| Most disengaged fathers presented a complex amalgam of reasons for their
loss of contact with their children after divorce, rather than one clear cause: Reasons for Disengagement
| Reason |
Percentage that
mentioned |
(N) |
| Access difficulties |
90 |
(36) |
| Father's decision to cease contact |
33 |
(13) |
| Practical difficulties (distance,finances, work
schedule) |
28 |
(11) |
| Child(ren) not wanting contact |
18 |
(7) |
| Legal injunction |
16 |
(6) |
| Early pattern of no contact (prohibiting future
contact) |
5 |
(2) |
Most frequently mentioned (by 36 of the 40 disengaged fathers) were difficulties
related to access, whereas many of the contact fathers stressed the importance of the
support and encouragement of their ex-wives in their maintenance of contact and
development of a new parental role. Those fathers who received little or no confirmation
of their roles as "fathers" by their former spouses appear most likely to become
disengaged from their children's lives:
"That's the way my wife wants it - she doesn't want me around. And it's very
difficult for me because I always feel guilty and wonder 'Did I try hard enough to get
access?' I know I've tried every angle, and there's nothing I can really do now, other
than what I've done. And the legal system has allowed, has encouraged, my wife to cut off
contact between me and my son. They say I'm a swine if I don't pay support, but they say
nothing about my not being allowed to see my son". (Canadian "disengaged"
father)
"My wife's refusal to share the caring of our son, her perception of him as
'her' son and of herself as the only legitimate parent ... My wife actively breaking off
my contact with my son, and her parents' influence in her breaking all ties with me ... My
own inability to see my son on only a sporadic basis, which is nothing like my previous
relationship with him or what I think to be fatherhood. Tied in with all of this is a
tremendous sense of loss, of sadness, of total humiliation and discouragement".
(British "disengaged" father)
"...The tension and conflict, the anger that permeated all my contact with my
wife and children was impossible to bear. She was really, really angry. Her hands always
shook, her voice always trembled--conflict was the central element in our relationship.
Each contact involved a major fight, insulting screaming matches where we'd both say
really vicious things to each other. It was one huge trauma for the girls. We'd argue and
fight, I'd take my daughters, brood all afternoon, come back, and there'd be another big
scene. My daughters would listen to this; they'd cry and scream. My wife threatened to
call the police; I was in a blind fury. Finally I gave up--it was hopeless. My daughter
was in the middle, she was unhappy, wetting the bed. You have the kid's welfare at heart,
which my wife used as a convenient weapon against me. She saw me as causing all this
damage, as the disruptive influence in my daughter's life. So the solution is to remove
this disruptive influence. I was told to stay away; that I was harmful emotionally to my
children. But never mind my daughter's constant pleas for her dad; never mind my wife
telling my daughter that I had abandoned her. These are all subtle things that my wife
wouldn't admit even to herself, but they're what determined the final outcome. After
awhile I became afraid to make contact. My wife was perfectly content not to have me
re-enter the children's life: that becomes a tremendous barrier--you become afraid of
making contact. After awhile you rebuild your life, they rebuild theirs--it becomes easier
to accept the status quo." (Canadian"disengaged" father)
Linked to ex-wives' lack of support of paternal contact and fathers' feelings of no
longer being influential and valued as fathers, were fathers' own decisions to cease
contact with their children. The 13 fathers citing this reason spoke of their overwhelming
sense of loss and depression, the pain of seeing their children only intermittently, and
the fact that an avuncular "visiting" relationship in no sense resembled
"real fatherhood" and was perhaps harmful for children as well. Fathers' own
decisions to cease contact were inextricably linked to their inability to adapt to the
constraints of the "visiting" relationship:
"The most difficult thing is not seeing them and not actually being there to
see them grow up. If you don't see them for three months or six months or whatever, you've
missed six months of their life. You've missed the wee things like, 'Dad, the ice-cream
van's here' or 'Dad, I've got homework to do' or this and that. And then you've got to say
goodbye to them, and it's very frustrating. And you wonder - I still don't really know
what's best - I wonder if maybe it would be better to leave them alone and let them live
their life, and it's not knowing what to do, not knowing which is best for them. The
feeling you get inside yourself everytime you go away: 'Am I doing the right thing by
seeing them, would they be better off if I just didn't see them?'... It's basically just a
hurtful relationship. There's a lot of men who really care about their kids, but walk away
from them, because there's too much hurt on both sides. But a lot of people don't realize
that. I used to be one of them, by the way, who thought really badly about a father who
hadn't seen his kids in years. People seemingly label these fathers as uncaring people,
but sometimes I wonder if in fact they're more caring, because of the hurt involved, and
the separation - and each time you've got your child and your child has to go back - is
really hard, is really difficult. And until you go through it, you can't understand it.
And I think especially with younger kids, the quicker a parent doesn't see their kids then
their kids aren't really realizing that their dad's not there. Maybe it's less hurtful
because both the child and parent have to say goodbye to each other, and both of you are
practically in tears. There's a sort of silence between you - it's like continual hurt.
And men that don't actually go and see their kids again, I quite admire, because they're
minimizing the pain on that child - because otherwise it's continual pain. But the pain
never goes away for the father, no matter what he does". (British
"disengaged" father)
"Mainly that I couldn't accept the role of simply being a visitor in my kids'
lives. I'd been so involved with them, when I lived with them, as a father, that the gulf
between simply being somebody who's a visitor, who took them out occasionally, and being a
father, was just too wide for me to bridge. And I also felt that it would inevitably lead
to resentment on their part about it. I didn't think that I could cope during the time
that I did see them as a visitor...and that probably during the whole of that time I'd be
screwed up emotionally to such an extent that that would convey itself to them, and lead
to them not wanting to be with me." (Canadian "disengaged" father)
Eleven fathers mentioned practical difficulties in exercising access, including
problems of distance, transportation, finances, work schedule, or lack of adequate
accommodation, but only as a secondary factor in their loss of contact. Seven referred to
a lack of confirmation of the non-custodial father role by their children, or their
children increasingly distancing themselves from their father after divorce; 6 mentioned
the bias of the legal system toward sole maternal custody and the existence of a legal
injunction prohibiting the type of contact they had desired; and 2 fathers indicated that
they had been unable to overcome a pattern of diminished or no contact established in the
months immediately following divorce.
