or father figure can also protect against adolescent psychological problems in families where the parents have separated. 'There was a particularly strong association between father involvement with daughters during adolescence and a lack of psychological distress in adult life' says Dr Flouri. 'For boys who have involved fathers it was quite marked that they were less likely to be in trouble with the police as they grew older' she adds.

The study also showed that early father involvement is associated with continuing involvement throughout childhood and adolescence. 'At different ages fathers relate to their children in different ways but the underlying concept of father involvement is a continuous one' says Dr Buchanan. 'Generally speaking the higher the father's level of educational attainment the more 'involved' he was with his children' she adds.

6. ‘The Impact of Parental Involvement on Children’s Education’ - The Department for Education and Skills (2003)

Fathers play an extremely important role in their children’s lives and a plethora of research indicates that father involvement is significantly related to positive child outcomes. A father’s interest in a child’s schooling is strongly linked to educational outcomes for the child. Fathers who devote time to their sons are giving them a greater chance to grow up as confident adults. Boys who feel that their fathers devote time, especially to talk to them about their worries, school work and social lives, almost all emerge as motivated and optimistic men. Father involvement in children’s education at age 7 predicts higher educational attainment by age 20, in both boys and girls. For boys, early father involvement protects against delinquency in later life. The involvement of fathers exerts an influence on children’s positive attitudes to school.

7. ‘A Good Childhood: Searching for Values in a Competitive Age’ – The Children’s Society (2009)

Based on the experiences of 30,000 children, the research found that 'a child's performance at secondary school, self-esteem and well being as an adult is linked especially to the father's input' and 'children are 40% more likely to suffer mental health problems when separated from their fathers' and 'On average, children are less likely to fail at school or suffer depression the more they see their separated father.'

crash dive you are really not at all understanding what we are doing at CSF.

I will give you an example.

I have just completed work for a dad who has a joint residence order but who has not seen his son for the past five years. A succession of Cafcass officers, Legal Guardians and so on have been involved but the mother has got the boy to the point where he himself now refuses to see his father, citing incidences from the past as evidence that his father is a bully.

This dad came to us after a long and painful effort through court to establish his legal rights to his time with his son.

We worked with both mother and father from a child centred perspective aiming to understand what the issues were that were getting in the way. We worked with the boy, he told us the same thing that he had told everyone else along the way, he did not want contact with his father, he was a bully.

We reviewed the court papers, particularly the Cafcass and LG reports. It was clear that the evidence for alienation was in place. We began a process of working with the mother to address her issues about the relationship with the father. When it was clear that she was actively blocking not only the relationship between father and son but any outside intervention, we investigated further. Finally, we put in a report to court and accompanied the father. A section 37 report was ordered. The outcome of this process is that the son is now on the child protection register, there were other issues emerging that I cannot write about but the LA are now working on rehabilitation for the son and re-introduction of contact with the father. We will support that process.

Other agencies had turned this dad away. The Cafcass officers had believed the mother, the LG simply cited the child's wish not to see the father. We started from a place of not just looking at the presenting issues but digging deeper to find out what was really going on.

But we still do not start from a place of presumption of shared care or joint residence because as this and many other cases that we work on demonstrate, the law does not guarantee an equal outcome. Further, if just one child is subjected to demands to split their time equally between parents without regard for that child's feelings and needs, we feel that as a society we will have failed.

Our project is not mediation and nor is it simply therapy. It is to work with families to provide the intensive support that each parent needs in order to come to a place where co-operation between them is possible. Where a parent is alienating, as in the case above, we act to offer support but ultimately help the parent who is alienated to achieve what will best benefit the child. Every case is different and every family needs tailored made support.

We are not simply advocating our own position for the sake of it, we work with families every day and make a real difference. This is what is needed on a widescale in the UK.

Presumption is not the holy grail.

would just like to say that the most heartbreaking thing I have ever had to deal with was a father waving a contact order at his daughter whilst demanding that she got on a train to spend two weeks with him. In his mind, shared care means that his daughter will be in his care on time, every time. This girl had just finished school for the holidays, she was exhausted and begging her father to allow her to remain in her home town for a couple of days to see her friends, relax and sleep. She was 12 years old and had been expected to conform to a shared care arrangement for six years. It was difficult to see how, a presumption of shared care, which this father was adamant was the only answer, could deliver anything positive for this girl. I worked with her father, supported him to discharge his fear and anger, persuaded him to stay overnight with his sister and allow his daughter to do what she needed to do. She went with him a couple of days later and thoroughly enjoyed her time with him.

