A debate, please

The Real Love that Dare not Speak its Name

The Sunday Times (UK) - Sunday, 7th September 2003

By Bob Geldof

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article...6406_1,00.html


This is an abridged version of a chapter entitled The Real Love that Dare
not Speak its Name by Bob Geldof, from Children and their Families, Hart
Publishing, Oxford, £31

Review

The father love that dare not speak its name
By Bob Geldof

When it comes to access to children, divorced men haven't a chance, writes
Bob Geldof. In a world of dual-career couples, the law needs to recognise
the hands-on parenting role played by many fathers

Family law as it currently stands does not work. It is rarely of benefit to
the child and promotes injustice, conflict and unhappiness on a massive
scale. Most custody rulings show no understanding of contemporary society.

The contention that women are inherently better nurturers is wrong. Custody
rulings appear to be based on the "sugar and spice and all things nice"
school of biological determination rather than on anything more
significant. If a woman "mothers" a child, a warm universe of nurturing is
conjured. If a man "fathers" a child it simply implies nothing more than
the swift biological function involved in the procreative act.

If the later 20th century saw the transformation of women's lives, then the
21st century is seeing the transformation of men's lives, and by definition
the lives of their children. Nearly half the workforce is female and men
now hold a different view of parenting. There are no studies which suggest
that a child brought up by a man (as I was) displays any psychological or
emotional characteristics different to one raised by a woman.

My complaints are not the moans of the unsuccessful litigant at the hands
of family law. I, in fact, was "successful". This is someone dismayed by
the inappropriateness of the law to the everyday. Nor is this the complaint
of the proto-misogynist - indeed the law is so inept that it produces
misandrists in equal measure - but rather the irritation and anger of
someone who sees exact parallels with women's struggle against bias and
prejudice.

What's sauce for the goose, as they say, is sauce for the gander - except,
of course, in the eyes of family law, where the man ceases to be an equal
partner in anything but name. A husband had better hang on to his marriage
or risk losing everything he has had and be forced under pain of pursuit,
prosecution and imprisonment to be a wage slave for life. There is grave
injustice here.

Many may read Bob the embittered, abandoned husband in this. They would be
quite wrong. My personal response to my situation was shock and dismay,
pain, emptiness and loss. I was embittered only with the law and my
consequent lack of rights as a man.

I am only too aware of the pain that women suffer in divorce, but it is
equally true that it is as nothing compared with the financial and
emotional loss suffered by men. She may lose her man, he loses the lot.

If he is the offending party, people believe that it's right that he should
leave the house and kids and pay for them. He even half-thinks this in his
guilt. But rarely does he think: I've got a new woman, I'm happier, so I'll
just take the kids and go off to this new life. Indeed, society would view
it askance if he took the kids. Why? We don't if she does precisely the
same. Why?

It is this type of confused thinking, lying at the heart of family law,
that allows it to be unjustly weighted in favour of women. This is
acknowledged by most commentators and lawyers when they are being honest.

I can accept that this was not the intent. The intent is that the law
should always act in the best interests of the child. We all agree with
that. But the unspoken assumption is that the interests of the child are
nearly always best served by the presence of the mother.

This is simply wrong. Only in exceptional circumstances will a man be
allowed to raise his children - something that outside the justice system
and within society is assumed to be inalienable upon his child's birth.

The law is creating vast wells of misery, massive discontent, an unstable
society of feral children and feckless adolescents who have no
understanding of authority, no knowledge of a man's love and how different
but equal it is to a woman's.

It also creates irresponsible mothers, drifting, hopeless fathers, problem,
violent and ill-educated sons and daughters, a disconnection from the
extended family and society at large. So many of us are hurting and yet the
law will treat the man in court (if my case is typical) with contempt,
suspicion, disdain and hostility.

He is a father who has already lost his wife, his children, his home and,
of course, his money, often his health and frequently his job. Good, eh? No
doubt professionals will decry this view. But it is a commonly held one.

Everything can be tolerable until the children are taken from you. I cannot
begin to describe the awful pain of being handed a note, sanctioned by your
(still) wife with whom you had made these little things and had felt them
grow and kick and felt intense pride and profound love for before they were
even born.

