Product Description
The newly revised third edition of the Handbook provides a detailed reference for the implementation of law, policy and practice to promote and protect the rights of children. It brings together under each article an analysis of the Committee on the Right of the Childs growing interpretation during its first fourteen years and examination of over 300 of its Concluding Observations following consideration of States reports. The Handbook also provides a concise description of the role, power and procedures, and developing activities of the Committee and its appendices include a guide to related UN bodies and texts of key instruments. ... Read more

Product Description
When relationships break down, disputes commonly arise over the parenting arrangements for children, whose living arrangements have to be reorganized at a time of great conflict and turmoil. Most such disputes are resolved without a judicial determination through private agreement, negotiation between lawyers, mediation, or a combination of these methods. This book examines whether and how children should be involved in the process of resolving family law disputes. Although there is widespread acceptance in the Western world that the views of children should be taken into account, and that the weight given to those views should depend on children's age and maturity, there is much less agreement about how children's voices should be heard.

There are many benefits to giving children a voice in decisions that affect their lives, and the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child identifies this as a right for children. However there are difficulties and dangers in seeking to hear from children, not least because they may be subject to pressure from each parent to express views that support his or her case. Courts dealing with family law issues are constantly faced with a dilemma. Is it better to keep children out of the conflict, or to give them a say so that the arrangements are as workable for them as possible?

This book integrates examinations of these issues with empirical data from interviews which explore the views and experiences of children, parents, counselors, mediators, lawyers and judges involved in such disputes in Australia. Drawing on this research, the authors suggest ways that children can better be heard without placing them at the center of their parents' conflicts. They argue that the focus should not just be on how children are heard in legal proceedings, but on how they can be better heard in those families who resolve their conflicts without going to court. ... Read more

Product Description
"Betrayal of the Child" is Stewart Rein's explosive newbook on children's rights, divorce, custody, and fatherlessness. Itis, perhaps, the most comprehensive book on the market. It searchesout the historical reasons for our present irrational and injustapproach to deciding vitally important children's rights issues,cutting across the various disciplines, analyzing cause andeffect. The book is loaded with practical information for fathers,including a Father's Guide to the Courts, cases, laws, abductioninformation, case analysis, expert evidence and shared parentingstategies. It is also a hard hitting, no drawn punches book of rathersevere social, legal, and psychological criticism in which Rein laysto rest the old clichued thinking on "maternal attachment" madepopular by John Bowlby-explaining that from the child's perspectivethere exists a "triad" within the family nexus, consisting of dualfather-mother-child dyads. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (10)

Knowledge is Power
There is nothing like developing an understanding when faced with issues in life that only serve to confuse and bewilder. Reading this book has helped me understand what happened to me and my children and why. This in turn has helped me deal with the problem from a better perspective. It has also helped to alleviate some of the frustration simply by having a more complete understanding of the nature of the problem. And although it may have come too late to change my situation, I can still use this powerful information to try to help other fathers not yet divorced gain an awareness of lies in wait for them should they have the misfortune of receiving divorce papers. When warned beforehand, it is a dereliction of a man's duty as a father to fail to read this indispensible book.

All parent's should be made to read this
This book has been an inspiration to me.It points out what happened, why it's bad and suggests how you should proceed.

I beg everyone to read this book.It should make everyone criticize the courts descisions as well as their own beliefs.

Excellent, Straight Information about Critical Issues for men and their children.
I am a divorced Dad and have gone through the Family Court system, unfortunately prior to reading this book. I have raised three children for 13 years; single-handedly and now find myself as an outsider in a custody dispute over my forth child, a 1-year-old son. I must share with anyone (women, men, dads, moms, children) that you must read this book. It is an excellent description of what fathers and their children face in the current Family court climate. Not only describing in a very truthful and non-euphemistic manner the current issues and trends but also how we got here.

One in every two men will face these issues at some point in their lives. However, most are clueless and those that are not clueless, don't seem to care. Even parents (yes, both Moms and Dads) with children who are boys, don't seem to understand just what kind of a position these boys can be in as grown men. How we got here is a sad story of misunderstandings, misbelieves, poor science, poor deduction, and clouded views, but the fact that we are still here despite significant and continually mounting evidence, is truly a shame and one of the biggest, yet "secret" failures, of our society.

If you do not read this book for yourself then read it for your son or any boy that you know will some day be a father.

