YOU have to wonder if the ”bloody kids” have replaced ”the missus” as the perceived ball and chain around the modern man’s neck.

Both are topics of conversation I find older guys will use to establish a rapport with a stranger – particularly in client meetings, at conferences and work functions.

Sport might also get a mention and, perhaps, commentary on the attractiveness of whatever woman is nearby but once these subjects are exhausted it’s fascinating how often men will riff on the onerous nature of parenthood, and ”how you’ve lost the next 20 years of your life”.

”The eye-rolling and pity I get when I tell people I have three kids under five is mind-blowing,” says a chief executive friend of mine who hears the ”bloody kids” conversation-starter rolled out at least three times a week.

”I find it odd that in a new social situation – say small talk before a business meeting – a man would essentially admit he is spineless. Because that’s what he’s telling you: ‘It’s all too much.”’

By contrast, I find it comforting to hear my mate talk this way because he’s certainly stretched – with a hugely demanding job and those three kids under five – yet about the only complaint I’ll hear from him regarding his children is not seeing enough of them.

Being in a situation where my daughter doesn’t live with me, I can empathise with his desire to spend more time with his sprogs, something I try to communicate to men when I get the ”bloody kids” conversation.

”Mate, I’d give my left testicle to be able to get bored of my daughter,” I say to them, to which they usually reply, ”Then come around my place on the weekend and absorb the full horror.”

No doubt many guys who say this are half-joking but I have to wonder how much of this bravado and self-absorption their children pick up on, and what effect it has on them.

We hear constantly about mothers’ guilt (working or stay-at-home) as to whether they’re spending enough time with their children, yet it’s not an anxiety I hear articulated by too many blokes.

The concept of a day out to spend time with their mates, also known as the ”leave pass”, with its allusion to prison life, is so ingrained in the minds of Aussie men, I doubt many pause to consider that if children and your partner are viewed as something you need to escape, you might be doing something wrong. I know when you measure the time you spend with your child in hours – as I do – and not days, each one becomes a prize more precious than just about anything else in your life.

Again, I understand many full-time parents think they ”never get a second to themselves” but it always surprises me the number of mothers and fathers I see at cafes, faces buried in newspapers, as their children vie for their attention. These are interactions they will never get to have again.

A dad was telling me recently about putting his two-year-old into day care so his wife could earn a little extra money – ”but it hardly counts after we’ve paid all the fees”, he said.

Sure, this is a decision forced on many parents but for plenty, it’s still a lifestyle decision, so let’s not moan too much about the cost, which belies the value of the job being done.

You are paying someone else to bring up your child – to spend time with the most cherished person in your life – and that’s just about priceless. Take it from me.

My divorce certainly did not present itself as a gift, trussed up with a big red bow like a Lexus in a Christmas commercial. Instead, it was a big ugly box, filled to the brim with explosives. It was a present I never anticipated and one I never desired. But, as it came with a “no return” policy, I was determined to make the best of it.

I was with my husband for 16 years. Sixteen good years. Little did I know a tsunami was forming beneath the placid surface of our marriage. A tsunami that reached land one afternoon when I received the following text message:

“I am sorry to be such a coward leaving you this way but I am leaving you and leaving the state.”

The warning sirens never sounded.

That was the last I ever heard from him. The knot of marriage untied with the swiftness of a guillotine, leaving me afloat in a sea of despair and confusion. My body and mind revolted from my new reality. My limbs were racked with tremors, my mind torn asunder with the pain. A shock and awe attack coordinated and executed by my husband.

Instead of spending that weekend at the coast as we had planned, I spent the weekend honing my Internet sleuthing abilities, discovering that he had accumulated unknown debt and wiped the accounts clean and committed felony bigamy just six days after abandoning the marriage. I lost everything with that text message. I was without my husband, my dogs, my home, my savings, my health, my sanity. I was facing the reality that the man I had loved for half my life was a stranger. A stranger who had kept me calm through carefully crafted deceptions, soothing me with velvet-trimmed lies told with soft breath into my trusting ears.

For a time, I raged. How could he do that to me? How could he try so hard to try to destroy me? Telling me how much he loved me while buying a wedding ring for his wife with my paycheck? I felt victimized. Betrayed. I looked to the courts for vengeance and justice and felt anger when it did not materialize.

