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-- men need to band together and fight for their father/parenting rights in courts as a group--
There just isn't the information available to young men or boys at school when information about abortions, raising children etc is thrown at girls from the onset of puberty.
Another thing we have here in the UK is social housing - houses that are owned by local govt and tenancy is distributed according to need. Young girls know that if they become pregnant they immediately go to the top of the housing list and can get themselves a house to themselves. The problem in that scenario is that if a father is on the scene she may lose that right to a house. Children's rights to contact with both parents are damned in such a scenario.
What hope is there for men when the information is not available about the consequences of becoming a father and losing contact?
-- it's not all together uncommon for a one night stand to result in a child the father is completely oblivious about for years. A woman can successfully take a man to court when a child is 3, sue for child support, and win despite his just being told that he even has a kid.
I am and will always be in favour of both parents being responsible for the costs of raising their children. Whether the father has contact or not, he should if he can support his child / children. That's whether he's known them all their lives or he is informed after a period of time.
The UK system changed a while back - if a mother made a claim on social funds she was obliged to inform the authorities of who the father was. If she falsely accuses someone who subsequently (through DNA) finds he is not the father then he gets all his money back.
-- Otherwise it just appears as if they don't care and enjoy having an excuse to be let off the hook. The damage this does to children is seen throughout our entire society.
To be honest, very few people actually care or are completely ignorant of how bad the situation is until they find themselves with a letter saying their children don't want any contact or a court states that the parent with custody has successfully blocked all attempts at contact and it is not in the interests of the child to allow contact.
One chief justice in 2003 issued his view that if the mother was so implacably hostile to contact that it distressed the child, then no contact with the father would be allowed.
There is a long uphill battle and the first bit is the men's magazines to start actually informing men of the minefield that is becoming a father.