Clearly, a shortcoming of the present study is that only fathers' own stated reasons
for disengagement were accessible; corroborative information from other members of the
divorced family was not available, and uncritical reliance on self-report data can be
problematic as fathers tended to largely underestimate their own role in their loss of
contact with their children. Nevertheless, fathers' own interpretations of the
disengagement process, not previously examined in the divorce literature, are what they
face and act upon; for this reason, any analysis of paternal disengagement must begin with
and seriously consider fathers' self-reports. There were many indications in the data,
however, that paternal disengagement is a much more complex phenomenon than merely the
result of obstruction of access by the former spouse.
Interdependence of structural and psychological factors. A closer scrutiny of
the dynamics underlying the process of disengagement suggests that two orders of variables
determine the level of post-divorce father-child contact: structural and psychological.
The disengagement of non-custodial fathers after divorce is a result of a combination of
structural constraints and fathers' own psychological response to the perceived loss of
their children. On their own, each is usually insufficient to effect disengagement;
combined, they are a potent force mitigating against post-divorce paternal contact. Both
structural and psychological factors are inculpated as critical mediating variables
between divorce and disengagement: while divorce represents a situation where fathers are
judicially, culturally, and legislatively disadvantaged on the basis of
gender, fathers' psychological adjustment to the
consequences of divorce is the other critical factor in the disengagement equation.
Non-custodial fathers' disengagement from their children should not be interpreted as a
lack of interest in their children, or the end result of what may have been a tenuous
father-child relationship during the marriage. The grief of previously highly involved
(and now-disengaged) fathers is the most pronounced and remains unresolved: chronic grief
is most characteristic of this group, a reflection of their closer attachment to their
children before divorce. Psychological factors related to fathers' unresolved grief and
inability to adapt to child absence, role loss, and the constraints of the
"visiting" relationship, are highly significant factors in their eventual
disengagement. Fathers' lack of help-seeking behaviour further compounds the resolution of
grief associated with the multiple losses attendant to divorce.
It also cannot be assumed that fathers' post-divorce roles are solely reflections of
their choices. Highly involved and attached fathers during the marriage are highly
vulnerable in relation to structural constraints and the effects of a judicial mode of
custody and access determination, often being caught in a completely impossible dilemma:
unable to tolerate the idea of the loss of their children, but given little expectation
for success and what many consider to be a highly adversarial means to try to prevent the
loss (which they believe will seriously harm their children), they gradually disengage
from their children's lives. Such fathers, often unaware of alternatives in regard to both
custody and access resolution and post-divorce custody arrangements at the time of
divorce, rarely make legal application for custody, although they are the most likely to
desire at least partial physical custody of their children. Structural factors,
delineating and regulating the boundaries of the post-divorce father-child relationship,
are thus also significant determinants of fathers' subsequent loss of contact with their
children. Existing analyses of "divorce adjustment" have overlooked this dynamic
interaction between the structural consequences of divorce for non-custodial fathers and
individual fathers' psychological adaptation to these consequences. The concept of
"divorce adjustment" prevalent in the divorce research suggests that it is individuals
who are expected to come to terms with (or adjust to) the consequences of divorce; the
social structure is not implicated as in need of fundamental change.
Structural Factors
Adversarial nature of legal processes. Although disengaged fathers themselves
identified the antagonistic nature of the post-divorce relationship between the former
spouses resulting in withheld access as the primary external barrier to their post-divorce
contact with their children, it may be argued that legal processes are strongly implicated
in exacerbating or creating such conflict. Fathers' overall assessment of their lawyers
vis-a-vis helping or hindering their subsequent relationships with their children, and of
the judicial system in regard to its appropriateness as a forum for determining child
custody and access arrangements, differed between contact and disengaged fathers.
Disengaged fathers in particular felt that the system of individual representation
characteristic of the traditional adversarial approach of the legal system served to
polarize the divorcing spouses. They attributed the provocative behaviour of lawyers and
the adversarial nature of the legal system as often creating overt conflict where little
such antagonism had previously existed. Direct communication between spouses was usually
prohibited by the lawyers of either or both parties, and a more hostile tone introduced
via letters and affidavits drafted by lawyers but ostensibly representing their clients'
sentiments, which constituted a new medium of communication between the
"pursuer" or "plaintiff" and "defendant".
"They brewed up bad feelings between my wife and myself--the letters that the
lawyers have sent us--one trying to intimidate the other. My wife was boiling over a
letter written by my lawyer which I knew nothing about, and I was really mad about a
letter her lawyer sent me. It's been made into a war." (British
"disengaged" father)
"...a woman goes to her lawyer and says, 'Look, I'm not getting along with this
guy, I'm frustrated, I'm fed up," or whatever, and her lawyer then says, 'What a
rotten swine,' and then they write up a great big affidavit that accuses the father of
being the rottenest son-of-a-bitch on this earth. And that's presented to the father, and
the father sees this, but it's not worded in the wife's words, it's worded by the lawyer,
and they get madder than hell when they see all this nonsense. And then they go and see
their lawyer and their lawyer reads this and then he writes up a whole bunch of crap back.
So that's the big thump--that's what kills it, right then and there, then it's a big fight
all the way in..." (Canadian "disengaged" father)
They essentially produced a negative tone in the relationship where none existed
before. Essentially the adversarial principle produces hostility where there might have
been compromise. It results in not being able to do things spontaneously which you would
do in a normal relationship - it causes you not to telephone, it causes you not to write.
