Reuniting Father's With Their Families

Strike the Root ^ | 3/18/02 | Stuart A. Miller and Rich Zubaty

[The Giant Apricots]

In the county where I live it's almost automatic for the mother to be given custody in a divorce case.

Sadly, true in the United States.

[The Giant Apricots]

We have learned to accept women as sole head of the household and we are reaping the harvest.

So, let's unlearn it. Reinstate fatherhood.

[The Giant Apricots]

Now let me guess. It's all the women's fault. The men would be wonderful fathers but the mothers won't let them.

Hyperbolic sarcasm does not a good argument make.

1. There are fathers who abdicate their responsibilities.

2. However, there are even more fathers who indeed, have every interest in parenting but "the mothers won't let them".

I acknowledge #1; do you acknowledge #2?

And the point of father's rights groups is that systemic sexism in the court system and the legislatures subsidizes and promotes #2, and thus makes it the prevailing case.

[The Giant Apricots]

The fallacies and steretypes in your post are legion. ---I don't know why people believe that only mothers get custody. It's simply not true.

It's true in 85-90% of cases, by every relliable statistical measure. Just change "only" to "in vast majority part".

---If the mother has done all the child-rearing, and then gets a support order, and then all of a sudden the man wants custody, it's going to look like he just wants out of child support.

One of the most anti-father myths is that when a father files for custody, he just wants out of child support. Most fathers are not so heartless. They love their kids, and want to raise them.

---On the other hand, if the father acted like Mr. Mom before the two split up, he's got a very good shot at custody, split custody, or shared custody.

It's sexist to use the appelation "Mr. Mom". There are two million stay at home fathers. They are not imiation mothers; they are primary caregiver fathers.

---Most men are satisfied with visitation, at most.

Type in the phrase "father's rights", including quotation marks, at http://www.google.com or visit http://www.fathermag.com or http://www.glennjsacks.com of http://www.dadi.org or a thousand thousand other father's rights websites, all of which strongly dispute your contention that "most men are satisfied" with being reduced to being visitors in the lives of their own children.

[The Giant Apricots]

Good poem.

[The Giant Apricots]

The problem is that he has the burden of proof and is not on equal footing with the "hallowed" mother.

Good point. I've seen too many welfare mamas treating their kids like unloved chattel to place any stock in the "hallowed motherhood" stuff.

[The Giant Apricots]

Even if one were to accept your man hating version of reality at face value, the data is irrefutable - women are generally failures at raising kids alone.

An accurate statement.

[The Giant Apricots]

The burden of proof is on those seeking to diminish a protected right (to parent). Roles assumed during a marriage have little to do with the capability to adapt to a split.

Well said. Now get some laws, binding upon the family courts, passed!!!

[The Giant Apricots]

If the parents split up, believe that joint legal custody is best, and that the children should spend as much time as possible with both parents.

Too often, courts interpret "the bests interests of the child" as being equal to "the best interests ofthe mother".

[IronJack]

American Fathers Coalition is a fine, energetic organization fighting a juggernaut of public opinion and systemic apathy on behalf of disenfranchised fathers. Studies and common sense tell us that a loving, caring father is as necessary to a child's well-being as proper food and shelter. Yet the system regularly denies dads all but the most casual contact with their own offspring, while sending them the bill for their upbringing.

Please consider supporting this group and their determined, noble effort.

[The Giant Apricots]

1. Talk about how babies are made honestly. Never, ever mention a baby, pregnacy, childbirth, children without including some reference to BOTH people who co-created a new person.___2. Don't ever say a child is "fatherless" unless you know for a fact the father is dead. No child is "fatherless". ___3. Say NO to all forms of anonymous procreation. All people should have full access to the full indentity of BOTH of their parents. ___4. Acknowledge that the parent who is a.w.o.l. is abdicating his/her obligation to the child. Don't place all "blame" on the parent who is present and accounted for.___5. Insist in all your conversations that fathers are equally important as mothers. Never make one out to be more important than the other.___6. Never imply that fatherhood is "optional" regardless of the circumstances of a child's conception. Insist that all people who co-create children have an OBLIGATION to that child. No exceptions, no excuses, no whining.

I agree with all of that. But with the OBLIGATION comes the RIGHT to parent. Caps off.

[The Giant Apricots]

Men certainly are better at parenting alone than are women.

To be technically accurate, this should read "Men are less likely to have societally problematic children when parenting alone than are women".

However, the kids would still be missing something by virtue of maternal absence, just as they would be in a single-mom house in the case of paternal absence.Thus the need for a judicially-binding presumption (rebuttable under strict scrutiny standards) for joint residential custody.

The feminist deconstruction of the essentiality of fatherhood is the worst crime of our times.

[CobaltBlue]

I have heard that courts favor mothers, but I don't think that's true.

When my own parents split up, in 1967 (really showing my age here), my father filed for custody and won. I love my mother, but I think the court made the right decision. My dad was better at being the primary parent. The court did not seem biased in favor of my mother.

I've been handling custody cases (not the only thing I do, by a long shot) since 1990. Due to my own upbringing, I don't care whether I represent men or women, I just care whether my client really has the best interests of the children in mind.

Based on my own experience, I do not believe that courts are biased in favor of, or against, either sex.

I do believe that courts are biased in favor of the status quo, if it is working. I think they have an "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" mentality.

And, truth be told, more mothers than fathers act as the primary caretaker before the parties split up.

