Diana Wichtel: Relax, traditional family is safe

The Government really has been cleaning out the closet. All sorts of things that lurk at the back, packed away in the too hard basket, are seeing the light of day. With loaded issues such as prostitution and same-sex parenting on the agenda, no wonder fuses are blowing all over the land. The fact is, both prostitution and same-sex parents have been around for a very long time. It's just that we didn't have to think about them, which is always so much easier on the national nervous system.

The Care of Children Bill was always going to be almost as much of a minefield as the prostitution legislation. After all, it gives rights to - yikes! - same-sex partners. Our more conservative political parties greet this sort of thing as if removing discrimination against gay parents is the slippery first step towards making it compulsory. So the bill has been the occasion of a fresh outbreak of hand wringing over the alleged erosion of the traditional nuclear family. But it's hard to see how being fair to people who don't conform to a rather narrow definition of the word "family" damages the position of those who do.

How exactly does safeguarding the rights of parents and children in, say, a de facto relationship hurt those who are in a married relationship? All that is taken away from the traditional set-up is some sort of legislatively backed feeling of moral superiority.

If that sort of thinking was applied to other areas of life, blacks in America would still be sitting at the back of the bus. Giving black Americans civil rights took no rights away from white Americans, except the right to make other people's lives a misery because of the colour of their skin. What it did do is make white Americans less secure in their accustomed place in the social hierarchy - at the top.

Proponents of the family as the cornerstone of society don't just want the family safeguarded. They want their version of it to be privileged above all others.

And with privilege comes the fear of losing it. The resistance to giving other forms of family protections speaks of a deep insecurity. The idealised model of the family is clearly viewed as being so fragile that the very existence of other versions is a threat.

The bill, claims Bill English, is an "attack on fathers" (a certain insecurity about masculinity is a national characteristic, too, if the homoerotic nature of a lot of blokey humour is any indication).

And Peter Dunne has announced that United Future will oppose the bill, citing, among other things, "the wide-open definition of fatherhood". Yet on United Future's website, the party's policy on family proclaims "We will ensure all New Zealand families have the opportunity to participate fully in our society". You have to wonder what "all" means in United Future speak.

Of course, the wording of some parts of the bill didn't help. Lianne Dalziel was reportedly "furious" when Bill English went on fancifully about "a remarkable feat of biotechnology" regarding the now notorious Clause 17(2). The clause declared that "the father of a child, may by operation of the part 2 of the Status of Children Act 1969 be a reference to the same-sex de facto partner of the mother of the child". Oh dear. Lesbian Father Shock.

The oddly framed clause represented "a drafting technique" apparently, not some sort of modern reproductive miracle. Still, the Government really should have seen that one coming and used a different drafting technique.

As it is, our pitifully short attention span has been directed away from the intent of the clause. That clause seems designed, however clumsily, to safeguard the child of a same sex couple's right to that cornerstone of the family, its two parents. Say the biological mother of a child dies. Without some sort of legal guardianship, the mother's same sex partner could be seen to have no rights. The grieving child could lose both parents. It's hard to see how this would be in the child's best interests.

I can't see a great deal to alarm the traditional dad in that. And even opponents of the bill allow that it gets some things right. More transparency in the Family Court process would be good. Any transparency in the Family Court Process would be good.

You'd have to try hard to work up indignation that the terms "custody" and "access" are to be replaced by the less polarising "day-to-day care" and "contact". Some are threatened by a new emphasis on parental responsibilities rather than rights. But if this makes parents think twice about engaging in punishing - especially to children - custody battles, then it's a move in the right direction.

As for the erosion of the traditional family, there's been bleating about that since wives first won the right to own property. It's always those most loudly proclaiming the traditional family as a symbol of strength, the cornerstone of society, who seem most intent on treating the institution like some sort of endangered species in need of special privileges.

The traditional family has survived depressions, wars, feminism, Rogernomics and the Osbournes. No doubt it will survive some long overdue recognition that not all families are the same.