Abstract
A recent parliamentary postulate in Switzerland calling for joint custody as the legal norm argues that fathers are discriminated against in Swiss divorce law. This postulate has incited a debate which circles around issues of equality, the role of fathers and mothers, and the good of the child. Our article, uniting approaches from literature, cultural studies, and science and technology studies, examines the arguments sparked by the debate with a view to different takes on gender and family. In doing so, it traces the roots of contemporary Swiss family law in the Rousseauian narrative of family life in Emile ou de l’education; it explores the manner in which scientific knowledge is marshaled to lend political legitimacy to current debate; and it asks finally how narrative bridges the gap between public discourse and lived experience.
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Notes
A postulate is one of the means by which the elected parliamentarians in Switzerland can bring forth political concerns. There is no need to pass both chambers of the parliament with this request: if it finds a majority in one of them, the Federal Council is required to examine the postulate and to consider regulatory action. Thus, although as a political instrument it may have less clout because it does not require ratification by the two chambers, it may be brought to the Federal Councillors’ attention more quickly. When Reto Wehrli, Christian Democratic member of the Swiss parliament, brought forward his petition, it was backed by a rather unusual coalition of right and left wing politicians.
For the regulation concerning parental care, see article 133–134 Schweizerisches Zivilgesetzbuch.
This translation of Launay’s introduction is our own. The English quotes that follow come from Barbara Foxley’s 1911 translation of Emile, reprinted in 1974.
Postulat Reto Wehrli, 04.3250, Elterliche Sorge, Gleichberechtigung: http://search.parlament.ch/cv-geschaefte?gesch_id=20043250 (accessed 7 March 2008).
Amtliches Bulletin Nationalrat (2005, p. 1495ff): http://www.parlament.ch/ab/frameset/d/n/4709/208721/d_n_4709_208721_208722.htm (accessed 7 March 2008).
Mirroring this belatedness is the upsurge of fathers’ and parents’ rights movements such as Schweizerische Vereinigung für gemeinsame Elternschaft (Odermatt 2007) or Verein Verantwortungsvoll erziehender Väter und Mütter, which seemed to come into existence just after Wehrli’s postulate provoked such intense political debate (e.g. dgy, NZZ Online, 21 July 2008).
Zischtigs-Club, Gemeinsames Sorgerecht: Ende der Streitereien? Sendung vom 18 October 2005 (Archiv): http://www.sf.tv/sf1/club/index.php?docid=20051018 (accessed 11 June 2007).
Amtliches Bulletin Nationalrat (2005, p. 1495ff): http://search.parlament.ch/cv-geschaefte?gesch_id=20043250 (accessed 2 May 2007).
Ibid.
As Jürgen Oelkers notes in a speech given as apart of a presentation by the Department of Education of the Canton of Zurich, “It is no coincidence that Jean Piaget developed in Geneva a theory of education that was meant to be a direct extension of Rousseau. Pestalozzi came from Zurich, and it is also no coincidence that he is held to be the first to put Rousseau’s teachings into practice” (Oelkers 2002, p. 1).
The author, Eugen Huber, was later characterised as “a traditionalist who was open to innovation” in the Historical Encyclopedia of Switzerland: http://www.hls-dhs-dss.ch/textes/d/D4533.php (accessed 25 November 2008).
Recall in this context Rousseau’s astoundingly egalitarian view about education in Book 1 of Emile where he writes: “All that one can do to remedy this is to be sure that those of both sexes who govern the child are in constant agreement about him, that the two act as one for him”; and compare this to his opinion, voiced in Book V, that “She cannot fulfil her purpose in life without his aid, without his goodwill, without his respect … Nature herself has decreed that woman, both for herself and her children, should be at the mercy of man’s judgment” (Rousseau 1974, p. 328).
The English translations that follow are our own.
As historian Nadja Ramsauer (2000) argues, this new interest in child welfare was symptomatic of a paradigm shift in the legal conceptualisation of the family in the German speaking world, which no longer privileged economic aspects of family law, such as inheritance law or the need for child labour, but rather aspects having to do with the person, such as education and wellbeing (Ramsauer 2000). This shift away from economic concerns to concerns having to do with personhood and individual behaviour also meant that the instruments used to apply the law became somewhat murkier and open to definition, thus giving more power to those responsible for judging any given situation. In other words, bourgeois concepts of pedagogy and education handed down to Swiss education reformer Heinrich Pestalozzi, are used as a means of controlling the lower classes and to combat pauperism.
It takes into account some principles formulated by the United Nations and ratified by Switzerland in 1997, in particular the child’s right to be heard in court and thus to participate in the decision concerning his or her future (UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, art 12). However, how far this rule is applied remains open to the decision of the courts and their practices (Bundesamt für Justiz 2005).
Amtliches Bulletin: http://www.parlament.ch/ab/frameset/d/n/4709/208721/d_n_4709_208721_208722.htm (accessed 7 March 2008); our translation.
Amtliches Bulletin Nationalrat (2005); our translation.
And indeed, it is much more the legal practice of the courts or the evaluations of judges in civil cases that is questioned by the fathers’ movements, rather than the existing division of labour in families, a discourse which helps to position divorced fathers “as the new victims of family law reform” (Collier 2006, p. 56).
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Gisler, P., Steinert-Borella, S. & Wiedmer, C. Double Lives, Double Narratives: Tracing the Story of the Family in Rousseau, the Swiss Civil Code and the Fathers’ Rights Debates. Fem Leg Stud 17, 185–204 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10691-009-9120-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10691-009-9120-y