Minding Maisie

Civitas, 1 October 2010

‘It was the fate of this patient little girl to see much more than she at first understood, but also even at first to understand much more than any little girl, however patient, had perhaps understood before,’ writes Henry James of his young, responsive subject in a polemic contribution to a fin de siècle canon with striking contemporary relevance.

What Maisie Knew is an indictment of dysfunctional families’ decadent misgivings and although children continue to be denied full enlightenment—quite rightfully—, their predicament is all too familiar in our communities.  In fact, some may suggest the plight of the child with separated parents, many of whom are mid-ruckus, has become the status quo.   Last week at a speech to the charity ‘Families Need Fathers,’ Britain’s senior family judge, Sir Nicholas Wall, spoke of the damaging effect of resurrecting battlefields in the home post-separation, especially amongst a particular demographic.  ‘As a rule of thumb my experience is that the more intelligent the parent, the more intractable the dispute,’ warned Wall.  Plagued by unresolved conflict, parents use children, like Maisie, as ammunition for always inadequate settlement disputes.  After decades of impregnable family psychology and subsequent prescriptive legislation, the maternal instinct prevails, despite attempts to muddy the waters of parental stereotyping (the inclusion of a default ‘Joint Birth Registration’ in the Welfare Reform Bill of 2009 was a pivotal but regrettably insufficient attempt to cultivate the notion of paternal responsibility and contribution—for both mothers and fathers).

Wall’s sincere and grounded contributions provoked an influx of reflective commentaries from dads nationwide; Family and Relationship inserts of national papers were overcome with a previously hidden male affliction—tales of fathers denied access to their children, from their perspective.   Whilst Maisie does not understand the worlds she finds herself shuttled between, an anonymous writer for the Guardian wrote of his ‘despair’ of not being understood in a world where part-time ex-wives/part-time mothers dominate schools, children’s services, and their former homes.  His name remains unacknowledged, but his article achieved quite the opposite for his cause.  

With a healthy proliferation in campaigns for fathers, distressed dads have substituted a single ‘I’ with  a collective ‘we’.  Divorcing the individual from common turf in order to establish and promote the stable role of a father in children’s lives is one step towards transcending our current oppressive familial structures, if only legislation followed suit.  The collective ‘we’ worked wonders for isolated middle class mummies via Mumsnet, and whilst equally sharp-elbowed Dads might have their work cut out, stating their case as contributors of care and funding is progress.  It might also pave the way for later generations and eventually become the new status quo – not as a retaliation against mothers, but as the best alternative to happy families for children like Maisie.