shared parenting works by t.stoddard
Massachusetts is on the verge of becoming a shared parenting state. Or it seems, after Governor Deval Patrick and today's committee members expressed unprecedented interest.
HB 1400 would establish a presumption of shared legal and shared physical custody following divorce, where a family court determines that both parents are fit to care for their children. Ned Holstein M.D., M.S., Founder and Chair of the Board of Fathers & Families testified today along with Harris Allen, PhD, Cheryl Quiambao, Annie McQuilken, Norma Millett, Shawn Gliklich, MD, Attorney Deborah Sirotkin Butler and other shared parenting supporters.
Glenn Sacks, F& F's Executive Director reports:
Through Fathers & Families’ efforts, over one-quarter of the Massachusetts Legislature has expressed clear, public support for our Shared Parenting Bill, many of them signing on as co-sponsors. We gathered thousands of signatures to place shared parenting on the 2004 Massachusetts ballot and led a successful campaign for its passage, winning 86% of the vote. Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick told the Legislature that if they pass Fathers & Families’ Shared Parenting bill, he will sign it, and F & F recently met with Massachusetts Governor Patrick.
Many questions were asked of those testfying in favor of HB 1400. Holstein described the meeting, saying it took about an hour. ”They don’t do that if they just want to sweep an issue under the rug,” he said.
Myth busted
One myth that reappears whenever shared parenting is mentioned is that it is a tool used by abusive men who are aided by an evil empire called "the fathers movement." People who perpetrate this myth will tell you that father and shared parenting advocates are women-haters who want nothing but harm to come to women and children.
Men's, fathers' and shared parenting organizations, like family rights and mothers' organizations want reform in family law to protect children. Ideally, children would have both parents in their lives equally, but they don't advocate for abusive parents of either gender to retain custody. "We are an equal parenting organization that happens to have the word 'fathers' in it's name," says Donald Tenn, president of Fathers 4 Justice. "We have members who are fathers, members who are mothers, and even grandparents," he says. (See Good dads reach new heights to protect their children)
Harry Crouch says an investigation in San Diego is rocking the foundations of the California Family Court System. This investigation, he explains, took root through the California Men’s Center with National Coalition of Free Men member attorney Marc Angelucci and other NCFM members. "A host of adversely impacted fathers and mothers joined together in an ever increasingly effective campaign to expose certain harmful, if not corrupt aspects of the family court system," he said..
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Comments
The content and tone of the statements regarding `shared care' show attitudes that children are merely to be treated as the possessions of parents, to be shared between them with their other goods and chattels. It is therefore an abuse of children's rights as it completely fails to take into account their needs and wishes and simplistically makes assumptions that they are always co-terminus with those of the parents. The needs, wishes, and rights of children must be held paramount, and not the rights of parents. Having residency or contact with their children after separation should be viewed as a privilege, and not a parental right. Children's lives are being destroyed, even leading to deaths, in other parts of the world where `Shared Parenting' laws have been introduced. Shared parenting laws do not provide for the children's protection from abuse and exploitation and does not allow the reciprocal rights of contact or of refusing contact ~ they are forced into arrangements.
I disagree Charles. Every shared parenting bill I've read has protected children.
It isn't about parents' rights. The children have the right to equal access to both parents, and studies have proven it is best for them.
I agree with Terry Stoddard. Children are best served with equal axcess to both parents. God knows it would have helped in my case.
I don't believe this bill goes far enough to protect the rights of both parents.Why are only divorced fathers cases being considered in the bill, are there not single parent fathers
in the world today to? Dough!
So mom can run off, and shack up with any guy she chooses
and take my kid along for the ride.Yet because I never married her,I don't have no place/say in my child's life? Fact is, her new boyfriend will have more of an influence in my child's upbringing then me, and this is the reward for living in place like Massachusetts.
Fact is, it coast thousands of dollars to hire a layer,reserve a court room, and retain the almighty Judges attention, to convince to him, and all, something which they already know...Of course DADS have the RIGHT to be in the child's life too!!
No question! So this bill doesn't protect enough!
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