Bob Geldof speaks up for the
rights of single fathers urging the courts to reject the idea that mothers
always make better carers than men.
NOW again it's Christmas.
We're all busy spending on our loved ones, our families and, most especially,
our children.
In particular this
is the children's festival. The time when a kind old man will slip down a chimney
or slide down a roof and bring joy to your child - FATHER Christmas.
It is the special
child's time because 2,000 years ago, the story tells us, a woman and a man
had a baby together and though the man knew perfectly well he was not the child's
father he nonetheless loved him and his wife and raised him to be strong, independent,
brave and loving.
Lucky kid, to
have Joseph for a dad. Indeed, were Jesus alive today, to have any dad at all
to raise him to be a good man.
For those divorced
men with children, Christmas is a travesty, a repulsive contradiction of a family
holiday, of a loving celebration, of a special children's time.
These are the
men who will be forced to be alone without their babies, who will commit suicide
most frequently at this time of year in an age when male suicides are already
300 per cent greater than women's.
These are men
who, in the eyes of what is sickeningly called Family Law, committed the greatest
crime — of being divorced.
Men who are guilty
of the worst sin - of being fathers - because dads, to the great dismay of the
secret elite who sit in secret judgment in these secret courts are, shockingly,
ALL men!
And men, as everyone
knows, are monsters, feckless, abusive, aggressive, thuggish, incapable of such
a hugely complex task of giving love and patience, cooking baked beans or giving
a bath, doing homework or combing hair and reading stories.
It's a miracle
any of us got here at all, us all having had dads and everything.
This Christmas
Eve we will say goodnight in our homes to our over-excited children, tell them
to go to sleep quickly or HE won't come, prepare for the morning and have a
quiet drink of pleasure before bed.
Yet there will
be many fathers forbidden by the savagery of our laws to be with their children,
standing broken, as I have, outside their old homes, the keys still in their
pockets, weeping and whispering goodnight as they watch each child's bedroom
light switch off before turning away, maddened with grief, to the pointlessness
of a lonely Christmas Day.
What have we
become? In whose name is this brutality done? Who are they who do this and why
do they not account to us, the people? What unthinking fools perpetrated these
unlawful laws?
How is it in
a child's interest to remove him from his dad and why? Two people fall from love
and one, though having done no wrong, is semi-criminalised and punished by having
his children removed from him for ever (for childhood is never recoverable).
The extremity
of Family Law is bewildering, for having your children taken away from you is
only one slight degree better than them taking away your freedom.
And yet you are
not a criminal, nor have you done any wrong.
These same people
assume that women make better parents - that a mother's love is better, more
important than a father's. That somehow it's bearable for a man to be parted
from his children but not a woman.
Why? These assumptions
and prejudices are not simply outdated but plain wrong, dangerous and damaging.
You only have
to listen to the language that the law uses when it gets involved in our private
lives. It's meant to be neutral but it is cold, deadening and hopeless. In fact
it becomes heartbreaking, hurtful, rage-inducing. I cannot even say the words.
A huge emptiness
would well in my stomach, a deep loathing for those who would deign to tell
me they would ALLOW me ACCESS to my children - those I loved above all, those
I created, those who gave meaning to everything I did, those who were the very
best of us two and the absolute physical manifestation of our once blinding
love.
Who the hell
are they that they should use the language of the prison visit to ALLOW anything
between me and that which is mine?
REASONABLE CONTACT
when the situation under this law is, by definition, UNreasonable!!!
CONTACT? Is this
what we had before in our home or am I now some visiting alien?
An ABSENT parent
- labelled by those who have forced me to be absent.
A RESIDENT/NON-RESIDENT
parent - words that reduce the meaning of that which was once Mum, Dad and home
to the sterile language of the state institution.
I cannot begin
to describe the pain of being handed a note, sanctioned by your (still) wife
with whom you had made these little things, with whom you had been present at
their birth and previously had felt grow and kick and tumble and turn and watched
the scans and felt intense manly pride.
Wrestled and
played with them, walked them to school, picked them up, made tea with, bathed
and dressed, put them to bed, cuddled and lay with in your arms and sang to
sleep.
Felt them and
smelt them around you at all times, alert even in sleep to the slightest shift
in their breathing ... a note that will ALLOW you ACCESS to these things who
are the best of you.
What have you
done? Why are you being punished (for that is what it seems)?
How can she be
allowed to dictate what I can or can't do with regard to MY children?
What we must
have is a new law. Not one remnant of this, quite literally, hopeless Children
Act should remain.
It is barbaric
and will be looked upon with dismay and laughter by lawyers of future generations
as we do now on old, outdated, medieval laws.
We need a human
law. A law that fits the way we live now. A way that reflects the differing
versions of family that we have but that still generates love and kindness and
compassion.
A law that does
not take away the happiness of the remaining years of our grandparents' lives
and allows them to continue to contribute to our society by helping to raise
our children.
A law that lets
mums be mothers and dads be fathers. Both nurturing, both loving their children,
perhaps outwardly differently but inside with the same intensity and passion.
Different but
the same - an equality of difference. This new law must reflect exactly that.
I am asking that
this new law will say at sentence one, paragraph one: "In the interests of children,
upon separation they WILL be with both parents an equal amount of the time.
"They will be
with their father 50 per cent of the time and their mother 50 per cent of the
time."
This is already
being implemented in some countries and states and there doesn't seem to be
any extraordinary or unusual problems with it.
Of course, this
arrangement will not suit some people but it does mean that the already overheated
emotions of divorce are cooled slightly and, through discussion, a mutually
acceptable arrangement can be arrived at without anger, bitterness or hatred.
It may also help
to stem our uniquely epidemic divorce rates.
If both parents
going into divorce know that they will only see their children half the time,
that financial and housing arrangements are now less cut and dried, then maybe
it will give them pause for thought.
That such a powerful
newspaper as The Sun, motivated by its millions of readers and their letters
of outrage (which I have seen) is now supporting this call for a new law for
their readers' children and grandparents means that the country, its mothers,
fathers, grandparents and most importantly its children, are ready.
Before more men
are driven to suicide or desperate brave acts to draw attention to their plight,
before more children are taken from their dads, before another empty Christmas
passes, let the Government stop their endless tinkering and discussions and
begin its reform.
On this, the
most perfect of family holidays, let us hold in our hearts those small boys
and girls who have wished and wished to Santa for only one thing this Christmas
... their dad.
THE SUN SAYS
THE SUN has published
few more emotive articles than the one by Bob Geldof on this page.
His description
of standing outside his old home weeping and whispering goodnight to his children
on Christmas Eve will bring a tear to the eye of many readers.
Especially the
hundreds of thousands of dads who won´t see their children this Christmas because
of what Geldof rightly brands our "grotesque" Family Law.
The courts award
custody of 93 per cent of children from broken homes to their mothers.
That does not
always benefit the children but, as Geldof can testify, promotes injustice,
conflict and unhappiness on a massive scale.
There is no presumption
in English law that fathers have rights.
And there is
little the courts can do if a bitter mother refuses to let her former partner
see their children.
Today The Sun
launches a campaign to have our laws changed so that fathers have an automatic
right to 50-50 access.
Men who leave
home are not criminals who deserve to be punished.
And children
need a dad. Even one who doesn't live with Mum is still a very special and important
person in their lives.
We need a new
law… and we must have it NOW!
NOW tell us your stories. E-mail
featurea@the-sun.co.uk or fax 020 7782 4063
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