It's about time.
While being in a city and state that supposedly supports "father's rights", my husband and I are terrified of what we are setting into motion next week- trying to get custody of his daughter.

Despite the fact that his ex is lying about where his child support is going (luckily we have proof), her moving out of state (illegal in this state), changing his daughter's last name, refusing to let her call him "daddy" and the fact that he hasn't seen her in months (those are just the the tip of the iceburg)... there is that doubt. Because she is "The Mother".

It seems that unless a woman is on drugs or a mental institution (actually in a hospital, because meds, or refusal to take them, isn't enough apparently) the father is at the mercy of the mother's every bad day.

So we go, to possibly spend thousands of dollars, just to make the messed up court system acknowledge a beautiful, bright, six year old girl's right to know her father, any new siblings, and her father's extended family. Maybe.

And if this book seems a little "pro-man", and therefor "anti-woman", so be it. There are plenty of "empowering" books for women, why not men?

Children as Fodder in the Downfall of Society
In short, if you don't know the material in this book, you don't know human rights, (including children's rights, men's or father's rights, and women's rights) as it applies in contemporary western society.If you have yet to emancipate yourself from the radical feminist induced mental slavery, you may not be ready for this book.

I've read several highly regarded father and children's rights books, and find this one by far the best.This book makes it apparent why the most staggering human rights violations in the history of the world are being perpetrated by the state and federal governments of the United States and the United Kingdom, in particular, against their own laws and ratified treaties with the United Nations.It is concerned with no less than government coerced self-implosion, using our precious children as fodder by dysfunctional, deviant, and self-appointed misandrists.

Now I finally understand why my children's lives are being ruined and I, as their father, can do nothing to prevent it.My question as to why those sworn to uphold the law in the state of Iowa would intentionally break the law, knowingly ensuring that my children will then be subjected to neglect, and physical, emotional, and sexual abuse, has finally been answered. This book makes it clear why any attempt to protect my children is met with hostility towards me, and additional abuse being forced upon them.And the detrimental lifelong consequences to my children, and to their own descendants, are becoming quite clear.

This book is for anyone truly concerned with children, men, women, our society, our descendants, or our future.Unless you find widespread, state sponsored torture and deprivation to humans desirable, I suggest you purchase and read this great work immediately, and then seriously consider taking action to prevent the downfall of western civilization.

Thank you Stewart, for your great and noble work for children. ... Read more

Product Description
Divorce and Family Law in California provides a clear, concise, and complete guide to divorce and family law in California. Topics covered include: Marriage, Divorce, Annulment, Legal Separation, Property, Debts, Spousal Support, Unmarried Couples, Paternity, Custody & Visitation, Child Support, Guardianship, Adoption, Dependent Children, Children’s Names, Restraining Orders.

A California attorney since 1978, Bob Pickus works for the Alameda County Employees’ Retirement Association in Oakland, addressing primarily the impact of divorce on retirement benefits. He also volunteers for the Volunteer Legal Services Corporation in Oakland, providing weekly divorce and family law clinics and follow-up services for low-income persons. ... Read more

Product Description
Presenting a new framework for understanding the complex but vital relationship between legal history and the family, Michael Grossberg analyzes the formation of legal policies on such issues as common law marriage, adoption, and rights for illegitimate children.He shows how legal changes diminished male authority, increased women's and children's rights, and fixed more clearly the state's responsibilities in family affairs.Grossberg further illustrates why many basic principles of this distinctive and powerful new body of law—antiabortion and maternal biases in child custody—remained in effect well into the twentieth century. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Dry but the general argument holds up
Any attempt to assemble a detailed picture of society must take into consideration the legal structures that function within that culture. A court system works in two ways: judges influence society through its rulings as often as society at large influences the judicial system. Michael Grossberg's "Governing the Hearth: Law and the Family in Nineteenth-Century America" is a work that combines a comprehensive examination of early American law with aspects of social history in an attempt to arrive at an overarching theme of the development of family law--what would later become "domestic relations" law--and its influence on the larger society. Grossberg relies heavily on legal sources, including appellate court rulings and legal tracts, to construct a three-stage progression of American family law.

