Since this site requires registration which many of our readers might not want to do, below is the article in full that otherwise I'd have simply linked to.  It's from the publication Children and Young People Now, out of the U.K.  It speaks for itself and looks like great news to me.

Couples who break up should by default have shared parenting responsibility, according to the shadow children's minister.

Speaking at a fringe meeting hosted by charity consortium Kids in the Middle, Tim Loughton said his party preferred a system which presumed shared parenting following family break down.

He also suggested that couples who cannot agree on joint arrangements should be made to go through a mediation process.

He said: "At the moment we have got an incredibly adversarial system when parents split up. It is crazy we have so many acrimonious cases.

"From the start of the process there should be a default mechanism for shared responsibility unless there is a welfare reason not to."

His comments answered concerns set out by the 26 charities that make up Kids in the Middle, over the adverse impact of conflict between parents on children.

Duncan Fisher, chief executive of the Fatherhood institute who is managing the campaign, said he wanted to see a more committed approach to relationship education in schools. He added that both parents needed to be engaged through health visitors and the midwifery process.

Answering a question from Shireen Ritchie, the chair of the Local Government Authority's children and young people board, about how local authorities can logistically involve both parents, Fisher said the process should start before the child is born.

"There are difficulties with working with two parents rather than one. But 95 per cent of couples are together during pregnancy. If we get them then, get their names, addresses get them registered then you are not chasing after them once the baby is born."

Wise words.  The horror at the adversarial nature of divorce, the promotion of the presumption of equally shared parenting, the understanding of the importance of mediation and the wisdom of relationship education in schools, all sound sensible about a family law system that more than one British commentator has recently termed 'insane.'

As we know, there's an enormous gulf between politicians' words and their deeds.  We know well that there are people who would rather be horsewhipped than consent to greater father-child contact.  And we know that "relationship education in schools" may carry a huge load of feminist ideology about the perfidious nature of men, fathers in particular.

But those are all things to be dealt with, to be fought over when the time comes.  Final victory never comes; movement toward greater father-child bonds is always a work in progress.  It is now and always will be a process of becoming.

And this conference of Tories points the right way.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 13th, 2009 at 11:08 am and is filed under Shared Parenting.