Eine von drei britischen Trennungsmüttern: Nach einer Trennung sollte ein Vater nichts mehr zu sagen haben, was seine Kinder angeht

Die Daily Mail berichtet über die Ergebnisse einer Studie der Organisation Relate (vergleichbar mit der deutschen Institution "pro familia"):

One in three separated mothers think their children’s fathers should have no say in their upbringing, according to a report yesterday.

It found that 32 per cent of separated mothers thought that they alone had the right to make decisions about their children’s future. The high proportion found by a survey implies that more than one in 10 of all the families in the country include mothers who do not want the fathers of their children to have a say over the future of their children.

The findings were revealed in a survey carried out for the counselling group Relate. It comes at a time of deepening concern among judges and education experts over the absence of fathers from the lives of millions of youngsters.

(...) Family courts trying to help warring couples re-arrange their lives have long struggled with the difficulty of dealing with intransigent mothers. Judges are reluctant to punish children further by sending mothers to prison. At one stage Labour ministers tried to get around the problem with a plan to make mothers who disobey court orders obey curfews and wear electronic tags.

But the finding follows strong remarks from judges in recent cases over the way mothers are sometimes allowed to exile fathers from their children’s lives.

Last month High Court judge Mrs Justice Parker set down a judgement that warned social workers: ‘Parents who obstruct the relationship with either mother or father are inflicting untold damage on their children and it is about time the professionals truly understood this.’

In another case Appeal Judge Lord Justice McFarlane condemned family courts that had prevented a father from having regular contact with his daughter for 12 years because ‘the mother appears to want an unhealthy exclusive relationship’ with her daughter.

In October Sir Michael Wilshaw, the chief inspector of schools and social care, warned against the alienation of fathers from their families, saying: ‘Children are abused because their biological parents were long ago alienated from each other and the new man in the house - often the latest in a succession of men - is violent and resentful.’