ABSTRACT
In western countries children usually live with their mother when parents separate, largely reflecting highly gendered pre-separation patterns of parenting. A key ongoing policy challenge has been maintaining separated fathers’ involvement with their children, given research evidence that children generally benefit from good quality ongoing relationships with both parents. The intense and ongoing political, policy and research engagement with post-separation parenting policy reform that has characterized Australia, and to a lesser extent England and Wales, makes them particularly useful case studies. In Australia, shared ‘parental responsibility’ was introduced in 1996 in order to move away from both proprietorial language and thinking in relation to children. The greater ongoing policy debate internationally since early 2000s has been about time with children, particularly extent to which law and policy should support shared time after parental separation. Generally, there is ongoing concern that post-separation parenting laws and processes, with their focus on parenting time, typically respond to interests of adults rather than children.