If you do write it is through the lawyer to another lawyer - it makes contact very formal,
including contact with children, which is not a natural way of relating. It restricts
contact to a particular time, day, or time of year. There is no spontaneity left in the
relationship. But the worst thing it does is divide you into two sides and there's no
middle ground or common ground which is where we'd normally be. Essentially you have no
communication with your wife about the children since everything is filtered through
lawyers". (British "disengaged" father)
From the research evidence available, it is clear that most lawyers do approach divorce
in a traditional adversarial manner (Eekelaar, 1984) and consider that in being partisan
and assuming a "fighting" posture they are merely protecting their client's
interests (Murch, 1980); the assumption that because two individuals are divorcing they
are necessarily in conflict is prevalent (ibid.) However, a sizeable proportion of
fathers in the present study did not report a situation of high conflict between the
spouses at the time of the separation, before legal consultation, and a third of the
fathers expressing a desire for at least partial physical custody of their children
reported no overt disagreement between the spouses in that regard at that time. These
fathers believed that the possibility of a shared custody arrangement clearly existed at
the point of separation:
"... we originally had a joint custody agreement, and it was the legal system
that tore this apart, it destroyed it. We had agreed beforehand and then this happened -
the legal system intervened". (Canadian "disengaged" father)
"...Joint custody was a very real possibility in my mind at that time. It seems
to me now that by listening to the lawyer and agreeing to grant sole custody to my wife,
that it jeopardized my future relationship with my daughter. My lawyer kept stressing that
the most important thing was to make the terms of the property settlement easier--and to
do this I would have to agree to my wife having sole custody...Basically I sacrificed
custody in the interests of a property settlement." (Canadian "disengaged"
father)
Many disengaged fathers described feeling intimidated by the adversarial approach of
the legal system, and were cognizant of the dangers of this type of approach in regard to
their children's well-being, another significant factor in their decision not to legally
contest the issue of custody. Fathers generally conceived of a custody "battle"
in terms of a format of attack - defence in order to impress the judge, with detailed
accounts of neglect, abuse, and cruelty presented by both sides in their attempt to
"win" their children. Many saw contested custody as more likely to hurt their
children (and former spouses) than facilitate the development of a meaningful post-divorce
relationship with their children; indeed, their overriding concern was that their children
would be used as "pawns" and "weapons" in the "battle",
which would likely continue well after the custody hearing:
"The way the lawyers fight - tit for tat all the time. It's made into a battle;
it's bargaining for a human life. It's made worse since the law leans toward the mother in
the case of custody. The mother says 'The law is on my side', and I as the father am
forced to fight, which I don't want to do ..." (British "disengaged"
father)
"My wife and I had no opportunity to come face-to-face to discuss our
situation--everything transpired between the lawyers. My wife decided to obtain sole
custody through the court, and my lawyer felt that I needed to take a 'fighting' posture.
My wife certainly used her lawyer this way, which led to a very acrimonious situation. My
wife's lawyer prevented me from having contact with my children, so that after two or
three months when I finally did see my children, they were visibly scared when they did
see me, and were quite reluctant to go out with me. My wife's lawyer used this in court
later on." (British "disengaged" father)
"I continued my efforts toward a reconciliation, mainly by trying to be
patient, remaining where I was, patient, in total desolation. I couldn't act in any kind
of positive way--I had to endure my suffering in the right way, with integrity. Any action
that I could have taken--bringing Michael home with me against my wife's wishes,
consulting a lawyer, fighting a custody battle in court--I considered all of these as
violent means, which ethically I couldn't do. I thought only about preserving my integrity
and enduring it all in the right way--although I admit I cut quite a ridiculous figure in
the process." (British "disengaged" father)
Many disengaged fathers considered contested custody--and the use of legal process
generally--as a highly adversarial means which did not justify the end they were seeking.
Such fathers described being strongly and intimately attached to their children and were
primarily concerned with the potential harmful effects of the adversarial process on their
children. For these fathers, however, withdrawal from the adversarial process further
jeopardized their ongoing contact with their children, as the level of hostility between
the spouses had become such that negotiation had effectively become an impossibility.
Feelings of powerlessness and victimization were prevalent among disengaged fathers
who, throughout the time of legal negotiation, attempted to maintain their pre-existing
bond with their children by not utilizing what they perceived to be an adversarial process
means to "win" custody. Their lawyers (or ex-wives' lawyers) nevertheless
adopted adversarial means in the legal negotiations that took place. Engaged in an
adversarial process, but not wanting to utilize such means to "win" custody,
those fathers expressing a strong desire for a shared physical custody arrangement after
divorce were viewed with suspicion and their desires and motives were questioned; they
were assumed to not genuinely want the burden of full or shared custody but to have
ulterior motives in positing such a "threat" or "bluff". In reality,
their previous involvement with and attachment to their children made them unable to wage
a public "fight", which they perceived would harm their children. Their refusal
to adopt such means, however, contributed to their loss of contact with their children.
Disengaged fathers often saw their lawyers (and the legal "divorce industry")
as having a vested interest in profiting financially from ongoing conflict, and hence less
likely to be alert to the possibilities of reconciliation or reaching an amicable
settlement by means of mediation. Fathers described lawyers' tactical manoeuvres toward
exacerbating and perpetuating conflict between the former spouses as manipulative and
designed to extract financial profit from the breakdown of their clients' family
relationships. These fathers came to resent their escalating dependence on their lawyers
and the legal system. However, they felt "locked into" the legal process insofar
as they had lost trust in their ex-wives, feeling vulnerable in terms of their future
relationship with their children and needing the special protection of a lawyer; this loss
of trust between the spouses and feelings of vulnerability were seen by fathers to have
been deliberately engineered by their lawyers and a legal framework actively promoting
such a dependency. In this context, fathers spoke of the slowness and constant delays of
the legal machinery and of high legal costs as largely unnecessary.
"...the law acts so slowly, and emotional matters should be resolved quickly if
there's going to be a balanced outcome. For example, it took six weeks for the fact of
non-access to be brought into the court and a further three weeks for it to be dealt
with--a total of nine weeks of non-contact had elapsed. The law delays things a lot as
well as polarizing parental opinions." (British "disengaged" father)
Finally, disengaged fathers stressed that the use of legal tactics appropriate to the
"combat" of litigation, when applied insensitively to issues arising from
emotional difficulties in family relationships, could be highly damaging. The judicial
system was thus considered by all disengaged fathers to be an inappropriate forum for
resolving issues of child custody and access.
