Wednesday, March 21, 2012

Boston Globe: Awake, Yet Very Much Asleep

The Boston Globe is calling for shared parenting.

Um... what the Hell took them so long!?!?!?!

Are we going to wait until fathers are thought of by society as Dinosaurs now are? Cool, yet LONG GONE and hey, who needed them anyway?

Or shall we wait (haven't we already?) until the children are all COMPLETELY lost, without discipline, respect, responsibility or any of the other traits men instinctively instill in kids?

Well, at the tail end of the nightmare, the Boston Globe sat up and said "Well what if we just let kids see their dads more? I mean men and women are equal and women earn a lot more money now, right?"

WELL LOOK WHO JUST SHOWED UP.

Gee, thanks Boston Globe. Thanks for repeating what the "radical fathers movement" has been SCREAMING AT THE TOP OF ITS LUNGS FOR 15 YEARS NOW.

EDITORIAL | Editorial

March 19, 2012

FEW MATTERS can be as contentious and emotional as post-divorce child custody arrangements, and in recent years that acrimony has spilled over into Massachusetts politics. Several times, a bill calling for what is known as “shared parenting’’ — which would create a legal presumption for joint custody — has been introduced in the Legislature, and failed.

The debate has often been passionate, as divorce proceedings can be, and it has sometimes turned ugly. Some proponents of the bill, who claim that the family court system is biased against fathers, have launched ad hominem attacks against opponents. Unsurprisingly, this hasn’t created a receptiveness to compromise.

But the Legislature has recently provided a model for compromise on deeply felt issues: the task force on alimony, which met for more than a year, and resulted in the passage last fall of a sweeping overhaul of state alimony laws. The state can - and should - follow the same approach to modifying custody laws by bringing together responsible advocates on both sides. It’s time to break the contentious impasse on an issue that’s already painful enough for every party involved.

The alimony task force was launched amid some doubt that opposing parties could even sit at a table productively. But they did, and reached some compromises that had seemed elusive, if not impossible. That gives confidence that a similar approach could find common ground on the even more important issue of child custody.

Advocates for custody reform aren’t going away; they are among the loudest and most persistent constituencies to lobby state government today. Their passion bespeaks a genuine need to examine the workings of family courts, and to determine whether some complaints about bias have merit. And while some shared-parenting advocates won’t be satisfied with anything less than joint custody in all cases, others have suggested smaller changes in law and practice that are worthy of discussion. These include tweaks in the language used in domestic relations cases - such as replacing the term “visitation’’ with “parenting time’’ - and changes in the restraining-order process that would encourage more healthy contact between parents and children.

The task force should not be another forum for fathers’-rights supporters to push a shared parenting bill that would deprive judges of the necessary discretion to determine the best interests of the child. Still, a full airing of the current state of custody proceedings would surely be valuable, as would a chance for all parties to get beyond polarizing rhetoric and us-against-them attitudes. Either the Legislature or the Patrick administration should convene a task force soon, and get to work.

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