If a presumption of shared care means outcomes that are different to those I describe, it is essential that those who espouse it get their message across to the parents who are enacting their rights. I see far too many mothers and fathers who are locked into asserting their rights through embracing notions of presumption of shared care, the only losers here are children.

Far from being mischievous, CSF is concerned with a long term project of helping children to have strong and flexible relationships with both of their parents. We are not seeking to change the world, just the lives of children who are deeply affected by their parents separation. That we do not agree with the presumption of shared care comes not from any other source than two decades of work with families. We know more about how to help parents achieve high quality relationships than most, this is not rhetoric, it is daily practice, underpinned by an indepth understanding of men and women's real lives. Our success is evidenced by the increasing number of families with whom we have worked who are achieving relaxed, co-operative and flexible shared care parenting agreements. We need nothing else to persuade us to continue this project.

Your anecdote says nothing about shared care, again it is about the importance of flexibility in caring for children. The fact that the father you refer to has a contact order implies that he had to go to court at some point to get the specified access to his child. You don't give the cause of the father's fear and anger. Could it be a fear that if he didn't insist on his court-enforceable 'rights', he may not get any other contact with his daughter in the face of an intransigent mother?

No actually, in this case it was not. Like many parents who are unable to deal with the end of their adult relationship, these two were hell bent on hurting each other as much as possible using their child as the weapon. These two were highly paid people, had spent thousands on litigation attempting at every twist and turn to outsmart each other and ensure that there was as much suffering done as possible. The in court process had taken two years and it was in mediation that they had agreed a shared care arrangement and had it ratified in court as part of their divorce settlement.

Over the years this had been stuck to rigidly by both parties and the girl's experience had been completely overlooked. By the time she was 12 years old she had had enough of moving between homes and wanted things to change to suit her. Her mother told her she would have to sort it out with her father and her father demanded that she stuck to the same arrangements because he had the right to shared care. These two had completely lost the plot in terms of their child's welfare and in terms of the advice they were getting, which was focused either around dad's right to have the child or mum's right to deny the that. Mediation had helped them agree something in the past but had little to offer in the present or on an ongoing support basis.

This is why we are arguing for wholesale change to the way in which parents are supported. Family separation is not just a one off event, its a process in which one or the other or both parents can get stuck in conflictual positions which leave their children floundering in the middle.

Presumption of shared care is not the holy grail. It cannot change anything for parents who are determined to overlook their children's well being. A shared residence order did nothing for the dad I have been working with who has been excluded from his son's life for nine years. In working with this man, it has taken me almost a year to get a section 37 order in place, thereby restoring his contact with extensive support from Social Services. I fully understand the grief and dreadful suffering of those parents who are actively excluded from their children's lives, I work with those families every day too. But I still do not believe that presumption of shared care will make anything different for them.

The only answer to this deeply entrenched problem is intensive support to both parents to enable them to build a co-operative, flexible arrangement that meets their children's needs over time. This approach is urgently needed and very much resisted in the UK and yet in Europe, it is available widely.

With a change of government I very much hope we might get the chance to develop our support services more widely. I hope so, because at present there is too little done and its done far too late for too many children.

The difficulty with all of this is that we are expected to reduce arguments down to campaigning soundbites and this is not a one side or the other argument, it is about the real lives of children, who will, one day, be parents themselves.

The evidence from the research shows that children with a high quality relationship with both of their parents after separation are those that fare best. The evidence also shows that the nature of the relationship between children and their father depends upon the relationship between mother and father.

CSF campaigns for a wholesale change in the way that we support separated families, we seek to provide more of the holistic support that we already offer, across the whole of the UK.

We do however, where necessary, oppose the notion of a presumption of shared care in law. We know from the six thousand families we work with on average each year, that shared care only works in the best interests of children when parents are co-operative, flexible and relaxed. It takes a long time to get some families to this place but when they get there the outcomes for children are extremely positive. Interestingly, the outcomes for the adults involved are also positive as they are not enmeshed with each other, can communicate effectively and are not dragged back into a quagmire of old arguments each time one party wants to change arrangements.

I would wholeheartedly agree that what is needed are therapeutic support services to enable parents to negotiate new arrangements together. This is what our services are designed to do and the evaluation from our Parenting Fund project shows that they do it well. We have embedded our philosophy into the Child Maintenance and Enforcement Commission through our delivery of training and we continue to press ahead with our work on the European Shared Parenthood Network bringing together colleagues from eight European Countries to share best practice in post separation support for families.

To my mind, the debate about shared care presumptions or not is an essential part of the reframing of our thinking about family separation. It cannot be about parental rights, it has to be about children's wellbeing.

