> What can possibly be done to make the system more equitable?
There was a man who had to take his dead wife's urn into school because they repeatedly insisted on talking to "the child's mother".
My kid's medical records are literally attached to my wife's medical records - I have to login with her username and password to view after visit summaries etc.
In effect, child related institutions like schools and family doctors systematically treat fathers as second class parents.
And then family courts look at things like involvement with schools and doctors to decide who gets custody - as if those institutions weren't biased against fathers in the first place!
We should have laws to (1) prevent discrimination against fathers by all these institutions (2) order courts to take into account that discrimination when determining custody to avoid perpetuating the existing bias.
(And if you agree these should be laws - please call your legislators and tell them! Nothing will change if people don't tell their elected representatives how they feel about these issues.)
"My kid's medical records are literally attached to my wife's medical records - I have to login with her username and password to view after visit summaries etc"
Some of these decisions are in the hands of software teams. Ask out loud in a team meeting about supporting other family structures: single parents, orphans, same-sex couples, grandparent-as-guardians, etc. "The MVP works for most of our users" isn't good enough.
It's likely that the generalized solution is overall simpler too even if you won't get to use an easy label like "mother" on the form.
There was a man who had to take his dead wife's urn into school because they repeatedly insisted on talking to "the child's mother".
My kid's medical records are literally attached to my wife's medical records - I have to login with her username and password to view after visit summaries etc.
In effect, child related institutions like schools and family doctors systematically treat fathers as second class parents.
And then family courts look at things like involvement with schools and doctors to decide who gets custody - as if those institutions weren't biased against fathers in the first place!
We should have laws to (1) prevent discrimination against fathers by all these institutions (2) order courts to take into account that discrimination when determining custody to avoid perpetuating the existing bias.
(And if you agree these should be laws - please call your legislators and tell them! Nothing will change if people don't tell their elected representatives how they feel about these issues.)