The author gives no figures as regards the child abuse rates.

Two probable reasons.

1. The highest level of child abuse is “child neglect” and it occurs mostly in single parent families with the mother as the single parent.
2. The rates of child abuse may have declined since 2006.

The father is most commonly the primary wage earner, and the second most common child carer after the mother.

There was never any allegations of fathers abusing children under the 80:20 rule, and fathers were often looking after their children for up to 3 weeks at a time, because they had the children for half the school holidays.

The abuse card began to be waved around when fathers wanted to see their children more than every second weekend and half the school holidays.

The author leaves out a lot of information, and is not to be trusted.

<Yet the lobbying efforts by fathers’ rights campaigners since the early 90s insist that this was “unfair” and biased against fathers.>

This is atticle NUMBER 3, about the family law act.

It is getting a bit tiring. The same old arguements getting rehashed by different authors.

One must assume that onlineopinion editors are in favour of the biased and prejudice approaches of these authors.

It is plainly obvious that these authors have one intention, and one intention only and they will use what ever method they can to get what they want, regardless, Distorting facts, making spurious claims and allegations.

Research into Maternal Gatekeeping shows that "A maternal gatekeeper limits her husband's involvement with chores and children by placing obstacles in his way. She may question and criticize his actions as a parent and fail to encourage his interaction with his children."

<Anyone who claims (as the father rights campaigners do) that a mere allegation with no evidence is all that a mother needs is spectacularly wrong or just mendacious. A guilty party cannot be expected to confess their abuse, but instead they can be expected to minimise or wish that their behaviours be ignored"

This argument comes up a number of times, so one wonders, who the real instigators of domestic violence actually are?

It is not a bad tactic to use to shift the focus off of ones own complicity.

Yet more spin with no substance. Describing Michael Flood as one of Australia's foremost experts on fatherhood sounds a bit like describing Sheik Hilaly as one of Australia's foremost experts on womens safety.

Most of the usual tricks, the link to the supposed rising death toll was to a story about one child killed rather than any evidence that the death toll is in fact rising. If there is real evidence that the death toll has in fact risen with fathers being the perpetrators since the changes relating to shared care were introduced then show us the evidence. The stats I've been able to find while not clear do seem to suggest the reverse may be the case.

Lot's of denigration of the fathers groups and no mention of the way the mothers groups operate.

Once again no real discussion of trying to reduce the motivators for bad behavior by both genders.

No mention of the work going on to add profiling into DV acts and possibly to the family law act which directly discriminates against fathers.

"The biological demands of nature replicated across most of the human and non-human species is that females are presumably more naturally or commonly geared towards taking care of children." - rare to see that go to print. Any comments from feminists on that one.

And then the clincher "Anyone that personally attacks this writer for this proposition would appear to align with those who seek to discount domestic violence and child abuse."

That may be the way some of you try and spin the issue to try and shut down opposition but it does not make it true.

GrahamY given the prohibition on author's being attacked personally and the biased nature of the criticisms of efforts by men to get fairer outcomes in family law made by this author I'm disappointed that the author was allowed to include that comment.

R0bert

Much of the FR Groups claims that children need their (biological) fathers is predicated upon a gross distortion and misrepesentation of research that children who grow up in two parent households tend to be developmentally more advanced than children in single parent households. There may be some essence of truth in this conention, yet some weighting must be given to the fact that there are many successful people worldwide who were brought up in single parent households e.g. President Obama. It is obvious therefore that there are many other factors at play. The research also applies to intact families and not to separated parents therefore there is no support in such research to justify the continued inclusion of the biological father in children's lives, except to meet their own needs. In fact many step-fathers, de facto male partners, and even live-in lovers who are committed to the relationship, are well able to provide a valuable role model and support for children where they take an active interest in the children.
The point made by Trish Merker about whether a biological father has `Shared' the parenting prior to separation is an extremely important one, and should be given high precedency in any post-separation determinations of custody and contact.

"It is getting a bit tiring. The same old arguements getting rehashed by different authors.

One must assume that onlineopinion editors are in favour of the biased and prejudice approaches of these authors."

James I agree with the first point. I'm left with the sense that you can't just ignore this stuff but at the same time there is a lot of the same old stuff. Still no evidence that shared care has caused any increase to the levels of harm (maybe in some specific cases but offset elsewhere).

I'm not so sure of the second. My impression is that Graham publishes a lot of stuff that he disagrees with.

The focus seems to be on increasing the opportunities for conflict between parents rather than reducing it, that report I referenced a couple of day's ago into shared care since the changes highlighted how big an impact low levels of conflict between parents has on outcomes.

Chaz some people have done well being raised by fathers without the involvement of mothers but that does not create an excuse to cut mothers out of childrens lives. Likewise pre-separation family life is often not where any of the parties want it to be, if a family is close to separating the tensions are often so high that things won't work as they otherwise might. Assuming that what happens then should set the patterns for the future does not necessarily make much sense.

If we want to really see how people choose to parent get the property and any other motivators to chase residency out of the equation and see what patterns develop post separation. We should be finding way's to minimize the external factors influencing residency decisions so that it really is about the children.

R0bert