Incidentally, Gilmore's work concludes that it is not necessarily in the best interests of children to start from an expectation of shared care.

Of course academics do not work in void, each has their own standpoint from which they view the argument, as do you and I!

I make no apologies for the length and depth of my commentary, it is my abiding area of interest. For Duncan's sake however, perhaps we should call a close to this particular thread! If you would like to discuss further do contact me via the Centre for Separated Families.

Karen, thankyou for the references and your (very full) reply. Is the polemic meant to be a reply to my second question? However I’m not sure that your initial assertion is proven by the references you give.

Of the papers you refer to, only Smart et al and Gilmore seem to be concerned directly with the pros and cons of shared care. I couldn’t find full access to Gilmore but, from the abstract and references, that largely seems to be a literature review. Although Smart does give positive and negative examples of shared care, and made very interesting reading, the first sentence of the conclusion is: “Our study was not designed to determine whether one kind of post-divorce residence arrangement was better than another.”

What the papers do seem to agree on is the importance of significant involvement from fathers and the problems caused by parental conflict. Rather than campaign against shared care, surely it would be better for children to campaign for improved access to conflict resolution services for warring parents. By that I don’t just mean mediation, which is too legalistic, but more a counselling-type service where hostile parents could actually be helped to see alternative viewpoints and to recognise the damage being done to their children by their behaviour.

As requested, here are the references to the research around shared care that gives evidence that a presumption of shared care is not in the best interests of our children.

The Centre for Separated Families has been working with families at the point of separation for a decade now and has pioneered new ways of working to enable parents to build co-operative arrangements for children that put their changing needs at the heart of a new parenting partnership. In our experience it takes a significant period of time and input with a parent to enable them to renegotiate the end of their relationship and begin a new way of working together.

Our work is not about parental rights but about helping parents to deliver their ongoing responsibilities. Our work is built upon the research, intensive work with parents themselves and a deep and enduring commitment to enabling parents to successfully deliver what their children need.

It is not about the amount of care that is provided by either parent, it is not about each parent having equal amounts of time with children. It is about parents accepting that their relationship has ended and finding ways of engaging with each other so that they can continue to be present in their children's lives in ways that most benefit.

We acknowledge that fathers have had a rough deal over the past three decades and that many want to be more involved with their children. We accept that mothers must grapple with some difficult issues around identity and control if fathers are going to be more involved. We do not accept that by adding the presumption of shared care into our legislation, we will resolve the tensions already present.

Notions of gender equality are very easy to fall back on when we are having these discussions, but the debate is far more subtle than reducing mothers and fathers to some kind of resource to be deployed in the battle to achieve equality. Children's lives are at stake here and their well being is being negatively affected every day by the relationship crashes that are instigated by parents every day.

The Centre for Separated Families is engaged in a long term project to change the way in which we view family separation in the UK and to build services that meet the real and not the perceived needs of mothers and fathers who separate. We do not feel that parental rights, equal parenting time, presumption of shared care are tools that will bring about the change we are seeking, which is that the next generation of children will not have their lives blighted by decisions made by their parents.

I note that the Conservatives are looking again at marriage and relationship support and I hope that sometime soon we might see in this country, the kind of sensible information and support that parents really need at the point of separation. We urgently need support services that are sensitive to mothers and fathers different needs, that are delivered with compassion and that lead to parents being able to work together through the change that family separation brings.

The message that we are all interdependent is an urgent one for our society. Interdependence can continue to be achieved without taking away individual rights to freedom after separation and those parents who manage those kind of relationships are those who are helped to recover from the end of their adult relationship. When this is achieved, children can and do fare well and go on to build strong adult relationships of their own. We cannot stop people from separating but we can give them the care and the tools that they need to ensure their children are not too negatively affected.

For more information about the Centre for Separated Families services to parents and training for professionals please visit our website at www.separatedfamilies.org.uk

The Centre produces discussion and evidence papers for background reading on our holistic approach to supporting families, these can be found at our website.


For the views of children who have been in shared care arrangements

'Children looked forward to a time when they did not have to live like nomads.'

Drifting towards Shared Residence?
Professor Carol Smart, Dr Bren Neale and Dr Jennifer Flowerdew
Centre for Research on Family, Kinship & Childhood
University of Leeds
Family Law, Vol 33December 2003


For contact itself
Working and Not Working Contact after divorce
Liz Trinder in Children and Their Families, Contact Rights and Welfare – Hart Publishing - 2003

For father involvement
'The mere presence of fathers is not enough … To the
extent that men remain involved in parenting after
separation, or assume parenting practices they have not
done before, they have a positive influence. As in intact
families, the most effective way they can parent is by
providing authoritative parenting … It is these aspects
of parenting, encompassing monitoring,
encouragement, love and warmth, that are consistently
linked with … well-being' (Children in changing families - Pryor and Rodgers, Blackwell 2001).