You had changed their nappies, taught them to talk and read, wrestled and
played with them, walked them to school, picked them up, made tea with
them, bathed and dressed them, put them to bed, cuddled them and lain with
them in your arms and sung them to sleep. You have felt them and smelt them
around you at all times, alert even in sleep to the slightest shift in
their breathing. And then you're handed 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? When did she assume
control? She wants to leave. What's that got to do with the kids and me?
Were I to issue her a similar note, what would happen? I still ask these
questions.

Why is the language that of the prison visit? Why is the person (and I'm
being restrained because it is nearly always the woman, but we're actually
not meant to say that for fear of being labelled misogynist) who has taken
the children, or been left with them, given immense emotional, legal and
financial power over the other party?

It is at this juncture that things spiral into acrimony, bitterness and
hate. Losing control of one's life is a desperate experience - having
someone else being able to exert control over it is worse. Some readers
will know better than I the incidence of serious illness and alcoholism in
men arising from divorce. Isn't this serious enough to insist on change?

Count the economic and social cost if that means more to you than the
human. What more is required to make men the same in the eyes of the law as
they are in the eyes of their children? Both parents must have equal status
after separation. There must be an immediate presumption, as there has been
in Denmark since January 2002, that the children, where possible, will live
with the father 50% of the time. Isn't that eminently civilised?

The principle of 50% of everything must pertain. Children are genetically
50% of the man and that selfish gene which drove him to express genetic
infinity with his partner through their children cannot just conveniently
disappear in some legalistic, Stalinist coup de théâtre.

We have seen the rise of dual-career couples; now we need dual-carer
couples. An equal child-sharing arrangement would be advantageous in many
ways, not least because it would help both parents to be free to earn a
living and pursue their independent lives, and thereby achieve and maintain
greater amicability between them, which will in turn benefit their
children. As to those who can't or won't participate in this arrangement,
then the parties can work out something of mutual convenience and benefit
to the children.

The implication of any order determining the father's allotted time with
his children is that he was always of secondary importance. Reasonable
contact is an oxymoron. The fact that as a father you are forbidden from
seeing your children except at state-appointed moments is by definition
unreasonable. The fact that you must visit your family as opposed to live
with them is unreasonable. "Contact" with your children should not be
infrequent and odd. In public parks on Sundays you can watch the single men
with children drag themselves through the false hours in a frantic panic of
activity, every second measured and weighed in a moment of state-sanctioned
time.

I know that what I have written spills from coherent thought into pain and
anger. The problem is that this issue is bound up with pain. The law is
profoundly flawed. Its laughable pretext of gender neutrality and
impartiality must be removed and the true face of bias, discrimination and
prejudice fully displayed. There is no harm in being radical when the
status quo breeds injustice. I am suggesting:

Education in schools that would lead to an understanding of relationships
and "familial responsibility".

Marriage classes which outline the consequences of having children and
their impact upon that contractual agreement.

At separation, and before divorce can be contemplated, a mandatory
arbitrator who could insist on a staged withdrawal or conciliation before
the dispute may be permitted to go to court. And should proceedings move to
divorce, a presumption of equal parenting, implying shared responsibility
and equal residency.

My "50%" proposition has already begun to be assimilated into the
mainstream in Denmark and frequently in the United States. I fought for it
myself. I had always worked from home. I had money. I took care of the
children. I had ample accommodation and a stable relationship with a woman
they knew and liked. My former wife worked. Why couldn't the children be
with me for 50% of the time? I could not and still don't understand why
there was so much opposition.

Eventually I succeeded, but I had nearly to bankrupt myself in the process
simply to be able to live with my children. How is that in their interests?
Finally I was granted full custody. But I never wanted or asked for that.
My former wife was not a criminal, so why this punitive measure of taking
our children from her?

If I disagree with it happening to men, equally so with women. I was given
full custody because the professionals involved would not agree that split
residence was acceptable, despite the urging of the judge in the case who
had sat on international benches making those judgments daily.

As I entered court on my first day someone leant over who felt he was doing
me a favour. "Whatever you do," he said, "for Chrissakes never say you love
your children."

Bewildered, I asked: "Why not?"

"The court thinks you're being unhealthily extreme if, being a man, you
express your love for a child."

For two years I shut up while I heard the presumptions in favour of a
mother's love. Finally I began articulating the real love that dare not
speak its name - that of a father for his child. No law should stand that
serves to stifle this.



This is an abridged version of a chapter entitled The Real Love that Dare
not Speak its Name by Bob Geldof, from Children and their Families, Hart
Publishing, Oxford, £31

© Bob Geldof