I would think a feminist who pushed the common law would be ignorant and the rest of the feral pack would square her away post haste. 
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.
Well. considering my ex is about to become his Fourth wife, I'm sure he would have quite a few tales to tell. I'm afraid the only thing we'll ever trade are punches, and that has to do with my five year old son.
Back in the fifties it was considered by most that the Chinese were really awful because they allowed abortions and the Soviets were really awful because they put their children into "nurseries." What direction are we going?
You don't pay a hooker for sex; you pay her to go away without a fuss afterwards.
-ccm
I would think a feminist who pushed the common law would be ignorant and the rest of the feral pack would square her away post haste.
Yes, and lots of sane people don't get married. The existence of the concept of marriage or the fact that it has been a popular tradition in our culture doesn't make it a good choice ipso facto.
Unrelated to that, I came up with a good summary of my marriage philosophy with one of my close (female) friends many years ago. A woman that is good enough for me to marry is a woman that I won't need to marry.
This doesn't mean that I'm opposed to marriage. What it means is that I eye with suspicion any woman who considers marriage as the goal of a relationship, as that strongly suggests fundamentally broken priorities on its face. A lot of guys have not thought about it this way, but they should. Marriage should be a quaint and pointless ritual that you engage in for the heck of it when you have a great relationship, it shouldn't be something that you actively are striving for. Marriage has no intrinsic value, and absent a good relationship, becomes a liability. Too many people get married to "prove" how good their relationship is, when a good relationship should be self-evident with or without marriage.
| It's true what you say but I've seen first hand...
If there were anything like a reasonable balance in these numbers, there would be far fewer divorces. If people thought they could lose their kids, "boredom" would not qualify as a reason to get a divorce. Neither would "I need to find out who I really am." Add the risk of heart-rending loss to these deliberations -- instead of the near-certainty of winning a free house -- and our fine feathered divorce attorneys would have a lot less to do. People would re-discover what human beings had known for thousands of years: that bad times come and bad times go and this is how life unfolds. You don't need to consult an attorney every time you feel bored. End the Free House Lotto and the divorce rate will take care of itself. Make it so you can't just win; you can lose, too. People gamble less often when loss is a possibility. |
Conspirator's Hierarchy : The Committee of 300 by Dr. John Coleman
Some highlights of the book: Nation states could either accept Club of Rome domination or else survive by the law of the jungle and fight to survive.These two links show how it was done in the music and drug scene:The Committee of 300 commissioned Cyrus Vance to write a paper on this subject of how best to bring about such genocide. The paper was produced under the title the "Global 2000 Report" and was accepted and approved for action by President Carter, for and on behalf of the U.S. Government, and accepted by Edwin Muskie, then Secretary of State.
Under the terms of the Global 2000 Report, the population of the United States is to be reduced by 100 million by the year 2050.
...
(10)To weaken the moral fiber of the nation and to demoralize workers in the labor class by creating mass unemployment. As jobs dwindle due to the post industrial zero growth policies introduced by the Club of Rome, demoralized and discouraged workers will resort to alcohol and drugs. The youth of the land will be encouraged by means of rock music and drugs to rebel against the status quo, thus undermining and eventually destroying the family unit. In this regard The Committee of 300 commissioned Tavistock Institute to prepare a blueprint as to how this could be achieved. Tavistock directed Stanford Research to undertake the work under the direction of Professor Willis Harmon. This work later became known as "The Aquarian Conspiracy." [See links below.]
...
Marriage shall be outlawed and there shall be no family life as we know it. Children will be removed from their parents at an early-age and brought up by wards as state property. Such an experiment was carried out in East Germany under Erich Honnecker when children were take away from parents considered by the state to be disloyal citizens. Women will he degraded through the continued process of "women's liberation" movements.
The "Age of Aquarius" and The "New World Order"
Full text of above link is here: THE AQUARIAN CONSPIRACY -- Font is too big but content is compelling. You can direct your browser to reduce font.
I wonder too. It is not a man-woman thing, it is that they are destroying the family with their 'kindness'.
Those are very realistic numbers.
That's one of them thar biological difference thingies. It would never occur to most men that anyone would consider noticing what they wore a form of "attentiveness."
If you had a big enough lie detector, you could probably get 99% of married men to admit that they have lost track of their wives in a grocery store and suddenly realized they they do not know what she has on that day.
We process only enough visual information to determine that that thing moving around over there is not a threat. What it has on, or whether it just got a haircut, is not something we need to know. So we don't.
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We can all recount anecdotes. We've all seen the one where yada yada happened. Enough with the one-off examples, OK? We push a million couples through the divorce mill, and 897,000 times the woman ended up with the house and the kids. The next woman contemplating divorce now knows she has an 89.7% chance of ending up with the house and the kids. This drastically lowers the level of dissatisfaction necessary to produce an actual divorce.