A Knight Defending Fatherhood

Fathering Magazine ^ | May 26, 2002 | Roger F. Gay

[RogerFGay]

A Knight Defending Fatherhood

May 26, 2002
By Roger F. Gay

You can tell this is an election year because politicians, bureaucrats, and TV "talking heads" are bashing fathers. In the mid 1970s Congress decided to get the federal government involved in domestic relations law. Ever since, the war against dads has driven gender politics, expansion of the welfare system, and increased spending. By the early 1990s it seemed commonly accepted that battering women and abandoning wives and children to welfare was a character flaw genetically fixed by every Y-chromosome.

Enter Stephen Baskerville -- a knight defending fatherhood. Baskerville might not be what many people imagine as "one of those fathers' rights guys." A political scientist at Howard University, Dr. Baskerville's files are filled with scholarly articles with lots of citations to other scholarly articles, a growing number of which he has written. In his appearances on television and radio however, as well as in the articles he has written for the general public, one might occasionally sense a certain irritation with mis-educated public remarks about fathers.

In an article in this month's Liberty Magazine entitled "The Myth of Deadbeat Dads," Baskerville offers to educate the rich and famous. He reports that TV host Bill O'Reilly recently declared that "There is an epidemic of child abandonment in America, mainly by fathers." "Sen. Evan Bayh has attacked 'irresponsible' fathers in several speeches. Campaigning for president, Al Gore promised harsher measures against 'deadbeat dads,' including sending more to jail. The Clinton administration implemented numerous child-support 'crackdowns,' including the ominously named Deadbeat Parents Punishment Act." In response, Republicans "want to send the strongest possible message that parents cannot walk away from their children."

"Special interest groups demonized fathers," says Baskerville. "They called them 'deadbeat dads' and criminalized them. The result is a system that traces newly hired employees, shifts the burden of proof to the accused, and throws fathers in jail for losing their jobs." He is not alone in that opinion. His article sports 46 citations from a mixture of sources, including books and academic journals, the popular press, and even relevant Web sites.

"The system of collecting child support is no longer one of requiring men to take responsibility for their offspring, as most people believe. The combination of 'no fault' divorce and the new enforcement law has created a system that pays mothers to divorce their husbands and remove children from fathers."

Baskerville presents a convincing argument, well supported by research and other commentary. Quoting an article entitled "The Strange Politics of Child Support"; "By allowing a faithless wife to keep her children and a sizable portion of her former spouse's income, current child-support laws have combined with no fault jurisprudence to convert wedlock into a snare for many guiltless men." (Bryce Christensen, Society, Vol. 39, No. 1 (Nov.-Dec. 2001, p. 65)).

Baskerville adds, "This 'snare' can easily amount to a prison sentence without trial."

His work and commentary have captured the attention of the fathers rights movement. Dave Usher has been a leading activist since 1987 and served for nine years on the exectutive boards of the two largest fathers rights groups in America. He knows that political opinion has been influenced by false information and how difficult it has been to report serious problems with policies that effect fathers. Too few "researchers" who have witten about fathers and fatherhood actually did any research. "We need a few dozen more Baskervilles," he says. "He is a solid researcher."

Although there are many wrongs yet to be righted, the fathers rights movement does not face the extreme prejudice that it once did. Hundreds of organizations and conferences, loads of scholarship, and countless Web sites have sprung up over the past few years focused on issues of concern to fathers. Dr. Baskerville organized one of the first fatherhood conferences three years ago at Howard University. Conferences on fathers issues and fatherhood have been organized and supported by the Ford Foundation, the U.S. Department of Labor, the state of California, and other well established institutions.

Ironically, the Democratic Party -- the party that started the war against fathers in the mid 1970s is out to capture the male vote. Before they finalize their strategy someone should conduct a poll to see how many males age 25-50 want to be their own worst political enemies. With fatherhood knights like Stephen Baskerville around, father-bashing will not be as easy to get away with as it used to be.

---------------------------------------------

Roger F. Gay is the leader and lead researcher of Project for the Improvement of Child Support Litigation Technology, an R&D project focusing on the science, engineering, and application of child support guidelines.

[William Terrell]

I suspect that any member of a small minority that has had a particular bad experience feels that the percentage is higher.

Don't you think 99% is as close to 100% as human beings are liable to get? Actually, I think 99% is 'way too close for truth. I'd say 90% is as close to 100% as any population at any time, at any place, composed of any people well ever get, no matter the circumstances, no matter the issue, even in a hardcore police state devoted to nothing else. I see no record of any compliance to any rule that is greater than 90%. If you can find objective proof that one exists, I'd be pleased if you could provide me the numbers and sources.