""...the whole system is totally barbaric--it is not in the least
interested in the children's welfare, as I found out in that court. It's just to get a
decision made--they're there to make a decision, but unqualified to make the decision, and
more often than not they make the wrong decision, because they do not know the family's
circumstances, without liaising or consulting with any member of the family. It's the
judge's decision, which I find farcical," (British "disengaged" father)
Identified by fathers themselves as primarily responsible for their loss of contact
with their children, was that of obstructed access by the former spouse. Clearly, the less
supportive that a custodial mother is toward paternal access, the greater the likelihood
of access difficulties and eventual disengagement of the father. The source of
maternal hostility to post-divorce father-child contact thus becomes an important
question. Inter-spousal hostility after divorce is not necessarily primarily influenced by
pre-divorce patterns; while mistrust and anger are almost universally present in varying
degrees upon divorce, intensified conflict during and after divorce may be directly
related to intervening legal processes. Fathers frequently held their lawyers and the
legal system responsible for exacerbating or creating conflict between the spouses. Many
fathers initially made attempts to discuss terms of custody and access directly with their
wives, but were restrained by their lawyers (as were their wives) from communicating
directly, and instructed to negotiate via the lawyers. Negotiations involving lawyers
acting as intermediaries typically lasted at least several months, many several years,
during which an atmosphere of competition, fear and mistrust prevailed over what was in
some cases a spirit of co-operation (despite disagreements) at the time of divorce in
regard to post-divorce arrangements for the children. The adversarial nature of legal
processes, whether restricted to negotiations between the lawyers or involving court
action, makes it highly unlikely that a spirit of friendship and co-operation will survive
the divorce. Severe conflict is the end-result of a negotiating environment which
effectively forces each party to assume an extreme position.
To test the influence of legal processes in exacerbating or creating post-divorce
spousal conflict, the level of conflict between the spouses at the time of separation
(before any major legal involvement) was compared with the post-divorce level of
friendliness between the former spouses (after legal processes had made their major
impact). No correlation was found between the level of inter-spousal conflict at the time
of the divorce and the nature of ex-spouses' post-divorce contact; that is, the likelihood
of friendly and unfriendly (or non-existent) post-divorce contact did not depend on the
level of conflict between spouses at the time of divorce--suggesting the presence of
mediating factors operating in the period during divorce which influence the nature of the
subsequent relationship.
There was also no association between the level of conflict between the spouses at the
time of divorce (separation) and subsequent father-child contact: conflict between the
spouses upon separation did not necessarily lead to paternal disengagement. The
relationship between paternal contact and the level of conflict between the parents after
divorce, however, was highly significant (p < .001): post- but not pre-divorce
parental conflict was associated with non-custodial fathers' disengagement from their
children. This further suggests that mediating factors are at work during divorce to
produce a level of parental conflict strong enough to result in access difficulties for
non-custodial fathers, followed by eventual loss of contact.
Significantly, most disengaged fathers described their ex-wives as having believed in
fathers' ability to be effective parents, as having confidence in and generally agreeing
with fathers' child rearing practices during the marriage. Disagreements over
child-related matters within the marriage were reported as relatively rare. The fact that
the great majority of divorces involve two capable and loving parents could be used as the
basis for developing positive co-parental relationships after divorce; in contrast, within
the legal process, former spouses are oriented toward devaluing the relative contribution
of the other, and custodial parents toward acting as if non-custodial parent contact is
not important for the children. Distorted perceptions of the former spouse appear in fact
to be a frequent result of a legal mode of custody and access resolution. Up to the time
of legal negotiations, each parent has viewed the other as necessary to the children's
lives; the adversarial stance adopted during legal negotiations contributes to a dramatic
shift in this perception.
Child custody determination. Traditional access arrangements were considered to
be entirely inadequate by those disengaged fathers who perceived themselves as highly
involved with their children before divorce. At the time of the divorce, the great
majority of these fathers wanted at least partial physical custody of their
children; they described their actual legal custody and access arrangements as woefully
insufficient--the main issue for these fathers was not one of legal custody and access per
se; rather, they were primarily concerned with maintaining a meaningful post-divorce
relationship with their children in the form of regular and frequent physical contact.
Among disengaged fathers, there existed a widespread yearning for the children with
whom they were no longer in contact. All forty disengaged fathers indicated a desire for
"a lot more" contact with their children:
Paternal Contact by Desired Level of Child Contact after Divorce2
|
Contact |
Disengaged |
Total |
|
% |
(N) |
% |
(N) |
% |
(N) |
| A lot more |
40 |
(16) |
100 |
(40) |
70 |
(56) |
| Some more |
28 |
(11) |
— |
— |
14 |
(11) |
| About right |
30 |
(12) |
— |
— |
15 |
(12) |
| A little less |
2 |
(1) |
— |
— |
1 |
(1) |
Total |
100 |
(40) |
100 |
(40) |
100 |
(80) |
p < .001
Existing divorce literature, while containing little empirical data in regard to
fathers' desired level of contact with their children after divorce, often contains
suggestions that fathers simply do not want custody of their children and explains
fathers' disengagement primarily in terms of a lack of interest (Eekelaar & Clive,
1977). The findings of this study suggest otherwise: the great majority of non-custodial
fathers considered traditional legal access arrangements to be insufficient, and wanted at
least partial physical custody. This was most evident in the case of disengaged fathers;
dissatisfaction with existing legal custody and access arrangements, as well as with
actual physical arrangements, was highest among those non-custodial fathers who had
previously enjoyed a relatively high level of involvement, attachment, and influence and
had subsequently lost all contact with their children.
