Custody Committee Dumps Feminist Myths

One of the first perceptible cracks in the feminist myths that have held a stranglehold over family law in Canada has finally appeared.

A Joint Committee of the Senate and House of Commons held hearings across the country last year on this important issue of custody and access of children following a divorce. The Committee ignored the feminist myths that men are dangerous and abusive and that mothers should properly have sole custody of the children. In its report, released on December 9, 1998, the feminists were shocked by recommendations that there should be shared parenting following the divorce so that a child will have involvement from both parents. At present, the mother customarily is given custody with the father, usually having access to his child or visitation rights -- such rights being carried out depending upon the mother's inclination. The report also recommended a mandatory 90 day notice if one parent wishes to move away from the former spouse and that support payments would be adjusted to facilitate continued visits. Another recommendation was that there be compulsory mediation for parents at the time of the divorce in order to develop a suitable child sharing plan. This latter recommendation has worked very well in some jurisdictions in the US and in the province of Alberta.

REAL Women was pleased with these recommendations as we had included these same recommendations in our presentation to the Committee when it held hearings in Toronto on April 1, 1998.

We would, however, have preferred that the report had gone further by providing for grandparents to have access to their grandchildren following a divorce and that the custodial parent (usually the mother) should not be permitted to deny access to the other parent. Children need and must have both parents closely involved in their lives, even if the marriage has broken down and no parent should deny the other parent access to their child -- and especially so, if such access has been ordered by the court.

One of the strangest recommendations, however, was the second to last recommendation (#47) which provided that "sexual orientation not be considered a negative factor in the disposition of shared parenting decisions". One wonders why the Ottawa-based homosexual lobby group EGALE was permitted to address the committee since the issue before the Committee was in regard to custody and access following a divorce. Since homosexuals do not marry and, therefore, don't divorce, their relationship was not within the scope of the Committee. However, on March 23, 1998, EGALE made a presentation to the Committee and argued that the Committee should "deconstruct stereotypes" of parenting and that there was "no qualitative evidence in parenting between heterosexual and same-sex couples". That, of course, is one of the greatest myths of all. If ever followed, this myth would cause untold harm to children.

Notwithstanding this politically correct nod to the homosexual lobby group, the Committee, nonetheless, managed to its credit, to withstand the frequent hysterical complaints by feminists that the committee was "biased" against women and had failed to take into consideration that men were abusive and that women and children's lives would be at risk if there was shared parenting. There were 73 presentations to the Committee by women's groups and 58 from men's father's groups -- scarcely an indiction of "bias" by the Committee.

This successful outcome of these Committee hearings can be directly attributed to Liberal Senator Anne Cools, who had insisted, together with some conservative Senators that the Committee be set up in the first place. When the child support guidelines (Bill C-41) was being argued in the Senate in 1997, without any recognition of fathers right to have access to their children, these Senators refused to pass the bill until the then Minister of Justice, Allan Rock, agreed to set up the Committee on Custody.

The Committee's recommendations, reasonable though they may be -- are the first break for the fathers of children of divorce.

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