The divorce was an unwanted gift, sitting unopened in the center of my life. I realized that I could either leave it there, a big ugly box blocking me from moving on, or I could unwrap it and find a way to make it beautiful. I chose the latter.

I began to unwrap that package, tentatively at first, becoming bolder as time passed. He may have sent that present to disguise a bomb, but I would be damned if I let its detonation continue any further. I looked for purpose and meaning in each item as I pulled it out. Where at first I felt grief and sadness for all that I had lost, I began to appreciate what I had. I had amazing friends and family that rallied around me, even provided me with a home for the first year. I had to work to regain my health, giving me gratitude for each weight lifted, each mile run, as it brought me closer to regaining my strength. I looked at all of the “I can’ts” that used to fill my life and hold me back with fear. They seemed so silly now. It turns out I can do so many things I was afraid to attempt before. I examined all the long hours I had logged at work over the years. Time I could have spent with friends. With my husband. I vowed to find balance in my new life and not be a slave to the job.

I learned that a hard edge and stubborn spirit can only get you so far. I began to see the wisdom in acceptance, surrendering to discomfort. Softness is not in opposition to strength; it supports it. Where I used to see my ex as some malevolent demon, “el esposo diablo,” I began to see him as a hurt, fearful child cowering in a corner. Compassion seeped into the anger, softening its edges and allowing me to downshift. I learned to breathe, finding air through meditation and yoga. Anxiety, which had been a constant companion, was slowly replaced with a calmer mind.

I have had so many new experiences since my marriage ended. I took advantage of my surprise singlehood and spent a whirlwind three months playing Match Madness, learning about the dating world from scratch. I made new friends, learned how to cook and ran my first race. I learned to enjoy watching sports (it turns out a baseball game is good for more than just getting a tan) and ride on the back of a motorcycle (sorry, mom). This gift has allowed me to see the world anew, childlike eyes in a 34-year-old woman.

The hardest part of learning to see my divorce as a gift was letting go of expectations. I thought that I would be married forever; I fully bought into the whole “till death do us part.” Finding myself parted and nowhere near dead, I had to release that assumption, that dream. I have learned that happiness is found through acceptance rather than control and that letting go of the past and imagined future makes today a better place to be.

I could have easily crawled inside that box and lived the rest of my life defined by its walls, staying hurt and angry. No one would have blamed me for that. I had no choice about what he did, but I had the power to not let his choice control the rest of my life. I chose to see my divorce as a gift, a present that has allowed me to live my life with purpose and joy. I have decided to own this unwanted gift, using my story to help others along their own journeys. It is a present that I would like to regift to you.

Website: http://lessonsfromtheendofamarriage.com
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As a matrimonial attorney, the very first thing I say to every new client is, “Shut down your Facebook account and stop texting immediately.” While not everyone necessarily follows this advice, the ones that do are in much better shape if the case goes into a courtroom.

Two separate surveys from the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers have further bolstered my position on this issue. In 2010, our organization released the results of a survey showing that 81 percent of the members had seen an increase in the use of evidence taken from social networking sites during the previous five years. Facebook was predictably the most popular site for this kind of evidence, with 66 percent of the respondents listing it as their first choice.

Our most recent survey released this month shows an overwhelming 92 percent of respondents saying that they have seen an increase in the number of cases using evidence taken from iPhones, Droids, and other smart phones during the past three years. In addition, an even larger number of 94 percent have cited an overall rise in the use of text messages as evidence during the same time period.

So what do matrimonial lawyers know that many others are just beginning to recognize? Basically, having evidence in writing is always the most effective proof in demonstrating that someone is being dishonest, contradictory, and lacks credibility. Credibility is the coin of the realm in the world of family law. Once you can effectively question someone’s credibility with their own written statements, then everything else can be doubted about them.

This is why I also strongly caution my clients that any time you put something in writing, automatically assume that a judge will eventually read it. If it’s something that you don’t want a judge to read, then by all means don’t write it. Words are power; they can be used for good or for evil. Think and be careful before you write anything, because it can go beyond the intended audiences and undermine you in ways you never even imagined.

