Young men are running from marriage

Rolling on the floor laoughing.

For some thirty years now a quiet revolution has been waged throughout the
Western world. Most people are now familiar with the social consequences of
the divorce explosion: the growth of single-parent homes and massive
increase in fatherless children. The Pandora's box of social problems this
has released has also reached general awareness. Virtually every major
personal and social pathology can be traced to fatherlessness more than to
any other single factor: violent crime, substance abuse, unwed pregnancy,
truancy, suicide, and more. Fatherlessness far surpasses both poverty and
race as a predictor of social deviance.

These problems are alarming enough in themselves. What is seldom appreciated
is that they are also responsible for a vast expansion in the power and
reach of the state. In fact, so is divorce itself. In contrast to its social
fallout, the political consequences of divorce are hardly understood at all,
yet they may ultimately be the most destructive.

The result of three decades of unrestrained divorce is that huge numbers of
people - many of them government officials - now have a vested professional
and financial interest in encouraging it. Divorce today is not simply a
phenomenon; it is a regime - a vast bureaucratic empire that permeates
national and local governments, with hangers-on in the private sector. In
the United States divorce and custody comprise over half of civil
litigation, constituting the cash cow of the judiciary and bringing
employment and earnings to a host of public and private officials, including
judges, lawyers, psychotherapists, mediators, counsellors, social workers,
child support enforcement agents, and others.

This growth industry derives from the impact of divorce on children. The
divorce revolution has spawned a public-private industrial complex of legal,
social service, and psychotherapeutic professionals devoted to the problems
of children, and especially children in single-parent homes. Many are women
with feminist leanings. Whatever pieties they may voice about the plight of
fatherless, poor, and violent children, the fact remains that these
practitioners have a vested interest in creating as many such children as
possible. The way to do it is to remove the fathers.

It is commonplace today that fathers are disadvantaged in divorce courts
everywhere when it comes to child custody. In today's political jargon we
attribute this to 'discrimination' and 'gender bias'. But this does not
convey the half of it. Divorce courts and their huge entourage of personnel
depend for their existence on broken, single-parent homes. The first
principle of family court is therefore: remove the father. So long as
fathers remain with their families, the divorce practitioners earn nothing.
This is why the first thing a family court does when it summons a father on
a divorce petition - even if he has done nothing wrong and not agreed to the
divorce - is to strip him of custody of his children. While mothers also
fall afoul of divorce courts, fathers are their principal rivals.

Once the father is eliminated, the state functionally replaces him as
protector and provider. By removing the father, the state also creates a
host of problems for itself to solve: child poverty, child abuse, juvenile
crime, and other problems associated with single-parent homes. In this way,
the divorce machinery is self-perpetuating and self-expanding. Involuntary
divorce is a marvelous tool that allows for the infinite expansion of
government power.

No-fault divorce is the middle-class equivalent of public assistance,
creating single-parent homes among the affluent as welfare did among the
poor. In the United States, where the trend began, all the major
institutions of the divorce industry were originally created as ancillary to
welfare: juvenile/family courts, child support enforcement, child protection
services. No-fault divorce extended these 'services' to the middle class
because that was where the money was, and with it political power.

Like welfare, divorce involving children is almost wholly female-driven.
Though governments invariably claim that fathers 'abandon' their children,
there is no evidence this is true, nor even that fathers agree to most
divorces. Cautious scholars like Sanford Braver of Arizona State University
consistently find that at least two-thirds of divorces are filed by women,
usually with no legal grounds. Yet lawyers and feminists report much higher
proportions. Shere Hite, the popular researcher on female sexuality, found
'ninety-one percent of women who have divorced say they made the decision to
divorce, not their husbands.'

This is hardly surprising, given the almost irresistible emotional and
financial incentives the industry offers mothers to divorce, including
automatic custody plus windfall child support and other financial rewards,
regardless of any fault on their part. A Canadian/American research team
found that 'who gets the children is by far the most important component in
deciding who files for divorce.' What we call 'divorce' has in effect become
a kind of legalised parental kidnapping.

