{"id":942,"date":"2015-01-18T15:38:37","date_gmt":"2015-01-18T23:38:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nocontest.ca\/?p=942"},"modified":"2015-01-18T15:38:37","modified_gmt":"2015-01-18T23:38:37","slug":"bringing-children-in","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nocontest.ca\/index.php\/2015\/01\/18\/bringing-children-in\/","title":{"rendered":"Bringing Children in"},"content":{"rendered":"

From an excellent article in Mediate.com<\/a> called “Best Interests and Little Voices: Child Participation in the Family Mediation Dialogue<\/a>” by Jennifer Winestone:<\/p>\n

Children were historically excluded from post-separation decision-making, because of the\u00a0 assumption that children lacked the \u201clegal and psychological capacity\u201d to participate in decisions and that insulating children from the decision-making process would somehow protect them from the turmoil of divorce.\u00a0But these were not the only reasons children were left out of the post-separation conversation.\u00a0 In accordance with the old adages \u201cfather\/mother knows best\u201d, \u201c[a] related assumption was that parents know what is in their child\u2019s best interests, and children\u2019s views would, therefore, be adequately represented by their parents.\u201d<\/p>\n

Studies show that these assumptions are false; in fact, \u201cchildren\u2019s\u00a0 meaningful participation in decision-making can reduce the negative affects of family breakdown\u201d and \u201coften promotes their social well-being.\u201d\u00a0Empirical findings suggest that children want to have a \u201cvoice\u201d in the processes that \u201cfundamentally affect their lives,\u201d and that not listening to children\u2019s voices \u201cmay do more harm than good.\u201d\u00a0Accordingly, there has been an increase in developments aimed at promoting\u00a0 the \u201cvoice of the child\u201d in family law processes.<\/p>\n

Recognition and respect for the \u201cvoice of the child\u201d has evolved not merely as a value-added phenomenon, but from a social recognition of children as \u201crights-bearing individuals rather than as merely objects of concern or subjects of decisions.\u201d [footnotes included\u00a0in full article<\/em>]<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I learned a lot from this piece.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From an excellent article in Mediate.com called “Best Interests and Little Voices: Child Participation in the Family Mediation Dialogue” by Jennifer Winestone: Children were historically excluded from post-separation decision-making, because of the\u00a0 assumption that children lacked the \u201clegal and psychological … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[24],"class_list":["post-942","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-roberts-posts","tag-conflict"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nocontest.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/942","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nocontest.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nocontest.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nocontest.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nocontest.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=942"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.nocontest.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/942\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nocontest.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=942"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nocontest.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=942"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nocontest.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=942"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}