Divorced British dads push courts for more access to children

A British cabinet minister has an illicit love affair and fathers a child. When the news becomes public and it emerges that his private and public lives have become entwined, he resigns.

The recent woes that drove Home Secretary David Blunkett from office last week have a familiar ring. Yet instead of denying his indiscretion and clinging to office like previous errant ministers, Mr. Blunkett did the opposite, broadcasting his liaison and rejoicing in his child. Contact with his toddler, he said, was more important than political prestige.

Almost overnight, Blunkett has become a hero to a burgeoning movement that has dramatically raised its voice: noncustodial dads.

Charging that for too long they have been mistreated by ex-wives as well as the courts, British fathers who are separated from their offspring are starting to clamor for their rights. Over the past two years - often using controversial tactics - they have begun to agitate for laws that reflect more accurately a society where living together and divorce are increasingly common, and more men are shouldering a share of child care.

"Access shouldn't be ... the gift of one parent," says Louisa Cross of the Solicitors Family Law Association. "There should be something put in the law itself that makes it crystal clear on that front." She says offending mothers who prevent innocent fathers from seeing their children should face, for example, community-service orders "to show the courts mean business."

Blunkett's case has neatly encapsulated these activists' concerns: After his affair went awry, the mother of his child refused access. The only way to maintain contact was through the courts - and that meant going public.

"He made the mistake of falling in love with someone, having a child with her, but now ... it's no longer convenient for her to have him in her life," says Matt O'Connor, founder of the advocacy group Fathers4Justice. "So like changing a light bulb, she wants to change the child's father [to her husband]."

Of course, there are many fathers who choose to lose touch with their children, and others who are barred from contact with their children because they pose a threat. And parents of both genders may use the courts to exact revenge on a former partner.

But fathers who legitimately yearn for access to their children argue that the courts have consistently overlooked their interests. The issue has achieved wider resonance through films like "Mrs. Doubtfire," in which a desperate father masquerades as a nanny in order to see his kids, but F4J says the scale of injustice has now reached a tipping point.

The group estimates that 100 British children lose partial or total contact with their fathers every day. About 2 million children , they say, now live separately from their fathers. When a relationship goes wrong, fathers charge, they almost never get custody and are frequently denied court-mandated access.

"There has been a strange alliance between feminists who feel women should have rights to their children, and ... judges who feel that children are women's work and can't see why men should want to get involved anyway," says Jim Parton, a former chairman of Families Need Fathers, a charity.

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