Shared Parenting

The petition is entitled Tackle Young Offending By Introducing A Presumption Of Shared Parenting And Opening Secret Family Courts and the explanatory notes say

"Britain is in breakdown. Family breakdown. The secret family courts are creating a ‘Generation X’ of children. Children who are turning to crime. A lost generation growing up without the love and discipline of their fathers. We the undersigned call for the urgent introduction of mandatory mediation before couples go to court, a legal presumption of shared parenting combined with a fully transparent system of justice that can restore public confidence in the discredited family justice system."

To do the petitioner justice, he has been completely up-front about his personal bias here - he's from Fathers 4 Justice.

He starts with a dubious premise - that "Britain is in breakdown", for which I personally see little or no evidence. We can return again to the old Plato quote:

"What is happening to our young people? They disrespect their elders, they disobey their parents. They ignore the law. They riot in the streets inflamed with wild notions. Their morals are decaying. What is to become of them?"

There are many such quotes from around the same time; I really should look up a new one for next time I need one.

This alleged breakdown he ascribes to absent fathers - that is, forcibly absent fathers. While I was trying to find figures for how many people grow up without their fathers, a passing reference reminded me of the post-war generations (of which there have been several) where vast numbers of children grew up without their fathers because the fathers had been killed. One wonders why they didn't, er, lead to Britain breaking down.

Mandatory mediation before court sounds like a good idea, I must say. Presumption of shared parenting has flaws, though I wouldn't dispute it provided the courts had the right to override it. And the question of increased transparency - well, a quick Google indicates quite a lot of people, including assorted family judges and MPs, are in favour of increased transparency, and I can't say it sounds like a bad idea from this very limited research I've done.

So in fact what the petitioner's asking for sounds quite reasonable. It's a pity, therefore, that he's based it on illogical rhetoric about a breakdown for which he has no evidence and linkages between this alleged breakdown and something which may be entirely unrelated to it.