Once the father loses custody, he becomes in many ways an outlaw and subject
to plunder by a variety of officials. His contact with his own children
becomes criminalised in that he can be arrested if he tries to see them
outside of authorised times and places. Unlike anyone else, he can be
arrested for running into his children in a public place such as the zoo or
church. In the United States fathers are arrested for telephoning their
children when they are not authorised or for sending them birthday cards.
Fathers are routinely summoned to court and subjected to questioning about
their private lives. Their personal papers, bank accounts, and homes must be
opened and surrendered to government officials. Anything a father has said
to his spouse or children can be used against him in court. His personal
habits, movements, conversations, purchases, and his relationship with his
own children are all subject to inquiry and control by the court.

Despite prohibitions on incarceration for debt, a father can be jailed
without trial for failure to pay not only child support but the fees of
lawyers and psychotherapists he has not hired. A judge can summon a legally
unimpeachable citizen who is minding his own business and order him to turn
over his earnings or go to jail.

As the logic of involuntary divorce plays itself out, divorce is forced on
not only one parent but both. Mothers are not only enticed into divorce with
financial incentives, in other words; they are being pressured into it by
threats against their children. Last year, Heidi Howard was ordered by the
Massachusetts Department of Social Services to divorce her husband or lose
her children, although authorities acknowledged neither parent had been
violent. When she refused, the social workers seized her children and
attempted to terminate the couple's parental rights. Massachusetts News
reporter Nev Moore says such cases are common in Massachusetts.

Family law is now criminalising rights as basic as free speech and freedom
of the press. In many jurisdictions it is a crime to criticise family court
judges or otherwise discuss family law cases publicly. Under the pretext of
'family privacy', parents are gagged from publicly disclosing how government
officials have seized control of their children. In Australia it is a crime
for a litigant to speak publicly concerning family courts, even without
mentioning specific cases.

In Australia, the US, and Britain, family courts have closed web sites
operated by fathers' groups. Britain, Australia, and Canada have all
resurrected archaic laws prohibiting the criticism of judges in order to
prosecute fathers' groups. In the United States judges cannot be sued, but
they can sue citizens who criticise them. The confiscation of property can
also be used to criminalise political opinions. Following his testimony to
the US Congress critical of the family courts, Jim Wagner of the Georgia
Council for Children's Rights was stripped of custody of his two children
and ordered to pay $6,000 in the fees of attorneys he had not hired. When he
could not pay, he was arrested.

The swelling hysteria over 'domestic violence' appears fomented largely for
similar ends. 'All of this domestic violence industry is about trying to
take children away from their fathers,' writes Irish Times columnist John
Waters. 'When they've taken away the fathers, they'll take away the mothers.
' Donna Laframboise of Canada's National Post investigated battered women's
shelters and concluded they constituted 'one stop divorce shops', whose
purpose was not to protect women but to promote divorce. These shelters,
often federally funded, issue affidavits against fathers sight-unseen that
are accepted without corroborating evidence by judges to justify removing
their children. Special domestic violence courts in Canada can now remove
fathers from their homes and seize their houses on a mere allegation of
domestic violence.

Divorce, not violence, is also behind the explosion of restraining orders,
which are routinely issued without evidence of wrongdoing, separating
fathers from their children and homes. Almost 90% of judicial magistrates in
New South Wales acknowledged that protective orders were used in divorce -
often on the advice of a solicitor - to deprive fathers of access to their
children. Elaine Epstein, former president of the Massachusetts Women's Bar
Association, writes that restraining orders are doled out 'like candy.'
'Everyone knows that restraining orders and orders to vacate are granted to
virtually all who apply,' and 'the facts have become irrelevant,' she
reports.

Fathers are further criminalised through child-support burdens, which
constitute the financial fuel of the divorce machinery, underwriting
unilateral divorce and giving everyone involved further incentives to remove
children from their fathers. Government claims of unpaid child support
constitute one of the most dishonest and destructive hoaxes ever foisted on
the public. In a US government-funded study, Sanford Braver discovered that
most fathers pay fully and on time and that 'estimated' arrearages are
derived not from official records but from surveys of mothers. Braver's
findings have never been refuted by any official or scholar. Yet ever-more
draconian 'crackdowns' and arrests continue.

Last summer Liberty magazine published documentary evidence that 'deadbeat
dads' are largely the creation of civil servants and law-enforcement agents
with an interest in giving themselves criminals to prosecute. In most
jurisdictions, child support guidelines are set by enforcement personnel,
the equivalent of the police making the laws. These officials can separate
children from their fathers, impose impossible child support obligations,
and then jail fathers who inevitably fail to pay.

