India Growing As Fatherless Society, Father-child Relationship Not Given Much Importance

Kumar S Ratan

www.menhelpline.org with its main objective to raise the voice of men, child and family whose hue and cry remains largely unnoticed.

This is hard truth that, fathers plays significant role in shaping the experiences and development of their children, but this is not taken well in matrimonial dispute. In such a situation, the courts grant custody of the child to mother while child deprived from father's love and loses change to build emotional bond with father.

Recently we celebrated Father's Day on 20^th June, and Parents Day, but there are many children could not celebrate this day due to being deprived of father's love and care in marital dispute. It is also because their mother has filed a criminal case on their father.

"Marriage may be freely dissoluble, but parenthood is not.", Margo Melli Emeritus Prof.

Father-child relationship, not given much importance either by court of law or by law-makers. While enabling a healthy father-child relationship develops emotional bond which is an essential ingredient for a child's overall development and becoming social. They are usually allowed to meet at the Children's Center which is much crowded and the presence of the custodial parent also creates a hindrance.

The child tells about their good or bad only with the parents whom they have developed the emotional bond. But enabling short meeting does not develop such a bond between father and child. This results in the highest rates of disappointment and depression among fathers due to less or no meaningful contact with their children.

"the law profusely takes care of rights of Mother and about the rights of Father too but the voice of child remained largely unnoticed by the society", Kumar S Ratan

You can see the level of Ignorance that still the Union of India and the Ministry of Women and Child has neither responded nor made any representation, in a case pending at Supreme Court filed by SAVE CHILD INDIA FOUNDATION vs. UNION OF INDIA (Diary No.- 1363 - 2019) through is founder Member Kumar S Ratan.

On the day a child will reach to age of 18 years and become part of young society and will be treated adult, they will see the world in the same way they have been nurtured and grown. So this will not wrong to state that, India moving towards the fatherless society.

It is assumed that fathers have no responsibility for rearing their children's because they have to work and earn for family needs and also that fathers spend about one-fourth as much time as of mothers in direct interaction. But here its highly ignored that, fathers assume high degrees of responsibility for their children. This also cannot be ignored that, as globalization is taking place, now both mother-father are working and this culture of working is growing rapidly.

"In the wake of uprising trend of Divorce among the married couple in India and owing to parental alienation the most affected person is the child but Alas! The most neglected person too", Kumar S Ratan

Parental Alienation affects a child development and is called Parental Alienation Syndrome (PAS), which the term was coined by child psychiatrist Richard Gardner. It has been observed in researches that children suffers from trauma, anxiety, malfunctioning or sub-optimal growth, lack of social adjustment in case of there is dysfunctional family.

There is growing need to ensure the ‘Shared Parenting and Joint Responsibility' (SPJR) and to ensure the constitution guarantee that a child has. It is our duty to protect our children from all form of abuse, harm and neglect.