This child of ours
Photo by Alex Green (pexels)
"The judge looks at you and says: Sir, you will pay."
"A black father who shows involvement is suspect."
"Dads don't know their rights. So we offer 30 minutes of pro bono legal advice."
In our last two episodes, we met several dads who talked about their experiences, their aspirations, the values they want to instill, and so on. One of the dads we met was Jean-Philippe, a guy from Montreal, in his forties, with an adult daughter and a teenage son. In telling us about his experience, Jean-Philippe recounted everything he had to go through to retain custody of his children. No joke, his story really stuck with me. And I think it deserves to be heard, because it speaks to issues that other men go through, but in silos. It speaks to what can happen to these men, to the resources that exist for them, to the importance of empathizing before judging. And in talking to people who work with racialized people, I realized that Jean's story also touches on ways of thinking that are widespread in Afro-Caribbean communities and that it might be time to question. So, without further ado, here's the story Jean-Philippe shared with us, followed by insights from two speakers.
A dozen years ago, Jean-Philippe separated from his wife, with whom he had a little boy. He was also the father of a pre-teen daughter from a previous relationship. At first, he and his ex-wife didn't exactly see eye to eye over custody of their son, but after a few legal proceedings, everything settled down. With his daughter's mother, however, it's a different story. Things start to escalate when she starts high school.
"Where it got to was that I got sued in court. She demanded that I pay for the school. She wanted the child to go to private high school. I didn't refuse. I took the necessary steps and everything. She was enrolled in private school. Except that she didn't want to tell me that it was up to me to pay for the private school, that she didn't want to pay. So it was up to me to take full responsibility for the private school. So that created a conflict. I said: "We could have discussed it". She simply took the opportunity to tell me that if I didn't pay for the private school... She didn't ask me, I received a court petition saying that I had never taken care of the child and that she was claiming $50,000, back pension and so on. Meanwhile, I was alone. I also had my son. So, listen, it's not working."
This legal action is the start of a long and costly battle for Jean-Philippe. The battle will cost him financially, emotionally and even in terms of his relationship with his daughter.
"So there, well, begins the galley with lawyers, hiring lawyers, here and there. But where it all started to go wrong was when I started having problems with my daughter. In court, I was winning my case, but then we started having parental alienation. Then [...] the things that happened that I didn't understand hit me. I didn't know how to react to the situation. I saw my daughter leaving. I didn't understand the justice system either. That's when you don't understand. Things happen, but you can't really defend yourself. You pay a lawyer. They tell you no, sir, you can't do that, you can't do anything. Basically, you see the situation happening. Like parental alienation, it was a subject I didn't know anything about at the time. I didn't understand it. So I had to seek help. I had to try to understand because the justice system doesn't help you. You just couldn't talk about it. When we brought up the subject with the lawyer, he'd say no, you mustn't talk about it, otherwise it could turn against you. That was the only thing he would say to you, because he didn't want to get into it. But in reality, it did happen, but you couldn't put it into words."
What is parental alienation? Basically, it's when one parent influences the child's mind to reject the other parent without good reason, or forces the child to lose all affection for the other parent. In Jean-Philippe's case, what he noticed was that his daughter was really colder with him, more distant, more hostile.
"At one point - another crazy situation - I go to pick up my daughter. I had to wait. I have a court order here. I have my court papers here. I won my case in court. The court granted me joint custody, which I already had, by the way, because the child was never in a situation where she had limits to go home, to one parent, to the other. Now, when I go to pick up my daughter, I send a text message to the mother: "I'll be there at such and such a time". She doesn't answer. I call my daughter: "Listen, sweetheart, I'll pick you up at such and such a time". She doesn't answer. Finally, I come - I have no choice, because if I don't come, they'll say I didn't come. It was all nonsense! So I go and get her. Finally, she got into the car and said: "Oh no, I'm not coming to your place". I tell her, "Listen, sweetheart, for now, we're going to do it this way, okay? Your mother and I are going to respect the court order. We'll try to respect it. Then, if there's anything to adjust, we'll adjust it. I'm driving down Maurice-Duplessis. My daughter says, "No, I don't want to go to your house". I stop at the light and she gets out of the car. My daughter is 13-14 years old. She gets out of the car. I'm like what the... You've got to stay calm. My daughter calls the police. My own daughter, she calls the police. Then she calls her uncle, her mother's brother, to come get her because she doesn't want to go to my house. Listen, what did I do to the child? Absolutely nothing. You know what I mean? Because these are all situations where you're like, what do you do?"
