Strategy

STRATEGY

Many people concerned about this issue have publicly demonstrated to get the law changed and make joint custody the default when parents separate. Despite the fervent efforts of these people the resolve to pass more and more anti family laws by the Australian Government destroying the family unit has prevailed.

The current top down approach of modifying the Family Law Act to include default joint custody and making it less adversarial requires the agreement of way too many politicians across Australia to work and is unlikely to happen because of the veto power of powerful vested interests such as:

-feminists;

-legal profession;

-WEF;

-left wing groups;

-media;

-the many jobs in big government that depend on the industry such as: Police, Child Protection, Courts, Prisons, community welfare.

This approach has 2 main problems:

-Waiting for it to happen may take generations.

-When this does finally happen the solution proposed is way too simplistic and won't make a significant difference to overall problem (see the results in States in the US that have already done this).

The sad reality is that marriage is no longer for life, however we need to ensure that parenting is for life.

A new breath of fresh air approach is needed. We need a solution that people can implement themselves without needing to involve the government. Parenting For Life is a bottom up approach to connect those people in society that want to improve the system and leave out the others and the vested interests.

The children of one of the member's of this group had the benefit of shared care with them spending each alternate week with each parent for 10 years. Changeover occurred at 6 pm each friday when their mother collected or dropped them off. Once in place it became set in concrete. Much nicer for the kids and much less adversarial that the sole parent model. The reason it didn't last is because of our culture and laws. We have carefully devised a plan to get around this.

It requires people intending marriage who have a possibility of having children to join in the system. It requires 5 key elements:

1 Each intending spouse and one family member complete an education module about the benefit to a child of having both parents in their life.

2 Each intending spouse discuss key issues of raising children and agree to a parenting plan.

3 The intending spouses agree on a detailed plan of how to share for the equal care of their children if they should decide to separate.

4 A detailed public declaration on a website that they agree to be parents for life.

5 A support network for separated parents of the Parents For Life system.

At the moment most people think that they can assess the suitability of their intended spouse and this should be enough ti ensure the risk of separation is minimal.

Sadly more than a 1/3 of marriages end in divorce. The separation rate for people who become parents without getting married is significantly worse and way worse again if they team up with a partner also from a broken family. The odds are stacked up against them.

If the marriage does go wrong it is so easy for parental harmony to be savaged by feminists, lawyers and misguided friends. Once this happens the children become the pawns in a very adversarial system. Fortunately many parents do not resort to the legal system however children still feel the adversarial acrimony generated by the sole custody model where one parent is held to ransom to see the children for money and the amount of time spent with the non custodial parent consistently diminishes with time.

The biological father is often exchanged for a steady stream of new boyfriends to take up the father role if the father is the non custodial parent. If the mother is the non custodial parent she may exchanged as the mother by a steady stream of the father's new girlfriends.

 For all practical purposes one parent has sole decision making and the children miss out on the benefits of cooperative decision making.

So FAILING TO PLAN is like PLANNING TO FAIL.

It could be that implementation of a strong PARENTS FOR LIFE system will strengthen the institution of marriage. It will hopefully change the culture of marriage for many people from being something someone wants to benefit themselves to a mission in life to jointly do the very best they can for their children.

What is needed now is:

- a group to implement this (could be a church or community group, rural community, etc):

-a teacher to review the material to produce a series of training modules from the available material:

-individuals to put their name on a list who want to become PARENTS FOR LIFE.

Can you help ?