According to the book, colonial family law was patriarchal in structure, tied closely to the state, and relegated women and children to the control of men. The American Revolution threw the colonial legal system, already under stress from a variety of factors including but not limited to the ability of settlers to leave for new lands, into chaos. What appeared in its place after a lengthy period of legal transformation involving an amalgamation of English legal principles and an emerging belief in American common law was a form Grossberg calls the republican family. The republican unit displaced the old patriarchal legal system in favor of laws that recognized individuals within the family. Too, this new form believed that state intervention in domestic matters was an evil best avoided. From the middle to the end of the nineteenth century, family laws across the board came under frequent assault from social reformers seeking to increase the role of the state in every aspect of the family. The end result was a hybrid of republican values and state intervention, of judicial discretion and legislative directives.

The author examines courtship contracts, nuptials, the fitness of those seeking to marry, contraception and abortion, the legal rights of illegitimate offspring, and custody rights. Repeatedly, Grossberg contends that the courts took the initiative in constructing a body of laws and rulings that supported individual rights within the family. Nowhere is this support more apparent than in laws concerning the rights of women and children. Custody cases tossed out the old concepts of colonial patriarchy, in which fathers held the ultimate power over spouses and children, and replaced it with a new system that allowed mothers to keep their children in cases of family disintegration. As for children, judges began allowing illegitimate offspring to petition for shares of family estates, something that was never allowed under the male oriented English law. Moreover, magistrates considered the emotional and physical well being of children, arguing that the "best interests of the child" required a reassessment of the father's dominance in family life. In this way and many others, argues Grossberg, judges assumed a patriarchal function in the American family.

"Governing the Hearth" is at its most fascinating describing the issues of birth control during the nineteenth century. The turmoil over this subject today tends to obscure how unimportant the issue was in the early part of the nineteenth century. American jurists subscribed to a belief stretching back into medieval times that claimed an abortion was not a sin or crime until the baby moved inside the womb. Called "quickening," this belief stood as accepted law until social reformers began agitating for new rulings against abortions performed at any stage of impregnation. Likewise, contraceptives came under attack from figures such as Andrew Comstock, who convinced Congress to pass laws banning the use of medicines and devices sent through the mail. One reason these chapters intrigue is because they show the relationship between the states and the federal government. During the early to mid nineteenth century, state's rights carried more weight than the powers of the federal government. The issues surrounding abortions are so controversial today that it staggers the imagination to realize there was a time when individual states decided the issue. Grossberg unfortunately never mentions how state versus federal rights played a part in family law.

The chapters on birth control laws succeed as well because they constitute one of the few areas in which the author links social history with his legal research. It is in these sections that the reader encounters the people involved in both sides of the issues, the unfortunate souls caught up in the tumult the courts experienced as the social reformers won their battles. Far too often the issues and court cases covered in this book seem like they float beyond the reach of any social, political, or economic realities. In some cases there can be little question as to why the courts dealt with certain issues. Even a cursory knowledge of American history explains why issues arose over the polygamy question in what is present day Utah. The same goes for miscegenation and the incorporation of freed slaves into preexisting marriage laws. But other parts of the book raise questions about what inspired legal changes during a particular time. On several occasions, Grossberg resorts to vague references about Victorian era perceptions regarding female behavior, specifically in the chapter on breach of marriage contracts. This explanation seems overly simplistic.

"Governing the Hearth" ultimately does make a compelling case for its central thesis, namely that the American legal system went through three distinct phases as outlined above. The book also convincingly argues that the fortunes of women and children improved greatly during the nineteenth century, and does so without overestimating their gains. For example, while women could retain custody of their children in the event of family disintegration they still had to fit societal standards of good conduct as defined by a patriarchal mentality. But the fact that women began to emerge as individuals with definite rights was family law's most significant contribution during the nineteenth century, laying the groundwork for greater gains in the next 100 years.

... Read more

Product Description

"Children's rights": the phrase has been a legal battle cry for twenty-five years. But as this provocative book by a nationally renowned expert on children's legal standing argues, it is neither possible nor desirable to isolate children from the interests of their parents, or those of society as a whole.

From foster care to adoption to visitation rights and beyond, Martin Guggenheim offers a trenchant analysis of the most significant debates in the children's rights movement, particularly those that treat children's interests as antagonistic to those of their parents. Guggenheim argues that "children's rights" can serve as a screen for the interests of adults, who may have more to gain than the children for whom they claim to speak. More important, this book suggests that children's interests are not the only ones or the primary ones to which adults should attend, and that a "best interests of the child" standard often fails as a meaningful test for determining how best to decide disputes about children.

