I'm glad you mention the words "Loving parents" as I believe the family law system as it now stands makes it very hard for at least one of those parents to be "loving" simply because love evapourates when overly scrutinised.
It can only be intrusive for any court appointed official to start asking a child whether they love their parent - isn't that so? In any event it is such a stupid question where the child is unable to express any love for the parent if the other parent is hostile to any signs of affection between them. Finally whether the child is telling the truth or not is beyond anyone's ability to elucidate isn't it? How long do you think it would take for someone to make an assessment as to whether parents and children love one another in intact families where expressions of love may be limited very often? A friend of mine said it would take "months" of observing the family in his opinion, and he was no fool.
In defence of you lawyers I believe society places unrealistic expectations upon you or the court officials charged with writing their reports on the parent-child relationship.
Here is an excerpt from one case where a child was asked whether they thought they loved their father:-
12. Prior to contact ceasing in March L said that she had been suffering with nightmares and she attributed this to her visits with her father. She said that at times he had said things that worried her, such as “You are bad and only God can make you right”. She accused her father of nagging her a lot and questioned her “You do love me don’t you?” L feels that she does not love her father anymore and instead is angry and resentful towards him. She said that although she sees him as “dad” she does not view him as a father figure but “just a man that comes and is yucky”.
16. Given the strength of feeling that L has portrayed about her father Mr. G was invited to discuss the matter with L. When Mr. G stated that he believed L had been happy during contact L responded “You know that is not true”. Mr. G went on to say that during the last three or four visits he had included other children for L’s benefit but L pointed out that these children were much younger than her. Mr. G said that he thought L would enjoy being with other children and L immediately responded to him “I am not a child”. L continued to be critical of her father and disagreed with much of what he was saying. Mr. G stated that L was only saying these things because of her mother’s influence upon her.
“L is a popular, reliable and pleasant girl who goes out of her way to be helpful and who will carry out any request in the most cheerful way. Academically she is involved, organised and successful. She appears to be making good progress in all her subjects and is extremely diligent with her homework. She is making the most of every opportunity the school offers and behaves with great maturity and responsibility."
My comments:-
If I came to you for support in a case like the one described here would you wish to support me as the father or wish to see the child get what they said they wanted I wonder?
It would be too longwinded (even for me!) to try to breakdown every aspect of the excerpt I've given you, but I will give you a few examples of the inconsistencies it contains.
The father was never told his daughter was having nightmares in the run up to the breakdown of contact, and there were no signs of this happening either (I suggest the likelihood is that any nightmares were subsequent to the break down in contact and the cause was the impending court case and the child - if we can call her that at twelve, knew she would have to lie in order to portray the same views as her mother).
The father never told his daughter "she was bad and only God could make her right" - how did they manage to get all these details down in a ten minute interview, plus five minutes with the father present afterwards?
The father knew very well his daughter was happy during the contact visits - she'd told him to "Keep coming daddy" for ten years and if anyone wished to they could have seem photographic evidence of the child enjoying themselves on a beach or wherever and his witnesses could have been interviewed - none of this was done.
Finally the child was progressing so well at school as testified above - how could anything so terrible as described have been happening during contact with the father and this now have affected the child's school work?
I ask all these questions rhetorically - hopefully this post will help people like socomlogist by showing them how so many other parents have been discriminated against, or had fraudulent evidence used against us in the family courts.
We married the women who went on to desert us for another man, so we made our own "mistake" there if you want to share responsibility for the relationship breakdown and subsequent hostility. However, I'm often told women expect men to obey them, believe it or not - "You've either got to understand women or be prepared to obey them" my friends say. I don't take kindly to anyone dictating to me so I'm not built for relationships of this kind you could say. Still if our ex.'s expect to be obeyed, as I'm sure mine did, and my daughter was simply complying with this imperative when she condemned me, then how do you legislate for that?
Sorry for the length of the post.
All the best, Graham