According news, Britain is about to ‘enshrine’ parents’ right to their child in the child welfare law. Oops, no, it’s actually the child’s right to both parents. Well, that’s one big difference. It means that someone can decide for the child that the child does want to exercise that right. So bring on the lawyers. That’s the first issue. Then we see that Mr Loughton, one of the select ministers working on the new law, says (according to the linked article in the Telegraph by Christopher Hope), “Quite clearly, ordinary living and working arrangements make an equal division impossible, and undesirable, in all but a small minority of cases.” So, with that flip of the lip, equal parenting is gone. Bring on the lawyers. Then, as a ‘coup de grace’ to the long maligned fathers of Britain, said minister adds, “the most important thing remains the principle that the child’s welfare is the paramount consideration and this must not be diluted.” So we must still decide precisely how child’s welfare is best achieved — bring on the lawyers. We see then that the minister throws out any sense of changing the mantra “the best interests of the child” that has destroyed fathers and families ‘en masse’ for generations, and effectively announces “Divorce Industry as usual”.
Here’s what the select ministers including Mr Loughton need to know and understand:
Parental rights: parents do have rights including equality rights just like everyone else in every other aspect of modern society;
Equal parenting: 50-50 parenting is easy to arrange in all but the most unusual cases because it does not have to be on a daily, or a weekly, or a monthly, or even on a yearly basis — it just has to work out that the parents share the child equally over time (no need to chop the child in two as proposed by King Solomon);
Welfare of the child: the community standard for the welfare of the child across the western world is protection of the child from abuse and neglect. It is a matter between the child-protection agency and any remiss parent. Child welfare has no business being discussed in family separation arrangements unless the child protection agency is engaged in the matter. Family law should encourage diversity in parenting (subject to the community standard) just as we encourage diversity throughout modern society, including our schools. Applying different standards for child welfare to parents in separation is arbitrary and unfair to both parents and to the child and it must be defeated in the best interests of a just society.