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DIVORCED DIASPORA Zimbabweans must stop turning children against estranged others or fathers, for selfish reasons
Zimbabwean Children abroad are turned against their parents by those who have custody of them. This ranges from a mother or father who has custody or social workers and foster parents. Some do this entirely out of spite and some do it mostly out of financial gain. A lot of Zimbabwean divorced partners are eliminated from their children’s lives because of the ‘implacable hostility’ of those partners with custody,
‘The normal prejudiced assumption is that a mother will give children kindly care while a feckless father swaggers off over the horizon. in the whole world at large fathers are portrayed as useless objects who cannot take care of children.
This misconception has been implanted in our minds and the Judiciary has tended to believe that a mother is a tender human being and therefore deserves to stay with children during divorce proceedings. it is however true that a woman when angry is the most cruel creature human kind had never seen. Most women have mastered the art of emotional blackmailing.
In a very rare case A High Court judge in London ordered that a 10 year-old girl should be removed from her mother’s care because the girl had been systematically estranged from her father by her mother’s “ranting” against the man.
Ruling that the mother’s conduct was manifestly harmful for the daughter and contrary to her long-term interests, Mrs Justice Parker observed that the child had been manipulated into believing that her father did not want her; and she ordered that the girl should be taken into the care of social services as a half-way measure towards placing her in her father’s care. The court heard that the girl was likely to be resistant to being reunited with her father without such interim measures.
The case torched a storm with women groups complaining. The reality was it was a case which showed that men have always been made to look like devils; the word love has been removed from the lives of father’s and their children.
The high court ruling stood out as an extraordinary moment, reversing normal prejudiced assumptions that a mother will give children kindly care while a feckless father swaggers off over the horizon.
The case to the men it reflected a phenomenon that they see all too frequently – the elimination of fathers from their children’s lives by unmitigated, unscrupulous demands on the children’s loyalty on the part of the mother with custody, along with the unremitting denigration and belittling of the father.
Most partners with custody of children go an extra mile to demonise the absent parent. Even if the partner pays enough funds for the upkeep of the children the children are always told that their father is playing around while mothers are suffering.
Fathers have been too often used as the scare crow, anything the child does the child is reminded that a dragon with hands dripping of blood called father is coming. Fathers have been made vampires and used to be the scaring devils of the house. in this aspect the fathers are alienated from their children before they are divorced, by the time of divorce the fathers are already viewed as evil ones who cannot stay with the children.
For those organisations, the only unusual feature of this case was that the harmful conduct of the mother was actually recognised by the court; and that, for once, officialdom did something about it. It should be noted that conflicts of loyalty for the children do seem to be a common feature of high-conflict separations. It’s a huge problem for many couples and the children are made to make the most emotional wrecking choice.
The controlling parent is likely to be the woman and the estranged, undermined parent is likely to be the man. There are of course some idiots of men who try to turn the children against their mothers. This is very rare but indeed possible. It is called “implacable hostility”.
Divorcing away from the familiar community is a new thing to Zimbabwean community who have been in the UK for less than two decades. The society they are in promotes divorce. People are happy to announce that they have been in a thirtieth marriage. Marriage is now under attack and the children emerge as the worst victims of the sins of passion.
While couples agree that both parents should share responsibility for bringing up children and 85 per cent agree that fathers are instrumental in bringing up children the parent with custody never tells the child when the other parent has assisted. they make it look like they are the only ones who are toiling to make ends meet.
That consensus has been reflected in recent amendments to the Children and Families Act 2014 which now require courts making child arrangement orders “to presume that the involvement of both separating parents in the life of a child will further its welfare”. However this is the English Law, the Zimbabwean couples mix both English system and their own system. They pretend to know and in the anger of their lunacy the children suffer more.
Even so, a parent who does not put first the emotional needs of the children but is primarily driven to exact revenge upon a former spouse or partner or to impose punishment by frustrating or thwarting their relationship with their children is, in the very nature of domestic life, almost impossible to control.
Children are more often used as weapons to fix the other party and indeed the child suffers more than the offending parties.
There is a great insidious undermining or disparagement of the other parent by snide remarks or the lurid exaggeration of imagined fears which require the children to line up their loyalties with the apparently threatened or embattled parent?
In this onslaught of an absent parent the young children voice a determined preference not to see or be involved with a parent who has been vilified by the other. How can anybody be sure that the child is expressing true feelings that have been freely developed rather than a point of view which has been inculcated by a manipulative parent?
Where contact with children is being frustrated or denied and the children themselves are rejecting a parent with whom they previously had good relationships, specialists in mediation and child psychology should get involved without delay. But the system which does not understand the cultural background of a Zimbabwean will hide behind the term the best interest of the child.
Most children are forced to stay with parents who are manipulative and always remind them that their fathers are horrible no brains and selfish.
Parents have portrayed marriages as the most horrible institution in life. It will not be a surprise to find out that in few years marriage will be wiped out of the important issues of life.
Diaspora has all odds against them, no helpers who understand them. the church pastors are mostly self-centred and do not promote families. Most of them are powered by money. Relatives who are backing home decides to take sides of those who pay them the most. life as we know it has been thrown into a quagmire.
Children are being turned against their parents. Who is going to help the Zimbabwean couple abroad?
Vazet2000@yahoo.co.uk
Source – Dr Masimba Mavaza