Greetings! My name is Ian Nicholas Vendargon. I am currently persuing a South Australian Matriculation pre-unversity programme at Taylor’s University College, Malaysia. One of the subjects that I am undertaking is Legal studies (2LGS2).

As part of this course, I am required to undertake a Civic Participation Task that includes conducting an active Civic Participation. I have chosen the issue of ‘Are children adequately protected after the breakdown of their parent’s relationship?’ I hope that you would be able to give your honest opinions on the questions below;

i. Firstly, do you feel children in Australia are adequately protected after the breakdown of their parent’s relationship?

ii. Secondly, after a divorce are the children’s regular financial needs made available to them by both their parents?

iii. What are the factors that have to be considered when deciding who is to become the residential parent or with whom the children are to live with?

iv. Do children maintain contact on a regular basis with both their parents and other people concerned with their care, welfare and development after a divorce?

v. Are other matters of parental responsibility, such as issues involving the children’s education, health, religion, cultural aspects, holiday arrangements and leisure activities settled after a divorce?

Thank you for your time and co-operation. Your assistance is greatly appreciated.

Ian, the students at your college have been busy using this site. It's generating some interesting discussions.

Now for my attempts at answers to your question. I'll answer from my own experience, what I observed from other fathers when I was involved in a fathers group and from divorced women I met while dating some time ago and my impressions of overall trends. I do think that some people manage to act in their childrens best interests but that the ties between children and finances and the gender bias in the family law system (including counselling services) make for a system that is easily abused.

i. Firstly, do you feel children in Australia are adequately protected after the breakdown of their parent’s relationship?
- Not really but I think the system that attempts to protect them is part of the problem. I'd rather see less special provisions and make sure child protection protects all children.
- The rates of substantiated abuse and neglect suggest that single parent female lead households are the most dangerous family types for children to live in (followed closely by single parent male lead households). http://www.abusedchildtrust.com.au/facts.htm#3 , http://www.aifs.gov.au/nch/sheets/rs7.html , page 26 of http://www.aihw.gov.au/publications/cws/cpa03-04/cpa03-04-c02.pdf

ii. Secondly, after a divorce are the children’s regular financial needs made available to them by both their parents?
- Sometimes the childs regular financial needs are not met at all by one or both parents. The costs are born by the taxpayer and possibly the non-residential parent.

iii. What are the factors that have to be considered when deciding who is to become the residential parent or with whom the children are to live with?
- Currently the gender of the parent seems to be the main factor taken into account. The mother has to be really bad before a male has much chance in a custody fight so unless the mother wants shared care men become the residential parent when the mother decides it's all to hard or when the child is old enough to choose where they wish to live.

Part 1
R0bert

Part 2
iv. Do children maintain contact on a regular basis with both their parents and other people concerned with their care, welfare and development after a divorce?
- A lot of cases where fathers and children are cut off from each other completely by mothers moving with the children away from where the family resided. The situation gets even worse for other extended family. In my own situation my son has maintained contact with grandparents (maternal grandparents have moved interstate so that is limited). We have only just got past some issues between my son and father resulting from lies told to my son about my father by my ex.

v. Are other matters of parental responsibility, such as issues involving the children’s education, health, religion, cultural aspects, holiday arrangements and leisure activities settled after a divorce?
- It depends on the parents but a residentail parent who is bloody minded enough can end up having almost total control over these aspects. On the other hand that can backfire as kids reject those excesses.

Again to emphasise, some parents work this stuff out well and sometimes the non-residential parent is the cause of their own woes. Some people let their anger at the other parent get in the way of the stuff that matters. They fight battles to make a point, play silly games and sweat the small stuff rather than find ways to try and get the best from what exists. There is another side to this stuff that I've not seen up close so my comments only tell part of the story.

R0bert

hi,

thank you for the replys and looking forward to more
ian.

There is a type of violence called by psychologists ‘relational aggression’, ie acts that damage a person’s relationships rather than the person themselves.

It seems that this form of aggression may even be women’s primary form of violence* yet the type of relationship sabotage and character assassination that characterize this form of aggression is not even considered when considering the welfare of children after separation.
*Crick, N. R. & Grotpeter, J. K. (1995) Relational Aggression, Gender and Social-psychological Adjustment. Child Development.

I feel that an appreciation of this type of violence within families is crucial to truly understand the position that many children find themselves in after the breakdown of their parents’ relationship.

I deal with a lot of disenfranchised fathers and one thing that comes through time and time again is that their ex-wives, not only during the separation but forever afterwards, do everything they can to sabotage their relationships with their children. These techniques include; restricting time together as much as possible, geographical isolation, indoctrinating the children with negatives stories, lies, fabrications, exaggerations, projection of negative motives, re-writing history, placing negative reinterpretations on past events, surrounding the children with like-minded people, holding in obvious disdain anyone who does not agree with their depiction of the situation, etc, etc. It is almost identical to a cult induction regime.

This is absolutely appalling and damaging to the children in the extreme because when a mother sabotages the father’s relationship with the children she also sabotages the children’s relationship with their father – which up till that point may have been a v good, even vital relationship. I believe that this sabotage of paternal relationships is a huge driver behind much of modern youths’ self-loathing and disaffection.
(cont.)

...
This is absolutely appalling and damaging to the children in the extreme because when a mother sabotages the father’s relationship with the children she also sabotages the children’s relationship with their father – which up till that point may have been a v good, even vital relationship. I believe that this sabotage of paternal relationships is a huge driver behind much of modern youths’ self-loathing and disaffection.

Then there are more extreme forms such as Parental Alienation Syndrome (PAS) where the children have been forced to side with the abusive parent to save themselves from being abused. In this circumstance the abusive parent (usually residential mother) forces the children to actively turn against their father by both ostracizing the children if they don’t turn and showering them with previously withheld love if they do.

When it gets to this stage it locks these children into a terrible self-perpetuating cycle that can go on their whole lives. The cycle is: needing to maintain the false allegations to justify how they have treated the innocent parent in the past then, having maintained those allegations they continue that treatment into the future, which then has to be justified by maintaining the allegations...

You may be aware of the book by George Orwell “1984”. In this scenario, although it is within his power, Big Brother does not kill the protagonist Winston – he has a much more effective tool. Big Brother forces Winston to betray someone he loves.

Once Winston has done that he is no longer a threat because his spirit is broken – he is just filled with self-loathing and disgust. I believe that it is something like this that happens to these children, although the malleability of their youth often allows the issue to be buried in the subconscious they often have to rely on drugs of some type to keep them there and even then it surfaces in self-destructive and anti-social behaviour