The discrepancy between fathers' desires in regard to custody and access and the actual
post-divorce arrangements made is striking. Seventy-nine per cent of all of the
non-custodial fathers and 88% of the disengaged fathers in the sample indicated that at
the time of the divorce, their preferred arrangement was one in which their children could
live with them at least part of the time, including overnight stays. Clearly, those
fathers who legally disputed custody and forced a court decision (15 of 80 fathers) did
not constitute all of those who wanted custody of their children; there appeared to be
powerful factors mediating between fathers' stated desires at the time of divorce and the
final outcome of paternal non-custody, and between these desires and fathers' subsequent
inaction vis-a-vis pursuit of custody.
The role of lawyers was crucial in transforming fathers' aspirations regarding what
they could achieve through the legal system; lawyers assumed a key role in persuading
fathers not to pursue custody, or lessening their aspirations concerning their level of
post-divorce contact with their children. In 55% of cases, lawyers actively discouraged
fathers from pursuing custody; only 12% agreed with or encouraged it. Fathers were often
told that a "reasonable" amount of post-divorce contact was the
"customary" pattern of fortnightly access. In a field that relies heavily on
precedent for its decisions, it has been convenient and comfortable to recommend what has
gone before; the precedents of maternal custody and twice-monthly paternal access have
become, in the eyes of lawyers and the judiciary, not only customary, but somehow
developmentally and morally correct (Felner et al, 1985). Fathers wanting custody of or
open access to their children are viewed with suspicion; mothers who wish to accommodate
such fathers are advised not to "give up" too much (ibid.) For
non-custodial fathers, the pattern of "visiting" their children on a weekly or
fortnightly basis--at best, 2 days out of every 14--has thus continued, despite fathers'
strong dissatisfaction with the limited nature of such contact, children's yearning for
increased contact with their fathers, and mothers often feeling overwhelmed by the sole
responsibility for their children after divorce.
Lawyers play a central role in providing their clients with a basic knowledge of the
law and legal processes, helping them to decide what to ask for, and shaping expectations
of what they will get. If lawyers' advice regarding post-divorce contact is discouraging,
it is likely that fathers will lower their expectations; if the expectation that the best
fathers can hope for is limited access, these expectations shape what fathers strive
for--and settle for. Given that most custody and access arrangements only reach the court
as a fait accompli, the way in which lawyers advise their clients is an important
determinant of the final structural arrangements made. What lawyers advise is influenced
by what they think the court will accept ("bargaining in the shadow of the
law"). The majority of fathers, faced with explicit advice and strong direction from
their lawyers toward maternal custody with limited parental access, and convinced on the
basis of judicial precedent that they have a limited chance of success through the courts,
eventually accept the predominant pattern of weekly or fortnightly "visiting":
"I got the impression that there would be no problem getting access, getting
Andrew to stay with me on weekends and so on - but it didn't work out that way. He also
told me that I should forget about custody, and to just concentrate on access, which I now
realize was wrong". (Canadian "disengaged" father).
The lawyer advised me to give the mother interim custody and not to worry about it
or fight it. I didn't know at that time that in fact, when you're talking about custody,
nothing is 'interim' - anything that is 'interim' means that it is forever. I didn't know
that at that time". (Canadian "disengaged" father)
"Initially when there's a separation, there should be someplace to go to try to
save a relationship, rather than turning to lawyers and finding out what you're going to
get and what you're not going to get through a divorce. The legal system makes things
happen that should never happen--it calls for no effort on the part of the husband or
wife. It's presented as the easiest, as the only alternative. Fathers are told that they
should just give up the idea of custody--there's nothing positive fathers can do--and
mothers are told that they'll get everything, they're entitled to it, and that the lawyers
will get it all for them. For fathers a sense of resignation starts when lawyers tell them
that they don't have a chance for keeping the same relationship they had with their
children before they separated, and all kinds of other people--society generally--supports
this view. It completely takes over as time goes on and fathers realize that the whole
situation is hopeless. And they're left feeling completely helpless." (Canadian
"disengaged" father)
By pre-adjudicating custody disputes on the basis of anticipations of what would happen
were the dispute to be carried to court, lawyers perpetuate the (perceived) maternal
custody bias of the judiciary: inaction because of an assumption of prejudice becomes a
self-fulfilling prophecy, and reinforces the status quo. The feeling that fathers
are at a severe disadvantage in relation to custody of their children in the courts is
widespread:
"...They don't give men the benefit of the possibility that they may be good
parents. They look at you as if you're doing something wrong, as if you're the guilty
party. Lawyers and judges are the mainstay of the problems that men and children have,
when it comes to men and children not having the right to maintain their relationship. And
they support women if they decide to break the relationship - they promote women's anger
and bitterness, and promote destruction of the father-child relationship. Before the
separation, I had faith in the legal system. I've been through it and now find myself with
no confidence in the system whatsoever. I believe in the truth, and I couldn't believe how
full of lies the whole legal system is". (Canadian "disengaged" father)
If a father does not accept his lawyer's advice and seeks to challenge traditional
custody and access arrangements, as was the case with a number of fathers in the present
study, his lawyer may refuse to proceed with the application and to further represent his
client or, if he "agrees" to contest custody, the father's case may not be
presented strongly. The difficulty of obtaining legal aid for an action which is unlikely
to succeed is endemic for divorcing fathers, while private litigants may be deterred by
prohibitive legal costs (Parkinson, 1987). When custody is contested, as was the case with
15 men in the study, fathers and their lawyers are faced with a judiciary that in effect
acts according to a maternal presumption, despite the
gender-neutral
standard of "the best interests of the child". The main issue in contested
cases, under the rubric of "the best interests of the child", is usually the
tolerable fitness of the mother, above all other factors. The outcome of contested cases,
regardless of whom children are living with at the time of the hearing or of pre-divorce
parenting patterns is, in the great majority of cases, a maternal custody determination.
These contested cases define legal norms; they form the basis of a body of law upon which
all divorced fathers are advised.
