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I.
Introduction
The topic of shared parenting has, in the last few decades, moved up the political agenda. There have been a number of changes in the law, as the legal system has perceived itself to be under pressure from politics to find a solution to the problems of family breakdown. Yet, autopoietic theory provides an explanation why current reforms are likely to prove no more effective than previous ones. Normative messages generated within one system about the desirability of a particular form of shared parenting are very imperfectly 'translated' (in reality recreated) within a receptor system. Acceptance and rejection depend on the latter's existing normative and cognitive framework: what the system or person can understand and process and what they want to hear.
A carefully crafted and comprehensive new blueprint for the organisation of post-divorce family life was set out in the Children Act 1989 (van Krieken, 2005, p. 33). Since then, the courts have used its orders, notably Parental Responsibility (PR) and Shared Residence Orders (SROs), in ways that had not been envisaged by the Act's drafters: away from solely regulating practicalities towards the making of symbolic statements (Harris and George, 2010). As was the case with the 1989 Act, the objective has been to encourage shared parenting after separation. Cautious messages generated within scientific disciplines about the benefits of co-operative parenting have been partially and often erroneously recreated within politics, and then within law, to create simplistic exhortations about the need to involve both parents in post-separation parenting. Nevertheless, parents continue to bring these disputes to court, and dissatisfaction with the family justice system has persisted; separated fatherhood has come to be understood as a political problem that requires a legal solution (Collier and Sheldon, 2008).
Although both law and politics are perceived as comparatively powerful, changes to the law have proved ineffective or counter-productive. New reforms have now been introduced in the Children and Families Act 2014. Autopoietc theory explains why this will be a triumph of hope over experience; parents may be unable to understand what the law asks of them or unwilling to adjust because what they are being told is incompatible with what they already understand to be good or bad parenting.
In this context, the...