Dating And Younger Children

It’s an instant world: instant coffee, instant meals, instant communication, instant gratification on any level – and now, boyfriends becoming instant fathers.

The family structure has taken a beating in the last 50 years (close to over 50% of marriages fail), and more and more women and men find themselves navigating their love life through a minefield of emotional baggage and upheaval, dragging their children through the debris.

Historically, and especially – prehistorically – men were not highly concerned about their offspring until those children were capable of doing something that would contribute to survival. I know. I sound like a Neanderthal. Well, I was one once, according to my DNA.

Men are not compelled naturally to connect quickly with someone else’s children in that ‘aren’t-we-just-a-great-hybrid-well-adjusted-Dr. Phil’ family way (for lack of a better description). It is natural, however, for men to connect intimately and very quickly with women they have known for 10 minutes and a drink.

Women, who are well advanced in the skill of managing relationships, adapt much more quickly to new relationships. This doesn’t mean that men can’t. But read my lips – men, in their single-minded, task-oriented approach to life, focus on one thing at a time. It starts with their love-mates. Children take a lot more work and time.

According to child psychologists and family therapists (generally the most screwed up people on the planet), it takes years (at least 3) for a new adult coming into a pre-existing family structure to develop a relationship with a child who is not theirs. It’s a 2-way street. Young children, although highly adaptable, also need time to make the connection.

A boyfriend may already be a father to children he has brought into the world. Regardless, a boyfriend is not a father to a child he barely knows. What he can be or what he can become is a friend and a role model, and, perhaps, one day, something more.

Does your boyfriend want to be a father? Perhaps the question should be, how does he connect with children? Even natural fathers are useless if they can’t handle relationships with children.

Why would anyone ask or expect an adult to assume a title or role without understanding their capability to develop a relationship – especially with children? At the risk of sounding chauvinistic, sex makes it easy for a man and woman to connect and establish what they think is a relationship. It doesn’t say anything about either person’s capability to conduct relationships with children.

Through awareness comes understanding. Through understanding comes friendship. Through friendship comes trust. Through trust comes love. Through love comes a bond. Perhaps, one day, without expecting it, a man may become something to a child every father should be.

Does your boyfriend want to be a father? Only the children will ever know the answer. Though, one day, they may reach out to him eagerly, they may never call him ‘father’, but who he has become calls out to every father out there.

Laws governing custody & support are destroying relationships; what’s your story?

In 2004, a man in England put on a Batman costume and climbed up onto a ledge at Buckingham Palace to draw attention to the fact that he wanted to see his children. Jason Hatch, who separated from his wife Victoria in 2001, was granted access to his children for two hours every three weeks by a judge. But Hatch, a national co-ordinator of “Fathers 4 Justice”, claimed he had only seen his son, aged five, and daughter, four, for a total of six hours in the three years prior to his superhero stunt.

In March, 2005, after a bitter custody battle, Alnoor Amarsi, a distraught father, threw his 5-year-old girl off the Don Mills bridge onto Highway 401 in Toronto. Then he jumped over 60 feet to his death. Miraculously, the girl survived and recovered – physically, anyway.

On December 4th, 2006, a mother threw her young son from a similar overpass on Highway 401. She jumped, too. This time, both parent and child perished.

There is a graveyard at a site for men called MESA (www.mesa.com), the Men’s Educational Support Association. There are 34 names of the 34 fathers who committed suicide. Names like Luke Hovland, who committed suicide 4 years ago, eight months after spending 43 days in a Strafford County jail for failing to pay more than $16,000 to his ex-wife to cover half of their daughter’s tuition at Tufts University. Then there was Darrin White, a man on medical leave, who was forced to return to work to make the over $2500 in monthly support payments he couldn’t afford. The judge had already given the ex-spouse the children and the house. Although it was illegal, his ex-wife denied him access to his children. He killed himself eight years ago.

The legal system is not to blame, per se. The legal system is simply a system and the way it operates reflects the way the law is interpreted and manipulated by lawyers and judges. Can the system be manipulated? Even a parent with a proven history of abuse can win a custody battle by paying enough money and engaging a powerful legal team.

It will be a long time before anything changes. The laws are outdated and do not serve a society where, in most cases, 2 parents have to work in order to survive. The law is such that divorce and custody lead to emotional battles that destroy relationships and kill people. Terms like ‘custody’, ‘access’, ‘visitations’ and ‘enforcement’ paint pictures of prisons and incarceration, rather than relationships between parents nad children. The suspension of rights and freedoms dictates a bitter coping process for those who must live in a world that defines itself by these terms.

Many years ago, when a divorce changed my life with 2 small children, I was devastated to the point where, at times, I could hardly breathe. I am sure there are also many mothers who can say the same thing. Yes, I contemplated suicide. I attempted suicide. Obviously, it didn’t work. Finally, one day, after reaching out to everyone and everything, I connected with a man who eventually directed me to the MESA web site. He said, “Remember only one thing. Fathers who love will always be loved. The only thing that matters to your children is that you love them.”

It is not always easy to keep one’s eye on the goal, to love through adversity, disrespect and constantly changing values. If parents could respect the fact that children love both a mother and a father, it would affect the decisions and the manner in which those decisions are carried out. If one could take money out of the equation, or if two sensible adults could assess economic resources realistically as a shared issue on some levels (not all), that would go a long way to providing a lifestyle for everyone that is acceptable.

The reality is, the current, outdated laws enforce a transfer of wealth from one spouse to another and do not take into account the increased costs that arise from living 2 separate lives. There have been some shifts in thinking in some US states wherein the custody paradigm is looked at from the perspective of “residential scheduling”.

In 1999, Canada decided to fully investigate the current issues around custody and access. The Report of the Special Joint Committee on Child Custody and Access, dubbed “For The Sake Of The Children” (www.justice.gc.ca/en/ps/pad/reports/sjcarp02.html), is replete with hundreds of suggested reforms. The committee recommended that the Divorce Act be amended to:

- repeal the definition of “custody” and to add a definition of “shared parenting”;
- to require that parties applying to a court for a parenting order must file a proposed
parenting plan with the court developed by the parents on their own or with the help
of a trained mediator or through some form of alternative dispute resolution;
- recognize the expenses incurred by support payors while caring for their children.

Parents do not receive divorce training when they get married. Society cannot expect individuals to step up equally to the task of coping when “I do” becomes “I don’t”. Until the system is changed, more family relationships will be destroyed and more people will die. Until parents recognize that all children have 2 parents, coping will always include warfare. If parents truly love their children, then love should be the mediator and coping mechanism. Love – and not the 401 – should be the road we travel.