Customer Reviews (2)

Child Abuse Apologetics
"Americans have become convinced (wrongly) by the media that child abuse is a prevalent social ill." So says Mr. Guggenheim, setting up a tower of lies in which he insists that child abuse is rare and overreported.

As a conservative, I am deeply disturbed to see this kind of dangerous lie being told by someone who claims to be one of us.

Of course, unless Mr. Guggenheim has spent his entire life on some distant planet, he cannot possibly be unaware that virtually all children are abused, most of them horrifically. He tries to pretend that parents will "naturally" do what's best for their children because they "naturally" love them. This is absurd. There is nothing in the slightest "natural" about parental affection or responsibility. These things are in fact the product of centuries of constant propaganda intended to discourage parents from killing future laborers and taxpayers. When the propaganda fails, parents fall back on their real natural inclinations, namely to use their children as a unique opportunity to feel powerful over someone helpless. As a conservative, Guggenheim should realize that it is as impossible for a parent to resist the opportunity to wreck a small life as it is for an absolute dictator to resist committing mass murder. Power corrupts, everyone knows that.

The one valid aspect of his argument is that today's historically unprecedented concern over child abuse - people of past eras knew perfectly well that most children lived in a nightmare, but nobody cared - has allowed the government to interfere in families, much to their detriment. But like most people, he completely fails to see the correct solution. The choice seems to be, allow social workers the same kind of insane absolute power over an entire family that parents have always had over their children, or allow parents to continue abusing their children with impunity.

There is a much better solution: take the government out of the equation and let the child decide. Children have a powerful innate need to be loved by their parents; no child will ever leave a parent whose behavior is not completely unbearable. As things stand, a child who runs away from abusive parents is dragged back to them by armed police officers for more abuse. The only place a child can run to is to child pornographers and drug dealers and other such criminals. He has a choice between these and abusive parents, unless he can convince enough adults in the government to intervene in his case. Most of them will not; they have a lot of other work to do, many of them (i.e. teachers) enthusiastically approve of child abuse, and social workers, from all I can tell, love to destroy functional families but leave abused children in their nightmarish environments.

Children should be allowed to leave their parents whenever they want to. Make that the law and the problem of child abuse will evaporate overnight. No child will ever, ever leave a decent parent. Guggenheim tries to claim that "most" of the really bad abuse happens to children under three, who of course can't run away or report it, and apparently because of this, we're supposed to force older children to spend their entire formative years with the people who tortured them when they were babies. The fact is, being imprisoned with abusers causes lasting harm, and older children and teenagers who are removed from abusive homes show definite improvement in all areas.

Traditional views are not always right.
This book is premised on an ancient ideology which insists that parents are like gods to their children and that children are basically property. The guy starts with his premise and then goes on to manipulate statistics and ignore the obvious to promote his beliefs. In many cases in the United States when it comes to cruelty dogs have more rights than kids. Children are defenseless and to say that parents know and love their kids because they are biologically theirs is an incredibly ignorant statement.Their is ample evidence that many parents are incapable of caring for a child. Brutalized children often grow up to be destructive adults. What our society needs is a book on how to deal with this problem realistically, which we have not been doing. In the original 13 colonies killing your child for various reasons including rebellion was legal, is that what we want? ... Read more

Product Description
This book examines in detail the status of children in the EU. Drawing on a range of disciplinary perspectives, including sociology of childhood and human rights discourse, it offers a critical analysis of the legal and policy framework underpinning EU children's rights across a range of areas, including family law, immigration and child protection. Traditionally children's rights at this level have been articulated primarily in the context of the free movement of persons provisions, inevitably restricting entitlement to migrant children of EU nationality. In the past decade, however, innovative interpretations of Community law by the ECJ, coupled with important constitutional developments, have prompted the institutions to develop a much more robust children's rights agenda. This culminated in the Commission's launch, in July 2006, of a comprehensive EU strategy to promote and safeguard the rights of the child as well as the incorporation of a range of children's rights provisions into the 2007 draft reform treaty.The book therefore comes at a pivotal point in the history of EU children's rights, providing a detailed and critical overview of a range of substantive areas, and making an important contribution to international children's rights studies. ... Read more

