Catalonia’s New Civil Code and Joint Custody

Things are changing. 

The Parliament of Catalonia approved on Wednesday the draft law for the Second Book of the Civil Code on the person and the family, which establishes joint custody of the children in cases of separation.

As a promising sign of times, it was a woman, the Councilor of Justice Montserrat Tura, who presented the project that, along with the other codes approved by this legislature, constitute an unprecedented body of civil law in Catalonia.  Tura was enthusiastic to highlight that the law is committed to establish shared custody of children as the default option in case of separation; however, in some cases, in the interests of the child, custody can be attributed to one of them.  "We deliberately removed the term “visits”, we do not want winners and losers, we want children served by both parents," she pointed out.

Things are changing, and changing for the better.  Maybe not at the speed that we would like them to change, but they are certainly changing.  The Fathers Rights Movement is wining important battles worldwide.  We cannot allow ourselves to be discouraged by the fact that there is so much to be done.  We all knew that this was going to be a long journey.  The real important fact is that we are gaining terrain inch by inch, foot by foot. 

Let’s add Catalonia to our growing list of battles won.

The Face of Melancholy

As everyone knows, I live in Montclair, New Jersey, a town that I have adopted and that have adopted me as my second home, after my hometown of Guaynabo.  Montclair is like a small Manhattan, refined, cosmopolitan, socially progressive, racially diverse and tolerant, very tolerant.

When summer arrives, those of us who have children strive to find fun things for them to do while they enjoy their summer vacations.  Since Montclair has three public swimming pools, two weeks ago I got the season pass for my daughter and me, and since then, whenever we can we go to "Essex Pool”, a public swimming pool we have just two blocks from where we live.

Adjacent to the pool is small park for children, where I take my daughter when she gets tired of being in the pool.  On Friday, while we were there, I saw a scene that brought me sad memories.  A young man, perhaps in his mid-thirties, played with a beautiful girl, no older than two years old.  Both showed the features that we usually associate with Slavic races, including light hair and very light blue eyes.  While talking to a friend of mine who at the time was also there, I could not help noticing that although the man could not stop smiling while playing with his daughter, behind his smile there was a clear hint of sadness, of ill-disguised melancholy.  Since I could not see a wedding ring on his hand, I concluded that this man was a divorced father, and I wondered if what I was seeing was just the little time that family courts award to the majority of divorced fathers to be with their children.

I could not help feeling sad myself.  This man, whose face mingled the joy of playing with his beautiful daughter and a painfully hidden sadness, reminded me that a year ago that man was I.  A year ago, before the court granted me a fairer schedule to be with my daughter, I used to feel that bitter joy, that sad aftertaste after each otherwise joyous moment.

I say that it is a tragedy that there are so many fathers suffering the slow hell to which the family courts subject them by excluding them from the lives of their children, and/or by subjecting them to the status of vassals of their former wives.  In most cases, divorced fathers are reduced to the humiliating category of second-class parents, parents of a second order.  The human need to feel worthy and valued prevents a father in this situation from enjoying the brief time that he shares with his children.

Earlier this week, talking about the social services that churches provide to their communities, I said that one of the tragedies of the human condition was that the only pain we can understand is our own pain.  Now I say that it is a tragedy that only the fathers who live these calvaries could understand the continuous and excruciating pain that feels to be in this situation.

To me, who have had the dubious privilege of having being there, those desolate faces of fathers bring me memories, and make me sad.

Support in Unexpected Places: Gloria Steinem in The Colbert Report

I must confess that I am huge fan of Comedy Central, the cable channel dedicated exclusively to comedy shows. The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and The Colbert Report, with my neighbor from Montclair Stephen Colbert, are my “must see TV.”

Last June 22nd, Stephen interviewed Gloria Steinem (March 25, 1934), the icon of American feminism. Steinem, journalist, social and political activist, was a leader and spokeswoman for the Women's Liberation Movement in the late 1960s and 1970s, and still is a prominent figure and an important referent of the movement.

During the brief although interesting interview, Stephen asked her to comment on her statement that it was unfair to women to ask them to have careers and to raise children too. In her comments, and to my pleasant surprise, Steinem argued in favor of shared parenting responsibilities, pointed out as a social advancement the fact that the men’s rights movement is fighting so that men have a more active role in the raising of children, and complained that the US laws make difficult to men participate as equal parents as women.

I have said before that regarding family law, some forms of feminism are not real feminism, but feminine supremacism, kind of an “inverted machismo” where women want to have over men the same control that men used to have over them. These false feminist want equality in everything but in family matters, and when they divorce, they want to deny men their right to be parents of their children. If these so-called feminist were so, they would have understood that putting on women all the responsibilities of raising children is just a way of preserving gender inequality, and they would be fighting for equal parenting rights for both genders. And if someone asks who said this, you can reply: Gloria Steinem did.