When Delia Keller is in her office in Berlin-Prenzlauer Berg, she can tell a story about every book on the shelf, secretary and coffee table. “Look,” she then says, “that was great for a smaller budget!” She points to another book: “With this one, I worked forever on the order of the pictures.” She carefully flips through one of the works and you can clearly see the joy in it.
Keller loves her job. As a self-employed person in the Berlin art business, she curates exhibitions, compiles art books, teaches at the university and regularly presents her own photographs in front of an audience. As a single mother of a ten and twelve year old son, she also works full-time in unpaid care work. In the spring of 2021, she wanted to legally oblige the child’s father to provide more care – and failed. Her story shows how the case law discriminates against the main caring parents, i.e. the majority of mothers. Since the beginning of the pandemic, the father has not adhered to the agreed care times, says Keller. In a new partnership with a new child, he said more and more often the weekends with his two sons were postponed and canceled. So, last January, Keller decided to go to court. “It couldn’t go any further, at some point he only wanted to take over one weekend a month.” She demands of her ex-partner to look after the sons on two fixed, extended weekends a month.
Jurisprudence discriminates
In March the hearing before the family court in Berlin-Pankow takes place. Result: One weekend per month remains. Keller is particularly shocked by the opinion of the youth welfare office, on which the judgment is largely based. There it says: “The child’s mother presents a handling proposal in her application that she knows exactly that the child’s father cannot implement for professional reasons.” Keller can recite the passage in the document by heart: “About which she knows exactly” , she repeats several times, she is so annoyed by the phrase. “That can’t be the case, I work and have at least the same qualifications!” But that was not the point in the process at all. Those responsible at the Pankow youth welfare office did not want to comment on this case on Friday.
Karola Rosenberg works as a lawyer in family law and sees Keller’s case as a typical example of discriminatory jurisprudence. After all, there is not only a right of access, but also a duty of contact. However, the implementation is very different: “If a caring parent demands contact from the other parent, then contact must serve the best interests of the child. If a parent demands contact for himself in court, contact is always granted, unless it harms the child. ”With regard to the statistical distribution, it is particularly difficult for single mothers to transfer more responsibility to the child father.
A popular argument for this case law is the fear that a parent who is not interested in regular meetings with their own child is more of a danger than an enrichment for them. Then the mother is almost always alone in childcare. Rosenberg criticizes this: “Most of the time there is an interest in the child, but only as long as it is comfortable. And if the mothers come and want to relieve themselves right now in Corona times, that actually serves the child directly. ”However, relieving the main carer is not enough as an argument in court. This shows how much care work is still considered a “naturally female” field of activity. In this way, not only role models, but also material differences are reproduced: Who can work how much wage and later pay into the pension fund? Who is affected by poverty in old age? A look at the figures shows how big the gap is between men and women: a total of 22 percent of single parents are at risk of poverty. But the majority of them, namely 88 percent, are mothers.
But what if one parent doesn’t want less, but more contact? Karola Rosenberg does not rule out that the basic sexist assumption that a mother is naturally the primary custodian can be detrimental to fathers. But the hurdle for a so-called exclusion from contact is relatively high: Even if the man had been violent against the ex-partner, a balance would be weighed between the risk of possible re-traumatization of the child and the risk of alienation.
For Tanja Zimmermann *, this legal practice means constant mental stress. Because for three years she has been living in a legally enforced exchange model with her ex-husband. That means she has to organize exactly half of the care with the father of the two children they share. As a result, she is regularly exposed to the very person who abused her before and after the separation. Psychological violence developed early on in their relationship. The man isolated carpenter from family and friends, pushed through a move to the country, kept her from her work and made her feel like she was “the last bit of dirt”, as she put it. After four years she finally made it out, separated, moved to the next bigger city and started working as a chemist again. The plan was to take the children with you. “But soon afterwards he emphasized that these were his children too, and asked for half of the care, even though I had looked after myself almost on my own.” The psychological violence does not stop after the separation. When one day Zimmermann finds a camera in her new apartment, which is pointed at her bathroom, she has evidence to obtain a violence protection order in court. Since then, the ex-husband has not been allowed to approach her – except when it comes to looking after the children together.
Trend towards the change model
This is exactly what is being negotiated in parallel. Two weeks after the violence protection order, a family court decides on the change model. “I was completely shocked that it is still said that an interchangeable model is a great idea when a man does things like that!” Says Zimmermann. With the verdict, the stress is not over, to this day the ex-husband puts her under pressure with almost daily complaints. “I now have my own e-mail inbox just for him, it’s like a second full-time job.”
Since 2017, the change model can be arranged against the will of a parent. “Basically, the prerequisites are physical proximity, no high-level controversy and a certain ability to reach a consensus,” said attorney Rosenberg. Stefanie Ponikau, deputy chairwoman of MIA, the mothers’ initiative for single parents, notices, however, the tendency not to take domestic violence into account when dealing with contact regulations. “The courts are trying to work towards a parental consensus. In a perpetrator-victim divide, however, no consensus on an equal footing is possible. ”She observes a clear trend towards the alternation model, based on a misogynist ideology. Anti-feminist actors would, for example, participate in scientific work on highly controversial parents in such a way that partnership and separation violence against women no longer played a role. High disputes are presented as an always symmetrical conflict and patriarchal power dynamics are made invisible. In other words: Tanja Zimmermann’s situation is not an isolated incident. The MIA initiative supports numerous mothers like her who have to enable a violent father to deal with their children. For Ponikau, this cannot be in the best interests of the child: “It has been undisputedly proven that 99 percent of children who experience violence against one of their parents develop a post-traumatic stress disorder. In the case of children who are themselves the target of violence, it is 80 to 90 percent. “
Zimmermann is also worried about the well-being of her children. “The interchangeable model harms them, they are so torn. The little one cries a lot, and the big one gets really scared when I briefly disappear from his field of vision. ”Last April, her ex-husband was convicted of stalking. This could mean that a new contact negotiation could turn out differently. But the thought of having to endure the psychological stress and confrontation at a negotiation is difficult for Zimmermann to endure.
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