CHILD CUSTODY AND ACCESS INDEX

Of all the kinds of gender bias existing today, unequal treatment of fathers as parents probably harms the greatest numbers of persons to the greatest degree: it harms men AND women--and children most of all. The bias manifests itself most devastatingly in divorce and separation; its effects are at crisis levels in our society. The general discussions (labels beginning with A) and individual case studies (labels beginning with B) below are meant to reveal the problem graphically in hopes of spurring all the needed reforms.

This article was written in early 1999 to oppose anti-father publicity by sexist feminists in Canada's government. Contrary to Anne McLellan's view of it as an anti-woman plot, and Hedy Fry's tortured arguments against it, a judicial presumption of shared parenting is a fundamental human right, it is argued here. (This article was submitted to the National Post, which seemingly never publishes an opinion piece supporting fathers' rights unless written by staff, notably Donna Laframboise; it was ignored. An Edmonton Journal editor who had expressed interest in it did not reject it but instead, after some apparent internal discussion, failed to keep his promise to phone back about it and failed to answer calls.)

This article was published in the Ottawa Citizen in the summer of 1998, following the hearings of the Senate-House of Commons Committee on Child Custody and Access. That process had seen massive use of the stereotype that only men are violent in the family, used to oppose reforms toward parental equality in divorce.

This article explains in brief the serious current connection between distortion of the facts on partner violence and anti-male injustices in society, notably regarding separation and divorce.