Wr Own behalf of Parental Equality - the Joint Custody and Shared Parenting Support Group, I would like to compliment John Waters on his two articles "In the Name of the Father". Mr Waters has once again shown himself to be one of the few newspaper columnists who has an understanding of the manner and extent to which fatherhood is undermined by our unequal family law system.
As he quite rightly states: "Culture and law conspire to give the mother back as much of her freedom as possible, while utterly disregarding the rights of fathers and children". Regrettably, the common practice of awarding sole custody to mothers and access/ visitation rights to fathers is detrimental to all concerned. Not only does this practice reduce fathers to the status of visitors in their children's lives, but it also cuts children off from one half of their extended family.
Children have a right to both a blather and a mother playing a full parenting role to the greatest extent possible, and also to the supports provided by both sides of the extended family. A legal system which not only fails to uphold these rights, but effectively assists in their destruction/denial, needs a radical overhaul.
In dealing with the need for legal reforms, John Waters quite rightly refers to "legislation which places the rights of the children to both their natural parents above the individual rights of either parent..." and "...the introduction of the concept of joint custody for the generality of cases...". Parental Equality agrees fully with him on both points, and also with his comment that "We need to look at the family courts, and in particular at their utterly unhelpful adversarial nature".
In February, Parental Equality presented a submission to Mr Mervyn Taylor, Minister for Equality and Law Reform dealing with the manner in which the parenting of children was dealt with in circumstances of marriage/relationship breakdown. In this submission, we dealt with the need for children to have a real input from both parents, and strongly advocated continuing joint custody as the best parenting arrangement.
We also proposed the setting up of a family tribunal to replace the existing adversarial court system, which increases hostility and causes so much ongoing damage to both children and parents. Our submission is at present being considered in Minister Taylor's department, and we await his response. - Yours, etc.,
Secretary,
Parental Equality,
54 Middle Abbey Street,
Dublin 2.