Product Description
This book is about four philosophical problems that arise from consideration of the legal relationship of the state to the family and the ethical relationship of individuals within families: Do children have the same rights enjoyed by adults under the United States Constitution? What are the conditions under which the state is justified in intervening in the family in order to protect children and other family members? What standards should the state adopt to resolve disputes between parents and others over child or embryo custody? And, can traditional ethical theory be used to resolve moral problems arising within families? Several solutions to each of these problems are presented and subjected to critical examination. Emerging from this study is a foundation for the development of a consistent theory of family law and family ethics that will stimulate and advance scholarship in the philosophy of law and social ethics. ... Read more

Product Description
Fathers' Rights explains to separated or divorced natural and step fathers how to effectively deal with the child support program without losing everything they have and insuring that their children and ex-wives will receive fair treatment. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Unread
I have not read this book, but am looking for ANY direction in our current child UNsupport system.

http://LiarWife.com

Isn't a Father more than a Paycheck and Spermbank?
If women were treated as second class citizens the way fathers are treated by the so-called family court, the feminists would pitch an uproar the likes of which we have never seen. Statistics show that approximately %78 of divorices are filed by women. A divorice attorney for a women has it easy. When I went as a Pro Se litigent in 1993, the court-appointed mediator at Washington County in Minnesota blithly explained to me that "Joint physical and legal custody didn't matter." I went to be adjudicated as be my daughter's legal father, and could not afford the $1,500.00 retainer for an attorney. After taking my daughter's mother to court for denial of visitation five times in ten years, I've learnt that the only thing the courts are interested in are seperating the father from his children and his money, and wether or not the judge has a personal like for your attorney. I still see my daughter -- when it is to her mother's convenience. Attorneys make money hand over fist in this business -- and this is indeed big business! The case workers and court mediators are women who have a chip on their shoulder. Judges are adament when it comes to enforcing child support, but alarmingly lax when it comes to enforcing visitation. Yet our hard-earned tax dollars pay their salary. I don't understand why more fathers don't speak out on these issues, as any women certainly would. ... Read more

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This volume tries to address the diverse and varied issues which arise from the "normative consensus" reflected in the standards of the international human rights law on children's rights, when measured and evaluated against the normative cultural and social orders found in individual countries. ... Read more

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This book is the first analysis of the law in Canada pertaining to the health of children. It reflects the collaborative effort and concern of four national centres – Centre de recherché en droit public; Canadian Research Institute for Law and the Family; Canadian Institute of Child Health; and the Canadian Human Rights Foundation. The book begins with a factual picture of the health of Canadian children – the causes of disability, injury and death, the types of programs and policies in place and the success of such programs. It then examines the impact of public international law as it applies to the right to health generally and the implications of its interpretation for the right to health under the Convention and under current Canadian constitutional and criminal law. The possible recourse to the Convention for a positive or restrictive interpretation of this right under the common law of Canada or the civil law of Quebec are the focus of separate chapters. The final chapter is a discussion of the difficult question of research involving children. ... Read more

Product Description
Child rights is an important area of scholarship the world over and is gaining great significance as an area of research for the first decade of the 21st century. Protection of child rights is now considered an integral part of human rights. The author has critically examined the recent national and international initiatives, the present laws, court decisions, the recent amendments and the law reforms suggested by the law commission for setting an agenda towards protection of child rights and their empowerment. ... Read more

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This book makes a unique contribution to the study of gay rights politics by assessing the laws and policies governing the rights of gay children and gay families. The focus of the analysis will be on decision-making by state and lower federal courts_the very courts where the bulk of these questions are likely to be resolved. ... Read more

Product Description
This book examines three core foci of interest of both practitioners as well asacademics in the area of the protection of human rights of children. The firsttwo are the international legal documents of the UN Convention on theRights of the Child (CRC) and the European Convention on Human Rights andFundamental Freedoms (ECHR). The third focal point consists of an investigationinto a specific area of jurisprudence of the European Court of HumanRights regarding the protection of human rights of children: the phenomenonof the corporal punishment and abuse of children in the UK. The analysisconcludes that both the CRC and the ECHR are characterised by variousflaws and drawbacks in relation to the protection of children's human rights.The narrow textual scope of the ECHR and the significant weaknesses of theCRC regarding its implementation mechanism are two prominent examples.The paper suggests that in Europe, the trend of maximising the potential ofthe ECHR by combining the widely accepted, detailed standards on children'srights set out in the UN Convention with the highly successful system of individualpetition and implementation should be strengthened further. ... Read more