The MATCH constitution states our object for existing since 1979 to be “the preservation and protection of good mental health of mothers living apart from their children by the provision of information, advice and support.”

MATCH exists to support mothers who are apart from their children because of ill-health, fostering, adoption, abduction abroad, alienation following high-conflict family breakdown or family rows. Most of our Members used to be part of a family structure and were, in the main, its lynchpin. After divorce or separation, many were ostracised from that family, deliberately and maliciously, and denied the opportunity to support the well-being of their children.

Some mothers, through severe ill-health or other reasons, have had to give up their children for fostering and later adoption.

We want and need to continue to be part of our children’s lives, and to support our children for life. Some of us have not seen our children for years or decades. Some of us have spent tens of thousands of pounds in legal fees and on psychological services, putting our faith in the court system to redress the balance before realising the futility of our actions.

In trying to prove an ex-partner's active malice, several MATCH Members report having been advised by judges to “go away and get a life”.

All of us in MATCH expected to remain mothers for life even if not living in the family home. All of us have been denied that, becoming instead and against our will, invisible mothers, not always dignified with the acronym, NRP (Non Resident Parent).

Other parenting groups support the well-being of good fathers and grandparents similarly denied the opportunity to have a place in their children’s lives. Malicious, exploitative ex-partners have for decades been allowed to get away with harming children’s minds, denying them the chance to develop well-balanced bonds with both parents and extended families.

Such bonds induce a natural state of well-being for the whole family but mostly for children whose social and emotional progress can develop normally. Tragically, many of us have not the opportunity to help our children through the pain of restructuring the family after breakdown. We remain invisible parents and grandparents to invisible children, and can only imagine how our children are coping with the burdens inflicted on them by adults.

Living apart from their children, mothers have been, and continue to be, casually stigmatized and pigeon-holed in the media or in the view of the public as "women who leave their children". The most common feedback we have from new Members is the huge sense of relief they feel when they find MATCH and discover that “they’re not the only ones”.

See this link to "The shame of losing custody of your children" : http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/womanshour/02/2007_42_mon.shtml

Many mothers we support are traumatised at having been separated against their will from their children. Their lives as mothers ended brutally and suddenly. There are unresolved issues for them which can last a lifetime unless professional advice, therapy or counselling is sought.

In some rare and happy circumstances, full reunions or partial reconciliations do take place between a mother and some of her children, not always all of them. Contact may be resumed, sometimes with the negotiations of a sympathetic third party and after encountering many difficulties and tensions. Lives are resumed, albeit in a different form.

Tragically, in other less happy situations which the majority of our Members experience, there is no interest on the part of children to re-make contact with their mother. We offer non-judgemental emotional support to help these Members come to terms very slowly with accepting the loss of their children, and to move forward in their own lives and at their own pace.