Practicing this kind of restraint can be a real challenge for many people in today’s world, because the way we communicate has changed so dramatically. Before the Internet and cell phone era, divorce cases involved more of the old-fashioned “he said, she said” disputes that often hinged on phone calls and verbal conversations.

Texts, e-mails, and Facebook posts have obviously removed a great deal of the ambiguity from the process. Text messages can often be the most incriminating pieces of evidence, because they are so immediate and easy to compose. Unique among other writings that are prone to be drafted and revised, texts are composed at the spur of the moment, resulting in pieces of evidence that can be raw, uninhibited, and highly incriminating. In many ways, texts can be the written equivalent of a heated discussion, but without any of the doubt afterward about the exact words and language that had been used.

In a legal situation, having a full transcript and a history of texts creates a potential insurmountable mountain of evidence against someone. Having someone’s own specific words, combined with a clearly defined and recorded timeline, provides extremely powerful material for a devastating cross examination.

While many people are beginning to realize the risks posed by thoughtlessly posting comments and pictures on Facebook, I still find myself regularly shocked by the incriminating messages and images that can be so easily accessed in a divorce case. Sometimes even with the time to think things through, individuals still exercise a real lack of judgment and make terrible decisions that come back to haunt them in unforeseen ways.

The bottom line is that any form of communication that a person most regularly engages in will generate the biggest potential for evidence that others can sift through and use against them. Being mindful of this and choosing not to send a heated text or post a compromising image or comment on Facebook can benefit you in more ways than you might even realize at the time.

Once a divorce is final, I expect my client to start texting and posting updates to Facebook. But I do remind them that divorce is forever: If you have children, you may return to court in the future to revisit custody and support issues. Be careful who your Facebook friends are and always be cognizant of what you put in writing.

Divorce lawyers, Centrelink/Child Support Agency, counselling services and helplines all report a flurry of activity at Christmas – most of it distressing for all parties. It’s also a time when domestic violence increases along with all other stresses.

There are lots of tips on how to handle things, as well as other people’s experiences to draw on, with the most often cited one being to let go of your expectations and start developing new traditions. Have a look at these pages for some tips:

Divorce Support – Tips for Surviving Christmas as a Divorced Parent

Family Lives – Top ten tips for separated parents at Christmas

Dr Ruth – Holiday Tips for Divorced Parents

Most of these tips depend on parents being able to talk with each other, and focus on their children when making arrangements. While of course it’s better if you can do that, we all know that sometimes that doesn’t happen. If you can’t talk with each other, then you might need to be more stringent in your arrangements.

While there are lots of tips for dads on how to cope without your kids at Christmas, either parent can be the one on their own. If you don’t have your children with you on Christmas day, things can be particularly upsetting, and making a break with tradition can be even more important in helping you cope.

And if it’s that difficult at Christmas when there’s only one set of kids and parents to organise, what happens when you become a blended family, with children, step children, step-children’s other siblings, and maybe two or more sets of parents (not to mention all those grandparents) what do you do? Given the rate of separation and remarriage, this is becoming increasingly more common. There are some great stories – as well as some heartbreaking ones – on how to cope.

So Merry Christmas and happy holidays to everybody. I hope whatever you are doing brings you and your children great happiness.

Some useful numbers if you you need to talk with someone:

Lifeline: 13 11 44

Kids Helpline : 1800 55 1800

Mensline : 1300 789 978

Domestic violence line : 1800 656 463

Tara Fass, Huffington Post, 28 October 2011

The bifurcated child — shuttling between the homes of his or her separated or divorced parents — is, by definition, caught in the middle. Imagine the child as a bird migrating from one place to another, essentially homeless until you provide a safe perch. How can you help this child glide in for a smoother landing?

Most co-parents with issues, who seek mediation and counseling, are in some version of custody hell. When they seek my guidance, I’m sometimes reminded of Alice in “Through the Looking Glass,” who finds that nothing is quite what it seems. We’re talking about a mirror, after all, and frequently it’s a funhouse mirror, a genie all distorted and bent out of shape. How can you bring reason to a genie that won’t go easily back in the bottle?

