In The Name Of The Fathers

Sunday, Sep. 19, 2004 By JAMES GEARY AND BOBBY GHOSH

ACTION MAN: Hatch put dads' rights in the headlines by perching near Buckingham Palace's balcony dressed as Batman

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Rock musician and social activist Bob Geldof is trying to do so. In the 1990s, Geldof and his ex-wife, Paula Yates, fought a bitter battle over access to their three daughters. The dispute was settled in 1998 when he gained custody; Yates died of a heroin overdose in 2000. In a Father's Day television interview in 2002, Geldof spoke out against laws that favored mothers in custody matters and expressed the agony felt by many fathers. The response was overwhelming: a flood of letters from anguished fathers, more mail than his advocacy on behalf of Africa had ever unleashed. "I just wanted to be with my kids 50% of the time," he told TIME. "If a man and a woman live together and it fails, that's tragic. But if you have children, whole universes close to you" if you're prevented from seeing them.

Geldof, who's making a TV documentary on the issue for Britain's Channel 4, blames the courts. "Our system is adversarial," he says, "designed to spiral into acrimony, rage, bitterness and hatred. The law says it's gender neutral, but 93% of children go to the women — how is that neutral? It amounts to state-sanctioned kidnapping, the willful breakup of families."

"We're in a period of social change and the law has not kept pace," Geldof continues. "This mirrors some of the battles women have had to fight, like when it was said women couldn't make business decisions. Now we value emotional intelligence so highly, and assume men don't have any."

Recent research supports keeping fathers involved in their children's lives after a divorce or separation. According to Michael Lamb, a professor of psychology at Cambridge University who has spent over two decades studying this issue, children who live in single-parent families are nearly twice as likely as those in two-parent families to perform poorly in school, become delinquent or have difficulty maintaining relationships. "If you were able to look at a normal population, 15-18% would be maladjusted," Lamb says. "When you talk about kids in single-parent families, 30% are maladjusted."

Although child-development experts disagree about how much time children should spend with their noncustodial parent, Lamb says there's a consensus that every- other-weekend visits, comprising about 15% of nonschool hours, are inadequate. Some experts suggest at least one-third of nonschool time should be the norm. "Where the system has failed kids is in not recognizing that they need the other parent as well," Lamb says. "You don't have to have a 50-50 split to be an involved father, but you do want more than twice-a-month visitation."

Ralph Traviato is a Roman corporate communications specialist whose separation last February ruptured his relationship with his two children. "I was used to coming home and having my kids jump all over me," he says, with a nostalgic smile. "Then suddenly they're not there anymore. It's devastating." Traviato, 47, sees his kids every other weekend, but that's not enough for a man who describes himself as a hands-on parent. He knows about fathers who lose touch with their kids after a divorce, and is determined that won't happen to him. But he worries about how the separation will affect the children's perception of him. "I can tell you about my emotional needs, but what about theirs?" he says.

Traviato isn't an activist and has no hope that the laws can be changed. But Italian groups like Papà Separati are lobbying for new legislation, titled Law 66, to give children the right to maintain a balanced relationship with both parents. The present law, reasoning that children of divorce need continuity and structure, says it is in their best interests to live with one parent. The new law would provide for joint physical custody.

Even in countries that encourage joint custody, fathers say the courts are biased. Christian Bade, a Berlin surveyor, says his ex-wife used a one-sided legal system to drag him through the courts for three emotionally wrenching years. (Like the wives of other men in this story, Bade's wife didn't respond to requests for comment.) "It's so unnerving. Your whole life is destroyed," says Bade, 44. "You lose friends because your whole life revolves around this matter. I lost interest in everything else. I lost my job and didn't have the energy to find a new one." Bade now sees his son each weekend, and an additional three-and-a-half hours every second week. He has to keep precise time. Once when he returned the boy an hour late, he says, his wife went to court, claiming a violation of their right of access order; he may have to pay a €1,000 fine.

Journalist Matthias Matussek describes himself as an accidental "missionary of the men's movement." He was cast in the role after he wrote a 1997 cover story in the German weekly Der Spiegel that railed against the "feminist power of mothers" who used children as "trump cards in the gender war." Matussek looked into "the abyss of a possible custody battle" after his marriage hit hard times — it is now running smoothly again, he says — and he learned how "rightless dads are in case of conflict." "In movies, books for women and cartoons, men are today only depicted as ridiculous creatures and no longer as role models — it's time for that to change," says Matussek, who went on to write The Fatherless Society, a much debated 1998 book that says fathers are emasculated in child custody and visitation battles because judges and youth welfare offices are naturally sympathetic to the moms. As a consequence, he says "mothers can prevent their former husbands from seeing their offspring for years on end — to the detriment of the children." The feminist magazine Emma griped that the book was misogynistic and nominated Matussek the pasha (chauvinist) of the month. With so much arguing going on, it's no wonder that governments and politicians are finally beginning to pay attention. At a British Conservative Party conference on family issues last month, leader Michael Howard vowed to reform family laws to give divorced and separated fathers more rights. "There should be a strong legal presumption in favor of both parents having equal rights in the upbringing of their children," he said. "There are many fathers in Britain today who do want to play their part, yet can't get access to their children." But in the view of Constitutional Affairs Secretary Charles Falconer, "There cannot and will not be an automatic presumption of 50-50 contact. Children cannot be divided like the furniture or the CD collection."