The president of National Organization of Women (who hate men).
Posted on 07/31/2006 12:12:29 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.
The president of National Organization of Women (who hate men).
Or as Rush calls them: NAGS, the National Association of Gals.
NOW, now best known for its silence on Juanita Broderick.
All genders are equal, but some genders are more equal than others.
NOW has a plan.
The less dad's in the picture, the more dysfunctional the children.
The more dysfunctional the children, the more homosexuals.
The more militant homosexuals, the more NOW members.
It's their way of keeping membership up.
I think they're still lying, claiming they currently have 500,000 members.
Shared parenting is the default position of family law courts in every state I know of. It's written in case law and in day to day practice everywhere, and I believe often in statute.
Odd that they would oppose it so strongly, when their position has so little chance of prevailing.
The last numbers I heard (estimates, actually) were ~1/10 that number, or about 40,000-50,000. There are nurse's unions that represent more women.
That is a blatant untruth. Believe me, $40,000 into the batlle, I know what I'm talking about.
The conference, attended by all the members of NOW, was held in a booth at Tony's Pizzeria in the Bronx. The two fulltime members shared an extra-large Vegetarian Delight, and the associate member had a broccoli calzone. After the president spilled a second beer, the conference was adjourned so the members could go change into their dance flannels. But before they could get to Finger in the Dyke, the associate threw up in the cab, and the annual festivities were canceled.
However, not before several resolutions were passed, including items that
The conclave was to conclude with a bra-burning, but both the fulltime members kept stumbling over their breasts and setting the place on fire, until Tony finally had to kick them out.
A few years back, there was a renegade NOW chapter that was kicked out of the organization. I wish I could remember where they were, but they had a web page on which they claimed that the national organization had about (IIRC) 15,000 - 40,000 members total, of which many were non-paying "members" in name only.
What state is that? I would be interested in knowing. When I said it is the default position I didn't say it was the only position a court could take.
Ohio. The usual story here. Mom lies, kids go to Mom, Dad pays out the posterior.
That's what I remembered, too.
You don't understand the left -- Orwell did: "All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others."
It may well be the default position, but try getting a court to enforce it. That's an excercise in both futility and lawyer enrichment.
I'm more than $15k in on this, and can assure you, that even though my ex has brought nothing but her mouth to court, and I have provided the court with evidence, data, and everything else they'd want, it ultimately has not mattered. She continues to string it out, and bleed me dry.
NOW has never had a goal of granting equality to mere males. ;)
On "shared parenting" ... there has been a lot of progress on this, but a lot of work still lies ahead.
In my state of Virginia, it used to be that the courts would award custody to the mother's parents (if, e.g., she were an incarcerated, drug-addicted prostitute who was also mentlaly ill), rather than award custody to the father.
Some twenty years ago (I'm guessing), the state entered into a consent decree with the Attorney General of the U.S., that it would consider the best interests of the child, and not knee-jerk award children to the mother.
After this, courts would often re-award children to the father after the mother proved incapable of providing appropriate parenting to children, such as by neglecting them or abusing them. However, throughout much of the state, courts have yet to award the a child to the sole-custody of the father or even to issue a shared-custody award, in inital, contested cases.
In my jurisdiction, a few years ago, I became the first man to be awarded a share of custody in an initial, contested case. My lawyer in that case didn't think I had a chance, and was - from day 1 - preparing me to deal with the loss of custody.
Then, when I produced a prior court finding that the mother had neglected the children awarded to her from a prior marriage, and that she had serious personality defects, my lawyer thought I had maybe a fifty-fifty chance of winning shared custody.
(If I had known of the prejudices men face in court, I would have realized that this had to have been the case for the court to have taken custody away from that woman, and thought twice about marrying her, but ... hey, I and the children of that marriage survived.)
I can say that following my case, the local court has been somewhat open to the possibility of shared custody on the mere basis that both parents love the child or children involved, and neither is an incarcerated, drug-addicted prostitute and mentally-ill.
To all of my brothers and sisters, both adults and children, involved in custody disputes, my prayers are with you, that the best interests of the child (which almost always is to enjoy the love and support of both of their parents) will triumph over the disappointment and prejudice that so often is involved in these cases.
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