So, what do you think of 10% true, died-in-the-wool deadbeat dads? That number should certainly feel right. Remember, that means 90% are getting screwed because of the 10% who are legitimately irresponsible. Doesn't that strike you as odd? Would that be a real cause for compassion? And, talking in terms of equity and fairness, would it be better for all if 10% of the women (the 10% getting screwed by 10% of the men) who get hit with a real "deadbeat dad", just take it on the chin?

But that would take nobility, social consciousness that a socialism never engenders. It would take a quality of integrity foreign to the way of thought that seems to be behind your conversation with Mr. Gay. I think you should consider the quality of life available for all people at the final destination to which that way of thought leads.

[joathome]

"Men had a habit of dying much younger than their wives, so over several generations, women managed to hold a lot of real property."

Would you mind explaining this?

If my husband died before me, I would control the estate. When I died, the estate would more than likely be divided up amongst our children.

How does that equate to women managing to "hold a lot of real property?" I also think the property rights laws varied among the states.

Furthermore, since many Americans lived on farms in times past (and not too many of them were wealthy), that farm was a family enterprise. Widows can run a farm by themselves. Ditto for the family business.

Women may have owned wealth, but I believe you exaggerate the extent of the wealth they held.

[joathome]

Make that widows "can't" run a farm by themselves.

[Lord Z]

Mr. Gay:

While I respect your work, and this a really worthwhile tribute to a great man, Stephen Baskerville, can you tell me why you have chosen to make your focus on child support instead of on a presumption of joint residential custody?. It seems to me that while child support is important, and your expertise thereupon is undeniable, it is an issue which tends to push presumptive joint residential custody into the background, or at least into second place.

Which in turn feeds the perception---I believe mis-perception---that fathers care more about protecting their own pocketbooks than they do about gaining equal time to spend with their children.

[Lord Z]

There are deadbeats, but they are not the majority of fathers, or even of divorced/single fathers. An entire industry has been built on casting all/most divorced/single fathers as deadbeats, andthat just is not true.

[Lord Z]

And I don't think women consider having 100% responsiblity for the hands on care of kids as a perk ... it's hard work).

If that contention were true, how would you explain how most divorcing wives seek primary custody of the kids even when the father wants to raise them???

[shaggy eel]

BUMP your post # 85.

[Lord Z]

So, will you ask your state legislators to make the family courts more fair and balanced?

[Lord Z]

Children should be supported and raised by both parents whether or not the parents are married, divorced, or were never married.

True. However, that does not render divorce a "red herring", it simply illustrates that divorce is part of a larger issue: the need for society to recognize in law, custom, and practice the equal rights of fathers to be co-equal caregivers of their own children.

Which is the central point of all of this.

[Lord Z]

The Democrats are owned by the feminist groups like NOW, which have an open and blatant anti-father agenda. If father's rights are to find a legitimate political home, it will be in the Republican Party.

[Lord Z]

Thank you, young shaggy.

[Nick Danger]

[To R.F.Gay: ] can you tell me why you have chosen to make your focus on child support instead of on a presumption of joint residential custody?... feeds the perception---I believe mis-perception---that fathers care more about protecting their own pocketbooks than they do about gaining equal time to spend with their children.

I agree with that, and had it on my list to write something similar. In response to #46 ("This should help clear things up") I went to the site and started reading the pieces. My first thought was, "Oh, sh*t." They are appropriate for soc.men or some other audience that understands the material in the context of the multiple fronts on which this struggle must be waged. But there is an "inside baseball" quality to it that I thought would come off poorly among those who are new to these issues... perhaps even to many on Mens News Daily. Someone who goes over there expecting to find would-be deadbeat dads hiding from their responsibilties will come away from those pieces thinking they have found such people.

There's a fair amount of learning that has to take place concerning the ludicrousness of some of these state "imputed income" rules that end up impoverishing the poor bastards who are on the light side of the median income (arithmetically, half of them must be, yet we will impute no less than the median to all), before someone can understand what those papers are about. To the skeptic, they just sound like guys with SUV's trying to buy a new stereo instead of shoes for the kid. As a result, I don't think those articles are well-suited to a general audience. The intricies of that stuff do not lend themselves to sound-bite argument, which is all one is going to get in a general-interest forum like this.

[Lorianne]

Lorianne: And I don't think women consider having 100% responsiblity for the hands on care of kids as a perk ... it's hard work).

Lord Z: If that contention were true, how would you explain how most divorcing wives seek primary custody of the kids even when the father wants to raise them???

