Children of Europe

[14. 4. 2008] Joint custody abroad

Sweden
England
Holland
Germany
France

Sweden

People in many countries and also in Sweden have developed a policy and a system of rules, with the children’s best interests as a guiding light, which allows separated parents to have shared custody of their children.
The statistics which reflect this are the court decisions about the custody which were made in the Family Court in Sweden in 1992:
Shared custody 79%
mothers alone 19%
fathers alone 2%
(Vardnadstvistutredningen, 1995)

In the year 1996 there become in power a new law for the care of children.
Previously the courts have been unable to decide in joint custody if either of the parents opposed it.
Among the Scandinavian countries, the courts in both Finland and Norway already have that possibility. The trend is, however undoubtedly that more and more decisions on joint custody are handed down.
According to Lars Tornstam findings ( Dwelling Choices .... ) there is too many disputes on this topic and not so many proven experience or scientific knowledge. There is too little empirical knowledge and too much guesswork and theorizing.

Research
First in the early seventies a research on questioning of child care took off. And later
there was done a large scale study (1985 Bente and Gunnar Öberg) in Sweden, investigating families who, after divorce have chosen joint custody parenting.

Both of them are psychological family therapists, have carried out in-depth interviews sith sixty randomly drawn divorce families. Half of these had chosen shared parenting; the other half sole care. At the time of the interviews at least 5 years had passed since the divorce. T
The children were between 5- 18 years old.
The view of the in-depth interviews the emphasis is however, that the picture of shared parenting takes precedence before sole parenting. The most convincing is the list of advantages with share care, based on the research, published (Öberg and Öberg, 1987):

the children continue daily life
the children fee that it is “just”, neither of the parents is favoured.
the children are less likely to feel guilty and/or miss father
the children experience that they are loved by both parents
the boys continue to have a father as a model of identification
there is no risk that contacts with either of the parents will decrease in the teenagers years
a divorce is not experienced as a devastating loss, the child has not lost the important persons of their daily life.

View to the history
In history of Sweden there is obvious the man as the care giver having also a custody. Except of the period when the mother nursed or suckled the child.
According to Manus Eriksson’s constitution (landslag) from 1350, children born out of wedlock should after the first three years of nursing with the mother, stay with the father until the child was seven years of age.
After this both parents were responsible for the child’s care. This law was in force unchanged for almost 300 years. (Vardnadstvistutredningen, 1995)

England

Institute for Public Policy proposes shared parenting
A report published on 6 April 1998 by the Institute for Public Policy Research - the UK left wing think that- separated fathers and their children 'deserve a better deal'.

The report centres on the failure of the Child Support Agency to force parents to comply with maintenance demands, and the alienation of weekend fathers who only see their youngsters at burger bars. It promotes the concept of shared parenting and recommends that divorced and separated fathers should be given greater legal rights concerning their children and an equal share of the weekly child benefit paid to mothers.

Adrienne Burgess, the author of the report, says that society needs to change totally its attitude towards fatherhood in general, and non-resident fathers in particular. She says that allowing 'non-resident' fathers to become more involved in the upbringing of their children could be of enormous emotional and developmental value to the father and their offspring.

The Green paper
On 21 July 2004 the UK Government published a Green Paper on (link) Parental Separation: Children's Needs and Parents' Responsibilities.
The Green Paper, published by the Department for Education and Skills, the Department for Constitutional Affairs and the Department for Trade and Industry, sets out a series of proposals which it claims are:

'designed to improve outcomes for children who experience the separation of their parents'.
'The current way in which the courts intervene in disputed contact cases does not work well.'
'Some fathers’ groups have come to believe that the courts and the law are biased against them. We do not accept this view'.
'We consider that no change is needed to the core principles set out in the Children Act 1989.'

But it looks like the above mentioned goals cannot be achieved by this document, as the government has failed to take 50/50 Shared Parenting as a starting point.

Lot of ‚voices‘ in England reject the outmoded concepts of 'Resident parent', 'Non-resident parent' and 'Contact'.
And they proclaim that parents should share Parenting Time - in recognition of the importance of the time which parents spend with their children after divorce.

And proclaim : The law needs redrafting - no amount of tinkering can put it right.

Equal Parenting Alliance

The Equal Parenting Alliance is a new UK political party, formed in February 2006, thinks that the family justice system should respect the right of children to normal parenting by their two parents above the rights or wishes of either of their parents alone. The current system does not do this. To give the most obvious illustration of this; it allows one parent to easily eliminate the other parent from a child’s life, if they wish. We believe this is fundamentally wrong and bad for children.

It’s only in recent years that the problems with the family law system have become common public knowledge (mostly due to the vocal campaigning of Fathers 4 Justice between 2002 and 2006).

