Mediation is a recent expansion of the divorce industry as additional
professions cash in, now, mental health workers.
Mediators sincerely believe they provide something different.
Unfortunately, it is in form, not substance. As long as they act as
extensions of the legal system -- simply separate implementors of the
same conventions -- they can only create the same results.
Fifteen years ago, Chris Simpson (not his real name) was 32
when he and his girlfriend became pregnant. Though the relationship
had been volatile he was delighted at having a child. He proposed,
but she continued her cycle of temperamental breakups and makeups,
even taunting him with abortion. One night she rolled over and said,
"If you leave me I'll sue you for $1,000 a month. I know I can; I
talked with my lawyer."
"She got pregnant to control me and I knew would only use
the child for that. But I wanted that child. I wanted the best I
could possibly give it," says Simpson. He knew that the ambiguity of
its parents' relationship had to stop to at least assure the child's
world stability. Before the birth, he broke up with her once and for
all.
He did not see why this should affect the child having its
father, but knew the law did.
"When a lawyer suggested mediation, it sounded like the
solution."
He assumed it was an alternative solution, not just an
alternative route to the same one. That was a big mistake.
Resa Eisen told him, "You must obey her (the mother's)
instructions," making her idea of fathers clear, and would allow 2,
2 hour visits a week with an infant he'd never seen. "She was more
concerned I not disrupt his daycare."
There could be no stability for a relationship here. There
probably couldn't be one with only 4 hours a week. People spend more
time with their friends, the child, more time with strangers.
Two years later, still desperate for his child, he managed
to force a second mediation thinking the answer lay in a better
mediator. But despite recommendations, "Sheila Faucher giggled at
the idea of a man changing diapers. She saw herself answering to the
lawyers, not us nor the child. After eight months she had avoided
negotiation by trying to manage everyone's relationships instead.
Looking back, she must have been trying to force us into some
textbook she didn't bother explaining to either of us.
"For all [the mother's] faults, I believe she would have
agreed to an equal parenting arrangement had it ever been presented.
But the mediators were opposed. They saw their job as enforcing the
matriarchic wall: children are only for women."
All Simpson sought was some operational recognition of being
independently important to the child, just as the mother gets. If his
parenting was entirely at the mother's mercy he believed it would
never be the constant he felt it had to be for the child. Paternal
regard turned out to be more elusive from social workers. His mission
for the child's stability, which started, "His parents are together
or not," then forced to, "He has a father or not," got a negative
answer from the matriarchal wall. A mediator's job is to get men to
accept their lot as the inconvenience the law also regards them as
being. Simpson now feels, "I would have been better treated by the
courts."
Since both courts and mediators only impose the law -- not
seek what would benefit children -- the only solution is to change
what they impose. That's up to us, society, not lawyers nor shrinks.
Where is Simpson today? He's a deadbeat dad, of course.
Copyright © 2004 K.C.Wilson.
K.C. Wilson is the author of Co-parenting for
Everyone, Male Nurturing, and other books on family
and men's issues, available as e-books
at http://harbpress.com.