For overview of shared residence and the arguments for and against shared care
Contact/Shared Residence and Child Well-Being: Research Evidence and its Implications...
Gilmore Int J Law Policy Family.2006; 20: 344-365

For successful shared care
'The main ingredient for making contact work is a co-operative relationship between the separated parents' Hunt and Roberts 2004, Oxford Family Law Review


For the importance of the relationship between children and their non resident father and the key indicator that it is the quality of the relationship between parents themselves that leads to better relationships between NR fathers and children.
BACKGROUND: Children's relationships with their nonresident fathers, and associations between these relationships, children's relationships with mothers and stepfathers, and the children's adjustment were studied in 162 children from single-parent and stepfamilies, selected from a representative community sample in the UK, studied at 2 time points two years apart. METHOD: Children were interviewed about their relationships with their nonresident fathers, mothers and stepfathers; mothers reported on children's adjustment, and other family variables. RESULTS: Positive child-nonresident father relationships were correlated with (a) contact between child and father, (b) the quality of the mother-child relationship, and (c) the frequency of contact between the mother and her former partner. Conflict between child and father was correlated with conflict between child and mother, and child and stepfather. Child-nonresident father contact and relationships were stable over 2 years, and related to children's adjustment; these associations were stronger for children from single-parent families than for those with stepfathers, and for those whose mothers had been first pregnant as teenagers. CONCLUSIONS: Associations between the quality of children's relationships with nonresident fathers and their adjustment need to be considered within the framework of the larger family system; child-father relationships are particularly important for children from 'high risk' families. Dunn et al Journal of Child Psychology 2004

"Consider the research; Carol Smart, Ben Neale, Judy Dunn, Joan Hunt, Liz Trinder and others have shown that children do not fare well when their time is seen as belonging equally to both parents"

Karen, please can you provide links/source of this research?

"Children must not be put in the middle of crusades for parental rights, they are not possessions to be divided into two"
- no, but surely it is better for children to feel that both their parents are of equal importance and this is unlikely to happen if their care is only or nearly all provided by one parent?

I agree that parents must be helped to recover from the emotional and psychological wreckage of the end of a relationship so that they can parent effectively, co-operatively and flexibly. But I also think there are structural barriers that make it much more difficult for parents to do this – this is not unique to separated parents, the structural barriers lock into place the moment a baby is born.

The idea that a child has a single primary carer is built into laws and institutions in a variety of ways and creates a range of incentives for care to be allocated to one person. Take the birth of a baby. Only one parent, the mother, has a formal relationship with services; the status of the father has never been resolved. This lack of definition impacts most on vulnerable families where the parents cannot assert themselves as much; vulnerable new fathers generally get very little support. Then there are the leave entitlements, 52 weeks for mothers and 2 weeks for fathers, described as “working against gender equality” by the Equality & Human Rights Commission. This debate is getting popular: last week the Daily Mail carried the colourful headline, “Anti-dad maternity leave is bad for children and business”.

Separated parenting requires more sharing of earning and caring roles than when parents live together. Both parents have to become able to earn independently and care for the child independently from each other. Whilst there is an infrastructure of support to enable mothers to develop their capacity to earn, there is no such infrastructure to enable fathers to develop their capacity to care independently, a skill many do not have. There is a lack of financial supports for the second parent post-separation to help with the costs of caring for a child; the benefits system is built on the premise that only one parent cares for the child after separation. Long court procedures exacerbate conflict and are a structural contribution to making things more difficult. Professor Patrick Parkinson pointed out last week that in UK we have a uniquely lenient attitude towards relocation of a parent with a child, so creating an obstacle to the other parent providing care.

In all these areas, there is movement, albeit often rather glacial in pace and we are far behind other countries in moving forward. But the direction of travel is clear.

I agree that it is time to have a debate about the issue of parenting after separation and, particularly, the way in which fathers can make a massive difference to children's well being.

However, I would caution against belief that shared care is the core issue that must be resolved, it is not. The core issue is that parents must be helped to recover from the emotional and psychological wreckage of the end of a relationship so that they can parent effectively, co-operatively and most of all flexibly, this is the project that the Centre for Separated Families is concerned with.

