In the name of the child

Gender war
The lawyer's name is Reto Wehrli.
He is 43 years old, Catholic, father of one son. Years after this discussion with his office partner, he was elected to the National Council for the CVP, that was in 2003. “I said to myself: Well, now you have the opportunity.” He submitted a postulate entitled “Parental custody – equal rights,” in which he called on the Federal Council “to examine how joint parental custody is promoted for parents who are not or no longer married to each other and whether joint parental custody is implemented as a rule can". Federal Councilor Blocher, who was responsible for the matter, recommended that Parliament accept the proposal. When the debate took place in the National Council on October 7, 2005, it quickly became clear what it would lead to - a gender war. Jacqueline Fehr, Anita Thanei, Ruth-Gaby Vermot, veteran social democrats, said sentences like: “I asked around about divorced women, here in the hall, out in life.
The picture is pretty consistent. 'Why get a divorce if things continue the same as before?', these women say. 'That would only have continued the argument. I would have defended myself against it with all my might” – that’s the tenor. Anyone who thinks that women would simply accept joint custody is mistaken. And: “It is mostly women who work part-time; They are the women who take the children to the dentist, they are the women who take the children to kindergarten and school. All of these men who suddenly want to have a say don't want to be involved, they just want to have a say." And: “There are militant men’s organizations behind the postulate. They fight for power over the children and over the women.” The feminist terrain was marked.
On the other side, SVP politicians like Caspar Baader and Oskar Freysinger joined the fight. «Mrs Fehr, you always fight for equal treatment between the sexes. Do you actually think it's right that under today's rules, only one parent or the other has custody? Does that correspond to your ideas about equality?"

Relief
The next day the newspapers wrote that the debate over divorce law was like a hearing before a divorce judge.
An emotional exchange of blows, man against woman. Chantal Galladé, the young, ambitious social democrat from Zurich, gave the matter a new twist. “It strikes me,” she called into the room, “that this proposal was signed by many who belong to the younger generation. Maybe that has something to do with the fact that we younger people grew up as children of divorced parents. So we are basically the generation of children of divorce. We are the ones who will potentially be affected by this regulation in this state because we have small children and will then be asked these questions. That's why I would like to appeal to you: let us solve our problems in our own way. We have a different approach, a different vision of how we could interact with each other here as a couple or as parents. Let's just give it a try. Support the postulate!” Joint custody.
Gion Kohler clears his throat. It was back then, when the separation became apparent, that he and Denise took a walk to the camps and tackled the issue. He said to her: “Do we at least have joint custody?” It wasn't a question for her, she only vaguely remembers the walk and the conversation. “I was hoping that we would have shared concern,” she says. «Children have the right to have a relationship with their father. This is especially important for boys.” How noble that sounds.
Far too noble if you ask Gion Kohler. “Yeah, yeah,” he grumbles. «You can already admit that it has advantages for you. It's a relief. You have a lot more freedom." She nods.
“It’s a relief, of course.” The divorced couple sit quite tamely at the room table, but that wasn't always the case.
They have had two and a half years of tough struggle, first the parenting and separation agreement, then the divorce agreement, and they have spent around 9,000 francs on meetings with their lawyer and mediator. “Without him we wouldn’t have made it,” they both say. As they say, the Kohlers have exhausted their ability to separate the couple's problems from the children's issue "thanks to mediation." “Luckily we made it through without a fight for custody.” Injuries remained, of course.
disappointments. Initially, Gion wanted to “turn the tables”. He told his wife that she had been watching the children for ten years and now it was his turn. Now she should work and earn money and he will look after the children for the next ten years. “Then I said: But hello!”

Becoming a guru
Denise works in a catering business, it's a 40 percent job, she's on irregular shifts.
