KATHRYN Holmquist's article on this page earlier this month, "Does access always work?", prompts the question of whether or not it is time to assess the value of the non custodial parent in a marital separation having access to his child or children in all cases.
The whole debate also throws the spotlight on words like access and custody, words most often used in a criminal context. Is this helpful language to use when talking about how separated parents care for their children?
How do children feel if their Dad - and the non custodial parent is usually a Dad - drops out of their lives and they don't see him any more? Do they feel it as a rejection? Does it hurt? Is it likely to do permanent psychological damage - to harm them more than a bad experience during their contact with him? Does seeing a father only in the presence of someone else downgrade him in their eyes? Does it humiliate him? Does it help in building a relationship - or may it in fact prevent it?
How many fathers whose contact with their children is restricted drift away and lose contact with their kids? Of these how many would have continued to be Dads to their children and have built good relationships with them if the "access" arrangements had been positive not negative? How many fail their children because the system creates unnecessary barriers?
If we were to take at random a hundred separated families with "access" problems and arbitrarily divide them so that 50 fathers saw their children without "supervision" - and 50 saw them only with a supervisor present - how would the two groups turn out? My guess is that most kids who saw Dad only with a supervisor present would have infrequent contact with him at a low emotional level and would not develop a relationship with him. By the time they could dispense with "supervision" it would be too late to build the relationship they needed.
Of the 50 who saw him unsupervised I imagine five, perhaps more, would have bad experiences and might need to see him, in future, only with someone else present. Some might have life threatening experiences. Some might even die. Some fathers, probably fewer than in the supervised group, would not build friendships with their children and would drop out. But a higher proportion of kids than in the first group would see their Dad often and develop a good relationship with him. And they would carry less serious scars into their adult lives.
If this is even half right I think we have to ask ourselves another question. It is not: "Should we protect the few, by not exposing them to unsupervised contact with Dad, if we do so at the risk of greater hurt to the many?" It is "How far can we justify interfering between fathers and children?"
My approach to "access" is formed by my experience as a mediator. I have worked with couples where the mother was reluctant to let children be with their father, because she claimed - though he did not admit - that he was a substance abuser and she felt the children might be in danger with him. Some couples have dealt with this by making arrangements for the children to spend time with their father working up, through his agreeing not to drink while the children were with him, nor to drive them after drinking, to their eventually staying overnight with him. I don't know how these arrangements worked out but have hope since I didn't hear from those involved again.
My work has led me to believe a number of things: that the children of separated parents always miss the absent one, and that if a father wants to spend time with his children then this is for their benefit.
Children have the right to spend time with their Dads. Only extreme circumstances justify coming between them. Vhen plans are being made for a father to spend time with his children and for a mother to feel comfortable about their being with him, there are only two experts, Mum and Dad.
The limited resources this nation puts into these problems would be better employed - for all concerned, both the family and the wider society - in helping the family to work out their problems than in taking from parents the responsibility and control that are their burden - and their right.