There was a recent decision from the Third Department Appellate Division in New York which upheld a lower court decision allowing the relocation of a child to North Carolina with the mother. The father had appealed and asked for primary custody of the child if in fact the mother moved. The court, using the best interests test, (which is the analysis used in any custody proceeding) found that the mother was relocating for economic and financial reasons that would enhance her and the child’s lives. They allowed the move. The court found that video calls, daily phone contact, and extended parenting periods, would be sufficient for the child to have a meaningful relationship with his or her father.

Having practiced for over thirty-three years in family law, and being a certified parent coordinator, this decision troubles me. Is the age of Skype and face time diminishing the need and expectations of meaningful physical contact and intimacy, is this expectation and thinking an extent of how the court views the parent-child relationship? A child cannot experience a hug or build memories, or experience daily activities, such as making pancakes together or playing catch. Parenting is daily life – putting a child to bed, reading a bedtime story, having meals together as well as one on one quality time. It is day in and day out contact and experiences which builds the relationship.

How can this father now attend a parent teacher conference, a dance recital, or sports activity? Of course, there would be opportunity to bond on extended parenting periods but that is a “vacation relationship”, not the nuts and bolts of parenting, which is to build a foundation to sustain a lifelong relationship between a father and child. I wonder if societies minimizing the importance of a child’s relationship and need for a father also comes into play. It is bad enough the family has been damaged by divorce.  This line of thinking only continues the cycle of destroying the intact family and harms a child’s right and need to have a relationship with both parents.

There is substantial research that shows the importance of a child’s relationship with their father

The Father’s Project is a non-profit fatherhood program seeking to improve the health and wellbeing of children and families by empowering fathers to be knowledgeable, active, and emotionally engaged with their children. They researched the special effects of a father’s engagement on childhood development. These are the 9 facts that they found:

 1) Fathers and infants are equally as attached as mothers and infants when parents are involved with the children from infancy.

2) Father involvement is related to positive child health outcomes in infants such as improve weight gain in pre term infants and developing children.

3) Father involvement using authoritative parenting, loving with clear boundaries and expectation leads to better emotional, academic, social, and behavioral outcomes for children.

4) Children who feel closest to their father are twice as likely as those who do not, to enter college,  find stable employment after high school, 75% less likely to have a teen birth, 80% less likely to spend time in jail, half as likely to experience depression.

5) Father’s occupy a critical role in child development. Father’s absence hinders development from early infancy through childhood and into adulthood. A father’s absence experience during childhood persists throughout the life course.

6) The quality of the father child relationship matters more than the specific hours together. Nonresident fathers can have a positive effect on children’s social and emotional well-being as well as economic.

7) High levels of father involvement are correlated with higher levels of sociability, confidence, and self-control in children. Children with involved fathers are less likely to act out in school or engage in bad behavior.

8)Children with actively involved fathers are 43% more likely to earn A’s in school and 33% less likely to repeat a grade than those without engaged Dad’s

9) Father engagement reduces the frequency of behavioral problems in boys while also decreasing delinquency and economic disadvantage

Psychology today’s research on families substantiates the above to be true. The results of father’s absence on children are nothing short of disastrous along a number of dimensions:

1)Children’s diminished self-concept and compromised physical emotional security. Children consistently report feeling abandoned when their fathers are not involved in their lives struggling with their emotions and episodic bouts of self- loathing.

2) Behavioral problems: fatherless children have more difficulty with social adjustment and are more likely to report problems with friendships and manifest behavior problems; many develop a false aggression in an attempt to disguise their underlying fears resentment and anxiety.

3) Promiscuity and teenage pregnancy; fatherless children are more likely to experience problems with sexuality and there is a greater likelihood of having intercourse before the age of sixteen forgoing contraception, and contracting sexually transmitted infections. All manifest an object hunger for males and experiencing emotional loss of their father as a rejection of them becoming susceptible to exploitation by adults

4) Drug and alcohol abuse

5) Homelessness: 90% of runaways are from fatherless families.

6) Exploitation and abuse: fatherless children are to greater risk of suffering physical emotional and sexual abuse, being five times more likely to have experienced physical abuse

7) Child abuse and emotional maltreatment:  fatherless children are at a one hundred times higher risk of fatal abuse. A recent study reported that preschoolers not living with both of their biological parents are forty times more likely to be sexually abused.

8) Mental health disorders: father-absent children are consistently represented at a higher rate on a wide range of mental health problems particularly

9) Life chances: as adults, fatherless children will likely experience unemployment have low incomes and remain on social assistance.

10) Future relation relationships: father absent children tend to enter partnerships earlier and more likely to divorce or dissolve their cohabiting unions and a more likely to have children outside of marriage or outside any partnership

11) Mortality: fatherless children are more likely to die as children and live an average of 4 years less in their lifetimes.

This recent decision on relocation stressed that economic and financial benefits as more important to the court than the child having a father in their daily life. I am sure that the court in weighing this decision believed that daily calls and face timing is sufficient for their relationship to be maintained. 

What impact this will have on children in the future?  We may need to wait for an additional study; however, in the research we do have, it is clear that the more contact a child has with both mother and father, the better formed adult they will be.  That is worth more than all the money in the world.