Real Women of Canada: "The Family Hits The Spotlight"

Article here. Excerpt:

'Western nations are looking at the shambles their countries have become. A great increase in family breakdown (divorce and separation) resulting in increased substance abuse, alienated youth dropping out of school with no skills, and an ever increasing number of children raised in single parent homes, are just a few of the problems facing nations today. This has led to government policy makers, churches and charities trying to make sense of both the causes and consequences of family break-up. Consequently, the future of the family has now been placed at the top of the political list of priorities.

For example, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown talked about family values at the annual Labour Party Conference in Brighton, September 27-October 1, 2009. The UK opposition leader David Cameron told his party members that the family lay at the heart of his beliefs. Other government leaders in Russia, France, Poland, Latvia and Romania are expressing similar concerns.
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Status of Women funded feminist organizations, such as the organization National Association of Women and the Law (NAWL), recently made a submission to the Department of Justice on the issue, rejecting Mr. Vellacott’s shared parenting bill. The Feminist Alliance for International Action (FAFIA) (see article “Status of Women Must be Disbanded”, p.1) has submitted its own objections to shared parenting. The reason that shared parenting raises feminist hackles is due to the fact that, if it were to be implemented, women would no longer be assured on divorce of having control, as well as physical custody of the children of the marriage, as is the current situation. Therefore, feminists regard Bill C-422 as a severe undermining of their "entitlement" to the children of the marriage upon separation and divorce.

Since most divorces in Canada are initiated by the wife, women might not be quite so quick to initiate divorce proceedings if there was a real possibility that they would not have custody of their children on divorce, as they do at the present time.'