Demonizing Mothers: Fathers' Rights Discourses in Child Custody Law Reform Processes

Since 1997, a contentious law reform process relevant to motherhood after separation and divorce-and the social construction of motherhood more generally-has been unfolding in Canada. Canada still has an older style of custody and access legislation, as opposed to the new wave statutes that were introduced in the late twentieth century in jurisdictions such as England and Australia. These countries have jettisoned the language of custody and access, and moved towards shared parenting regimes after divorce or separation (Rhoades, 2002). Canada too has moved towards adoption of this type of legal regime, albeit more tentatively. Although apparently neutral on their face, such regimes effectively enhance fathers' rights in relation to children, given the social reality that most children continue to live with and be cared for by their mothers after separation or divorce. Even without legislative reform, the trend of enhancing paternal contact-and paternal authority-is already occurring in Canadian courts, sometimes in circumstances that endanger mothers and children, such as abuse (Boyd, 2003a; Cohen and Gershbain, 1999). Formal legislative reform that would move further towards shared parenting in Canada seems inevitable, although its timing is in question.' In this article, I suggest that influential discourses emanating from the fathers' rights movement in the recent Canadian custody law reform process embody a demonizing of mothers. These demonizing discourses in turn promote mother blaming, which reflects a profound lack of understanding of the social realities of motherhood in modern Canadian society (cf. Turnbull, 2001). These discourses also represent a backlash against legal and social changes that are viewed as benefiting women. The term "backlash" signifies both resistance to feminist struggles for change and efforts to maintain and increase the subordination ofwomen (Walby, 1993: 79). Especially relevant to