Parents’ equal rights urged

Press, Volume CXV, Issue 33741, 14 January 1975, Page 17

Parents’ equal rights urged

Families Need Fathers, a society for equal parental rights, founded in England in 1974, is to set up a group in Auckland.

The society exists to see that access and custody decisions concerning children after a separation or divorce, cease to be aimed against fathers.

A member of the Society, Mr R. Scott, of Papatoetoe, is to convene the Auckland group.

The Society was founded in London by a group of men and women who believed that attitudes to the relative roles of men and women as parents were incorrect.

“In so far as human responsibilities and rights do exist, the most fundamental is the right to care for one’s children. The increasing tendency for society to deny this

right to one parent (almost always the man)-means that an increasing number of children are being deprived quite unnecessarily of their natural and undeniable right to two parents,” the society says in a pamphlet. It says that the questionof custody, care and control of children should be taken away from the judiciary system and decided by a panel of social experts in the more sympathetic atmosphere of a family court. They believe that unless there were strong reasons to the contrary, custody should continue to reside with both parents. “Where joint custody is impracticable custody should be awarded without prejudice as to sex to the parent most likely to put first the child’s full psychological needs.’*