Following are some arguments based on the good experience with shared custody from UK courts:

It ensures continuation of family life for the child, with the advantage of nurture from both parents rather than just one.
It reassures the child that he has two parents, and although they live in separate places, he definitely has a home with both of them.
It dispels the notion that only one parent is "caring" and that the other is "errant" or "absent".
It ensures that one parent is not unfairly burdened with the responsibility of discipline whilst the other is relegated to the fun or contact parent.
It provides the opportunity for children and parents to develop meaningful and lasting relationships - in place of the artificiality and frustrations of contact .
It affirms the parents in their belief that they both have an ongoing role in their child's life.
It places both parents on an equal footing with schools, doctors and the world at large - who might otherwise only want to deal with the residential parent.
It confirms that no matter what, each parent wants to, and is able to, provide a home for their child.
It reassures the child that in the event of one parent dying he still has a home to go to.
Without such an order, if one parent dies, the child would not automatically go to live with the other parent, but would be left with whoever they were living with at the time or handed over to a guardian - a poor substitute for a natural parent.
It enables both parents to claim the additional personal tax allowance (and possibly one parent benefit, family credit and additional child benefit), thus increasing the income available to the children (only applicable for two or more children)

Holland

On 20 November (Children’s Rights Day) 2000, some 30 fathers tried to occupy the headquarters of the 'Partij van de Arbeid' (PvdA –Dutch governing Labour party) in Amsterdam. They wanted the party to pay more attention to the significance of fathers in the wellbeing of children. They struck a blow for shared care and access to children for both men and women.

The action led to a series of negotiations at all levels of the party. It also led to the Labour party hosting an open conference with protest representatives and other interested parties, contributing to new policies for the Labour party manifesto.

In the course of the lead-up to the conference there was noticed on several occasions that what was negotiated stood a strong resistance in practice.
Nevertheless, Labour party officials had difficulty in conceiving this. For better understanding the present situation in Holland was compaired with recent experience in New Zealand.

A Shared Parenting Bill, allowing for a default of equal division of parental responsibility, was placed before parliament in May 2000. However, the governing New Zealand Labour party and women’s organisations to stoped the bill.

The round-table conference was a success, in spite of the absence of the Women’s Alliance. The most important points regarding the redefinition of childcare responsibilities were positively received.
Mrs. Hamer was more than willing to bring this matter to the attention of the manifesto committee. In fact, this initiative has led to the insertion of an interesting paragraph in the manifesto promising to implement equal care for both parents into law.

At the party congress in December 2001 both texts, (the recovered original plus subsequent amendments), were incorporated into the election manifesto with the condition that the word "unrestricted" was dropped for unknown and undiscussed reasons.

In the meantime an important and highly relevant article by Professor Hoefnagels, published in the party’s own magazine, was coming under heavy fire. In this context, it is crucial to appreciate the stabilising influence of the taskforce we had helped to form. This comprised both user groups and politicians, with two administrative and one national executive member of the party as well as two members of parliament, who pursued their task with zest and competence.

This text is based on the Joep Zanders information, the Dutch activist in the shared custody movement.

What is interesting?
Already for a long time New Zealand has been a frontrunner with the equality of both sexes. In 1893 New Zealand was the first country to give women voting rights

In New Zealand just recently a new law (Shared Parenting Bill) has been discussed which deals with the 50/50 sharing of childcare.
At the moment New Zealand is a frontrunner in the discussion about judicial childcare for both parents, with the recent law proposal "Shared Parenting Bill" from MP Dr. Muriel Newman. Also in various other ways is New Zealand a front runner in the renewal of the family law.

The integration of the traditional Maori culture and the newer Pakeha ( European cultures) culture has reached one of its highlights in 1989.
In many traditional cultures, the role of the extended family is for the Maori considered more important than in many western cultures. This also is valid for the role of the immediate living environment, such and the tribal community.
With the law of 1989 the constructive possibilities of the environment for solving of family problems were regenerated and also introduced within the (pakeha) culture.

These developments have not only been partly successful, but also had a major international effect. Also in the Netherlands many organisations (e.g. Family Continuity International) are busy with the implementation of the principles of the family council.

More....

Germany .... any information is welcome, send us an e-mail mk@childrenofeurope.cz

France

In 1999 a group of fathers from different countries from all over the world gathered in the French village of Langeac. There they discussed the starting points for a new and fair system of childcare and the associated judicial framework.

The most important starting point became the right of a standard 50/50 responsibility and
care distribution.

The so-called "Declaration of Langeac" on Equal Parenting, 1999 was a result of the international meeting in France in Langeac

THE BEST PARENTS ARE BOTH PARENTS.