Child support trials operate on a presumption of guilt, where 'the burden of
proof may be shifted to the defendant,' according to the US National
Conference of State Legislatures, which favours aggressive prosecutions.
Contrary to Common Law and the US Constitution, courts have ruled that 'not
all child-support contempt proceedings classified as criminal are entitled
to a jury trial,' and 'even indigent obligors are not necessarily entitled
to a lawyer.' Thus impoverished parents who lose their children through
literally 'no fault' of their own are the only defendants who must prove
their innocence without counsel and without a jury of their peers.

Cases like Darrin White of British Columbia are the result. With no evidence
of wrongdoing, White was denied all contact with his children, evicted from
his home, and ordered to pay more than twice his income as child and spousal
support, plus court costs for a divorce he never agreed to. White hanged
himself from a tree. 'There is nothing unusual about this judgement,' said a
British Columbia Supreme Court Judge, who pointed out that the judge applied
standard support guidelines.

Fathers driven to suicide by family courts are acknowledged by officials in
Canada, Australia, and Britain. A suicide epidemic has been documented by
Augustine Kposowa of the University of California in the Journal of
Epidemiology and Community Health. Kposowa attributes his finding directly
to family court judgements, though media reports of his study emphasised
fathers' lack of 'support networks'.

Why is so little opposition heard? Though the conservative media are waking
up, the silence of conservative politicians is deafening, given that every
prophecy about the dangers of judicial activism, bureaucratic
aggrandizement, and ideological extremism is vindicated in the war on
fathers. What is perhaps most diabolical about the divorce industry is its
ability to co-opt so many people, including its critics. By creating
problems to be solved - and then dispensing government money to solve them -
the machine gives everyone an interest in fatherless children. Even critics
develop a stake in having something to criticise.

In Canada and the US, domestic violence legislation dispenses a gravy train
of federal money to the states/provinces and localities. This is often
earmarked with appeals to 'law enforcement', though the effect is to divert
it from the prosecution of criminals to the prosecution of fathers.
Likewise, child support enforcement is propelled by federal payments
rewarding local governments for each dollar collected, filling local coffers
and giving officials an incentive to squeeze revenue from (after they have
forced divorce on) as many fathers as they can find.

Especially questionable are government enterprises to 'promote fatherhood',
which disperse grants to local governments and organizations ostensibly to
'reunite fathers with their children'. Yet they are premised on first
separating them from one another. What is advertised as a program to
facilitate 'access and visitation' means supervised contact centers, where
fathers must pay to see their children in institutions. 'Encouraging good
fathering' means state-sponsored television advertisements with actors
depicting fathers abandoning their children. One American state receives
federal money to implement 'Five Principles of Fatherhood', including: 'give
affection to my children' and 'demonstrate respect at all times to the
mother of my children'. One cannot help but wonder what penalties the state
will bring to bear on fathers who fail to show sufficient 'affection' and
'respect'.

Involuntary divorce is the instrument not simply of tyrannical judges,
unscrupulous lawyers, and doctrinaire feminists, but of a new political
class whose interest is to subject the private corners of life to state
control. Two conservative scholars recently argued in the Journal of
Political Economy that the vast expansion of governmental machinery during
the twentieth century proceeded largely from women acquiring the vote.
Women, far more than men, voted to create the welfare state. But: 'Why would
men and women have differing political interests?' ask John Lott and Larry
Kenny. 'If there were no divorces . . . the interests of men and women would
appear to be closely linked together.' The premise of their question invites
the answer: 'As divorce or desertion rates rise, more women will be saddled
with the costs of raising the children.' Conservatives have accepted the
feminist argument that the arm of the state is a necessary defensive shield
to protect women from the costs of divorce, attributed to male desertion.
But male desertion is not a major cause of divorce. The welfare state and
expansive government therefore are not defenses against divorce but
preconditions for it. Divorce is a political weapon and an offensive one at
that, promoted by the same bureaucratic and ideological interests that are
undermining and politicising fatherhood and expanding the power and reach of
the state to deal with the consequences.

What then can check the march of the unilateral divorce machine?

