Needless to say, even if parents divorce, their children's father and mother continue to be their children's father and mother after the parents divorce. Therefore, it is thought that children have a kind of natural right that they are raised and loved by their parents. However, after parents divorce, it becomes near to impossible for most of the children to meet their parent who does not have parental authority. A major reason for this is that the civil law of Japan regulates the single parental authority system.

Principle is described clearly in article 9-3 of the "Convention on the Rights of the Child" that Japan ratified in 1994;
"States Parties shall respect the right of the child who is separated from one or both parents to maintain personal relations and direct contact with both parents on a regular basis, except if it is contrary to the child's best interests."
However, the current Japanese situation obviously contradicts this.

Recently, Japan has been urged to join the Hague Convention that forbids kidnapping of children between countries. In case of an international divorce, the separation of children and their parent is a very serious problem. However on the other hand, the divorces of Japanese and Japanese are far more common than international divorces, and a lot of separations of children and parent occur every year and extremely tragic cases frequently occur. Especially, cases of abuse by step parents resulting in death to the stepchild have frequently occurred recently. It is thought that those tragedies could have been prevented if there were a regular contact between children and the parent who does not have the parental authority.