A 1,000-word article can never do justice to the complex and emotionally charged subject that is any family break-up. Last June, to mark Father’s Day, I wrote a piece about absent fathers that I knew would be provocative. Although I made it clear that I wasn’t calling all fathers rotten apples, many still felt that my contribution was flippant and an insult to present (as opposed to absent) fathers. And yet, I’m unrepentant: the article was never about them.
I was at the time far more anxious about upsetting fathers whose absence in their children’s lives had been scripted by estranged partners and unfairly endorsed by the system.
My article was not intended to nail-the-male. Rather, it was an invitation to fathers never to forget just how important they are in their children’s lives and to resist the secondary role often assigned after a marital break-up.
For Mother’s Day, the easy thing would be to write a gushing piece about all the fantastic mothers out there (and there are, though fallible and human). With equal ease, I could ‘right the wrong’ I apparently did the fathers and take to task those less than honourable mothers.
But my article today will address instead all parties involved in a break-up: mothers, fathers, lawyers, ‘experts’, even the magistrates and judges who can actually help (and therefore just as easily hinder) the process. So this piece, although I won’t sing it like Julie Andrews, is about a few of my least favourite things – actually two things I should really like to see done differently.
Firstly, just as people have discovered the benefits of anger and money management, there are advantages in successfully managing a separation; the emotional wellbeing of the children, for one thing. And if you still want to talk anger and money, why put children through expensive therapy? Why make them angry or unhappy for the rest of their lives?
A marriage break-up does not have to (and should not) spell the end of family life.
I find it ludicrous that, following a break-up, most children will hardly see the non-custodial parent. This in most cases will be the father, who most likely will see his children for a few hours a week only.
What sort of meaningful relationship can be built on a weekly basis? And even that will be weakened when allowance is made for genuine sickness and less genuine ‘excuses’.
Until children are 18 they should be required by law to regularly see both parents
There are, you see, bitter custodial parents out there who will allow resentment and ‘punishing the ex’ to get in the way of access. There are even those who believe that the non-custodial parent has no right to ever enjoy Christmas lunch with his own children. Now consider the corrosive effect of such behaviour on the children.
A natural consequence is that children grow up knowing one parent and one side of the family – usually the side belonging to the mother – while aunts, uncles, cousins, nephews and nieces on the non-custodial side rarely get a look in. It’s wrong – as wrong as tearful scenes, screamed profanities, bad-mouthing the non-custodial parent, refusing him entry into the home – all in plain view of the children, thereby unconsciously or consciously demanding that sides are taken.
However painful a break-up, there’s a great deal to be said for not allowing that pain to destroy everything that was happy and positive about the marriage. Why write off many good years as a ‘mistake’ or waste of time?
Parents – mothers especially – are always appalled by physical abuse stories. Even when children accidentally fall and graze a knee it can routinely spell the end of the world, and it’s not unusual for parties in the throes of a separation to capitalise on these incidents and file police reports. They think nothing of interrogating a child for hours after an access visit, and will raise hell if they discover there has been contact with a new partner. This is brutal. Nothing can be worse for a child than a manipulative parent trying desperately to unite the children in his/her bubble of wrath.
Secondly, children need both parents: something the law should reflect.
Instead of reassuring children that they will always have two parents who love them unconditionally, the spouse who is ‘left’ with the children all too often perpetuates a distorted narrative portraying him/her as the only reasonable, loving and caring parent. The misrepresentation of the non-custodial parent is particularly cruel (to the children) and unjust. Leaving a marriage does not constitute abandonment of the children, let alone ceasing to love them.
Given that it takes two parents to make a child, what child wants to be told that half of him is unbelievably awful? And although a child might convince himself that he wants nothing to do with one parent, that is not something that should be taken at face value and ‘accepted’. A child will still need help to see that choice through, and will need even more help to undo that decision and not see it through. This is where judges, magistrates and experts really can help.
Until children are 18 they should be required by law to regularly see both parents, on the assumption that where there is contact, there is hope. A judge who thinks that a 14- or 16-year-old is old enough to decide is tragically mistaken. In separation cases adolescent children usually fare much worse and may even need coercion. While a four-year-old is likely to take things in his stride, a 13- to 18-year-old is more likely to feel emotionally shattered and angry, as if an entire childhood has been predicated on a lie.
Indeed, so many underlying factors come into play in such cases that the only solution is to force the issue and just hope for the best; the justification being that the corrosive and permanent effects of parental alienation are infinitely more damaging.
michelaspiteri@gmail.com