Sometimes during the day, sometimes in the evening. Every now and then on weekends. He is a trained carpenter, he now gives further training courses, coaches SME bosses, and together they earn a gross 120,000 francs a year. The Kohlers are a middle-class family, the likes of which exist in thousands in Switzerland. Not poor, but every franc counts. There are M-Budget products in her refrigerator. Before the separation, she was entirely a housewife and mother.
And now this: “turning the tables”? A hint of anger appears on her face. “The first ten years were backbreaking work. Constantly carrying the babies around, spooning three mouths at the table or cutting something up, I often got the first bite when everything was already cold. And the nights! In the first few years I didn’t sleep through the night.” She pauses in art and then waves her hand into the empty room. And today? The daughter is ice skating, the eldest is with his girlfriend; Sven is sitting upstairs at the computer. “Childcare is something completely different today.” Turn the tables: Many a mother would wish that.
Why did Denise turn it down? “I said no,” she says defiantly.
“It would only have been fair to turn the tables,” Gion repeats, his voice sounding depressed.
He speaks carefully (while Denise is impulsive and often suddenly loud), he says it again, yes, yes, he would have liked to have done that. "But I realized that you, Denise, would not offer a hand in this, and I felt forced to give in in the interest of finding a solution that was good for everyone." Denise straightens her wiry, athletic body with a jerk.
«Hey. Working 100 percent in service is extremely strenuous. The level is high, I would have burned out within a year. I simply wouldn't be able to do it. And what I want as my main job is my children. Yes. That's why I knocked on the table in mediation and said: Not like that! I said: I don't support you sitting at home and realizing yourself and becoming a guru." Gion had ideas, she explains, to do a little bit of housework and “in such a guru-like way”, “and I would have to cripple myself”. Gion: "You haven't checked that I've been crippled in the same way over the past ten years."
And this is how they work today, the Kohlers: The mother looks after the children in the “nest” from Monday to Thursday, they have dinner together on Thursday evening, then the father takes over - every other weekend until Monday morning.
On the other weekends, Gion quits family duty on Friday and retires to his one-room apartment. Once a week, when his mother is on shift at the hotel, he takes on an additional day. “There is no such thing as absolute justice,” says Gion.
"But of course, if you're flooded with feelings, anger and hatred and whatever, then you're blocked." Justice is important, says Denise, and you shouldn't have the emotional impression that you're getting the short end of the stick.
«We weren't aware of that during the entire process with the mediator. But looking back, that was probably the basic idea behind everything. With an eye on the approximate balance, the mediator steered us gently, if necessary with a provocative remark. The Kohlers have carefully regulated how they interact with the children. They knew the risk of failure. “You probably won’t find anyone in Switzerland with such a detailed divorce agreement.” Lawyers usually advise against the so-called nest model; it often actually falls apart after two or three years. Mostly when new partners come into play. Then someone finds a hair in the shower and immediately has a fantasy. At Kohlers, the agreement said: “New partners do not take part in the nest.” They later deleted this passage again; the children were questioned about this and the mediator was consulted. And the house was remodeled. Each parent now has their own bedroom with a shower. And if a new partner visits at the weekend, the toilet must be “roughly cleaned” afterwards – that’s what the agreement says.

Outrage, anger
Many lawyers and psychologists today see the weaker legal position of fathers as discrimination against men in favor of a mothers' monopoly.
The fact that fathers, after years of family life, can be excluded from custody in a divorce regardless of the circumstances leads to indignation and anger. For a few years now, this anger has been gathering in fathers' associations, of which a new one is founded every few months: "MANNzipation", "Fathers without custody", "Interest group of divorced fathers" - this is where the men whose stories sound hair-raising meet like the other. There is the young father whose wife slipped into depression after the birth of the child, who stepped in and took over everything, the baby, the household, who initiated pep talks against the mother's baby blues for weeks, and then, at some point, back to normal Office must.
The relationship falls apart. The woman says to him: Joint custody? You can take that off. And then the man stands in front of the judge and the judge sees that the man is working 80 percent. The case is clear to the judge: the woman gets custody. There is the middle-aged man who spent a year negotiating with his wife about joint parental custody, and she finally agreed.
