Blogpost by MRA Dr Rick Bradford on news the UK Government will repeal the presumption of parental involvement. “Make no mistake, the ultimate aim is to empower mothers to be able to remove fathers from the lives of their children with ease and without hinderance”. Some extracts posted in comments.

Neat-Surround2425 · 2025-11-14T19:30:18+00:00

As I have said in the past , UK is one of the top 3 worst countries for men .

wntk · 2025-11-14T19:23:24+00:00

"The official Ministerial Statement noted that this presumption [of parental involvement],

“..has faced criticism for appearing to reinforce a ‘pro-contact’ culture that prioritises the involvement of both parents in a child’s life over the child’s individual welfare.”

Indeed, it has faced criticism – from lobbies who wish to progress their true objective, namely for mothers to be able to remove fathers from their children’s lives without any hassle.

And note how the above quote cunningly suggests that a ‘pro-contact’ culture automatically demotes the issue of child welfare to second place. This is the art of impression forming."

Which_Ad_3917 · 2025-11-14T19:28:40+00:00

People use children as an excuse for all sorts of bad shit

wntk · 2025-11-14T19:50:44+00:00

“It is therefore very important to note that Hunt & MacLeod found “Where information was available (in 286 cases), 38% of resident parents (109 of 286) were known to have been opposed to any face to face contact, with a further 15% (44) wanting supervised contact only, i.e., a total of 53% of resident parents were opposed to anything beyond supervised contact. An additional 11% of resident parents were resistant to ‘staying contact’, i.e., overnight stays with the non-resident parent.” (For quotes from my own book I do not use italics).”

wntk · 2025-11-14T20:57:29+00:00

“Nor does returning to court, perhaps to request an enforcement order, do the non-resident parent any good. By 2017 the percentage of enforcement applications that resulted in an enforcement order had fallen to virtually zero (0.2%). So, what does happen when a non-resident parent complains to the court that their own order is being disrespected?

“The answer is quite shocking if Hunt & MacLeod is any guide. The best you can realistically hope for is that your original order is reinstated…But worse: in 14 of the 30 cases Hunt & MacLeod identified, even the original order was not reinstated. Instead a new order was issued for reduced contact. So, in about half of cases where a resident parent has refused to abide by the terms of a court order, and the non-resident parent has brought the matter formally to the attention of the court, the court responds by “rewarding” the resident parent with reduced contact by the non-resident parent.”

Hunt & MacLeod concluded, “The court is ultimately impotent in the face of implacable hostility on the part of either resident parents or children and non-compliance with court orders”. Now recall that 53% of resident parents (i.e., mothers) were opposed any contact beyond supervised contact. Those two facts are the crux of the matter.”

63daddy · 2025-11-14T21:34:08+00:00

The default should always be equality. It’s sad to see this step backwards from that.

hmspain · 2025-11-15T02:32:19+00:00

I thought it was about maximizing the child support check?

Clippy4Life · 2025-11-15T07:48:34+00:00

Im surprised we haven't overthrown these governments yet. Your family is literally being torn apart and you are just sitting there like, "this sucks but ok because government says so". Im not trying to make light of our issues here. Where are our balls? How long are we going to sit here and allow ourselves to be treated like 2nd class citizens?. Like animals with paychecks? Peaceful protests don't seem to be doing anything for you (Like the truth or not, it is what it is). Until you guys decide to start sticking up for yourselves and defending yourselves, this will keep happening. YOU are the backbone of your country. YOU are the worker. YOU are important for society to function. YOUR blood is on the line when the horn is sounded. YOU are who we look to when times get hard. If they refuse to change, then LEAVE. Let their stupidity run them into the ground.

wntk · 2025-11-15T11:49:27+00:00

“The Benefits of Involvement

Finally, the report attempts to minimise the positive effects on a child of the involvement of both parents even when there is no question of harm.”

wntk · 2025-11-15T12:52:13+00:00

The last extract that I'm posting, which is the longest one:

[Refutation of the Key Claim]()

The attempt to oust even more fathers is claimed to be based on the desire “to better protect children in private law cases”. The falsity of the claim can be established immediately thus,

The report considers only the potential harm due to the parent seeking contact, not the potential harm arising from the parent resisting it. In around 90% of cases the former is the father and the latter the mother;
But domestic abuse is not a gendered phenomenon. Indeed, there is increasing evidence that women may be the majority of perpetrators of domestic abuse in some cases, especially where the abuse is unilateral (e.g., see PASK (2013), Lysova et al (2025a), Lysova et al (2025b));
Women (or mothers) are more often perpetrators of child abuse resulting in death, or explicit child homicide, than are men (or fathers) (see this extract from The Empathy Gap).

To the latter observation people will remark that it arises because women do more childcare than men, so the statistics are skewed. Whilst true this does not alter the bald fact, and it is a fact that is directly relevant to the claim being made. This observation alone completely demolishes the report as it reveals that ignoring the potential harm to a child arising from the resident parent is in conflict with the paramountcy principle – and all the more so if contact with the other parent is denied as this could have been a protective factor. Indeed, this has been observed in practice (See the reports from Cafcass, 2017, and from the Department for Education, 2016).

Comments

[Refutation of the Key Claim]()