If you’ve acted out in shameful and betraying ways in your relationship, or you’ve disengaged (grown cold and distant, or worse) from your children’s other parent, it’s helpful to remind yourself that you are not alone. But regardless of your mood from day to day, you need to take special care of your kids. They require a safe and steady, holding environment. They’re growing up, whether you’re fighting with your ex or trying to heal.

You must access the core resources to bow out of your romantic relationships with your heads held high — setting a good example for your children and clearing the path to a brighter future. Trouble is if you are still in conflict mode with your former significant other, you are still in the throes of what I call the “emotional divorce.”

You may have a tendency to obsess over your past love connection in the name of justice and fairness. But the competitive, tit-for-tat, scorekeeping approach doesn’t help anyone, especially not your offspring, who absorb and feed off this poison. They’re continuously watching us, but when children are on high-alert, they especially watch us like hawks and parrot back what we provide for them. Be careful what role-modeling seeds you sow — down the road it will be a version of what you reap.

If you’re still wrangling after the breakup, it’s time to recalibrate. Not knowing how to stop your hurtful ways — the very stuff that got you into trouble when you were together — is proof positive that you need to let go of the past and take new steps. If your child is trying to fix your relationship or engaging in storytelling that is keeping him or her at the center of an imbroglio, that’s another sign it’s time to turn your attention to getting along with your co-parent.

Try to give your ex the benefit of the doubt, and trust but verify as my teacher, Isaac Berman, Ph.D advises. Just quieting down can speak volumes. Backing up is not giving up. Feeling lost? Focus on one good thing and remember what the kinder need. After all, they light you up and are the delightful result of your relationship with the co-parent.

Focus on the knottiest problems about how to share custody in a way that benefits the child. Dr. Berman says it’s an art form to acquire a taste for what is odious to you. He thinks you can downplay the pain of conflict by conceiving of it as just another way to stay in touch that has outworn its value. Additionally, your enlightened self-interest should remind you if your former partner wins you win too. It follows then, that your child wins as well.

As you prepare for a session with your mediator or therapist, have the courage to internalize the message, “I am in conflict with someone I once cherished. How can I avoid being part of the problem and improve the situation?” Such radical honesty may soften your former mate and restore him or her to a more accommodating place, which it turn can ease the process of sharing custody in a way that makes the child feels comfortable in BOTH homes.

If you allow yourself to dwell on being disgusted with your situation, you may be inciting or feeding the problem. Only by acknowledging this will you have something substantial to work with to help you keeping the solemn promise to your raise your children right.

When dealing with the Bifurcated Child, each parent can be the dreaded finger pointer as well as the one the being pointed at. Stay mindful of the bigger picture, which is that every action you take, every mood you display, has an effect on your kids. And don’t punish yourself when you make mistakes, or judge too harshly when your former significant other screws up.. As Leonard Cohen sang, “There is a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.” He could have been talking about illuminating your looking glass with that light.

Our apologies for the website being down for so long. Hackers are the bane of our existence. Our various websites have all been hacked over the years, but I’m sure we’re not the only ones.

Being a very small community organisation, with few resources, it’s very damaging when we do get something like this happen. Unfortunately we don’t have an IT department to call on, so a big thank you to the people at Lumonata who fixed things for us and are currently working on updating it and getting information back up there.

In the meantime, keep your stories coming.  We don’t always get back to you (and again, our apologies) but the stories are a great help in our work with government to get better policy and administration practices for single parents and their children.

This letter – or I should say letters, there were two of them – arrived three working days after he went in to see them because they got it wrong, again.

My son is 19 years old. He’s trying to adjust to university life (he wants to be a teacher) and live independently. All that is hard enough without being harassed by Centrelink who change payments, send letters asking for things he’s already done.

And if they can drive a student with nobody to support but himself to distraction, imagine what they do every day to single parents who are trying to look after children.

When my children were very small I got a surprise visit from Centrelink at 8am one week day. Somebody had dobbed me in for working and claiming income support so they came around to check up on me.

As all parents know, 8am on a weekday is not the best time to have visitors, especially ones who want to put you on the spot. I was trying to get children ready for school (I think at that stage 2 of them were at school), one ready for child care, and myself ready for work. Perhaps it’s not surprising that I wasn’t very happy with the visit, and the accusations.

