CHANGES in societal attitudes and the culture of the workplace will be essential parts of any journey back to sanity that legal changes are essential also. If we are to accept that we live in a divorce culture, should we not at least acknowledge the effects of this culture on children? This would seem to require some form of legislation which places the rights of the children to both of their natural parents above the individual rights of either parent to scrub the board and start again. At the moment, culture and law conspire to give the mother back as much of her freedom as possible, while utterly disregarding the rights of fathers and children. A constitutional amendment, if we could stand another one, might not be a bad place to start.

The introduction of the concept of joint custody for the generality of cases would be an essential element of restoring fatherhood to its proper moral and social status.

We also need to look at the family courts and in particular at their utterly unhelpful adversarial nature. A compulsory counselling system, with highly trained personnel given powers to enforce a set of guidelines designed to maximise the right of children to know both parents equally, would go a long way with those who campaign on these issues. But more than that there is the need to educate public officialdom, from judges to social workers, in the importance of fatherhood.