Is it Full-Time Dads and Part-Time Kids or...

I was thinking about a former client tonight who was recently separated and really annoyed with the legal system. He believed that even with shared and joint custody these days, the system still seemed to have a biased attitude - more readily assuming that the mother was the natural choice for custodial parent.

My thoughts started with this memory of his deep sorrow that occasionally came out as anger, sometimes at the wrong times for his presentation to the lawyers or court system. But he was mostly sad, on the verge of depression, because of not getting to see his children on a daily basis. As I thought of him, my mind switched to a more expansive view of separated fathers in general and how they all have such different experiences whereas it is still the norm for women to talk about being single moms.

Interesting... How is it that most women are single mothers, yet we refer to fathers as having visitation or shared custody? Hmmm... is that in itself a bias?

I know that some men manage to get along with their ex-partners, but for many father each encounter is a potential for conflict. Some share the children week by week, others are limited to every second weekend maybe with a Wednesday dinner thrown in there as a gesture of good-will, or something. Some fathers are only able to see their children under supervision, and way too many aren't getting to see their kids at all.

I recently met someone whose son has not seen his own son in many years and I tried to find out why because it didn't make sense to me. My mind just cannot accept that a good father would be refused the opportunity of being in his son's life, or in reverse, for a boy to not be permitted to have his dad in his life.

This father/grandfather I'm referring to did not know the details, and all I could think was that his son might have been told that to resume visitation he would have to go through supervised visits until the courts and or the mother, agreed that the boy felt comfortable, secure, safe and attached enough to his dad to be left alone with him... and he refused. Leaving both him and his son as the losers of so much.

I keep thinking about it, and how, one way or another most separating parents go through pretty heavy challenges for everyone, but the fathers who want to remain in their children's lives sometimes seem to have to fight for the right to be a part-time dad, and almost all the kids become part-time kids - with mom and with dad.

I try to convince all fathers not to back out of the struggle no matter how tough it might be feeling for them. I truly feel for them, although I have never had to fight to have the right to parent my daughters. Amazingly, my feelings grow even stronger for all the children who are often silently devastated when either parent chooses to back out of their life. I don't understand why mothers and fathers are not seen as equally important to a child, as well as equally capable of being a bad influence to a child. It's not as if I have not had any female clients that I did not think were suitable to be responsible for their children, even part-time.

Helping devoted dads cope with the challenge of creating a satisfying lifelong relationship with their children is something that I am really passionate about, probably in part due to my childrens' father turnind his back on them when he started a new life, and new family. But, why I do what I do always goes back to my love for children. In fact, I often tell clients who are worried that I will be biased towards one parent over the other not to worry because "I work for your kids but make you pay." I guess you just can't take the preschool teacher out of me.