“The Test of Parenthood Editorial” The Press – Friday, 10 June 2005

This goes beyond a load of tripe — it’s the offal of journalism. Such unbalanced articles should be offensive to any self respecting journalist, and a discredit to the Editor who allows publication.

This article concludes by saying “ the need for parents to accept their responsibilities in an adult fashion, and to realize their first priority must be the welfare of the child they helped create.”, yet started by suggesting that the 21 year case of Gordon Dowler was a fault of the system and not of the integrity of the women involved.

The lines in between however are the usual unwelcome diatribe of feminist propaganda that demonize the father and promote child support.
The media should not shoulder the blame alone — a repugnant state of politics that worships the incontestable occupation of the moral high ground could not represent our people and guide the state but only represent the state and guile our people.

A distinction needs to be drawn between the fatherless child and the de-fathered child. It is the state that must be called to account for the welfare of the child. If it should place but one obstacle in the way of the Father, then the state has assumed his role. The suggestion that the remedy is solely financial comes with the assumption that a father’s contribution can be quantified in a dollar value, and his absence compensated for by the ruthless and relentless application of a financial formula.

The state admits to its own negligence by describing fathers through the social consequence of their absence. If there is something unsavory in this country, it is not masculinity; it is arrogance of the law that has exceeded its purpose in the pursuit of power, and the butchers that have promulgated it.

To be as polite as possible about the states attitude toward fathers, one might say it is unfortunate that those in this country, who have assumed a greater responsibility than parenting, are perfectly inadequate and inadequately perfect.

Child Support has no integrity as it purports to be something it is not, and for that reason it will continue to be the case that some will challenge its deceit, some blindly comply and some wander off and wonder why.