Are Child Custody Laws That Treat Parental Gatekeeping Like Child Abuse Long Overdue?

Submitted by Matt on Tue, 2014-08-19 20:00

Article here. Excerpt:

'When you first read or hear the words "parental gatekeeping", what do you think about? You may have an image of a parent standing in front of a locked gate, arms crossed with a child on the other side and the other parent trying to get through.

Hold that image.

Parental gatekeeping is not an everyday word intact or separated families use but it has a very real impact and import on child custody cases.

Gatekeeping is simply the act of facilitating or restricting the relationship with a parent and a child. I have found the "facilitative" aspect of it (and the concept of facilitative gatekeeping) a bit of an oxymoron. After all, to facilitate generally means reasonable communication, open access gates and no real need to be a "keeper."

Restrictive parental gatekeeping is just as it sounds. Placing limitations, often through actions, to restrict communication or access to a child. Restrictive gatekeeping can be for the child's protection (often in physical abuse, serious neglect or substance abuse cases) or unreasonable, in an attempt to harm the parent-child relationship. The latter often festers into parental alienation.

Now we come to the question and it's not an easy one. Should a restrictive gatekeeper who is not gatekeeping due to abuse, serious neglect, or real concerns about alcohol or drug abuse but rather to intentionally harm the parent-child relationship be treated just like a parent who has been found to have committed serious, physical child abuse and have custody taken away from him or her? Along with that, is a state like California and others that don't have specific family codes punishing this type of gatekeeping behind on this necessary legislation?'

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Comments

Can't help but giving rationalizers an out? Too bad, takes the wind out of the article's sails. For many women, infidelity is carte blanche to do as she will against her unfaithful hubby. As for husbands who discover or are told of wifely infidelity, most either blame themselves or get blamed by their unfaithful wives for it. The author fails to mention, too, that wives are as likely to be unfaithful as husbands.

So here's a scenario I've personally seen a couple times played out: Wife and stay-at-home mother starts affair with one guy and gets discovered. Husband says she must end it or it's divorce time. Wife ends it with guy 1 but soon starts up with guy 2. Husband discovers it and says "No more." Looks like wifey got what she really wanted; she had a kid w/ her hubby and waited just long enough to lay claim to premarital but now-comingled property like his 401k, etc. After supplying a roof over her head while she paid nothing into it, he had to give her $70k to "buy" half a house's equity he already paid for, even though she paid nothing toward the mortgage. Being the "primary caregiver", she got "primary residence", an actual new house she bought using his money he had to pay her at settlement. And, he was on the hook for alimony for several yrs. and child support for at least 15 years, plus college. Good thing they only had one kid, right? Well, he had 2 from a prev. marriage, and he also doesn't have primary residence. He was only slapped with C/S, since his ex worked and also made more than he did, both then and now.

And did she try to use PA as a pre-emptive effort to discredit her ex so when they got old enough to understand what "infidelity" meant, they wouldn't believe their dad? Well, hard to say what a person's motivations are. But their behavior can be identified, can't it?

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Submitted by Matt on Tue, 2014-08-19 20:25