If you listened to the previous episode, Jean-Philippe is the dad who, year after year, took his daughter to her skating lessons and competitions when she was little. The dad who stayed in the stands during practice, who bought the $800 skates, the costumes and so on. And now, things are so bad with that same child that he has to see her summoned by the judge in the conflict between her and her mother.
"When I first came to court, the first case, the first time, the mother was practically forced to say: 'yeah, he's a good father and everything except that I don't want to give him custody'. We had to go and do a psychosocial analysis [...] The judge heard both parties, and then remarked to the mother: "But what are you blaming the father for? You yourself say that he's a good father, that he's always looked after the child. And now you want to prevent him from seeing the child". They said no, it's the child who doesn't want to. Imagine, I'm in court, I've just paid a lawyer for a whole day, it's two o'clock in the afternoon, the judge has listened to everyone. And then they say: "Madam Judge, the child wants to talk to you". Because my child was at Saint-Jean-Vianney school, we had to pick her up and take a break. They insisted that the judge listen to the child. All this to try and say that the child no longer wanted to go to her father's house. Can you imagine? Your own child, there, whom you love and whose well-being you want, there. And all you want is for your child to take part in a game so that this child pushes his father away. So they had to pick up the child from school in the depths of Rivière-des-Prairies and take him downtown. Meanwhile, they're waiting for the child to speak to the judge - behind closed doors - so that the child can come crying to the judge to say what his mother wanted her to say in court. Imagine, on a day-to-day basis, you have to go through this. Your child comes to you. Start giving yourself attitude. The only other parent you have to deal with is the other parent. That's his mother. But you already know that it's this person who's creating this chaos with a child who's barely 13. That's why you're trying to stay calm. You're a black guy. It doesn't take much, they call the police, and you end up with a criminal record. So you have to stay calm. You have to handle every situation calmly. They do this to you. You have to absorb it. Until my daughter doesn't come to my house anymore."
With so much going on in and out of the courtroom, Jean-Philippe is feeling really disoriented and out of his depth.
"I had a lot of difficulties, there was a lot of anger, but at the same time, you had to carry on with everyday life. You've got two kids, you've got to carry on as if nothing had happened, you've got to be the dad, you've got to be strong, you've got to keep taking them to their activities, you've got to fight on every side to, I'll tell you, just see your kids, just keep a connection, a life with your kids. You practically had to walk on eggshells all the time. So, at some point, what happens in life, as a father, what I realized is that it's hard to express yourself. You don't have time to complain, you can't call people and then start complaining. When you lose control, it's a bit difficult because you don't want to look bad. You don't want to look weak. You don't want to come across as someone who complains. But at the same time, you still have to put up with injustice. Because they'll just tell you that there's nothing to be done, that it's just the way it is. But in the meantime, they tell you that you have to take care of your children. Then, when it's the most important thing, you want to take care of your children. But to lose control, that's something that's practically unacceptable."
For this dad, what's clear is that he's experiencing an injustice. He began looking for resources to help him fight back. Contacting various organizations, he eventually came across RePère, an organization in Ahuntsic. It became his beacon in the storm.
"I met a social worker. The main thing was that he listened to me. So I understood that I wasn't alone in this situation. And that enabled me to... Every time I met him, I talked. I was venting, as they say. But I took part in workshops. I think the first workshop was a spaghetti dinner. I went with the kids and it was just a way of valuing the role of father. Just that activity, just being with other fathers, just being there, just understanding that these are situations that everyone goes through, it stabilizes the situation a bit, mentally. Not being lost, not feeling alone, going through this, because it's a lot of frustration. Afterwards, it helped me get organized. We had access to a lawyer, so I was able to talk, understand a little, sort things out, and really make sense of everything that was happening. Then, from there, I knew what to do. So, really, RePère stabilized me. Stabilizing, making me understand that I wasn't alone and that there was someone there to listen to me. That was the first thing.
Since 1995, RePère has been helping dads in difficulty by offering, among other things, psychosocial support, skills development workshops, support groups and father-child activities. But the service RePère is most often called upon for is its legal clinic. Its interim director, Sabine Duclair.
