The Carey article on female violence is interesting. But like all articles based upon statisitics, it fails to impress the antagonist or the Judges of the pro and an-tagonists.

What we need, within the Family Court, is a level of proof which would stand the test of a jury. The mere opinion of sundry self-styled experts is not enough; nor is the well-rehearsed, hysterical testimony of sundry partners.

But, moreover, we need to move the FC judges much further toward listening to the children. After all, it is they whom we all must seek to protect…but not at any expense.

The abuse of a spouse does not presume the abuser will abuse the children; yet spousal abuse is used as conernerstone evidence of a spouses unfitness to care for a child.

Then we have to address the very nature of abuse. Surely, anything short of demonstrable violence is abuse of position, but hardly constitutes indefensible abuse, or avoidable abuse.

But consider the benefit of a female in her petition to the court to gain almost exlusive custody of the children in a split. The financial benefit is massive. Hell’s teeth, a savvy woman can gain an income of equal to $60k before tax (for a working person). With such income they can live the life of Reilly.

But if WINZ find the children are being cared for, 50/50, this benefit drops dramatically and the female might have to start looking for a job.

But present a woman intent on getting full DPB with the prospect of earning her way through life, and watch the back of the hand slap the forehead as she quotes stats asserting she really must be there for the kids. Working and caring for kids is almost an oxymoron, they quote.

Well, just maybe, if the FC wasn’t so free with weighting custody to the woman, a few less woman would be seeing DPB as a career choice. Maybe, negotiating with the live-in, to get what she wants, while giving way a bit, would be way more attractive if DPB was way-less attractive.

I used to watch my ex-in-laws with a sense of awe. These folk reared their kids through the late forties and fifties. When My ex father-in-law finally died my ex-mother-in-law’s face-skin lost 50% of its wrinkles. She was finally free!!! ‘Yessss!,’ said she. ‘I’m free to be me.’

Sure, it took a couple of years for her to adjust, but she has.

But the thing which this magnificent woman had, which so few women today have, was committment. She married, for better or worse, and I gather there was a lot of worse interspersed with some better. But she had signed a contract with her husband and her future children.

The privations these folk went through, during the early years, would hit the headlines and be called abject poverty, today. But my ex-parents-in-law didn’t recognise privation. They just put their heads down, kept their arses up, and worked, and worked, and worked to rear five, utterly fine children…my ex-wife being one of them.

Yeah, I know. How can I codify them and then admit to divorce. Fact is, my ex and I did much the same thing as my PIL. Sixty percent drudge offset by forty percent joy. But we kept at it till our kids were into their thirties. And today, ex and I are still close friends.

We could easily have parted when the kids were young, when they were just preteen, teen, or into their early twenties. But we didn’t. We had a contract with us and the kids.

Although she had access to DPB throughout her belief was always rested in what was best for the kids.

That’s what we have to get the FC judges to begin considering further. We need to have the FC make it way less attractive for a woman to make up any story she feels good about for the purposes of offsetting personal responsibility against state-supplied life-style. And the way to do that is to have the Fc start requiring equal parenting.

Cheers
David.