Custody determinations made by the courts, influencing the type of advice offered to
fathers by lawyers, appear to be largely based on the assumption of fathers' secondary
importance in their children's lives except in an economic sense; the nature of the
pre-divorce father-child relationship does not appear to be a significant factor in legal
outcomes. Lawyers' directions rarely differ for divorced fathers; sole maternal custody
with limited paternal access was almost universally recommended for the fathers in the
sample. There exists, however, a heterogeneity of fathering roles within families. Thus
while there were no differences between highly and peripherally involved and attached
fathers in the actual advice they received from their lawyers regarding custody and
access, the outcome for each group was radically different in terms of satisfaction with
the custody and access arrangements that were made and the level of their post-divorce
contact with their children. It may be the very fact of uniformity of approach among
lawyers and the unvarying nature of judicial resolution of custody and access vis-a-vis
fathers with vastly different patterns and experiences of fatherhood that is largely
responsible for the poor outcome of those fathers relatively highly involved with and
attached to their children during the marriage. Fathers enter the legal process with very
different pre-divorce father-child relationship patterns. While such heterogeneity
warrants against a homogeneous approach, the legal process, bound by precedent, structures
post-divorce relationships according to largely fixed rules that ensure that the
"motherhood" and fatherhood" mandates remain intact.
As argued in Chapter 2, the state has a strong interest in the maintenance of
appropriate work and family role behaviours. Upon divorce, the.judicial system has a
central role to play in limiting child custody and access options, sanctioning and
legitimizing traditional structures and relationships, and perpetuating a
gender-based division of roles in the post-divorce
family. The "motherhood" and "fatherhood" mandates are clear: the
father remains responsible for children's economic support, the mother for their care.
Thus we see a consistent pattern of decisions that both justify and reinforce a maternal
presumption; this judicially-constructed preference has operated as effectively as a
statutory directive (Weitzman, 1985; Foote, 1988).
Psychological factors
Grieving process. The intensity of the pre-divorce father-child relationship and
its interactions is of paramount importance in determining the outcome of the grieving
process of non-custodial fathers. Those fathers most involved with and attached to their
children before divorce are most likely to acutely experience the negative effects of the
loss or absence of their children, and are the group most at risk of losing contact with
their children following divorce.
With a startling intensity, the disengaged fathers in the sample described being
emotionally connected to their children in strong and intimate ways, defining their
"fathering" role as a central component of their identity:
"Definitions of fathering vary tremendously but I personally would equate it
with parenting: a complete commitment to one's child, the major responsibility in one's
life, a combination of nurturance, encouraging autonomy and initiative within prescribed
limits. It's setting the stage to allow a child to grow and develop his potential to the
maximum". (British "disengaged" father)
"It means having an ongoing and continuing interest in the child's welfare
during their life, even if they're doing things of which you don't approve. It means, on
the one hand, being available when there are crises and difficult questions, and on the
other hand being able to stand back a little and let the young person get a degree of
independence. To make the young person value themselves as an individual and not just a
clone of mother and father. It also includes a lot of physical things - washing sheets,
ironing, making sausages. It means sharing things and sharing tasks, particularly when the
wife is also doing a part- or a full-time job". (British "disengaged"
father)
"It's a way of living - getting up with your children, eating with them, doing
work together, reading with them, hugging them, putting them to sleep, dealing with their
fears, and enjoying their pleasures - living with them". (British
"disengaged" father)
Contributing to the chronic grief of disengaged fathers is the fact that while a
salient loss has in fact occurred, the object of their grief is very much alive, and the
grieving process persists as the finality of death is lacking. The predominant feature of
the ongoing grief of disengaged fathers is a pervasive sense of preoccupation, loss, and
sadness; depressive features are most often cited in fathers' descriptions of their
post-divorce relationship with their children:
"I think of them everyday, almost constantly, although I never see them. I feel
I am constantly searching for my children, I think I see their faces in other children's
faces. It's a desperate kind of yearning". (British "disengaged" father)
"I have a constant, very real pain in my chest; there's tension, lack of sleep,
constant worry ... I'm totally preoccupied with my son, and a lot of my time is spent
trying not to think about what happened. But mainly it's a feeling of sadness, an
emptiness, a kind of darkness". (Canadian "disengaged" father)
"I feel depressed and alone. At times I have a total feeling of despair, but
I've got to gear my thoughts away from thinking like that. My heart feels like it's been
ripped away, but I try to consciously steer myself away from thinking like that. I have to
put on a facade of coping". (British "disengaged" father)
"I'm finding it impossible to adjust. I had a big part of my life that I
enjoyed - and lived for - just taken away. I feel a big gap in my life that I can't fill.
I feel that the less I see of him the farther away I'm getting from him. But the strain of
seeing him for just a few hours a week was too much not only for me but on my son's side
as well. The house is like a morgue - it's completely quiet, completely cold. I've felt
very depressed but just have had to accept the fact that I've lost him and can't do
anything about it. I've just had to accept the fact that I'm no longer part of his life
... I felt like a rat trapped in a cage. I felt on the verge of violence. I wanted to
strike out against every member of her family. I felt paranoid - like I was falling apart,
piece by piece. I couldn't concentrate on things - on anything, really. I felt mainly
depressed after awhile - completely confused and hopeless after trying to think over what
had happened and why it happened. Just a deep sadness about my son and about what had
happened". (British "disengaged" father)
"Depression, a sense of being unable to help those that I love, a sense of
worry about what's going on with the children, a sense of helplessness that the people I
love the most I can't help, a sense of utter horror at what society is doing in requiring
a father to go through horrendous long legal proceedings just to get permission to see his
children, much less have any kind of normal father-child relationship." (Canadian
"disengaged" father)
Child absence. Child absence produces a significant difference in fathers'
perception of their functioning as parents after divorce. Feeling devalued as parents,
previously highly involved and attached fathers described themselves as being rootless,
having no structure in their lives, and generally anxious, helpless, and depressed.
