Liz,
Could you please find the statistics that show that the vast majority of mothers in Australia want to be the primary breadwinner, and want the father to stay at home and look after the children. I’ve seen the statistics regards this, and that survey had a sample of many thousands of mothers.

As a caring, non-feminist and non-sexist teacher (and also a graduate of a social science course), you may find the information contained in the following web-site of interest:-
http://www.civitas.org.uk/pubs/experiments.php

You ask the most irrelevant questions.

Liz, this is drifting further off topic but "Dads that shared parenting during marriage DO continue shared care after marriage." - who are you trying to kid?

Have a read of the article on the legal system, truth has little to do with what happens in the courts and there are plenty of tricks someone desperate to maximise C$A and Govt handouts can use to ensure that parenting is not shared - a sea change being a popular tactic, stiring up conflict is another (if the parents can't work together then the mother should have the care).

I currently have our son with me pretty much full time, at my ex's request. Thats in spite of a very expensive legal battle in her attempts to get almost sole care (which was not only stopped when I gave in because of the harm to my son and I being done by the conflict). About 12 months after getting her way she changed her mind.

I was heavily involved in parenting my son while we were together and at seperation we started with shared care. If you do paid work how do you prove how much of your out of hours time you spent parenting?

The courts and Relationships Australia were not interested in how much parenting I did while we were together, rather they were a never ending train on financial and emotional energy.

R0bert

Liz,
As a caring, non-feminist and non-sexist teacher, I have noticed that you do not say anything positive about men or fathers, and you do not answer questions.

Robert,
I think your experiences would be rather typical. The mother takes the children so that she becomes “primary carer”, and the father now becomes a “non-resident parent” (which is another term for secondary parent). The father then has to pay money to the mother, (which is termed child support), or he won’t be seeing the children in the future.

It is a system of child abduction followed by extortion of money from the father, but it is not generally thought of as being child abduction and extortion, because mothers are generally thought of as being the most suitable parents to raise children.

However no study to my knowledge has definitely concluded that mothers make the best parents, so it is only a myth that mothers make the best parents. As you can see from the Civitas study mentioned previously (to the gracious, non-feminist Liz), the loss of the father can affect the child in almost every way.

This article paints a rather rosy picture of mothers, but paints a rather negative picture of fathers. The article is not scientifically based, and revolves around a study that had minimal sampling.

So it is articles such as this article that continue the myth that mothers make the best parents, and that myth then makes child abduction and extortion of money from fathers acceptable in our society.

I believe that fathers are just as good parents as mothers. In some cases even better as some women get alot of PMS.

Of course when they are babies I feel the mother is what the child needs and what is best, but as they get older either a father or mother can provide quality care.

I think the system does disrespect the majority of fathers and men. I know that my husband would make just a good as parent as me.

Fathers that are 'just as good as Mothers' do cooparent after separation. Those father's that didn't coparent, who chose that non-parenting role, don't do so after separation. The courts are not just going to hand a child over to a largely absent parent.

Likewise, if the Mother made that choice not to coparent, the courts won't hand kids over under some pretense of 'fairness'.

Sorry guys, the truth is that those parents who made the choice to no coparent don't have the right to, two, three, four years down the track, demand the kids be handed over.

The fact is, it's often Dads that make that choice. Sometimes women, but mostly men.