Brigitte – the German women's magazine – published an exciting article a few days ago, which begins with the following words:
We're always quick to criticize men who don't take care of their children after a divorce. But frankly, mothers sometimes don't come across well either in custody battles.
Maren laughs and chatters away. After so many weekends when she wasn't allowed to come. Finally, she's here, for eight hours with her dad. They go into town, eat ice cream, and play in a raffle. Maren wins a makeup set and beams. Later, as they say goodbye, she says, "Mommy will definitely scold me if I bring this home from you." The exchange takes place in a parking lot. The little girl gets out of her father's car and runs to her mother's. She turns around and waves one last time. "I saw her mother throw the makeup set in the trash at the next traffic light," Peter Witkowski recalls. It was the last time he saw his daughter for half a day. He calculated that she was only allowed to spend 21 hours with him in four years.
In 2007, over 187,000 marriages ended in divorce in Germany. The number of separations is estimated to be significantly higher, and around 50,000 children suffer because their parents are fighting over visitation and custody arrangements. In a divorce custody usually shared by both parents. Nevertheless, mothers have the upper hand when it comes to deciding how often and when the father can see his child, simply because in 80 percent of cases the children live in their household. Unmarried mothers can choose whether they want to share custody with the father of their child. Many choose not to, partly to avoid being connected to their ex-partner beyond the relationship: Around 54 percent of mothers in Germany therefore have sole custody of their children born out of wedlock.
Conversely, the situation is different: , before a father is granted sole custody, the child is more likely to end up in foster care . Custody and visitation rights are frequently and fiercely contested in court in Germany. However, the real battle takes place in the heart. The end of a relationship brings hurt, grief, anger, and resentment, even when one is the one who did the leaving, rather than being left. One needs distance – and unfortunately, sometimes, out of a perceived sense of self-protection, this distance is imposed on the child as well.
Some mothers take their conflict to the children's room and defend their territory by any means necessary: "Twice," recounts Harald Mauser (name changed) from Bremen, "she even had a doctor's certificate in hand: the little boy was emotionally distraught, and contact with the father should be suspended for the time being." The mother had told the doctor lies.
Educators, teachers, and doctors are often appalling stories about the alleged monster father who beats, malnourishes, or even abuses his children. "Other people are massively lulled into complacency. They're told: 'I have sole custody; under no circumstances should you let the child go to the father,'" reports Christiane Pohl, a certified psychologist from Würzburg.
Children themselves are often manipulated: Some women even deliberately give their ex-husbands false times to wait in front of the school and pick up the child. The bad dad was an hour late? The children are supposed to understand that he can't be relied upon.
What the child definitely understands is: Mom doesn't want me to love Dad. A terrible dilemma, from which children often see only one way out: They side with their mother. At least as long as she's watching. "Sometimes my son cried bitterly when I picked him up during the handovers," recalls Harald Mauser. "His mother would then say: 'You see, he doesn't want to be with you at all.' But as soon as he was in my car, he was cheerful and asked full of anticipation: 'Dad, what are we doing today?'"
The mother sees only the tears, the resistance – and feels her conviction that the father is merely a nuisance is further confirmed. Some women manage to keep their children away from their fathers for weeks or even months, despite a legally established visitation schedule. Fathers can plead with the best of intentions, complain to the youth welfare office, involve the court, insist on the fine provided for in the law for visitation violators – but it usually remains just a warning. "Many family court judges are afraid of automatically punishing the child along with the mother," believes Rainer Sonnenberger, federal chairman of the association "Fathers' Uprising for Children." "When it comes to enforcing visitation rights," he laments, "you're stuck. With or without custody."
Time works against fathers: precious weeks and months pass in which they cannot see their children, growing apart, estranged, and weaned. Recently, Ralf G. Fuchs drove 320 kilometers on a whim to a sporting event where his now 12-year-old daughter was competing. "Good day," the girl said. They were the first words he had heard from her in four years. "It's terrible when you imagine how much you would have liked to give your own child, and you simply weren't allowed to," says Fuchs.