One theme of intellectuals who dissented from the ideological-bureaucratic
dictatorships of eastern Europe was 'nonpolitical politics': to oppose
ideology not with contrary ideology but with non-ideology, to resist
politicisation by re-creating the ordinary business of 'civil society' and
private life. If any group should adopt this philosophy today, it is
fathers. For all the effort to 'restore fatherhood' through programs like
Fathers Direct, ultimately the only ones who can restore fatherhood are, of
course, fathers themselves. Almost by definition, fathers alone can truly
'save the children' by re-creating the family with themselves in it.

In so doing, fathers may also hold the potential to start redeeming a
political culture that for thirty years has been sinking into the mire of
permanent rebellion. Their current plight indicates how far the divorce
'revolution' has brought us all into a brave new quasi-Freudian world where
not only traditional institutions are attacked and brought low, but so now
are private individuals, simply because they hold the most basic position of
human authority, the head of a family. Whether they are up to the challenge
remains to be seen.

Stephen Baskerville is a Professor in the Department of Political Science,
Howard University, Washington DC.

Good point. Why give up assets in marriage when you can have it all otherwise?

"But if you look in the aggregate, men are withdrawing from family life in various ways," says Popenoe. "Men are delaying marriage longer.

Thank NOW and divorce lawyers. Hope women like being 'liberated'

Yes. As I just told another poster (and am expecting flames any second), much of the angry wave of feminism circa 1960s was a result of the no-fault divorce, wherein men who had worked and had money dumped their long-time home-making wives (who had married them under the timeless assumption that he would provide for her all her life and in return, she would tend his home and bear and rear his children.)

I am not going to flame you, but you do have your facts wrong. Like many of the more detrimental societal trends to afflict our country, California was the first state to pass a "no-fault" divorce law - in 1970. "No fault" divorce was an outgrowth of the feminist movement, which saw existing divorce laws that required proving grounds for divorce as favoring the husband (after all, he could afford the better attorney, investigators, etc.)

This must have been caused by the homosexual agenda somehow.

We hold secret meetings in women's restrooms. Why do you think we go there in groups?

HEY! Loose lips sink ships!

There is always abortion and ru 486, in the 3% of cases where an inconvenient life is created.

You go too far. People naturally pair off if there is attraction, but when did men have to look like GQ models to be condidered attractive? When did everyone need to be tall, tanned and buff? Its very un-masculine if you ask me. What about honor, hardwork and character- are they not attractive?
You think J-Lo will make a good mother and companion? Give me a break
I find modesty and grooming more attractive than some tramp on TV.

Looks like another meeting of the FR he-man, real man women haters club has convened.

They're so unsubtle about it.

The lives of children have become "more turbulent, insecure, and anxiety-filled" as a result of this loose-jointed relationship between their parents, and they face more than twice the risk of social and behavioral problems.

But it is the 20-something children who are the victims, in my view. They are the ones who had "turbulent, insecure and anxiety-filled" childhoods because of feminism, liberalism, abortion-on-demand, values-neutral television and if-it-feels-good-do-it sex education. They are the ones weaned on ritalin and now graduated to prozac. If these men (and a great many women too) seem unable to cope with starting or raising a family, it's simply a bi-product of what *their* parents have handed down to them. Is anyone surprised?

But don't blame this all on men. If there is a great deal of promiscuity, why should men get all the blame? If marriage seems to more men like a legal "trap", why should men get all the blame? Aren't they just responding to what the pop culture and Hollywood preaches to them? Sex without responsibility - does that sound like something these guys just invented or is it something that has been drilled into them?

Of course, there are some worthless slackers out there and some Clinton-like slugs who care nothing for the woman they are with other than what they can get out of them for that night. I'm not exonerating them. But I will declare that these men weren't raised in a vacuum. They're responding to the world they've been told is out there.

Singapore does what you say.

Seems to be the trend here on FR. Personally, I think it is 100% the fault of the person who "did it or didn't do it."

My niece told me, she is all messed up because of her dad. I told her, she is 21 now, and if she is capable of seeing there is something wrong with her, she is capable of making the decision to "fix it." BTW, we are talking here about irresponsible behavior (and unlawful behavior in her case).

If these "boys" ever decide to grow up, they have no one to blame but themselves, if "all the good ones are gone."

Hmmm.... you have 4 cats too, eh? Well, if your luck is anything like mine, within the year you'll find a handsome young man from a nice family in Peoria who likes fossils, alternative country, canoeing... and is allergic to cats.

It's working out pretty well so far, but he does have sneezing fits sometimes.