But then she suddenly and seemingly for no reason recanted (she found out that her ex-husband was living with his new girlfriend). The men in these clubs only want one thing: shared parental custody as a rule in the event of a divorce.
The expectation of salvation in a new law is enormous; every day, divorced fathers call the Federal Office of Justice and ask with burning impatience about the status of the work, or they want to know whether it will still apply retroactively. “Many men have years of arguments behind them, feel ignored by the authorities, tricked by their ex-wife, and against the background of this endless revolving around themselves, custody becomes a kind of trophy that they want to hang on the wall.” explains Oliver Hunziker, 43, President of the national umbrella organization for shared parenting. All the bitter and disillusioned (and often self-righteous) men will be disappointed.
No law can save them. Because whether you can pull yourself together after a failed marriage and amicably care for your children depends only to a limited extent on the current law. First of all, it is a question of character and mental health. And yet the time seems ripe to grant men this small right with the big symbolic content and - yes, of course - this bit of power.
In any case, Reto Wehrli's postulate was clearly accepted in the National Council - with 136 votes to 44. Since then, the Federal Office of Justice has been working on a bill that was finalized in December 2008. It proposes joint custody as the norm, regardless of marital status. In other words, it requires divorcing couples to make a great balancing act of emotions: although they no longer want to have anything to do with each other, they have to sit down at the table together on a regular basis and clarify important children's issues. The law throws the (former) couples back to parenthood, just as Reto Wehrli complained about in his postulate. Eveline Widmer-Schlumpf, head of the Federal Department of Justice and Police, will present the draft law to the Federal Council in the next few weeks and then send it for consultation. The law could be in force in two or three years. Theoretically.
Because the matter is far from being decided politically. A non-binding postulate is one thing, a law is something else. The template has two sticking points. On the one hand, there is the question of what joint parental custody should include. Certainly the right of residence determination. But if a mother wants to move with her child from Zurich to St. Gallen, does she first have to obtain the father's consent? Actually already. But what does that mean at a time when employee flexibility has become so important? What does this mean given that more than half of all marriages today are binational? Another thing that will cause uproar is the fact that in the future not only divorced people will automatically have joint custody, but also unmarried people - i.e. cohabiting parents.
Some politicians will interpret this as an attack on the institution of marriage, some will ask the question: Why should we still get married? The idea that we in Switzerland are facing an emotionally momentous change of mode is slowly gaining ground in public consciousness.
Reto Wehrli, the Schwyz National Councilor, has been traveling around the country for a year, from panel discussions to themed evenings, sometimes with the FDP women in Lucerne, sometimes with the student association in Zurich. He speaks on television, and there is usually a woman sitting next to him who stands out because she doesn't argue along gender lines like the others. Her name is Liselotte Staub, she is a psychotherapist and the author of a guide that is often consulted by the courts - “Divorce and Child Welfare”. Liselotte Staub says that with shared parental custody as the norm, the problems of divorce would not be solved, but married couples would be freed from today's war logic.
And to illustrate this, she tells the story of a teacher's divorce, which she considers typical. This teacher worked full time and at the same time did a lot with the children in his free time. He wants joint custody, the woman doesn't. He told the judge that he would reduce his workload and presented a care plan; The judge says that if the woman doesn't want to, they would have constant conflicts and that wouldn't be good for the children. At this point, the teacher's attorney changes strategy. He says to him: «We have to go on tutti. Now we have to go full throttle. You have to fight for sole custody and all the dirt has to be brought to the table.” The children are now being fought in court; ultimately it is a battle over the question of who is the better parent. “This fight is never in the child’s interest,” says Staub. For the psychologist, the fact that the question of who is the more competent parent is being asked in the courts today is not least a legacy of the divorce law that was revised in 2000. At that time, the principle of fault was abandoned. “The exclusion of the question of guilt has opened up a new battle zone, according to the motto: If it is no longer clear who is responsible for the breakdown of the marriage, it must at least be decided who is the better parent.” In short, the internal logic is: If someone is left alone to search for the reason for failure and no judge's ruling provides clarity, they will seek compensation in another way.