Actively involved in their children's care and upbringing within the marriage and deriving
much satisfaction from parental tasks, these fathers had largely transcended the
traditional "fatherhood mandate." They consistently referred to initial fears of
a diminished relationship with their children, and subsequent preoccupation with the
absence of their children. Feeling deeply attached to their children during the marriage,
they saw themselves as primary or at least co-nurturers of their children--and could not,
upon divorce, tolerate the idea that this function was in jeopardy.
Although child absence was manifested in a number of ways, the great majority of the
now-disengaged fathers in the sample displayed a number of signs of depression,
resignation, and a full grief reaction connected to the loss of their children:
"It's a very great loss. It makes me sad, I have periods of intermittent
depression, I wake up at 4.00 a.m., I have a lot of sleepless nights. Of course my present
wife has helped tremendously, and encouraged me to channel these feelings into positive
endeavors. But there's a tremendous feeling of loss and sadness, and it's a loss which can
never be regained. The period of a child's life growing, in Elspeth's case, from 8 to 14,
is a vital period for her and a vital period for me, which has been lost forever".
(British "disengaged" father)
"I feel very bad - I feel I am lost with nowhere to go, with no direction. And
I feel no one can save me; I don't know how I can survive like this. I can't sleep - all
the time I think about them". (Canadian "disengaged" father)
"Terrible. It's a piece of my life that's missing. There's not a day in my life
that she does not enter my thoughts, in one way or another. It's a tremendous sense of
loss that I'm left with--constantly." (Canadian "disengaged" father)
"I feel numb - I don't feel anything anymore. At first I felt completely
terrified - for about 4 years. And then I just started losing all feeling. I don't know
what I feel right now". (Canadian "disengaged" father)
The impact of child absence was as potent for those fathers who had not seen their
children for several years as for those who had lost contact more recently. Time elapsed
since the divorce, or since the last contact with their children, did not appear to
diminish the intensity of fathers' grief.
Role loss. Child absence is accompanied by role loss: despite the fact that a
"real" loss of children occurs after divorce, fathers also lose the status or
role of "fatherhood"--for previously highly involved fathers, a major
integrative force in their day-to-day functioning and an important component of their
identity and status. As the child is lost, so is the "father" role and its
functions and privileges.
Disengaged fathers, having enjoyed a relatively active pre-divorce
"fathering" role, found it almost impossible to maintain their role as parents
in the face of limited contact and a significantly decreased level of influence in all
areas of their children's growth and development. The less opportunity fathers had to act
as "fathers", the less they saw themselves as "fathers". Role loss can
lead to retreatism (Merton, 1968); the most previously involved and attached fathers,
faced with child absence and perceived role loss, feel their ability and confidence
vis-a-vis their "fathering" role to be drastically undermined:
"Whereas I know I displayed confidence and skill in rearing my child before the
separation, I feel quite uncomfortable around young children now. Even after a few days of
being separated from my son, I initially felt anxious and awkward when I did see him and
he reacted also in an awkward fashion. I very much question my abilities now, although I
still feel a great yearning to be a parent and to utilize the talents I know I have. I
just feel a tremendous lack in my life". (British "disengaged" father)
"I don't really think I have parenting abilities now because I don't live with
them. A parent should be a person that's there all the time. Now it's just like seeing
someone that you care about, but only during certain periods, certain times--it's not
really being a parent. To be a parent you've got to actually be there as they're growing
up, and I haven't done that in the last few years. At best I'm just a friend."
(British "disengaged" father)
Parkes (1986) and others have identified the gaining of a new identity as crucial in
the resolution of the grieving process; this was particularly problematic in cases where a
father's identity was largely defined by his relationship with his child. Further, the
father-child relationship meets the needs for nurture, affection, love, and status for
both father and child; children satisfy longings for genetic immortality, intimacy, and
family life--this too is lost after divorce. According to Erikson (1963),
"generativity" is a critical stage of the growth of the healthy adult
personality, and "regression from generativity" results in a sense of stagnation
and interpersonal impoverishment; an individual's development thus necessitates the
opportunity for active and ongoing parenting.
The "visiting" relationship. An important psychological barrier to
non-custodial fathers' post-divorce contact with their children is their inability to
adapt to the constraints of the "visiting" relationship and to construct a new
role as "part-time" parent after divorce, a particularly significant component
in the disengagement of those fathers who had an active role to play in their children's
lives during the marriage. Highly involved and attached fathers face the most abrupt
disentanglement from the routines and events of day-to-day life which had structured their
parenting role; their ongoing relationship is severely restricted by the
legally-determined patterns and constraints of access "visits".
Disengaged fathers' conceptions of what "fatherhood" constituted were
diametrically opposed to the structure that had been imposed upon them. For these fathers,
"real fatherhood" meant living with their children on a full-time basis and
sharing in everyday life with them. They felt "confused" and "lost"
without their children and being with them on a full-time basis. They had a particularly
strong desire to continue to be influential in all aspects of their children's growth and
development, values and lifestyle, which they found difficult or impossible to do within
the constraints of "visiting".
Confirming the findings of Wallerstein & Kelly (1980), the study found the pain of
the visits themselves--their brevity, artificiality, and superficiality--exascerbated
fathers' sense of loss. Access visits symbolized the abrupt ending of the pre-divorce
father-child relationship and emphasized what had been lost in the divorce: the loss of
their children and of the daily routine that had previously sustained the relationship.
For previously involved and attached fathers, "visiting" their children
mainly exacerbated already-intense feelings of loss and deprivation:
"I find that visiting is very hard. The time is very restricted, the constant
burden of a limited, restricted time is a very great pressure. There's a constant feeling
that they're not your own any more - you try to fight off this feeling, you feel very
emotional about it". (British "disengaged" father)
"Living with would be so much easier than visiting, if I had the opportunity to
do so. Visiting was very, very stressful, extremely upsetting. The changeover in my own
case was very, very difficult, because of constraints put upon the children by my wife and
her parents. Things weren't made easy because of comments from my mother-in-law or my
wife. It was very cold, unfeeling. If I were living with them, there'd be more time to
establish a father role, more chance of a bonding, of a better bonding". (British
"disengaged" father)
"I think visiting is just a tease. It's frustrating and it's unsatisfying, and
it's not a normal father-to-children relationship..." (British "disengaged"
father)
Disengaged fathers also saw "visiting" as harmful to their children,
especially in situations of extreme conflict between the spouses after divorce--adding
further to their feelings of hopelessness, resignation and depression:
"It's no good at all - it affects them badly in all areas of their life. In a
visiting relationship the children always get what they demand from the father, because
the father will do anything he can so that the children enjoy themselves - just because
he's not sure if he'll actually see them the next time. And when they go home the
atmosphere with the mother is different, and they miss their father. It affects them at
school, at home, and in their relationships with other children. They keep asking
themselves why they don't see their father like they did before".
