The legal status, responsibilities, and rights of men who are fathers — married or unmarried, cohabiting or separated, biological or social in nature — is a topic with a long and well-documented history. Yet recent developments in a number of countries suggest a growing politicization of the relationship between law and fatherhood. In some countries, an increasingly vocal, visible, and well-organized fathers' rights movement has been credited with influencing perceptions of the politics of family justice. Fathers, it is argued, have become the new victims of family law justice systems that have swung too far in favor of mothers. Armed with such claims, fathers' rights activists have set out to achieve a range of legal reforms, most notably in the areas of child support law and contact and residence rights following separation. This book brings an understanding to these developments. Bringing together leading international commentators, the book provides a careful, critical, and comparative analysis of the work of fathers' rights activists, the role law has played in their campaigning, their legal strategies, their success (or otherwise) in achieving legal reform, similarities and divergences with the women's movement, and the relationship between fathers' rights movements and the societies that frame them.
Author(s): Richard Collier, Sally Sheldon
Year: 2006
Language: English
Pages: 173
Half Title Page......Page 1
Title Page......Page 3
Title verso......Page 4
Acknowledgements......Page 5
Preface......Page 7
Author Biographies......Page 13
Contents......Page 15
Introduction......Page 17
Beyond Backlash: The Evolution Of The FRM......Page 23
The FRM: Formal Equality and Beyond - Commonality and Contradiction......Page 31
THE FRM AND LAW REFORM: QUESTIONS FOR FEMINISM?......Page 36
CONCLUDING REMARKS......Page 40
2. 'Robbed of their Families'? Fathers' Rights Discourses in Canadian......Page 43
Reacting to Fathers’ Rights Advocacy: The Special Joint Committee (SJC)......Page 44
Fathers’ Rights Discourse at the Special Joint Committee (1998)......Page 46
Uneven Influence: Fathers’ Rights Discourse and Law Reform......Page 56
False Adversaries and Canadian Compromise: Listening to ‘The Professionals’......Page 64
Conclusion......Page 66
Introduction......Page 69
Contexts: F4J, Fathers’ Rights and Law Reform......Page 70
The ‘Co-Parenting Turn’, the New Fatherhood and the Good Divorce......Page 77
Are Fathers Really the ‘New Victims’ of Contact Law?......Page 78
Rethinking Fathers’ Rights......Page 82
Concluding Remarks......Page 88
4. Adopting 'Equality Tools' from the Toolboxes of their Predecessors: The Fathers' Rights Movement in the United States......Page 95
Fathers’ Rights Groups in the United States: An Introduction......Page 96
Methodology: Casting a Deep Net Through In-Depth Interviews......Page 104
Results: Fathers’ Rights Activists as Standing on the Shoulders of Giants?......Page 106
Equality: Is that all they are asking for?......Page 114
Introduction......Page 117
Fathers’ Rights Activism in Sweden......Page 118
The Discursive Opportunity Structure......Page 120
Legal Reform in the 1990s and Fathers’ Rights Groups......Page 130
Concluding Remarks......Page 137
Introduction......Page 141
Australia’s Fathers’ Lobby and the 2003 ‘Equal Parenting’ Inquiry......Page 142
Discursive Strategies in the 2003 Inquiry......Page 145
Failure to Secure an ‘Equal Time’ Presumption from the Inquiry......Page 150
Responses and Rhetoric after the Inquiry......Page 155
Subsequent Developments and Expedient Processes......Page 160
Conclusion......Page 161
Bibliography......Page 163
Index......Page 183