Children must not be put in the middle of crusades for parental rights, they are not possessions to be divided into two. Consider the research; Carol Smart, Ben Neale, Judy Dunn, Joan Hunt, Liz Trinder and others have shown that children do not fare well when their time is seen as belonging equally to both parents.

Children fare well when their relationship with both of their parents is of high quality and the factor that leads to high quality is the relationship between mothers and fathers. This is where the focus of post separation support must lie if we are to make things change for children.

We really live in interesting times. We have a generation of politicians who have grown up after the second world war in a welfare state that works for most people and many of whom are parents of young children. Can attitudes be changing?
The need to compensate for past gender inequalities may at last be maturing into something more subtle with the recognition that fathers are a part of a solution to gender equality not an inconvenience that gets in its way!
The recession, and the prospect of a change of government has meant that this debate is at last being had. Australia proves that governments can try new solutions. Labour seems to no longer distrust fathers but is still unable to embrace shared parenting wholeheartedly.The Conservatives are still a bit too tied up with marriage to notice the reality that needs addressing, (though Ian duncan-Smith aring to speak out) but all the trends are in the same direction.
As ever FNF will seek to work with anyone willing to take the agenda forward.

Your point about the "core principle that mothers are the rightful people to be in control of the family" confirms in my mind an idea I have had for a long time - that actually the key issue around fatherhood is how we define motherhood. The issue is not how we see fatherhood per se, it is how we see fatherhood in comparison to motherhood.

In his lecture last week, Professor Patrick Parkinson said that a faultline between the two perspectives - autonomy for separated parents versus continuing responsibilities to their children - was exposed most clearly in how courts deal with relocation of one parent, so taking the child away from the other parent. I noticed that the Commission for Social Justice's report last week, Every Family Matters, states "England is probably the world’s most liberal jurisdiction in making relocation orders."

What are the institutionalised barriers to co-operation that we need to chip away at?

Duncan,

One of the architects of the New Labour policies to support the individual rights of women said to me at a roundtable meeting in 2004 - 'we constructed the policies we believed to be the right thing for women at the time. That we were consigning divorced and separated women to the dual role of carer and provider for children after separation was not something we stopped to fully consider. Now its up to you to reconstruct the policies in order to enable men and women to share the responsibilities after separation.'

The legislation she spoke of has its roots in the Finer Report 1974 in which recommendations were made that mothers who were divorced or separated should no longer be treated as being dependent upon their ex husbands, but should be considered in their own right as being dependent upon the state. The state would then do the work of collecting child maintenance for them. This brought independence for mothers and enabled them to take control of their lives after separation. Of course it also signaled that fathers were not to be trusted and were to play a secondary role in their children's lives after separation.

So much has changed in terms of dads and their children but post separation life still circles around the core principle that mothers are the rightful people to be in control of the family.

The problem is that too many groups supporting separated families in the UK view this core principle as either wholly correct and to be defended or incorrect and to be attacked.

My view is that we must simply unpick this core principle and replace it with one which encourages interdependence and responsibility as well as the individual right to autonomy after family separation. Other EU countries legislate in this way - we continue to learn from colleagues within the European Network for Shared Parenthood - www.puttingchildrenfirst.eu and will be holding a seminar in early 2010 to show how the UK could do the same.

Retaining a recognition of interdependence does not have to mean continuing to be completely dependent upon each other, after all why separate if you are not going to be free to experience autonomy? But one can be a separate individual and continue to recognize and support the ties between children and their wider family. Many mums and dads succeed in renegotiating their relationships in ways that allows a continued sense of family.

If we can take down those institutionalized barriers to co-operation, my guess is that we would find that many more can do just that.

The Child Maintenance Commission has made a brave first step towards doing just this, by changing the culture in which separated parents approach decision making around money after separation. The Options service signals to parents that post separation family life is not about one parent (usually mothers) making all the decisions and the other parent (usually the father) being treated punitively.

The Centre for Separated Families trained the Options service staff to engage with mothers and fathers and continues to train the Commission Executive in equalities based understanding of the lives of separated families. The signs are that this step has already brought a big shift in consciousness and behavioural change between separated parents. I know from the outcomes from Options and our wider work with parents that shifting the focus and changing the language and expectations we have of families does bring about radical change. By supporting parents to overcome the barriers to co-operation that were laid down in the legislation all those years ago, we can and do bring about hugely significant change for children.

Perhaps with your influence and success in campaigns such as Kids in the Middle, you can encourage, persuade, cajole or simply force the change in thinking that is needed. This is where the focus needs to be, all the rest is just tinkering around the edges. It is so long overdue. Good luck.