Parenting

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Yesterday and today’s Royal Gazette stories about mothers moving to the United Kingdom with their children, often to be eligible for benefits, and leaving the fathers behind is a grim reflection on the state of the Bermuda family.

For some time now, there has been a see-saw debate between single mothers who accuse fathers of failing to support their children and fathers who say they are prevented from taking part in their children’s upbringing by bitter mothers and biased courts.

The truth lies somewhere in the middle. There are bad fathers who fail to support their children and there are good fathers who are prevented from seeing their children.

One thing is certain. The biggest losers are the children, who are deprived of parental guidance.

Mothers who move to the UK exacerbate this, but cannot be entirely blamed.

The first step has to be to find ways to avoid the open warfare that often erupts between estranged parents, both in the courts and outside.

The second, where reconciliation is impossible, is to provide for shared parenting, where both parents are equally responsible for their children’s well-being.

Where this fails, Bermuda needs to ensure, through the courts and elsewhere, that parents who are not their child’s primary carer, meet their financial and parental obligations.

And Bermuda needs to build a society which is so attractive to young mothers that they do not move to the UK and become dependent on the remains of the British welfare state.

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