Looks like marriage isn't the only thing that is down:

U.S. BIRTH RATE REACHES RECORD LOW
Births to Teens Continue 12-Year Decline; Cesarean Deliveries Reach All-Time High

The U.S. birth rate fell to the lowest level since national data have been available, reports the latest Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) birth statistics released today by HHS Secretary Tommy G. Thompson. Secretary Thompson also noted that the rate of teen births fell to a new record low, continuing a decline that began in 1991.

The birth rate was 13.9 per 1,000 persons in 2002, a decline of 1 percent from the rate of 14.1 per 1,000 in 2001 and down 17 percent from the recent peak in 1990 (16.7 per 1,000), according to a new CDC report, "Births: Preliminary Data for 2002." The current low birth rate primarily reflects the smaller proportion of women of childbearing age in the U.S. population, as baby boomers age and Americans are living longer.

There has also been a recent downturn in the birth rate for women in the peak childbearing ages. Birth rates for women in their 20s and early 30s were generally down while births to older mothers (35-44) were still on the rise. Rates were stable for women over 45.

Birth rates among teenagers were down in 2002, continuing a decline that began in 1991. The birth rate fell to 43 births per 1,000 females 15-19 years of age in 2002, a 5-percent decline from 2001 and a 28-percent decline from 1990. The decline in the birth rate for younger teens, 15-17 years of age, is even more substantial, dropping 38 percent from 1990 to 2002 compared to a drop of 18 percent for teens 18-19.

"The reduction in teen pregnancy has clearly been one of the most important public health success stories of the past decade," Secretary Thompson said. "The fact that this decline in teen births is continuing represents a significant accomplishment."

More than one fourth of all children born in 2002 were delivered by cesarean; the total cesarean delivery rate of 26.1 percent was the highest level ever reported in the United States. The number of cesarean births to women with no previous cesarean birth jumped 7 percent and the rate of vaginal births after previous cesarean delivery dropped 23 percent. The cesarean delivery rate declined during the late 1980s through the mid-1990s but has been on the rise since 1996.

Among other significant findings:

In 2002, there were 4,019,280 births in the United States, down slightly from 2001 (4,025,933).
The percent of low birthweight babies (infants born weighing less than 2,500 grams) increased to 7.8 percent, up from 7.7 percent in 2001 and the highest level in more than 30 years. In addition, the percent of preterm births (infants born at less than 37 weeks of gestation) increased slightly over 2001, from 11.9 percent to 12 percent.
More than one-third of all births were to unmarried women. The birth rate for unmarried women was down slightly in 2002 to 43.6 per 1,000 unmarried women, reflecting the growing number of unmarried women in the population.
Access to prenatal care continued a slow and steady increase. In 2002, 83.8 percent of women began receiving prenatal care in the first trimester of pregnancy, up from 83.4 percent in 2001 and 75.8 percent in 1990.

Data on births are based on information reported on birth certificates filed in state vital statistics offices and reported to CDC through the National Vital Statistics System. The report is available on CDC's National Center for Health Statistics web site at www.cdc.gov/nchs.

I disagree-Men are men and have almost the same expectations as always- women have changed.

You deny the existence of no-fault divorce?

Ah! I *do* have 4 cats! LOL!!!! Finding a good man is really hard. The creepy ones are easy.

MY cats are better company than men. I don't have to stop and explain what I'm talking about to them constantly, or define my vocabulary. The last guy I dated was an engineer, and it was like running school constantly, explaining to this guy what words meant, what history something referred to...that the words enumerate and remunerate DO NOT mean the same thing.

Actually, true condon effectiveness is only at 60% now.

Try finding love with 4 cats, boy, you weed 'em out quick, let me tell ya.

My screen name aside, cats are acually a common basis on which men do their own weeding.
Pets can be cool, but any maternal transference over pets is a red flag so big a permit should be required.
Letting pets sleep in the bed is another one.

I don't deny it. But it has no benefit to men than extortion. Don't know many women who pay alimony, child-support or receive custody of children.

Looks like marriage isn't the only thing that is down:

U.S. BIRTH RATE REACHES RECORD LOWBirths to Teens Continue 12-Year Decline; Cesarean Deliveries Reach All-Time High

U.S. BIRTH RATE REACHES RECORD LOW
Births to Teens Continue 12-Year Decline; Cesarean Deliveries Reach All-Time High