Boycott Divorce Corp.!
The Truth About Equal Parenting
In search of a better way, interviews were conducted in another part of the world where divorce and the sharing of children, post-separation, are practiced in a more healthy and holistic manner.
From the Divorce Corp. book review http://divorcecorp.com/the-book/
Divorce Corp. uses the euphemism here "sharing of children" to disguise their true agenda of Forced Equal Parenting (FEP). In the film, they portray Scandanavia as having the solution to the Family Court corruption and dysfunction because they have equal parenting laws.
Fathers' Rights groups have been trying to get FEP enacted for decades. This documentary is a new strategy. A very clever and cunning strategy--bury their agenda in the truth of Family Court dysfunction and get everyone to get exited about it and get on board. [Although Glenn Sacks, one of the leaders of the Fathers' Rights movement, is in it so they are not so distant.]
They are suggesting that because most divorces are mediated in Scandinavia where they have FEP laws, that must mean FEP is responsible for their lower court involvement, hence the solution to the problems they are depicting.
First of all, most divorces in the U.S. are mediated as well. It is a small percent that are contested and cause the types of problems depicted in this video. Most contested cases are abuse cases, which are impossible to mediate because the abuser will never agree to supervised visitation.
They did not research abuse cases in Scandinavia, so it is impossible to make comparisons with our system without that information. Even when there is no abuse, though, parents who fight over custody by definition do not get along. The research shows that FEP is not good for children of parents who don't get along.
Even when parents do get along, research (and common sense and experience) suggests that the better living arrangement for children's mental health and well-being is the "primary caregiver model". This means that custody after a divorce should mirror what was happening before the divorce.
If it turns out to be true that there are fewer abuse reports in Scandinavia, there is a possibility that Protective Mothers are being told that Equal Parenting is the rule, and if they try for protection from abuse, it will likely to be determined to be false allegations/alienation and they will lose custody. Many women have chosen to stay quiet about abuse for fear of the abuser gaining full custody. This is one reason Divorce Corp.'s position on false allegations being rampant is so dangerous for children.
[Note: It has been confirmed with the director that the solution they are promoting is FEP as practiced in Scandanavia.]
Collection of research on shared parenting:
http://www.thelizlibrary.org/liz/joint_custody_studies.html
Only approximately 4-5% ultimately go to trial, with most cases settling at some point earlier in the process.
...Taken all together these studies suggest that, in divorces marked by ongoing disputes over the custody and care of children, both inside and outside the court, there is often a history of domestic violence [including child abuse] in the family and a likelihood that the violence will continue after the separation.
...It has previously been observed, based on research which predates the domestic violence/parental alienation battles that are now a feature of the field, that "multiple allegations of abuse are a feature of those higher conflict families" whose cases become contested custody litigation.
http://leadershipcouncil.org/1/pas/Meier.html
...Now, men’s rights groups are pushing another bill that would change court guidelines in custody proceedings, moving from the standard of doing what is in the best interest of the child to making shared custody the default. That sounds reasonable enough—good parents should certainly be able to play a meaningful role in their children’s lives after a divorce—but the proposed law has no provision for judges to determine whether one of the parents was violent in the relationship, which is a pretty glaring hole. And studies show that shared custody is one way that emotionally abusive spouses often seek to extend their control after a marital breakup.
In spite of that, men’s groups have convinced more than a quarter of Massachusetts House members to cosponsor the bill. In the face of that pressure, Governor Patrick in July appointed 18 people to the Working Group on Child-Centered Family Laws, which is examining current regulations and trying to come up with a consensus on future guidelines. Men’s rights groups, including the Fatherhood Coalition and Fathers and Families, managed to get three of their members in the group, but there are no representatives from mothers’ groups. (One member comes from a domestic violence organization, however, and another from the Women’s Bar Association.)
“They’re organized,” says a Beacon Hill insider. “They’re vocal, they can be vociferous…and they’ve capitalized on the success they had with the reform alimony laws.”
And men’s groups are having successes like this all over the country. Rita Smith of the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence told the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Intelligence Reportthat such groups have “taken over the courts,” and that they have “been able to get custody evaluators, mediators, guardians ad litem, and child protective service workers to believe that women and children lie about abuse.”
http://www.bostonmagazine.com/2012/08/angry-men-feminist-agenda/
Shared parenting is another ideological belief of abuser groups that is not supported by valid research and is not beneficial to children. Many of us can remember when shared parenting was either not permitted or strongly discouraged. An initial study based on a small population and short time period found that shared parenting could be beneficial to children under the best of circumstances. This encouraged courts to promote shared parenting as a way to resolve difficult and contentious cases. Abusers have promoted shared parenting as a way for fathers to gain control when they otherwise would have difficulty winning custody because of their abuse and the mother provided most of the children care.
