Posted on 07/06/2002 5:00:19 AM PDT by buccaneer81
A 'marriage strike' emerges as men decide not to risk loss
By Glenn Sacks and Dianna Thompson
Katherine is attractive, successful, witty, and educated. She also can't find a husband. Why? Because most of the men this thirtysomething software analyst dates do not want to get married. These men have Peter Pan syndrome: They refuse to commit, refuse to settle down, and refuse to "grow up."
However, given the family court policies and divorce trends of today, Peter Pan is no naive boy, but instead a wise man.
"Why should I get married and have kids when I could lose those kids and most of what I've worked for at a moment's notice?" asks Dan, a 31-year-old power plant technician who says he will never marry.
"I've seen it happen to many of my friends. I know guys who came home one day to an empty house or apartment - wife gone, kids gone. They never saw it coming. Some of them were never able to see their kids regularly again."
Census figures suggest that the marriage rate in the United States has dipped 40 percent during the last four decades to its lowest point since the rate was measured. There are many plausible explanations for this trend, but one of the least mentioned is that American men, in the face of a family court system hopelessly stacked against them, have subconsciously launched a "marriage strike."
It is not difficult to see why. Let's say that Dan defies Peter Pan, marries Katherine, and has two children. There is a 50 percent likelihood that this marriage will end in divorce within eight years, and if it does, the odds are 2-1 it will be Katherine, not Dan, who initiates the divorce. It may not matter that Dan was a decent husband. Studies show that few divorces are initiated over abuse or because the man has already abandoned the family. Nor is adultery cited as a factor by divorcing women appreciably more than by divorcing men.
While the courts may grant Dan and Katherine joint legal custody, the odds are overwhelming that it is Katherine, not Dan, who will win physical custody. Overnight, Dan, accustomed to seeing his kids every day and being an integral part of their lives, will become a "14 percent dad" - a father who is allowed to spend only one out of every seven days with his own children.
Once Katherine and Dan are divorced, odds are at least even that Katherine will interfere with Dan's visitation rights.
Three-quarters of divorced men surveyed say their ex-wives have interfered with their visitation, and 40 percent of mothers studied admitted that they had done so, and that they had generally acted out of spite or in order to punish their exes.
Katherine will keep the house and most of the couple's assets. Dan will need to set up a new residence and pay at least a third of his take-home pay to Katherine in child support.
As bad as all of this is, it would still make Dan one of the lucky ones. After all, he could be one of those fathers who cannot see his children at all because his ex has made a false accusation of domestic violence, child abuse, or child molestation. Or a father who can only see his own children under supervised visitation or in nightmarish visitation centers where dads are treated like criminals.
He could be one of those fathers whose ex has moved their children hundreds or thousands of miles away, in violation of court orders, which courts often do not enforce. He could be one of those fathers who tears up his life and career again and again in order to follow his children, only to have his ex-wife continually move them.
He could be one of the fathers who has lost his job, seen his income drop, or suffered a disabling injury, only to have child support arrearages and interest pile up to create a mountain of debt which he could never hope to pay off. Or a father who is forced to pay 70 percent or 80 percent of his income in child support because the court has imputed an unrealistic income to him. Or a dad who suffers from one of the child support enforcement system's endless and difficult to correct errors, or who is jailed because he cannot keep up with his payments. Or a dad who reaches old age impoverished because he lost everything he had in a divorce when he was middle-aged and did not have the time and the opportunity to earn it back.
"It's a shame," Dan says. "I always wanted to be a father and have a family. But unless the laws change and give fathers the same right to be a part of their children's lives as mothers have, it just isn't worth the risk."
Dianna Thompson is the founder and executive director of the American Coalition for Fathers and Children. She can be contacted by e-mail at DThompson2232@aol.com. Glenn Sacks writes about gender issues from the male perspective. He invites readers' comments at Glenn@GlennSacks.com.
Amen! Amen!
But, although the courts do seem to be stacked against the men, the blame cuts both ways. There are many lazy, immature women out there who put their stupid feelings ahead of the well-being of their children. Also, there are many immature men who marry for looks instead of searching for a woman of character. Often, people put more effort into deciding on what kind of car to buy than they invest in picking a mate.
Until our culture re-establishes marriage as a sacred commitment between a man and a woman that is to be preserved and nurtured, we are in a heap of trouble. And the biggest losers are not men or women but the children caught in the middle.
In one meeting I was in, she had the person who had had a clever idea for a brochure sitting in the room, while she went around the table asking every other person in the company to criticize the brochure. How does someone do that and not understand that it is evil to use position power to insist that people crap on their peers' work... in public and in front of the president of the company? I do not understand people like that. I'm sure the person who had that idea is never going to have another one.
After all I have written in this thread, for you to come back with that is the most disingenuous piece of crap imaginable. I should have listened to those who said your motives for being here were simply to disrupt and to make snide comments.
Discussing anything with you is a waste of time. There will be no more of it for me.
Of course you do. The courts call it "child support". In my case, there is no reason for my ex, making 40k, living in a one bedroom apartment in small town Ohio to be getting $940 a month from me. For one five year old child. Fifty percent of that money is alimony. And I pay the taxes on it. She receives it tax free. That's justice.
Did you get the house?
Replace "men" with "black" and see how it looks. Not pretty, is it?
Yes, and had to sell it (and give her half the profit) because I couldn't afford it on my own once the child support started coming out of me. I literally couldn't make the payment. And I can barely afford the rent I pay now. In a nutshell, after taxes, 401k contribution, health insurance and child support are deducted from my pay, I take home 37% of my gross. That's fair, huh. After all, I'm just a man.
No, I know for a fact that a great deal of it goes toward her legal bills. And so what if it's going into a college fund? That's not the point. And that's not what child support is supposed to be for.(BTW, I have a degree and value higher education, but a college fund should agreed to by both parents, regardless of their marital status).
Not at all...perhaps you should think about sueing for joint custody,I know, at least around here, that when both parents equally raise the child then no child-support changes hands.
In order to have joint custody, both parents have to live in or near the same school district for obvious reasons. She is now 70 miles from me, on back roads all the way. About all I have left is my job, and I need to hang on to it.
On the contrary, I have no faith in the system. It is corrupt and unconstitutional. The child support figure is based on the standard Franklin County formula. I've met men who have been hit harder than me.
That's like asking how the tax code was written. I have no idea. But I assume it would have to pass muster with the General Assembly.
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