Author and Social Justice Campaigner – Shaun Buchanan – shares his view on the importance of equality in parenting.
Parenting is crucial to all societies, the bedrock of Family, and the first step of socialising the next generation of people. But with the current social strife in relationship breakdown, domestic violence, divorce, maternal and paternity leave. There is still an increasing economic pressure to be productive and raise a family simultaneously. However, we find non-resident parents who leave the home are now completely ostracized from their families. With current statistics indicating that the parents that usually experience this situation are Fathers.
Parental Alienation is defined as the result of psychological manipulation of a child into showing unwarranted fear, disrespect or hostility towards a parent or other family members. Currently, most single parent UK households tend to have mothers as the head. Gingerbread has the figures as high as 90%:
https://www.gingerbread.org.uk/what-we-do/media-centre/single-parents-facts-figures/
I recently attended a Dope Black Dads meeting to interview some estranged Dads. Many didn’t want much contact with their ex-partners due to the toxic nature of their individual relationships. As a consequence, some children suffered from abandonment. This led to self-inflicted alienation by refusing to enter into conflict situations that could lead to false allegations of abuse by Mothers.
The Fathers present informed me that some mums also acted as gatekeepers and only allowed contact when it suited their social arrangements. Some even used reduced contact as punishment if they that didn’t contribute financially to the upkeep of their offspring.
Organisations such as Women’s Aid over the last 3 years have try to discredit Parental Alienation as a pseudo terminology that abusive men use as an excuse to harass estranged children and women by taking them to court under false pretences. They have now successfully lobbied Parliament to create current a Domestic Abuse Bill, which is currently at the third draft stage see below:
When attending Asia Effiong -Jones radio show, a predominately female panel wanted to discover why certain Fathers were not facing up to their responsibilities after relationship breakdown. I illustrated that men are still socialized into stereotypical roles of being breadwinners and receive less parental leave from work.
Parental prejudice leads to men having to jump over more safeguarding checks in order to maintain their parental rights. Support for Dads, in terms of benefits and social housing were also less extensive. That society still expected Fathers to work full time once they were not the primary carers. The panel acknowledged that this was unbalanced but believed the reason for this occurring was due to the birth process and that women were more caring by nature.
I illustrated Fathers could also be primary carers and that the last National Census conducted in 2011. The report illustrated that households headed by single Fathers in the UK now stands at 400,000. The panel was shocked, as they didn’t expect the number would be so high. I then provided the panel with a study conducted by Darren Spooner, an avid parental alienation campaigner; he found that some mothers also abandoned their children after relationship breakdown. This was due to a confluence of reasons such as postnatal depression, narcissistic or sociopathic personality disorders. These psychological traits led to safeguarding issues and neglect, which played a fundamental part of why this group of men were now the primary carers.
See the recorded show below:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vrt7XyxivyM
In essence Parents have so many pressures, internally and externally, combined with conflicting messages as well as the day-to-day responsibilities of child rearing. We as a society now stand in a transitional period of time where equality has become a byword, yet the reality continues to elude non-resident parents and as a consequence Fathers disproportionally.