‘Meaningful relationships’ in the Family Law Act Amendments of 2006: A socio-legal perspective on fathers, mothers and the ‘sharing’ of parenting after separation

Abstract

This is one of four papers in the present issue of JFS on the concept of ‘meaningful relationships’ between separated parents and their children. The term was introduced into the 2006 amendments to the Family Law Act 1975 (Cth),2 which also endorses the concept of shared parental responsibility and, when practicable and in the interests of the child, shared parenting time. The present paper explores some of the socio-legal antecedents to these concepts. It traces the historical shift from relationship as an externally located obligation of the father, to relationship as a mysterious internally fashioned bond between a mother and her child, essential to the child’s psychological development. I argue that the right of children to enjoy meaningful relationships with both their separated parents is closely linked to the need to make a further cultural shift that sees fathers too, as equally capable of bonding emotionally with their children. I see ‘meaningful relationships’ as an important conceptual breakthrough in family law, and suggest that from the child’s standpoint, meaningful relationships are primarily about parental attunement and the flexibility and emotional security that this brings, and less about processes principally aimed at determining or agreeing upon parcels of parenting time.