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Saturday, March 08, 2008
Celebrate International Women's Day #1
Today being International Women's Day, I thought I should counter all the gloom and doom about the status of women you are likely to see in the mainstream media by celegrating a few recent "success stories" for women. I'll be posting 5 blogs dealing with: custody; criminal sentencing; rape-shield laws; pay equity; and intmate partner violence. In each case, these topics deserve at least a full column, and will receive their due in the weeks and months to follow. Below is just a teaser.
A Custody Tale:
First, let's celebrate the fact that women almost always win in family courts in Canada. To illustrate the extremes to which judges go to favour women, consider the front-page story in Monday's National Post about "Obesity new factor in grading parents."
The parents separated when their chilren, boy-girl twins, were 2 years old. At that time, the boy was already diagnosed as "morbidly obese," and the girl was "overweight." Through a series of interim applications, custody of the children went back and forth between the parents for the next 8 years, until a trial was finally held.
At the trial, renowned obesity expert Dr. Glenn Berall, chief of pediatrics at the North York General Hospital, was called as an expert witness -- and an advocate for the children. He observed that whenever the father had care of the children, their weigh issues improved, and whenever the mother had them, their weight problems tended to return. On that basis, he recommended that the father be given primary care.
The judge rejected this advice, awarding primary care to the mother "where the children seemed most happy and well-adjusted." Well, duh! Of course the children are happier with Mom -- she indulges them to their own detriment. Judges, like parents, are supposed to do what is in the child's best interest, not what makes them temporarily "happy."
I wonder what part of "morbidly obese" the judge doesn't understand. Morbid obesity is a life-endangering condition, certainly a life-shortening one. What this case illustrates is that a separated parent who tries to instill discipline in their children risks losing custody. Although this case stands out as an extreme example, it is entirely typical for judges in family court to interpret the child's best interests in the shallowest of terms -- at least when it favours mothers to do so.
Separated parents beware: you discipline your children at your own -- and their own -- peril!
Posted by Grant Brown on March 8, 2008 in Current Affairs | Permalink
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Comments
Grant,
I look forward to your updates on these topics.
If you get the chance, could you please include a look into parental alienation? I'm not so much interested in the overt, obvious sabotage (though highly important) but the more subtle and possibly even unconscious attitudes of some mothers (primarily but not exclusively) that drive men from the daily lives of their children.
Also, I wonder whether anyone has ever looked at the phenomena where feminist attitudes prevail in a family (mother and father) before a divorce and then suddenly, during custody issues, the maternal trump card comes out by the mother and the father eventually resorts to stereotype as well by silently and stoically relinquishing custody under a constant barrage of legal, financial, and social pressure because he sees it hurting his children.
Posted by: h2o273kk9 | 8-Mar-08 4:39:16 PM
Cases like this will discourage men from marrying.
All part of the war on "family."
Posted by: JC | 8-Mar-08 8:43:46 PM
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