Have Anti-Father Family Court Policies Led to a Men's Marriage Strike?

Kathleen is attractive, successful, witty, and educated. She also can't find a husband. Why? Because most of the men this thirty-something 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."

The US marriage rate has dipped 40% over the past four decades, to its lowest point ever. 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 which is 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 Kathleen, and has two children. There is a 50% likelihood that this marriage will end in divorce within eight years, and if it does the odds are two to one that it will be Kathleen, 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 Kathleen joint legal custody, the odds are overwhelming that it is Kathleen, not Dan, who will win physical custody. Over night 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 7 days with his own children.

Once divorced, odds are at least even that Dan's ex-wife will interfere with his visitation rights. Three-quarters of divorced men surveyed say their ex-wives have interfered with their visitation, and 40% 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.

Kathleen 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 Kathleen 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% or 80% 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."

There is a 50% likelihood that this marriage will end in divorce within eight years, and if it does the odds are two to one that it will be Kathleen, not Dan, who initiates the divorce.

If this statement is true, it means there is only a 1 in 3 chance that Dan will be divorced with Kathleen as the initiator. He's got a 1 in 2 chance of an enduring marriage. I'm on my second marriage, and so far it has been well worth the risk. Even considering that I had to get through a horrid first marriage to get to the good second marriage.

"Dan" is a wuss or innumerate. Or, more likely, a homer-simpsonesque moron who no intelligent, educated, attractive woman would consider marrying and his "marriage strike" is pure sour grapes.

Life is a risky proposition, still, it beats the alternative hands down.

Some of us old people were around in the 60s' and early 70s' when the femanatzis declared that monigemous marrige was prostitution,

It depresses me how much of the evil crap those people sowed has taken root. What is all this business about "Why buy the cow?" if not a description of marriage as prostitution? Do these people really think that, or is that one of those Officially Approved Profound Statements that people use to avoid discussion of these issues?

The "buy the cow" argument is also one of the dumbest things I've ever heard. There was no shortage of pre-marital sex in the 1970's, or the 1960's, and probably not in the 1950's. Certainly not in the 1920's. In spite of that, most people in those generations got married. Nobody talked about men staging a "marriage strike" back then. That the current situation is caused by the free availability of sex is pure BS.

I don't doubt that if you ask 1,000 random young men why they're not married, you're going to hear a lot of "Why should I? I can get laid without it." But that's them dismissing you; that's not a real answer. Men have able to get laid without getting married for millions of years. Marriage is about something else.

One of the "something else's" is children. A man can have no reasonable expectation in this society that he can live in the same house with his children. It is an everyday occurence now that some man hears from The Black Robe that he has just become a visitor in his childrens' lives, by order of the court. What kind of deal is that? Why would anyone knowingly walk into that? Can there be anything more gut-wrenching than to have your children taken away from you? What kind of deal is this "marriage" stuff if that can happen?

The other "something else" is commitment. Half the young people today grew up themselves with divorce. They know there is no such thing as commitment. Those who grew up as boys also know that there is no place in a "family" for an adult male. A "family" is a Mommy and her kids. That's what their family was. That's what all the families around them were. When push comes to shove, they will be treated as disposable because they are men, and they know it. Nobody can convince these guys that everything will be just fine if they find the "right woman." What was their mother, the "wrong" woman? No... it can happen no matter what, and they know it. And they don't want it to happen to them.

These are perfectly human responses to actual events. These young men don't believe in commitment -- they've seen with their own eyes that there's no such thing -- and they don't want to have children if all that's going to happen is that they'll be taken away. Is any of this humanity honored, or even understood? No. What we hear is that they're not getting married because they are immature, or because the only reason men ever got married was for sex. It's just more damned dehumanizing of men, which is the other legacy of those 1960's bitches. That someone might not want to have children, bond with them, love them, and then have them wrenched away because they themselves have the wrong plumbing to suit some jerk in a black robe, just doesn't seem to register with some people.

Listen to this crap. "We can control them with sex. All we have to do is stop giving it away." Talk about dehumanizing the other half of the population.

I got some woman on my case right now because I called her spade a spade when she suggested that women not "give it away for free." What did she have in mind... charging for it? Probably not money.. at least not until the divorce. No, she was talking about trading sex for marriage proposals. Same damned thing: I have this, you want it, I want that, you have it, let's make a deal.

Whatever happened to forming families and raising children? I'm listening to these people talk about arranged marriages in Korea and I'm thinking,... "maybe not such a bad idea. At least they 'get' what it's about."

It seems like half the people on this thread are talking about sex as a form of currency. Trade it for this, trade it for that. If he won't propose, take it away. Talk about cheapening themselves. It reminds me of the old joke... now we're just haggling over the price.

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