It's never too late
Just as some complacent mothers always know better, many fathers are unreliable.
The unreliability of fathers is statistically proven. Liselotte Staub calls it “the sad reality”. In fact, many women say: He didn't care before, why does he want joint custody now! Now suddenly he can take care of the children, that's blatantly unfair. He left me to muddle around on my own for years, and now he's suddenly the sweet daddy. “This is of course a slap in the woman’s face. It’s a total insult,” says Liselotte Staub. “But from the child’s point of view: great!” It is never too late to become a father. And then she tells the story of a father who didn't deal with his son for six years, and whose marriage ultimately failed because of it.
This father, a workaholic, now spends every other weekend with his son, he goes to the museum with him, does homework, in short: he takes care of him. And the woman? She doesn't think it's funny at all, she's wanted this all these years. “But it’s great for the child because he can now live out his relationship with his father. This is the best prevention against this enormous longing for a father that you see in many children. » Many fathers become estranged from their children after divorce.
They withdraw because they do not have custody and as a result the feeling of having lost their importance as a parent dominates. They experience it as a loss of power; it creates helplessness. With shared parental custody as the norm, no one would be a loser anymore. Men and women could meet on equal terms. According to Liselotte Staub, there is something inherently gratifying about that. It is also a good prerequisite for mediation if the dispute flares up again. In most families, the quarrels calm down over time, even if the separation phase was turbulent. “Shared custody is also viable for parents with a high potential for conflict,” says Staub. Outside, in front of the “nest”, the birch trees are sinking into the evening gloom.
At some point on this Wednesday afternoon, ten-year-old Sven broke away from his computer game and sat down at the table with his parents. He listened with a mixture of equanimity and curiosity, at one point saying that he actually didn't know why his parents divorced. “Have you ever asked your parents?”
"No."
For a moment it is dead quiet.
Then the mother, who has propped her head up, says to the son: “Are you going to make candles now?”
"Yes."
“Do you need two more francs for the wick?”
«No, I have a wick.
But I would still like the two francs.” "For what?"
"Just like that.
To the öppis chaufe." The question of why Denise and Gion Kohler divorced doesn't embarrass them.
Not in the slightest. They kept records, thoroughly; a folder labeled “Partnership” bears witness to the countless discussions over the last eight years. “It was a kind of marriage planning, relationship work. Our constant theme was closeness,” says Denise. And to Gion: “Right? You had the feeling that I didn't want enough closeness. It's obvious that things don't work out that way when it comes to sexuality. We talked and talked and wrote it all down, we almost talked the relationship to pieces at times, we talked so much." Gion: «I wished that you would show your feelings more.
Actually, what women usually ask of men. I came across granite. Or should I say: on ice?" Denise: «There was no solution on this point.
We both had a need, and the many pages we filled were an expression of it. We are both logical, clearly structured people, and we may have tried to find our way out of the endless loop.” Denise disposed of the folder last October, and Gion, who now finds out, is surprised. How could you! Then they talk about this and that, about his illness and the fears associated with it, and at one point he says: "I don't know when you first became interested in getting another boyfriend abroad." A loud cry from her.
“Just this formulation!” The phone rings.
Gion answers. He says: “Yes, yes, she lives there too.” He hands the phone to his wife, who is now his ex-wife, and says: “About the dress.” Sure, Denise says into the receiver, she'll come pick it up today, before half past five. When she hangs up, Gion can't help but comment. “So, are you buying a nice dress?” Denise Kohler groans and clasps her hands above her head in a theatrical gesture. «You can't keep anything secret in this household! You’re divorced, but the other person still knows everything!” Then she explodes into laughter, and he laughs quietly with her.