(Canadian"disengaged" father)
Those fathers who were highly involved with and attached to their children before
divorce and managed to remain in contact with their children after divorce were
those who were able to arrange (in most cases mutually with their former spouses) an open
and frequent schedule of contact with their children. These fathers reported that a
co-operative and supportive post-divorce relationship had developed between the former
spouses in regard to their parenting responsibilities. The nature of the non-custodial
parent-child relationship is thus affected both by the frequency and length of contact
after divorce, with frequent and lengthy contact, (as opposed to "visiting")
being much more likely to ensure continuity of contact in the case of fathers actively
involved in their children's lives before divorce.
Perceived effects of divorce on children. A primary factor associated with the
disengagement of previously highly involved and attached fathers was their perception that
their children were being "caught in the middle" of an adversarial legal process
and ongoing conflict between their parents. These fathers were reluctant to continue to
expose their children to conflict, or to utilize what they considered to be
"violent" means to "win" their children's custody, a process they
believed to be potentially highly damaging to their children. Fathers' prevailing concern
for their children's well-being thus functioned as a "Catch-22" against them: if
a father was concerned about exposing his children to what he considered to be a
"violent" process, or if he wished to not disrupt his children's lives further
by challenging custody and upsetting their "status quo", his ongoing
contact with his children after divorce may well have been in jeopardy.
Disengaged fathers were more attuned to the potentially negative impact of the divorce
on their children, a reflection of their previous attachment to their children. They
believed that their children recognized their fathers' importance in their lives and would
be severely affected by the rupture in the relationship. These fathers felt that their
children's health and development was very much in jeopardy as a result of father absence
after divorce:
"Given the close relationship that we had, I knew it would affect her
negatively. I knew it would affect her, but in what way I didn't know. And I suppose I
didn't give it the concern it should have received, in retrospect, because I thought it
would only be a temporary situation. I suppose that this is how I've rationalized
it". (Canadian "disengaged" father)
"I don't feel that they've got a stable life, where they've got someone to fall
back on to talk to. I know they've got their mother, but she's with them day after day,
and it's not a shared responsibility. She just can't spend the time they need with them,
whereas with two parents, you give each other a break, or you bring a different attitude
toward them. They've only got one view of life, basically, and they don't have two people
to give them a variation." (British "disengaged" father)
"I think they have lost a sense of security, and there is a total lack of any
fatherly role, which I think is very detrimental to them. They've lost the love of and for
their father". (Canadian disengaged" father)
"He's very upset, sad, wondering why I've left, why his life has been turned
upside-down. I'm very concerned about the long-term psychological effects--having a chip
on his shoulder, wondering why his father left him." (British "disengaged"
father)
Paradoxically, disengaged fathers stressed the importance of continued paternal contact
as critical to their children's well-being after divorce:
"It is important to maintain the relationship in spite of the difficulties. It
depends on the situation before separation. If the father had very little contact before
separation, it's not so important to maintain links. But if he's closely involved in
bringing up the child, he has to keep up the relationship. When it comes down to it, a
person's security is rooted in his parents. This is very fundamental - security. A child
should know where he came from, what his roots are". (British "disengaged"
father)
"The effects on the father are double-edged. A little bit of contact for
someone who wishes to be a full-time father is a crumb from the rich man's table, and I
would feel that the little bit of contact would add greatly to the father's distress when
he goes away, or when the child goes away. But that father is an adult and I think that
disadvantage emotionally of the recurrent sore of leaving his own child has to be taken
for the sake of that child". (British "disengaged" father)
Cross-national Comparison
A final comment in regard to the data concerns the absence of findings of significant
differences between the Canadian and British subsamples. While some differences between
fathers from Canada and Britain obtained in relation to some of the legal aspects of the
divorce, these were negligible in comparison to the striking differences between contact
and disengaged fathers in relation to a large number of variables. The differences between
contact and disengaged fathers were virtually identical in the two locales; where
significant differences between fathers who remained in contact with and those who became
disengaged from their children were reported, these applied equally for the Canadian and
British subsamples.
While it appears that in the Canadian context there is wider public discussion of
alternative post-divorce structural arrangements than in Britain, particularly in light of
the higher rate of mothers with dependent children being employed on a full-time basis in
Canada, legal structures and processes dominate in matters of child custody and access in
both locales, and the actual outcomes of these processes are almost identical; that is,
the percentage of divorced fathers becoming non-custodial parents and the influence of the
legal system in promoting traditional family structures after divorce are equivalent. The
legal appropriation of custody and access determination--and the consequences of this--is
highly similar in the two jurisdictions.
The main findings of the study--the grief reaction of non-custodial fathers attendant
to divorce, the discontinuity between pre- and post-divorce father-child relationships,
the discrepancy between fathers' stated desires at separation and what they finally obtain
through the legal system--were equally manifest in Canada and Britain. The lack of any
substantive differences in the geographical comparison, with parallel data obtaining
between Canada and Britain, limits alternative hypotheses, contributes to the validity of
the data, and allows a measure of generalizability of the findings not otherwise
available.
Posted with permission by coparent@interchange.ubc.ca
See also:
Edward Kruk, Ph.D.. Address details and
references to other writings by him are accessible at http://www.swfs.ubc.ca/about_us/faculty_pages/kruk.htm
and at his own website.
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