So, I think the judge looks at the history of the parties, and says, well, if the parties thought the mother should be the primary caretaker prior to the split-up, why should I change that?

I will always believe that fathers are just as good, in principal, as mothers at being the primary caretaker. And the child's needs changes as the child matures.

I have a case right now where I am arguing that the father should have custody because the minor child is a boy who is interested in math, and the father is an engineer, while the mother is a seamstress, so the father would be better as the primary custodian because he can help the boy with his homework. Also, the father lives in a better school district.

This is consistent with my own beliefs. My own kids are interested in math and my own husband is an engineer. If my husband and I (God forbid) split up, I think my husband would meet their needs better than I could.

I do believe that children do better with a father AND a mother. I think people should tough it out. Marriage isn't a bed of roses. Hey, even beds of roses have thorns.;^)

[CobaltBlue]

I have had interactions with fathers rights groups. My perception is that they perceive the deck is stacked against them, when it isn't.

The worst thing that men-as-potential-custodians suffer from, in my opinion, is lack of credibilty. There are so many men who are trying to game the system to avoid paying child support that they make it look bad for everyone else.

The dirty secret that bothers me, as a woman, is that women are MORE unwilling to pay child support than men. This drives me nuts.

I think I have probably seen it all, but I know for a fact that family court judges have seen it all. All the horrible things that people do to one another, they've seen.

You and I probably can't even imagine the things they have seen.

So, without going into the gory details, it's no surprise that they become a bit cynical. When a man who has always worked 60 hour weeks and socialized during his time off with his buddies all of a sudden decides to argue that he's really an equal caretaker, it kind of makes the judge feel a bit cynical.

[Harrison Bergeron]

"To be technically accurate, this should read "Men are less likely to have societally problematic children when parenting alone than are women".

By the tediously presented data in this article about a study, you're right.

[Harrison Bergeron]

In my eight or so years exposure to men's discussion forums, most intelligent men see child custody your way, but they've become jaded by the system's unwillingness to enforce their visitation rights with the same vigor that it enforces child support agreements. Whatever you want to make of the data in the above article, it makes a stong case that exposuring kids to a concerned father will do at least as much - or by all indications, more - good than financial support. The oversold government child support collection bureaucracies that have been set up at greater cost than the actual child support collected under their watchful eyes sends a message that the feminist inspired transfer of wealth from men to women is a higher priority than the transfer of society from one generation to the next.

[Harrison Bergeron]

It's one thirty AM... but let me clean up that run-on sentence before I hit the hay:

The oversold government child support collection bureaucracies have been set up at greater cost than the actual child support they've managed to collect. This sends a message that the feminist inspired transfer of wealth from men to women is a higher priority than the transfer of society from one generation to the next.

[The Giant Apricots]

Thank you for the reasoned responses. I recognize that a part of the problem is a societal expectation that fathers will be the super-provider, and the mothers the stay-at-home primary caregivers. An arrangement which I don't personally believe in...I've seen good and bad mothers/fathers, with every age from newborn on up. So, I concur that simple wide-spread empirical evidence conclusively indicates that whatever it is that makes a parent caring/capable/attuned/responsible, that factor lies in one of the other 22 chromosome pairs...other than XX VS. XY. Which doesn't mean that fathers and mothers are interchangeable, but rather that they are complementary in a more subtle way than the usual vision of one-as-nurturer, one-as-disciplinarian motif, which has become such a societal archetype. But a false one.

Yet, society has certainly made the assumption of the provider role accepted for women---there are women in virtually every field. Indeed, the "working mother" is heralded as a superwoman.

"Working dad" is portrayed as oxymoronic, because it is taken as a given that dads work.

Nothwithstanding two million at: Slowlane.

Sociopolitically, there is an organized and politically influential movement against fathers and against fatherhood. Try a google.ccom search on "deconstructing the essential father". Or go to NOW.org, a 500,000 member group with excessive political cloutand check out their Clearinghouse AGAINST Father's Rights. That clearinghouse is run by notorious father-basher Trish Wilson. Trish Wilson also goes by the name of Asherah, a pagan "goddess" who did terrible things. Again, a google.com search can bear evidence to all of the above.

With the second reauthorization of VAWA, "judge training programs" are mandated. The full text of VAWA is also online. One part of it contends that fathers who are domestic batterers are twice as likely to seek custody.

Now, simple math indicates to a judge "educated" in such a falsehood that if "fathers who are domestic batterers are twice as likely to seek custody", then 2/3 of fathers who seek custody are probably domestic batterers.

Which plays into the feminist myth that men---uncaring beasts---only fight for custody out of a need to control their ex-wives, or to duck child support.

Either is certainly a bad reason, which can only be effected by a bad father.

Thus, it can only be true of the majority of fathers who seek custody if the majority of fathers who seek custody are, indeed, bad people.

And this cannot be true.

Because neither good nor evil is limited to men alone, or to women alone.

With opposition to fathers and fatherhood being so organized and vitrolic, father-support organizations must be equally active.

With all that said, I recognize that, secondarily, rigid adherence to ultra-traditionalistic divisions of labor contribute to the problem.

[wwjdn]

bttt

[tomkat]

Even if one were to accept your man hating version of reality at face value, the data is irrefutable -
women are generally failures at raising kids alone.

An accurate statement.

as to the discipline issues - agreed.
(from first-hand experience squaring away the mess)