While formal equality may offer equal opportunity, this does not translate into equality of outcome. Less than 4% of parents registered with the CSA have equal or close to equal care of their children. See Child Support Agency, ‘Child Support Scheme Facts and Figures, 2002–03’, (2003); Family court statistics indicate a reduction in ‘joint residence’. See Family Court of Australia, ‘Residence Order Outcomes — 1994–95 to 2000–01’, <http://www.familycourt.gov.au/court/html/residence_orders.html> at 18 September 2003.
2.
McIsaacHugh, ‘California Joint Custody Retrospective’ in FolbergJay (ed) Joint Custody and Shared Parenting (1991) 262–74. The joint custody model advocating 50/50 shared residence between parents has been largely discredited and repealed in overseas jurisdictions such as California. In the case of California, joint custody was frequently imposed on litigating couples and seen as a solution to high levels of inter-parental conflict. The expectation was that parents would be forced to resolve their differences by both putting the children's needs first. This is in fact contradictory to findings such as those of Amato which suggest that the higher the level of conflict, the more likely it is that the effects of frequent contact with both parents on a child's wellbeing will be negated. AmatoPaul R., ‘Contact With Non-Custodial Fathers and Children's Wellbeing’, (1993) 36Family Matters32.
3.
See FunderKate, Remaking Families: Adaptation of Parents and Children to Divorce, (Australian Institute of Family Studies, Melbourne, 1996). This study found that the majority of parents and children ultimately adjust to divorce quite well and in such a variety of ways that there is ‘no one golden rule’ for post-divorce adjustment nor any one optimal family structure.
4.
Rhoades, Graycar and Harrison claim that there is a disproportionate number of submissions made to parliamentary inquiries into family law matters by disaffected fathers. Helen Rhoades, GraycarRegHarrisonMargaret, The Family Law Reform Act 1995: The First Three Years (University of Sydney and the Family Court of Australia, 2000).
