The Parents' rights movement is a civil rights movement whose members are primarily interested in issues affecting fathers, mothers and children related to family law, including child custody.
Parents' rights advocates claim that many parents' parental rights are unnecessarily terminated, and that children are separated from fathers and mothers and adopted through the actions of family courts and government social service agencies seeking to meet their own targets, rather than looking at the merits of each case. Parental rights activists state that employees of the Massachusetts Department of Social Services (DSS) take children away from their parents without cause. They add that these employees, who they assert have improperly received immunity from the Massachusetts Supreme Court, threaten mothers with the loss of their children to coerce them into divorcing their husbands and attending support groups. They state that these support groups serve the dual purpose of allowing the associates of the DSS employees to receive additional government funding for running the support groups, and allowing the DSS employees to gain information used to take children away from their parents. Parental rights advocates state that abuse of power has occurred and that vested interest has played a role.
In June 2007, UK parents' rights advocates criticized the local court, claiming that it was treating children as adoptable commodities, that decisions were made on lack of evidence and perjury, and that courtroom secrecy was harming families and children.
The reason the protest is global, says advocates, stems from public policy implemented around the globe regarding child's rights leading to the unnecessary removal and adoption of children from biological families. Barraged with a plethora of theoretical concepts that now plague family courts, families find themselves broken apart at the whim of state authorized caseworkers with little more evidence than their own personal fears and gut instincts. Judges who often write their own rules for court conduct and grievances, allow for wide decision making parameters with no accountability with courts and all other stakeholders benefiting financially from child removal.
Two camps are in cohesion on the protest. One involves non-custodial parents and the other child protective services actions. In the USA, Title IV d and e funding extorted from Social Security reserves governs state financial disbursement and incentives covering billions per state urges agencies on the take to implement policies that best encourage maximum funding. While hiding behind the smokescreen of child abuse, children are dying and disappearing by the thousands in state care.
Parental rights advocates are not stating that they are the only ones with rights. What they are saying is the current public policy and ensuing law denies not only parents fundamental rights to the upbringing of their children but denies children the stability and comfort of remaining with family unharmed by state systemic abuses.
Famous quotes containing the words rights and/or movement:
“In our governments the real power lies in the majority of the community, and the invasion of private rights is chiefly to be apprehended, not from the acts of government contrary to the sense of the constituents, but from the acts in which government is the mere instrument of the majority.”
—James Madison (1751–1836)
“I’m real ambivalent about [working mothers]. Those of use who have been in the women’s movement for a long time know that we’ve talked a good game of “go out and fulfill your dreams” and “be everything you were meant to be.” But by the same token, we want daughters-in-law who are going to stay home and raise our grandchildren.”
—Erma Bombeck (20th century)