“You are forgeting that these are not dads by choice, rather a participant in a one night stand. It's the mother who has decided to have the child, not the father.”

Sheer guess work on your part Rehctub since the report also advised that:

“Separated parents living overseas now owe around $90 million in payments to their kids back in Australia," Senator Ludwig said.

‘"Wherever separated parents live, it's unacceptable for them to shirk their child support obligations."

“A meeting in Hobart yesterday decided to make greater use of orders that banned parents with a child support debt from leaving the country.”

Yabby

May I suggest you first take your hand off it and read further into Sian Rees’ account of life on the Lady Juliana?:

“About 225 female thieves, prostitutes and con artists were rounded up from prisons in London and the British countryside to the failing Sydney Cove colony aboard the Lady Juliana, wrote one historian.

"The females were to serve two purposes - to prevent the starving and isolated male colonists from engaging in 'gross irregularities', and to act as a breeding stock for the troubled settlement.

Hmmmm......funny....I thought Holstein cattle were of Dutch origin?

“Historian, Nicol describes life onboard the ship and the ways in which the women were pressured to use sex to improve their situation and status.

"He details the difficult conditions the women were forced to endure during the long journey and the extreme seasickness that overtook the female passengers as they left England's shores.”

A first hand report of the first day and evening of arrival still survives: :

"Soon after the convict men were unshackled and disembarked, the inhospitable terrain considered a deterrent for escape.

"The women were brought to the shore ten days later and on seeing the women the convict men broke into frenzy, the rum barrels were broken and rape and debauchery reigned. Seeing the wildness in their eyes, Phillip and his Officers kept their own men at a distance, deciding to let the events take their course and did nothing to help the women."

Could someone more informed please tell the rest of us if child support agencies employ investigators to look at the type of scamming that has been highlighted in this thread?

SJF:"portraying women as using the kids as a weapon post-divorce - when 9 times out of 10, the woman is simply fulfilling the primary caretaker role that society has conditioned her to play."

Partially accurate, for a change. The structures that were set up for Family Law were in response to the demands of "women's rights" activists who claimed that women were being ripped off during divorces, sometimes with some justification. Those processes now mandate that any woman who is not working must do all she can to recover as much money from the father as possible if she wishes to avail herself of any form of state support, such as the dole. The process has become self-energising, with the only genuine beneficiaries being the second-rate, ambulance-chasing legal aid lawyers who those women are forced to use unless they have money.

It's not "conditioning" of the mother that's at fault, it's the fact that she and the father are locked into an adversarial co-dependent relationship for years after they should be allowed to get on with things.

Some women are happy to use the system in a passive-aggressive way - "it's out of my hands, take it up with my lawyers/CSA/the police" all the while knowing that he is being sent broke trying to meet his obligations without any State support whatever and that it is all being done in her name without her having to do anything other than fail to work to support herself.

As a "feminist activist", what do you think should be done to change that?

Protagoras: "After centuries of a patriachial system in control, we now have the emergence of aggrieved and estranged fathers howling all over the web on how unjust the present legal system is".

exactly. it's drop dead obvious children will remain victims of parental disputes until such time as women and men can resolve disputes from a level playing field, which can only ultimately be accomplished with law enacted by agreement between women's and men's legislatures.

examinator

1. "forcing the males to advance skills"
2. "women should be forced to up grade their skills too as a condition of social security"
advance skills for men, up grade their skills for women.
Are the advance skills equal with the upgraded skills from the social security or you mean to give the top skills to men and the basic skills for women?
When you say "forcing the males to advance skills" do you mean male employees or males without work?
If you mean male employees then why not to force women employees for advance skills?
If you mean non working males then why for them advance skills and for non working women up grade skills?
examinator
You know that there is huge discrimination against women, part time work, casual work, low wages, low opportunities, non equal pay for equal work, althought in our days more women have finished or study in tertiary education than men and women are working harder, (studies show it, in USA)than the men and women work better as team than men.
PLUS the children and the second sift at home.
BUT WOMEN ARE MORE PROGRESIVE THAN MEN , LES RECISTS, MORE SENSITIVE ON ENVIRONMENT ISSUES, HIGHER DEMOCRATIC AND SOCIAL SENSITIVITY AND LESS REPRESENTATION IN THE DECISION MAKING BODIES.
If we have to give something more then it must go to women not to men!
Antonios Symeonakis
Adelaide

Protagoras

Very interesting posts, particularly the first one. It’s refreshing to see another OLO poster making an effort to put an emotive gender issue into a wider historical perspective.

The current divorce child custody laws in most Western countries have remained pretty much unchanged since the 1920s, when major reforms were first put in place. Until then, fathers got full 100% child custody on divorce, and this was not negotiable. However, back then divorce was rare and socially unacceptable and only the upper classes had the money to obtain them. Usually, when a marriage foundered, the husband just buggered off and the wife and kids went to the poorhouse and orphanage repsectively.

The reforms of the 1920s, which transferred child custody mainly to the mother were more the product of the introduction of the welfare state, the empowering of the labour movement and changing attitudes to children’s rights and status. Until then, children were considered little more than the workhorse chattels of their parents. WWI also created a desire to renew and entrench the caring role of the family (in other words, the mother) as it did in the decade following WWII.

The Family Law Acts of the 1970s only really introduced no-fault divorce, while leaving the mother-dominant child custody laws intact. On this basis, I believe the more recent introduction of 50-50 child residency legislation in some countries is a progressive move.

Ironically, feminism, which has brought so many positive benefits to the family is lagging behind in accepting the 50-50 laws – mainly because of the old pressure on women to be primary childcarers. But I do notice feminist attitudes are softening on this.