"Dads don't know their rights. So it's, 'What do I do, I can't see my child'. We work with a lawyer who gives 30 minutes of pro bono legal advice. We listen to the dad first, take the time to find out exactly what the situation is, and then refer him to our lawyer, who offers 30 minutes free of charge. Normally, you have to pay for legal advice. We give him 30 minutes to ask his questions. We do a little work with him first. We tell him to prepare his questions in advance to maximize that 30 minutes. So, legal questions are priority. Often, it's DPJ (child protective services). We sometimes get referrals from the DPJ, who sends dads to us too. That's the second, I'd say. Things are often conflictual with the ex-wife. The subject is co-parenting, which is also often difficult. So, I'd say, in the first, there's the legal clinic, everything legal. The second would be everything to do with co-parenting, equal-equal, DPJ too. There are situations where the person is not necessarily separated from the spouse, but there are situations of conflict with the DPJ. That's when we get involved with parenting skills. We have workshops, and we also have a specific program for parenting skills. And then, last but not least, sometimes dads just call up and say they don't know what to do. I can't say it's rare, but it's not really the most common thing we get from our users. And there are some who just like spending time with other dads, who like coming to activities, just chatting about subjects that concern them too amongst themselves."
In the end, Jean-Philippe was awarded joint custody of his daughter and son. But given his already stormy relationship with his daughter, he decided to give up custody.
"In the end, I didn't get my daughter any more. But at least I had the peace of mind of knowing that I had done everything I could, everything in my power to make things right. It's with that peace of mind that I live today. I did everything I had to do. I didn't just give up and say: "It's your mother's fault". I could have just done that, but that's not what I did. I made sure I did everything I needed to do as a father to be worthy of the name father. I walk with my head held high. If my daughter ever wants to know what happened, I'm going to tell her. Very humbly, very simply, without having to add, without having to invent. I'm just going to tell her things as they are. I don't feel bad about what happened, about what I did in the whole process. I have no remorse about meeting my child later, and then telling him."
One of the things Jean-Philippe told us really got me thinking. It's a way of looking at the role of the father and the mother in the Haitian community, but also in the Afro-Caribbean community. Jean-Philippe.
"I think we men need to talk more. We need to make it normal. As women, violence, as we normally talk about it and it's unacceptable, in the same way, men too, there are things that are unacceptable, that happen to us, that we have to normalize rather than say that it's not acceptable. Having our children taken away from us simply to say that children belong to women, that's not true. It's not just the system, it's the stereotypes. We imagine the system is like that, but it's not true."
Children come back to moms. I've heard that a lot my whole life, but strangely enough, even if I don't believe it, I've never realized just how ingrained it is in our ways. To understand it better, we spoke to Myriam Coppry, founder of the multidisciplinary clinic NUNANUQ Intercultural Services. She offers coaching to parents from culturally diverse backgrounds who are experiencing difficulties. In her work, she encounters immigrant parents or parents of immigrant descent in custody disputes. Often, the conflict stems from one parent's reluctance to accept the separation. Sometimes, it's complicated by the fact that the person left behind is not the one who wanted to immigrate in the first place.
"But if we add a third layer that I see more in the Afro-Caribbean community, it's that in fact, often when couples separate, we separate from the child too. Moms don't leave much room for dads, and dads find it hard to take their place. So managing this co-parenthood, even if you're no longer a couple, is a learning process that's very, very new in the Afro-Caribbean community."
Researchers have traced this conception of the family back to the days of slavery. It was a kind of response, a defense mechanism if you like, against the tearing apart of families. But the context has changed. Once again, Myriam Coppry.
