London –The job of parents is to make their children do the things they do not want to do, a senior family law judge has said here.
Mothers and fathers should use the ‘carrot and the stick’ approach to make children do the things they find boring or difficult – from going to the dentist to doing their homework, Sir James Munby said.
He suggested confiscating mobiles and electronic gadgets, grounding teenagers, and ‘threats falling short of brute force’ as suitable methods for parents to get their way.
The price of failure, the judge suggested, could be lifelong pain for the parents or even, if the children’s education or health was at stake, their removal by social workers to grow up in state care.
Sir James, who is President of the Family Division, gave his advice in a case in which two teenage girls have refused to see their father for more than six years.
Sir James, sitting in the Appeal Court with Lady Justice Black and Lord Justice Vos, said there would be no winners if the girls, aged 14 and 16, were not persuaded to restore their relationship with the father. Sir James said being a parent was tough. But he added: ‘That is what parenting is all about.
‘There are many things which they ought to do that children may not want to do or even refuse to do: going to the dentist, going to visit some “boring” elderly relative, going to school, doing homework or sitting an examination, the list is endless.
‘The parents’ job, exercising all their parental skills, techniques and stratagems – which may include use of both the carrot and the stick and, in the case of the older child, reason and argument - is to get the child to do what it does not want to do. Sir James said dealing with strong-willed teenagers could be taxing and demanding.
‘But parental responsibility does not shrivel away, merely because the child is 14 or even 16,’ he said, ‘nor does the parental obligation to take all reasonable steps to ensure that a child of that age does what it ought to be doing, and does not do what it ought not to be doing.
‘What one can reasonably demand – not merely as a matter of law but also and much more fundamentally as a matter of natural parental obligation – is that the parent, by argument, persuasion, cajolement, blandishments, inducements, sanctions – for example, “grounding” or the confiscation of mobile phones, computers or other electronic equipment – or threats falling short of brute force, or by a combination of them, does their level best to ensure compliance.’
He added: ‘That is what one would expect of a parent whose rebellious teenage child is foolishly refusing to do GCSEs or A-levels or “dropping out” into a life of drug-fuelled crime.Why should we expect any less of a parent whose rebellious teenage child is refusing to see her father?’
The estrangement of the girls from their father began in 2008 when on a weekend visit the father’s new wife grabbed and pushed one of them during a row.
The mother asked for contact with the father to be stopped.
Sir James said of the parents: ‘Unless they can, as they must, even at this late stage, sort things out, the future for all of them is bleak. There will be no winners here; all will be losers.’
The girls had a distorted and damaging opinion of their father, he added.
However, he said, sooner or later the teenagers would discover the truth.
‘What will the children think, how will they react, when they discover, as one day they will, that their father is not the man they currently believe him to be?’ he asked.
‘Will they then turn against their mother? Will they reject both parents? The mother needs to ponder these questions and think hard about what the answers might be.’
Nevertheless, the judges rejected the father’s appeal against an earlier court ruling which said he had no right to contact with the girls.
But despite what the ruling says, the court called on the mother to take it upon herself to rebuild family ties.
Daily Mail