Abstract
In this chapter, I demonstrate the importance of gendered notions of good and bad parenthood for how parents talk about care for children after divorce. In this study, the child welfare discourse seems to be nearly universal, present in all three countries and in all interviews with parents. Furthermore, when arranging child maintenance, child residence or contact privately with the non-resident parent, this was generally not the result of explicit bargaining ‘in the shadow of the law’. Instead, the outcome was either taken for granted, or one of the parents took matters in his or her own hands, which made marital power an important factor. Especially migration law was a powerful tool for parents in transnational divorce, made visible in issues such as international child abduction and involuntary abandonment in the country of origin.
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Notes
- 1.
In Morocco, Egypt, and the Netherlands, a multitude of legal, semi-legal, and non-legal terms are used to describe child care arrangements after divorce. These terms do not always translate easily into—legal—English, because of the differences in legal culture. In this chapter, I have chosen to use the term residence and residential parent to describe the place and the parent with whom the children live. The term residence as used in this book describes a de facto situation and is not necessarily connected to the legal position of the parents. Child contact is the contact between the non-residential parent and the child(ren). Again, this is the actual contact taking place, regardless of there being a formal agreement or contact order by a court.
- 2.
A further three interviewees had children from another relationship at the moment of the divorce. In all cases, these stayed with their original parent after the divorce.
- 3.
In the Netherlands, between 2000 and 2007, in about 10 % of the divorces, the children had their main residence with their father, whereas in a further 20 % of divorces the children had their residence with both parents, travelling back and forth (CBS 2009: p. 21).
- 4.
This interviewee was involved in a dispute concerning social security from his former Dutch employment.
- 5.
Legally, the children should have had Dutch nationality, as they had a Dutch mother. However, as explained above, there were some problems with their situation and they did not yet have Dutch passports to travel with.
- 6.
I will further discuss the SSR and the Dutch embassy in Chapter 7.
- 7.
Legally, child abduction has been arranged in the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction of 1980 and the Convention on Jurisdiction, Applicable Law, Recognition, Enforcement and Co-operation in Respect of Parental Responsibility and Measures for the Protection of Children of 1996. Morocco and the Netherlands are party to the Child Abduction Convention, Egypt is not. In practice, the regulation of international child abduction means that parents in a transnational marriage who share custody legally cannot leave the country of residence with their children without the permission of the other parent or a judge. See for a thorough discussion of transnational child custody disputes: (Carlisle 2014).
- 8.
For the cases in this research this was generally after three years of marriage, since 2012 it has become five years.
- 9.
A popular saying in Dutch media and online discussion forums, which even sometimes appears in court documents, for example, ECLI:NL:RBDOR:2012:BX0572, Rechtbank Dordrecht, 2012. In this case, a private agreement detailing that the children would not have contact with their father if he did not pay the agreed maintenance was considered by the court to be conflicting with public policy.
- 10.
Anna does not seem to be aware of the legal reform of 2005, which grants women the right to hadana for children up to 15 years of age; while her children were 14 and 7 at the time of the interview.
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Sportel, I. (2016). Taking Care of the Children. Organising Child Care After Divorce. In: Divorce in Transnational Families. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-34009-8_6
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