"You have to go back in history, to the constitution of Afro-Caribbean and even Afro-American societies, which were built on slavery. You really have to go back to that period. Back then, children, women and men could be sold. And couples weren't allowed to marry. Even if they got married, the masters didn't take it into account. So couples could be separated. There were no guarantees. The women found a very interesting mechanism to protect their children. And as we can see, even if people were suffering, they were resilient. So they understood that, since parents could be sold, children could be protected. And the children were entrusted to the grandparents. So that's how our societies were built, on what we call a matrifocal model. A lot of studies have been done on this, and we're not a matrilineal society, but a matrifocal one. It's all about women. And even if men are present, it's as if they were absent. In other words, they're relegated to the status of procreators. They're there to bear children. Incidentally, they can work and support financially, but a real place was not possible in the context of the time. Let's put that in context. It wasn't possible, you can't get emotionally involved in a relationship that's not even authorized, and then overnight, someone breaks up the family. It's just not possible. So people have found mechanisms. And around that, women built up a network of grandmothers to protect their children. And we still see today, in 2024, when I ask people who come to see me who raised them? They tell me it was my grandmother. We've reproduced the model, but we no longer have the same stakes. So women are the guardians of this transmission, of the children. So when couples split up, it's no big deal, the guy leaves and the women are strong and will continue to raise the children. So we haven't learned how to deal with separations in a way that's appropriate for children. Because a separation that's managed well, so this co-parenting, and even if you don't separate, managing the parental relationship well, that's something you learn. It's not just that dad's there for discipline, no. We're together. We're together, we have a common vision for educating our children. And that's something we don't learn enough about. These are very old traumas that continue to, I'd say, show through in the way we relate as couples."
Let me play devil's advocate. What's it like if two parents split up and the child has no contact with his father and is mainly brought up by his mother? At worst, there's grandma or auntie to help.
"How does it feel? The grandmother is there, the aunt is there. It's about a network. In our countries, that's fine. The network is there, everyone does it. There's consistency. The child who goes to school and his friends are raised by grandmothers and aunts. There's consistency. Here, there isn't."
"Co-parenting means having the same educational direction, consistency, in other words, agreeing on the basics, agreeing on the rules, agreeing on how both parents will work to educate the children. So, whether we're together or not, that's what co-parenting is all about. So there's no divergence. The key word is consistency in educational practices, and it has to be positive, in the interests and well-being of the whole.
Basically, the watchword is consistency. Consistency with the times, consistency with society, consistency with the other parent. But what happens is that we have attitudes from another time, which are not always consistent with today's society. In our communities, women are told that they have to be strong at all costs, that they have to be pillars, poto mitan, as we say. But today, with our busy lives, this can lead straight to disaster.
"But the poto mitan woman, right? And it's devastating. I have no other word for it. It's devastating. In a society like ours, in North America, where we're already under pressure, where we have a lot of demands in every sense of the word, in every sphere of life, to play the poto mitan wife is to go straight to the Bernard. Let me give you an example. That's why I became interested in parental burnout. When I was at the DPJ, I met a young Haitian woman, second generation. She had arrived here very young. She was studying, working and raising her children. She had two children. She did everything on her own. Then at some point, she felt she was getting tired. What did she do? She called in her sister to help out around the house. Just as she'd seen her mother do. She reproduced the same thing, except that her sister didn't have time to look after her nieces and nephew, she had her own life. The message she was getting was that she could do anything, but she was exhausted. Then one day, she collapsed. Well, I call it collapsed, the DPJ arrived. And when I questioned her, I realized, in fact, that she wanted shared custody with the dads. Because there were two dads. She wanted joint custody. But her mother said, no, you're a strong woman. You're capable of raising your kids. And because she wasn't able to assert herself, to respect her limits, she got this far. Yet she's a very, very well-structured woman. But she ended up in trouble with the DPJ because she was exhausted in her role as a parent. A young woman working, studying, raising two children. All she wanted was shared custody. And she told me. She told me that's all she wanted. But her family was saying, no, you're a strong woman, you don't need a guy, you can raise your kids on your own. If you can't, it's because you're no good. Absolutely, and her mother was very hard on her, very, very hard. So poto mitan women don't work here. Here, you've got everything on your shoulders, it doesn't work. And there's no one to protect the children. Over there, someone's going to be watching, your neighbor's going to say "Oh, make your child there, I saw him there." Or even your child will see that the neighbor has seen him, and he'll behave himself. Here, it's when the police arrive in front of your house that you'll know what your child is doing. Because even your neighbor knows, but he's not going to tell you. So no, it doesn't work. And that's something we have to learn. Because we've been brought up as women, we have to fall into it. And we have to be able to have a lot of compassion for ourselves, we women. We have to learn. We have to learn not to always be under the gogogogo, I say that, but I say it like that again. It's much better. But no, it's really... It's a job to make room for men. It's a job. So it's not easy. It's also our responsibility as women."
Another matter that struck us in what Jean-Philippe and Mrs. Coppry told us was the system's perception of the black father. We're not going to hide it. The black man is already perceived in a certain way by the system, and not always positively. I'll let you hear Jean-Philippe's and Mrs Coppry's experiences.
