This article offers a feminist deconstruction of legitimacy regarding the intentional decision by midlife independent single women to enter solo parenthood. Data collection involved interviews with 26 single mothers by choice and two years of participant observation in two Single Mothers by Choice support groups. Their accounts indicate that SMCs feel entitled to enter solo motherhood because they possess four essential attributes: age, responsibility, emotional maturity, and fiscal capability. SMCs use economic, moral, and religious justifications to further legitimize their decisions. (...) These justifications allow SMCs to present themselves as competent, ethical, and mainstream mothers. (shrink)

This article critically examines the relationship between shared residence and contact after the breakdown of the parents’ relationship. It examines the background to the government’s main emphasis on methods of monitoring, facilitating and enforcing contact as the most efficacious method of proceeding in respect of the law reform agenda, focussing particularly on the potential impact of punitive enforcement measures on primary carers, usually mothers. The article sets the discussion within its wider cultural context in respect of fathers’ rights claims that (...) family law currently favours mothers, and shows how recent legal developments constitute part of a package to manage post-separation relationships between parent and children. It also examines some of the emerging case law to show how the judiciary is using shared residence orders and transfer of residence to deal with protracted and very difficult contact disputes, and in ways which were not anticipated when shared residence orders were first introduced. Drawing on feminist legal commentaries the argument will be made that the use of transfer of residence and shared residence orders in these disputes is extremely worrying, especially in light of the growing body of empirical research which heralds caution. The article will conclude by suggesting that far from favouring mothers, both the law reforms and the case law effectively construct mothers as integral to the problem of contact. They are treated as the site of and solution to the ‚problem’ of contact, and the means of dealing with the problem is by increasingly punitive measures which are inappropriate in a family law context. At the same time non-residential fathers who do not uphold contact escape legal sanctions. (shrink)

This paper explores contact disputes in England and Wales. We discuss the legal background as well as separating parents' experiences of contact disputes. Contact has been high on the agenda since the U.K. Government report, Making Contact Work, examined various means for facilitating contact between non-resident parents and their children. More recently, the issue has featured prominently in the headlines, largely as a result of the campaigning efforts of fathers' rights groups who complain of injustice and demand changes in the (...) law. The idea that contact is necessary for children's well-being seems to have acquired the status of uncontestable truth. This paper examines the ways in which these ideas about children's interests have become embodied in adominant welfare discourse that is embedded in law and informs policy thinking. Family law has long abhorred parental conflict, particularly that which involves the children. It is frequently assumed that conflict can be reduced if parents could be persuaded to accept the premises of the welfare discourse. In this paper, we consider how parents themselves, in talking about their experiences of contact disputes, makes sense of family law. We found that parents regularly invoke the welfare discourse in their talk, but they interpret it in unexpected ways. Often these interpretations fuel conflict rather than reducing it. (shrink)

This paper explores contact disputes in England and Wales. We discuss the legal background as well as separating parents' experiences of contact disputes. Contact has been high on the agenda since the U.K. Government report, Making Contact Work, (2002) examined various means for facilitating contact between non-resident parents and their children. More recently, the issue has featured prominently in the headlines, largely as a result of the campaigning efforts of fathers' rights groups who complain of injustice and demand changes in (...) the law. The idea that contact is necessary for children's well-being seems to have acquired the status of uncontestable truth. This paper examines the ways in which these ideas about children's interests have become embodied in adominant welfare discourse that is embedded in law and informs policy thinking. Family law has long abhorred parental conflict, particularly that which involves the children. It is frequently assumed that conflict can be reduced if parents could be persuaded to accept the premises of the welfare discourse. In this paper, we consider how parents themselves, in talking about their experiences of contact disputes, makes sense of family law. We found that parents regularly invoke the welfare discourse in their talk, but they interpret it in unexpected ways. Often these interpretations fuel conflict rather than reducing it. (shrink)