Childrens Apartheid

Children post separation with orders of the Australian Family Court are alienated from the rest of the world. They are tied to a culture that has lived on beyond the 19th century, beyond the concerns of the outside world. If it were not a culture of the courts, it would have been torn apart by the public eye and deemed easily as a "cult". It is everything Australia has been trying to move away from. With a history of violence towards the stolen generations, Australia's White policy and of course its protectionist past that locked down the borders from every angle. Its not that Australia does not have a history of Human rights atrocities, it is that its leaders have always been good at diverting the subject and refocusing the issues.

Now more than ever, Australian Children of divorced parents live lives no different to the transient instutionalized foster kids. We all know now how unfortunate their experiences were, the wrongs that were done towards them when Kevin Rudd apologized to the grown children who were abused in homes. Apart from a few politicians who have spoken against the current arrangements, no lessons have truly been learned. This generation not only are forced to endure human rights abuses perpetrated against them, they must also fight for this to never happen again. Since the shared parenting bill, children have never been so divided. Its no longer the clashes of subcultures, but the war between the remembered and the forgotten, the divorced and the intact and of course the free from the chained.

Those who have not endured the torment of growing up in a home ridden with violence or haunted by its hands believe that everyone should be together as a family. Even if the child dies as a result or perhaps thrown off a bridge. Even without violence or abuse, the child is forced to live in an institutionalized environment. Regardless of their hopes they may have had training in their local football team or the friends they are use to seeing, they are literally ripped away from their day to day lives and thrown into a situation where they must no matter what live at each parents homes at the court designated times and places. Any hopes to enlist for the student exchange program or return to their parents family for Christmas in another country are quashed after family court. They are in Australian lock down until the age of eighteen. Unless the father decides that he agrees with it, their rights of freedom to roam are violated. Imagine the nightmare simply deciding which address to put down when there is only room for one on every form. Children are living in a suitcase where it becomes pointless to unpack their clothes.

Meanwhile, there are the privileged children, the ones who will benefit later with the global landmarks lurking in their resumes, the ones who are able to attend those extracurricular activities without interruption and go away for holidays that only shared parenting children could dream of.

Children raised to believe that marriage is a union of god and those who do not follow are evil is where the great divide is unrestrained between adults, but drifts into the school yard. The cons that go with an institutionalized lifestyle may also feed into such convictions against them.