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One mom in the article, Veronica, is described as “full of foreboding” on the days her children go to their father, after which she can’t go into the girls’ bedroom because “I know I’ll just dissolve into tears.” Veronica was shocked that their dad had “taken them to the hairdresser” without telling her. Now — gasp – their hair is too short for ponytails. It continues in this hand-wringing vein until, casually dropped in, we read, “Although she trusts her ex-husband implicitly with the care of her girls ….” In other words, he’s not a monster; he’s a good dad.

The reporter’s overt bias emerges in her mawkish tone. She asks us to imagine “the agonizing pain of being privy to your child’s life for only half the time. The milestone missed. The lost cuddles before bedtime … wondering if they are sleeping sweetly or crying out for Mummy.” Please. There are two people missing out on milestones and cuddles, and two people wondering if their kids miss them when they’re not there. But it’s as if one of them does not exist.

Veronica thinks she is being fair when she says, “I know the girls have to see their dad.” That’s just form. In essence, she doesn’t really think her daughters would suffer if they didn’t because, “at the end of the day I’m a mother who has to somehow learn to stop being a mother for half my life. I’m not sure I can ever come to terms with that. I don’t know many mothers who could.”

What about the kids, Veronica and Gwen? Do you know many children who “come to terms” with losing their fathers as so many do in mom-biased family courts? Maybe if the reporter had taken the trouble to interview some — any — fathers, she might have realized that having to stop being a father for half their life is equally “agonizing.” But it never occurred to her to ask. In my experience, it almost never occurs to anyone in the media to ask.

National Post

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