Later research based on a larger population and a longer period of time found that shared parenting is actually harmful to children. Constantly going back and forth is disruptive, having two homes is really having none and needed items are often in the wrong home.
There is legitimate research that shared parenting can benefit children under the best of circumstances. This would include a voluntary desire by both parents to share parenting, an ability of the parents to cooperate and living nearby. There is other good research that found shared parenting is never a good idea for children. Indeed most cases in which shared parenting are initially tried are quickly changed because of the problems it creates. There is no need to reconcile this dispute in the context of contested custody and domestic violence as these cases are not close to the best of circumstances.
Shared parenting laws usually include exceptions for domestic violence, but this does not protect the children when courts have difficulty recognizing true allegations of abuse. The courts are littered with cases in which mothers are pressured to accept shared parenting with their abuser and often severely punished if they object. The Saunders’ study found that abusers use decision making authority to control the mother and hurt the children. They use the exchanges to harass the mothers and although contradictory to try to resume the relationship. If the court is not inclined to limit an abuser to supervised visitation, parallel parenting would work far better for the children. Until the courts create the necessary training and reforms to improve its response to domestic violence consideration of shared parenting is a particularly bad idea that causes enormous mischief.
http://timesupblog.blogspot.com/2013/12/lies-of-fathers-rights-groups.html?spref=fb
Children Need Both Parents Equally: This statement is effective in misleading people because it sounds so reasonable and fair. It is really based on an ideological belief in treating individuals the same even when they are very different. This approach is designed to treat the mother and father the same REGARDLESS OF PAST PARENTING. This is not in a child’s best interests. The truth is that children do not need both parents equally. They need their primary attachment figure more than the other parent and the safe parent more than the abusive one. In domestic violence cases courts should stop pressuring the victim to cooperate with the abuser and instead force the abuser to stop the abuse in order to gain time with the children.
The reach and harm of this misleading statement is illustrated by a statement by one of the leading family court judges in the United Kingdom. In a speech to an abuser rights group he said that the worst thing that can happen to children is for the mother to bad mouth the father. We have heard judges in the United States make similar statements. It is hard to imagine that this is meant literally. I would hope the judge realizes that assaulting, killing or sexually abusing a child and many other abusive actions are far more harmful. The ACES (Adverse Childhood Experiences) studies demonstrate the profound harm to children’s health caused by trauma which is not true about negative statements. Indeed some negative statements are beneficial for children to learn. When children see an abusive father mistreat them or their mother it is important for the mother to tell them that such behavior is not acceptable in our society.
The misuse of the belief that mothers should not make negative statements about the father was taken to the extreme in a notorious case in Poughkeepsie, N.Y. The court found the mother to have engaged in alienating behavior because she encouraged the children to eat healthy foods, dress appropriately for the weather and avoid adult oriented television programs. This was considered alienation because the father encouraged all of these harmful activities. In the world outside of family courts this would just be considered good advice that any parent would be expected to give their children. As a result of widespread gender bias in the courts more serious negative comments by fathers are routinely ignored or minimized.
http://timesupblog.blogspot.com/2013/12/lies-of-fathers-rights-groups.html?spref=fb
Fathers’ rights advocates seem less interested in supporting children than in maintaining or assuming control over their ex-spouses and the children. They use the language of “shared parenting”, offering an ideal few could dispute, but this goal is undermined by their acrimony towards the custodial parent and their commitments to a patriarchal family structure.
In addition, their proposed solutions to child support and contact issues often show insensitivity to children’s welfare and involve one-sided restrictions on the custodial parent. Fathers’ rights discourse conflates the interests of children and fathers and ignores the possibility of conflict between them. It even compromises children’s interests, in prioritising the prevention of false allegations of child abuse over safeguards for genuine victims of abuse and expressing sympathy for men “who are so distressed by their loss of access to the children they purportedly love that they murder the objects of their affection”.
http://www.academia.edu/444482/Backlash_Angry_Mens_Movements_2004_
Content analysis discerns three factors that are central to the [Fathers' Rights] groups' rhetoric: representing domestic violence allegations as false, promoting presumptive joint custody and decreasing child support, and portraying women as perpetrators of domestic abuse.
http://vaw.sagepub.com/content/15/5/513