![handle is hein.journals/femlst12 and id is 1 raw text is: FELICITY KAGANAS and SHELLEY DAY SCLATER
CONTACT DISPUTES:
NARRATIVE CONSTRUCTIONS OF 'GOOD' PARENTS
ABSTRACT. This paper explores contact disputes in England and Wales. We discuss the
legal background as well as separating parents' experiences of contact disputes. Contact
has been high on the agenda since the U.K. Government report, Making Contact Work,
(2002) examined various means for facilitating contact between non-resident parents and
their children. More recently, the issue has featured prominently in the headlines, largely
as a result of the campaigning efforts of fathers' rights groups who complain of injustice
and demand changes in the law. The idea that contact is necessary for children's well-
being seems to have acquired the status of uncontestable truth. This paper examines the
ways in which these ideas about children's interests have become embodied in a dominant
welfare discourse that is embedded in law and informs policy thinking. Family law has long
abhorred parental conflict, particularly that which involves the children. It is frequently
assumed that conflict can be reduced if parents could be persuaded to accept the premises of
the welfare discourse. In this paper, we consider how parents themselves, in talking about
their experiences of contact disputes, makes sense of family law. We found that parents
regularly invoke the welfare discourse in their talk, but they interpret it in unexpected
ways. Often these interpretations fuel conflict rather than reducing it.
KEY WORDS: children's interests, contact disputes, family law, family policy, good
parents, welfare discourse
Government statistics show that every year the family courts make more than
50,000 enforcement orders [for contact] but around half are flouted .... In the
most extreme example, [Fathers 4 Justice, a campaigning group] cites the case
of Mark Harris, who has had 133 orders broken by his ex-wife.1
For thousands of women, the issue of child contact has become fraught with
danger ... . [W]omen's groups ... have watched recent developments with
mounting alarm.2
INTRODUCTION
In recent months, the issue of post-separation arrangements for children
has been catapulted into the headlines of U.K. newspapers, largely as a
1 A. Asthana and J. Doward, This far, but no Father, The Observer, 26 October 2003.
2 A. Moore, Some dads need to be kept away, The Observer, 26 October 2003.
A Feminist Legal Studies 12: 1-27, 2004.
O © 2004 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/femlst12&div=1&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)
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