The age of the Skype Dad

Could you be a useful and loving father to your children if you only ever saw them on a computer screen? Most of us would say no. So much of being a parent is about being physically there. It’s curious then that our courts seem to think the opposite — that a chat via Skype or on an iPad is all a father needs to bond with and care for his child.

British judges, like American ones, have to deal with increasingly complicated custody cases every year. We travel more these days, and so we meet our partners abroad. When these marriages break up (as four in ten marriages do), a foreign wife often longs to take the kids and head back home. In the past, when a custody case like this came to court, a judge might have said no, on the grounds that the children must be in reach of their father. But these days the fashion is for ruling in favour of ‘virtual visitations’. A mother can move where she likes, say our judges, and take the children with her, because the requirement for contact is fulfilled by a video call.

It’s a desperate situation for the fathers. I’ve spoken to several ‘Skype Dads’ who say this form of contact means not really being a dad at all — more of an evening duty, a badly flickering TV programme. I spoke to one Skype Dad, David, who talks to his young sons on screen twice a week. The boys are seven and eight and now live in Sweden with their Swedish mother. David, back in England, says he can feel his relationship with them deteriorating weekly: ‘It’s the worst form of torture for a parent.’

Skype Dads have been common in the United States and Canada since 2002, where video calls were at first a lifeline for fathers with children living in different states.