Dr. Karin Jäckel on Deutschlandradio on September 20, 2010:
Parent-child relationships are older than any man-made law and any guardianship role of the state. It is the natural and inviolable birthright, a human right of every child, to have a mother and a father and to be jointly protected, raised, and cared for by them.
Having to do without a parent is a profound loss for every child, affecting both body and soul, even if the child isn't consciously aware of it. At some point, all children question their own roots. Adopted children also want to know their biological parents because they want to understand who the two people are who conceived and gave birth to them, and what genetic heritage they carry within them.
Being a single parent is by no means a "success story," as Edith Schwab, chairwoman of the "Association of Single Mothers and Fathers," would have us believe, but is demonstrably a failure story that overwhelms mothers, forces children into psychotherapeutic treatment, and drives both into existential anxiety and poverty – with and without financial support from the excluded parent.
Even if single parenthood is interpreted as a form of emancipation, a mother cannot be a father, and a father cannot replace a mother. No single parent who excludes, conceals, or denies the other can fulfill a child's longing for themselves and their own family roots. Quite apart from that, single parenthood brought about by exclusion almost always results in the loss of second grandparents and other relatives for children.
Against this background, to still deny the birthright of all children to both parents and to place greater value on both the separation interests of the parents and a quasi-proprietary right of the mother to "her offspring child" is anti-child and causes separation wars.
It cannot be that worldwide research findings on the almost identical propensity for violence between the sexes continue to be subordinated to the myth "woman = victim, man = perpetrator" and that children are denied their birthright to both parents simply because some men become criminals and then commit violence against women and/or children.
The vast majority of fathers are willing and able to be attentive, caring, and loving towards their children and to assume parental responsibility. Therefore, excluded fathers fight just as relentlessly for their children who have been taken from them or withheld from them as excluded mothers. They suffer no less from the loss of their children and see their children as giving meaning to their lives just as much as mothers do.
Instead of protecting all children's right to both parents and imposing conditions to find a joint compromise in the child's best interests, family court judges grant the application of the lawyer of the abducting parent for temporary sole custody. This effectively sanctions the vigilante justice of child abduction.
When I first publicly revealed the pain and despair of children of bullied fathers in 2000, female journalists derided them as "new suffering men" and "whiners." This mocking reaction to male vulnerability remains to this day part of a convoluted form of misandry, as expressed, for example, in a policy paper by the SPD (Social Democratic Party of Germany), which aims to achieve greater humanity by overcoming masculinity.
It is time that those responsible for legislation, who feel called upon to protect women and mothers, finally understand and respect that women are no longer goddesses who seem to magically conjure their children.
Child protection must transcend all ideology, and the child's right to a mother and a father must be guaranteed.