国际英语资讯:News Analysis: Italy considering polarizing new rules for divorce, child custody_时事

国际英语资讯:News Analysis: Italy considering polarizing new rules for divorce, child custody

As it is, most children of divorced parents spend most of their time with the mother, with the father paying for child support at a level determined by the courts or mediation.

Supporters of the law say it will remove a bias toward mothers when a couple separates and eliminate the possibility that child support payments would be used to help cover expenses not directly related to the child.

But critics have been vocal, saying the proposal discriminates against mothers and, because it would make divorce more painful, it could act as an incentive for couples to remain in bad marriages or for them not to marry at all.

"A law like this would undo many of the advances women in Italy have made over the last generation," Manuela Ulivi, a family law attorney and president of the Home for Abused Women in Milan, told Xinhua. "Very few advanced countries have policies that would treat women's rights in the way."

Nadia Somma, from Demetra, an anti-domestic violence shelter in Turin went even further: "If this enters into force it would turn the clock back on women's rights 50 years," Somma wrote after the proposed law was released.

But Paolo Scotti, a psychologist and president of MEDEFitalia, an association of mediators, told Xinhua the details of the proposed law will determine its impacts.

"We really have to see what the final law will say," Scotti said. "Yes, it will give more power to what parents decide when they sit down and talk in a mediation process. People ask me: will this make divorce even more difficult? If it does, maybe it will make couples put more thought into whether or not to get married and have children."