And they could have saved themselves the whole trip just by checking my file. They would have seen that I was working because I declared my income regularly, and had my payment adjusted accordingly.

The harassment of single parents by Centrelink is just about to get worse, as they start rolling out income management across the nation.

This is where rather than giving you an income support payment straight into your bank account so you can spend it as necessary, they provide you with a Basics Card and tell you what you can spend the money on.

All because you have the temerity to end a bad relationship while you are caring for children, or because you decide to have a child out of wedlock rather than have an abortion.

Not just that but single parents will have to have meetings with Centrelink in order to discuss how they’re coping, how they spend their money, and their plans for the future.

I’m sure everybody knows somebody who is on welfare, and who might be rorting the system or who is just not interested in working. And by all means, Centrelink should work to make sure that doesn’t happen.

There are also people who really want some help to get ahead, to improve their education, to get some training, a job, or child care. And these people are entitled to have that support.

But there are at least as many people who are doing their best to care for their kids while working part time, maybe studying or doing volunteer work, perhaps dealing with their own family law or violence issues that have affected both themselves and their children.  They don’t need any more harassment from Centrelink just because they are not in a position to become financially independent.

I know Centrelink is a very busy agency but perhaps if they stopped doing so much unnecessary work and stopped harassing people who don’t need it they  wouldn’t be so busy and everybody would be much happier, and probably better able to cope.

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Sole Parents’ Union has a number of concerns about the report. On reading the report in the Sydney Morning Herald we wrote a response which you can read in full in our news section.

Apart from the misrepresentation of previous research, Sole Parents’ Union would point out that marriages which don’t end in divorce would be expected to be better for children than those that do, after all people would usually stay together for a reason – they get along well so they have low levels conflict and therefore less reason to separate. As we pointed out in our letter, it is conflict rather than divorce per se that is the problem.

But where divorce leads to an end in the conflict then outcomes for children also improve. A good divorce really is better than a bad marriage.

Sole Parents’ Union is not anti-marriage. Many of our members have been married and many would like to get married again.

But maybe it’s about time we took a fresh look at marriage, and what we expect from it. A quote in my desk calendar really brought this to my mind. From Hazel McCClay, the quote is:

“Historically, marrying for passion is a relatively new phenomenon – and one that just happens to correspond with the rising divorce rate.”

It’s that long ago that marriage was for ensuring inheritance and protection of property. Most marriages were arranged, and you weren’t expected to be in love with your partner. But now, we not only choose our partners based on love, we also expect them to be our best friends, equal co-parents, to contribute financially and share all the housework.  It’s a big ask, so it’s not surprising that often people can’t measure up and we end up feeling disappointed in them.

Studies show that dissatisfaction in marriage is increasing and that this dissatisfaction or disillusion makes it more likely the marriage will end in divorce.

We’re not advocating a return to the days when all marriages were arranged, but there are more options about how we partner, and what we expect when we do.

It’s also important that we talk about what happens when a relationship ends, because marriage in many cases is no longer for life. As a start, we could stop reinforcing the idea that ending a relationship is a sign of failure and concentrate instead on what the new relationship with our ex should be, and what expectations we can reasonable hold.

In most cases, a clean break between people when their relationship ends no longer happens.  Rather, we encourage both parents to stay in touch with their children, and, by default, with each other, but often don’t know how.

Sole Parents’ Union recently did a web-based survey about repartnering in which respondents said that they often had difficulties in communicating with or getting to know their ex’s new partner. As good communication is a key ingredient in building trust this lack of communication could lead to increased conflict between separated couples and/or with the children.

This is not an outcome anybody wants.

We’ll be able to take these stories (anonymously of course) straight to the politicians and bureaucrats to work on better policies and services for all sole parents.

No matter where we go, we find some of the same issues repeated. One of the primary ones is how to forge a new relationship with your ex. Because family law now is all about maintaining relationships between parents and children (which is a good thing), there is no longer any such thing as a “clean break”.

Divorce or separation doesn’t necessarily get you away from your ex, and many people have problems in letting go of the old relationship and creating a new one. Particularly if they weren’t the ones to make the decision to separate.

