Posted on 07/31/2006 12:01:58 PM PDT by PercivalWalks
The National Organization for Women turned 40 this summer, and formally celebrated its anniversary at its national conference in July. NOW President Kim Gandy has proudly recounted her organization's successes in opening up opportunities for women, and says they are “never giving up the dream of full equality for all.”
Unfortunately, on some issues – particularly in family law and child custody – NOW's policies and actions contradict its ideals of “full equality for all.” This is most evident in the group's dogged opposition to joint custody and shared parenting.
The logic behind shared parenting is hard to dispute. Kids love, want and need both their parents. When divorcing parents cannot agree on custody arrangements, as long as both parents are fit, they should both be allowed to share in parenting their children. Not surprisingly, research shows that children of divorce fare better under joint custody – where they spend significant amounts of time with each parent – than under sole custody.
NOW and its co-thinkers, to their credit, once encouraged fathers, fathering and shared parenting. In 1971 Gloria Steinem wrote that children suffer from having “too little father” in their lives, and that a more equal balance of parenting was needed. Karen DeCrow, president of NOW from 1974 to 1977, says “it was clear from the feminist writings and ideas of the '60s and '70s that joint custody was what we supported after a divorce.”
Fathers have embraced the call for more father involvement. Despite an ever-expanding work week, children today benefit from receiving more hands-on fathering than ever before. The Families and Work Institute found that fathers now provide three-fourths as much child care as mothers do – 50 percent more than 30 years ago.
Paradoxically, while fathers are more directly involved in their children's lives than ever, their bonds with their children are also more fragile. In the late 1970s NOW reversed itself and began promoting sole custody in divorce cases. In most divorces mothers are awarded sole (or de facto sole) custody of the children, and most post-divorce parenting time schedules offer fathers and children less than 20 percent physical time together.
Men who don't provide for their families are not respected, yet family courts treat fathers who have worked hard to support their families like absent parents whose bonds with their children merit limited consideration. DeCrow rightly denounces this practice as “sexist” and “inhuman.”
Along with divorce attorneys, NOW is the largest organized group fighting shared parenting legislation. It has issued numerous warnings, including one that says fathers' groups seeking joint custody laws are “using the abuse of power in order to control in the same fashion as do batterers.” In their statements the words “husband” and “father” are generally preceded by the word “abusive.”
Using these scare tactics, NOW has blocked shared parenting bills in several states this year, including New York and Michigan. Yet as even feminist firebrand Martha Burk notes, “With close to half of all marriages ending in divorce, it's impossible to believe that the majority of divorcing fathers are violent, and it would be wrong to base public policy on the notion that they are.”
Over the past four decades America has come a long way in redressing the grievances of disadvantaged groups, including women, African-Americans, Latinos and gays. The most glaring civil rights violations in America today are those suffered by divorced dads, many of whom have been pushed out of their children's lives without justification. It's time for NOW to re-examine its misguided stand against shared parenting, and to bring its policies into line with its stated ideals.
This article appeared in the New York Daily News (7/27/06), the San Diego Union-Tribune (7/7/06) and others.
Mike McCormick is the Executive Director of the American Coalition for Fathers and Children, the world’s largest shared parenting organization. Their website is www.acfc.org.
Glenn Sacks' columns on men's and fathers' issues have appeared in dozens of America's largest newspapers. Glenn can be reached via his website at www.GlennSacks.com or via email at Glenn@GlennSacks.com.
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Thanks,
IIRC, the membership of NOW is majority lesbian. They couldn't care less what normal women want.
This well-meaning statement is wrong and harmful to the goal of this article, which I agree with totally.
When fathers are pushed out of their children's lives for no good reason, it is NOT the fathers who suffer the most; IT IS THE CHILDREN!! PARTICULARLY BOYS!!!!!
NOW has become an evil organization because they harm children, not because they are against men. Yes, the second leads to the first, but the end result is where the focus needs to be.
The problem is that feminism means (or at least used to mean) the doctrine of legal equality between the genders. NOW is no longer stasified with that.
They also had a large drop in support when they supported Bill Clinton during the Lewinsky scandal.
Until the real problems of power imbalance in divorce law are addressed, specifically an end to no-fault divorce without the consent of both parties and a more realistic scheme of child-support payments, this issue is superficial. Many times the statistics about women being awarded custody more often than men are used as an example of victimization by men's equity groups regardless of the fact that the figure is skewed by the greater number of men than women who abandon a spouse with children and willingly cede custody to the mom.
What one rarely hears about in these "poor me" diatribes from the males is why the marriage broke up, because the no-fault system insulates amoral marriage partners from any penalty for adultery, addiction, financial or physical exploitation, abandonment or other behaviors that are toxic to a marriage. This indemnification from harm for breaking a fundamental contract to the child's (and caretaking spouse's) future and well-being is the problem.
A presumption of joint custody enables the serial philanderer to have a child with one mate and then indignantly sue for the right to have the child partially raised by the successive spouse(s) or live-ins and their relatives, all of whom probably have different values than a steadfast parent who did not cheat during the marriage. I am speaking of the high-end professional couple, where one spouse uses money and power as weapons against the abandoned spouse, harming the children.
"...amoral marriage partners ... for adultery, addiction, financial or physical exploitation, abandonment or other behaviors that are toxic to a marriage..."
In case after case there are women who are guilty of the above "behaviors" yet they can go to divorce court confident of getting primary physical custody of children "of a tender age". They can also be confident that the man will pay them tax free "child support" which they can use any way they want.
The realm of cheating, drinking, and scamming is now, as often as not, found on the feminine side of the marriage.
You are too funny!
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