"I arrive in court and in both cases I was put guilty before I was innocent. Every time I went before the judge, they looked at me. I don't know if it was because I was a young black man in my early thirties. But that's how they looked at me. But I always came prepared, with my documents. When I started arguing, things changed completely. In court, I was always right. That's why I say we have to be careful. The system is fair, but you have to prove yourself in court. If you arrive there as a victim and you haven't done things properly, you haven't prepared yourself, people are going to look at you as a young black man, you're a delinquent, you've got dreads [...] I swear, I arrived in court, the judge looked at me. Once the lawyers made their introduction, the judge looked at me and said, "Sir, you know, you're going to pay." Just like that. Me, I was like... I'm gonna pay. OK. She told me like that, because it's like... because the mother was asking for custody. Full custody. Then, I think the message is to say, "Sir, you're still going to pay child support." Look, we know, alimony, look. No matter what happens, paying alimony, we hear that it's fair. There's no problem. But when you get to court, without having heard any arguments from anyone, the judge looks at you, "Sir, you're going to pay." I kind of... I mean, I've got a job... I didn't understand, you see. I have a job, yes, I work, and I don't have any financial problems. I'm just here because I want to have custody of my child, quite simply, fairly. But these are things, again, if you're not prepared, if you're not mentally ready, you're going to give up."
Myriam Coppry: "The system has a perception of the black man. A black man who gets involved is suspect. He's controlling. And here, I'm going to talk from personal experience. I have a son, I'm black, he's black. When he had his first child, he was with his white girlfriend, and I told them to go to La Maison Bleue because it's THE place for young parents. I really sold them on the idea, I trully believed in it. Both children were born here in Quebec. I told them that that's they really had to go there, that they were going to get prenatal care, follow-up with the gynecologist, the whole thing! And they listened to me. I mean I was working for the DPJ, so I knew what I was talking about. So they went for the visits and everything, and at one point, they asked to talk alone with his girlfriend because they thought he was violent, because he was always there. they weren't used to having a black dad involved. Afterwards, before going into labor, they received a document to take to the hospital. I looked at the document, consulted it and realized that there was nothing but prejudice: "The lady always came alone, they never saw the partner". He did come, but in the document, that's what it said. So even if a black father wants to get involved, the system perceives him as a danger. So he has more effort to make than a white Quebec father. And it's real, that's why men find it difficult. So we're not in an equal society for all, because black men are described as violent, not involved with their children, and wife beaters. And I have my partner, one of my partners, a professional with a doctorate in psycho-education, he's black, he had his first child, and he himself was a victim of this. The nurse who comes to the house, who says to him: "Careful sir, you can crush your child, because you're a man" - because he was coddling, I'm not sure. And she hardly spoke to him at all. She only talked to him to say negative things. It's a danger for the child, not the mother. So where does the black man fit in? Already, he has to take his place in his own community, but on top of that, he has to take his place in society."
Talking to Jean-Philippe, Myriam and Sabine helped put a lot of things into perspective for me. We're all familiar with the stereotypes of the deadbeat daddy, the guy who abandons his kids or shirks his responsibilities as a father because he's a coward, a you-know-what a-hole, this and that and the third. But sometimes, don't you think it's, I don't know, just a little too simplistic an explanation, that it lacks nuance. It's easy to generalize, but when you look at the specific case, when you put yourself in the other person's shoes, you discover that not everything is black and white.
Jean-Philippe: "Before experiencing it for myself, I didn't know of anyone who say that they've experienced parental alienation. We would simply hear that the father was no longer in the picture, that he doesn't take care of his child. That's when I started to understand that all those years, I'd been told that guys don't take care of their kids, they're not there. But then I started to understand, it's normal. How can you go through all that and then have the finances to take care of your kid? One, just to pay child support, you have to work and make yourself small, because you've got to survive too. You've got to put a roof over your head, feed yourself, have a car, have a life. But from there to saying that you have to fight to keep your child, for me, it was essential. I had to do it. But I understand that a lot of people give up because it's a very, very, very difficult process. Emotionally, financially, and mental health wise too.
This episode of Odyans was written, edited and directed by Christina Dabel and Ralph Bonet Sanon. Follow us on Instagram, Facebook and visit odyans.com for more content.
Legal deposit, Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec, 2024
