The Family Law Amendment Act 2023 undermines children’s best interests, fuels fatherlessness, and risks long-term social harm by weakening equal parental involvement after separation.

The Labor Party’s Family Law Amendment Act, passed in October 2023, was a sad day for Australia’s children. This bill is against the ‘best interests’ of a child, and it deprives a child of their biological birthright to be with a parent.

Every major social pathology has been linked to fatherlessness: violent crime, drugs and alcohol abuse, truancy, unwed pregnancy, suicide and psychological disorders; all correlate with fatherlessness more than with any other single factor.

The Social Cost of Fatherlessness

The current Family Law System is biased against fathers and routinely deprives children of their biological birthright to equal access with their mother and fathers. This legislation creates a new stolen generation of children who, in many cases, are taken away from their fathers. The Family Law Amendment Act 2023 makes the already horrific family law system many times worse.

Studies show that almost every social ill faced by Australian children today relates to fatherless families. Children from fatherless homes are more likely to be poor, become involved in drug and alcohol abuse, drop out of school, and suffer from health and emotional problems. Boys are more likely to become involved in crime, and girls are more likely to become pregnant as teens.

Academic and Behavioural Impacts

Children in father-absent homes are almost four times more likely to be poor. In 2018, 12% percent of children in married-couple families were living in poverty, compared to 64% percent of children in mother-only families. Children living in female-headed families with no spouse present had a poverty rate of 67% percent, over four times the rate in married-couple families.

There is a significant amount of research stating that in a fatherless family, children are at a dramatically greater risk of drug and alcohol abuse. In addition, there is significantly more drug use among children who do not live with their mother and father.

A study of 1,977 children aged three and older, living with a residential father or father figure, found that children living with married biological parents had significantly fewer externalising and internalising behavioural problems than children living with at least one non-biological parent.

Children of single-parent homes are more likely to commit suicide and become involved in crime. Youth who experienced divorce, separation, or non-union birth reported lower grade point averages than those who have always lived with both biological parents.

Children living with their married biological father tested at a higher level than those living with a non-biological father. Fatherless children have more trouble academically, scoring poorly on tests of reading, mathematics, and thinking skills; children from father-absent homes are more likely to be truant from school, more likely to be excluded from school, more likely to leave school at age 16, and less likely to attain academic and professional qualifications in adulthood. Adolescents living in intact families are less likely to engage in delinquency than their peers living in non-intact families.

Calls for a National Inquiry

Data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health explored the relationship between family structure and risk of violent acts in neighbourhoods. The results revealed that if the number of fathers is low in a neighbourhood, then there is an increase in acts of teen violence.

The statistical data showed that a 1% increase in the proportion of single-parent families in a neighbourhood is associated with a 3% increase in an adolescent’s level of violence. In other words, adolescents who live in neighbourhoods with lower proportions of single-parent families commit less violence.

Children aged 10 to 17 living with two biological parents are significantly less likely to experience sexual assault, child maltreatment, and other types of major violence, as compared to peers living in single-parent families and stepfamilies. Additionally, adolescents in father-absent homes are more likely to report being sexually active compared to adolescents living with their fathers.

Furthermore, after divorce or parental separation, every child has a fundamental right to equal contact with both the mother and the father. However, because of anti-male and anti-parent legislation such as the Family Law Amendment Act, sadly, more men will take their own lives through suicide.

We desperately need a Public Inquiry or Royal Commission into the practices and policies of all Government Departments within Australia that deal with children in the court system. We need to seek justice for children who are denied a loving relationship with both parents. We now live in an age where, for the second time, children are removed from caring parents. Another generation betrayed; another generation stolen.

___

Image courtesy of Adobe.