This can be exacerbated in a small community where everybody knows everybody else, and you can be thrown into daily contact not only with your ex, but with their new partner if they have one.

Family mediation focuses both parents on the best interests of the children, but doesn’t always help you to address the problems you have with each other.  There doesn’t have to be a lot of conflict, but sometimes it’s just difficult to disentangle your feelings towards each other. One or the other of you might not be ready to let the relationship go, while the other has moved on completely. Or you might want to get completely away from somebody that you don’t want to be with anymore.

This can create problems with things such as child support or contact with children being used to try to control or punish the other parent.

We’ve previously reported on new research that says that fathers kill their ex-wives and children because of a sense of ownership – because they can’t let go of the relationship with their ex.

But it doesn’t have to be that way.

There are ways to learn to let go and move on from a relationship that’s ended. Sometimes you have to accept your role in the break-up and forgive yourself before you can accept that it’s over, and learn from what’s happened so you don’t keep repeating the same mistakes.

But what really concerns is why, despite the number of divorces and separations, people are still made to feel like they have failed.

Relationships end. Even in the best of circumstances. When you add all the stress and pressures of modern life, it’s surprising that it doesn’t happen more often.

We need to find new ways of talking about and dealing with the complex relationships we have now. With partners, ex-partners, children, step-children, the ex-partner’s new partner’s children, etc, families are no longer just two people and their biological offspring.

So how do you form those new relationships?

If you have any tips, let us know.

The Social Policy Research Centre at the University of NSW did a report on Shared Care Parenting Arrangements since the 2006 Family Law Reforms. This was reported extensively when it was released in 2010, particularly the finding that both parents and children like shared care, and it’s good for children.

But, like most things, that’s not the whole story.

Shared care – that is where children spend at least 30-35% of their time with each parent – works best in the same cases where other parenting arrangements work. That is, where it’s the choice of the parents, where children feel they have some say in the arrangements, and where there are low levels of conflict.

And where all parties are happiest is where they can have some flexibility, rather than having arrangements that are set in stone.  Children, particularly, seem to hate having arrangements they feel they have no say in and that they can’t change even when they want to.

In the words of some of the children in the study when asked what they didn’t like about their arrangements:

“… feeling like my life is ruled by what is in the court orders and what they want. [I wish I could] make my opinion and what I want matter”

“Not having a choice. If dad wants to see me I have to cancel all other arrangements for that day”

Flexibility is even more important when you consider that shared care is the hardest arrangement to make work. Half of all shared care arrangements change to a sole care arrangement within 3 years.

This could be because parents are being flexible and responsive to children’s needs to be closer to their friends, or to become more independent as they get older, or to have more stability in where they call home.

But I suspect that it also has a lot to do with shared care being very hard.

It requires a lot of cooperation between parents as well as with children. It also needs parents to live close enough to each other so kids can get to and from school easily and maintain their sporting and other activities. And it needs parents with enough money to set up two complete households with everything kids need.

And that’s a big ask for most multiple-household families.

Given that shared care is still unusual, and that most shared care arrangements don’t last, we need to talk about how you maintain relationships across household, and how you remain an involved parent even when your kids don’t live with you.

And again – flexibility is the key.

When I suggest to non-residential parents that they can go and watch their kids play sport I often get the response “but it’s not my weekend”.  This rigidity in sticking to the letter of orders is what causes a lot of disgruntlement in both children and parents.

If they only see their kids once a fortnight it’s not surprising that some fathers don’t let them go out with their friends or do anything else during that time. And if fathers refuse to help out by picking the kids up from school or caring for them when they’re sick sometimes so mothers can go to work or do other things, then it’s not surprising that mothers refuse to give fathers 5 minutes more than the orders say.

Generally children want to have a relationship with both their parents, and they want to spend time with both of them. But that doesn’t mean they have to move from house to house in a shared custody arrangement.

Shared care is not a magic formula that will make everybody happy and cooperative. Rather, those people who are already cooperative (if not entirely happy) are more likely to share care. Because they want to. Because they can.

And that’s why shared care is so good for some families. And why it’s so bad for others.

If you need to get the court to make a decision for you about how and where children will live, shared care is highly unlikely to work. That’s why it needs to be taken out of the Family Law Act as the first consideration.