When Tobias Knoch, 41, picked up his almost two-year-old son for a visit, the little boy pointed to the mother-son photos on the wall in his bedroom and then to his father. "Yes," replied Tobias, "I'll bring you a picture of Dad too." His ex, however, absolutely refused to allow any photo of the father in the son's room.
"I hate Dad and I want him dead,"said the nine-year-old daughter of Berlin filmmaker Douglas Wolfsperger at their last meeting. The child suddenly rejects the parent with whom she doesn't live and invents reasons for her hatred. Experts call it "Parental Alienation Syndrome" (PAS). Ninety percent of children whose parents are fighting over visitation or custody suffer from it. "Dad hit Mom," Peter Witkowski's daughter suddenly claimed. And that he "ruined her first day of school" because he wanted to film her big day.
"Children with PAS suffer their entire lives," warns Hamburg sociologist Anneke Napp-Peters, the first researcher in Germany to study children of divorce for PAS. "They usually have a negative self-image and are insecure. These consequences often become apparent as early as puberty, an age when many things are coming to a head." Napp-Peters found that three-quarters of all children who lost contact with one parent after their parents' separation and suffered as a result have significant problems managing their lives as adults.
Unfortunately, one has to acknowledge that in custody and visitation disputes, mothers, from their pedestal, hand out slaps wherever their full-time right to their own child is to be curtailed: "My child grew in my womb, only I know what is good for it," is a common justification given to the youth welfare office and the judge when fathers want to enforce their visitation rights against the mother's will.
Those who argue this way often only experienced their own father in a supporting role: " Many of these women were given a negative image of men by their mothers and project their own image of their father onto their partner or ex-partner," observed Würzburg psychologist Pohl. Fathers are unreliable; they are replaceable. Peter Witkowski's ex-wife only started keeping their daughter away from her father when she met a new man. "She just wanted," he believes, "perfect family happiness, and when another man suddenly came along, I, as the father, was just an inconvenience."
For decades, women have demanded that men become more involved in raising their children. Now, there are increasing numbers of fathers who attend parent-teacher meetings, organize children's birthday parties, and take time off work to care for sick children at home. Nearly ten percent of all fathers now take parental leave, after the figure had stagnated at around five percent for years. It is all the more tragic, then, when mothers harm their children with their behavior.
The problem isn't resolved in court; the legal process takes too long. "Often, there's no contact between a parent and child for one to two years, even though there's a clear agreement. The courts don't know how to deal with the visitation boycott, they bring in experts, and sometimes such a case takes seven to eight years through all the instances," family court judge Jürgen Rudolph noted years ago.
For his district of Cochem, he therefore agreed with his colleagues, lawyers, and youth welfare office staff to compel feuding parents to attend mediation or counseling within two weeks, before any dirty laundry is aired. Often, the parents are taken directly from the courtroom to the mediator – if necessary, under threat of having their motions immediately dismissed otherwise. Rudolph's pilot project has already been replicated in Munich, Berlin, and several other locations.
He also played a key role in the legislative amendment, which is set to take effect nationwide in September: Family courts will place greater emphasis on mediation and counseling for couples seeking divorce. Bochum-based mediator Ingo Krampen explains: "What matters is the child's well-being in the end. And this is best conveyed to the parents through mediation , where, unlike in court proceedings, there isn't a winner and a loser at the end."
Douglas Wolfsperger has made a film about the plight of divorced fathers – it's called "The Discarded Father" (now in theaters). He gave up his own fight for his daughter. For her sake: "I realized how terribly torn the child felt. I didn't want to put her through that any longer." He wrote the girl a farewell letter. It ends with the words: "I will always love you, you can always come to me. Your Papa Douglas."
children will eventually ask about their fatherExperience shows that