The new BBC series titled “Who Needs Fathers?” is about children growing up without fathers. As a result of sole custody granted mostly to mothers, the ties between fathers and children quickly dissolve after divorce. According to Cassandra Jardine (Telegraph.co.uk), the series is also eloquent on fathers’ suffering. Family laws have privileged the bond between child and mum, and gave up on fatherhood. Or assume that fatherhood could be put in deep freeze and resume at a later date. When the kid will be a grown up and feel like it, he would just knock at the glass window under which his frozen father lies. They will embrace as if nothing had happened. Thanks to the BBC, the world discovers that the guy under the glass window was not numbed. All these years apart from their children are marked by both the unbearable feeling of a loss and the equally unbearable feeling that their bond with their children may never resume.
It looks that in the wake of the 2004 family reforms in Australia, family laws might change in England, whoever wins the next elections. There will be some degree of shared-parenting introduced into family laws. The reforms will be possible because of public awareness. This can happen when the media does its job.