I can't explain it if both parents also work outside the home. However, in homes where the mother is the primary care giver before the divorce, full time care-giver is her career. Therfore relinquishing custody (even 50% of the time) would be analgous to asking the father to give up his career due to divorce. Also, I think women see themselves as the better care-giver because society hertofore has reinforced that view culturally. So it becomes a matter of "if you want things done right, do it yourself" kind of thing.

Mind you I'm not defending this view, just giving my theory as to why I think women are loathe to give up custody even 50% of the time. I think they should. In fact, I think they should insist on it. I fully support joint physical custody, but I would make it a strict 50/50 split unless the parties mutually agree to another plan. Even then, if disputes arise, I'd have the courts impose a 50/50 split in custody again. (I'm talking real custody, not play-acting parenting.)

It makes no sense to me why a woman would want to have sole custody and be "single mother" even with adequate child support.

[RogerFGay]

The initial problem (in "perception" if you will) in the feds dealing with child support was the intentional confusion they created between setting the amount of an award and "enforcement." Remember I said earlier that I was forced to study enforcement even though the focus of my research is on properly setting the amount to be awarded. Whenever anyone tried to debate the new system for setting child support award amounts, some bimbo bureacrat or politician would respond with a comment about "enforcement." I sense this discussion is going the same way.

What one concludes about non-payment of support from statistics depends on what statistics one picks. If you see some high number like $20 billion not paid each year, it includes all cases in which paternity has not been established and there is no child support award. We honestly don't know how much child support is being paid in that group. We know that nothing from that group is being paid through the government system. When no child support order exists, there's nothing for the system to "enforce." But taxpayers have been paying around $4 billion dollars a year for enforcement anyway; largely based on use of those statistics to impress people.

Use of similar statistics and intentionally created confusion between setting award amounts and enforcement drove the logic that caused the problem in the first place. Back when this thing started, more than half of all "potential" child support cases were cases in which paternity had not been formally established and no child support order existed. Sure, there were even cases in which paternity was established and the parents didn't want or need an order.

A guy named Ron Haskins, an insignificant psych prof. at U. of North Carolina -- received federal funds from the National Center for State Courts and the Office of Child Support Enforcement, to write a "research report" that says [paraphrased] no problem, just double the amount that those who do pay are ordered to pay. You see, lobbiests liked to use averages based on statistics for the whole group. If you double the amount payers' pay, you increase the statistical average by a factor of two; giving the same result as if twice as many people paid (assuming an equal amount would be ordered from the non-paying group if they were ordered to pay).

Then the National Center for State Court and the Office of Child Support Enforcement hired Robert Williams, a guy who owns a child support collection agency, to write a report "to provide technical assistance to states on development of child support guidelines." Williams didn't have any experience in the complex process of setting awards properly, but the hire the amount that is ordered, the more money his collection agency makes. So Williams used the recommendations made by Haskins. He then became the most popular consultant used by states to review their guidelines and child support laws. Haskins became head staffer for welfare issues on the Republican House Ways & Means Committee on Human Resources. Neither Haskins nor Williams were experts on the subjects they were put in charge of. Their qualification is that they're just both lying cheats.

[RogerFGay]

Which in turn feeds the perception---I believe mis-perception---that fathers care more about protecting their own pocketbooks than they do about gaining equal time to spend with their children.

Project for the Improvement of Child Support Litigation Technology (PICSLT) is an R&D project that focuses on the science, engineering, and application of child support guidelines. Project work began in 1989 with investigations at Intelligent Systems Research Corporation (ISR) and has continued as an independent project since 1994.

The project invites interaction with other researchers interested in child support science and technology and those who are seriously interested in legal reform, including child support guideline review commissions. Project work is non-partisan, non-gender oriented, and not affiliated with special interest groups. Progress has been made on the science of child support decision making since the federally mandated presumptive use of child support guidelines began in 1989. International interest is also invited.

To learn more about the project, click on the project description link.

[RogerFGay]

A couple of great sources for information on the right of both parents to be involved in their children's lives, one source research in psychology, the other a (long detailed) analysis of the legal philosophy involved:

The Custody Revolution : The Father Factor and the Motherhood Mystique, by by Richard A. Warshak

Parental Rights and Due Process, by Donald C. Hubin.


And results from the largest federally funded study of divorced fathers in history:

Divorced Dads: Shattering the Myths, by Sanford Braver

[RogerFGay]

The Democrats are owned by the feminist groups like NOW, which have an open and blatant anti-father agenda. If father's rights are to find a legitimate political home, it will be in the Republican Party.

But it does no good to presume that the Republican Party is doing the right thing simply because the Democrats are more obviously supporting the wrong thing.

When the initial amendment was proposed to create the federal Office of Child Support Enforcement in 1975, only representatives of NOW and aspiring presidential candidate Ronald Reagan showed up to speak in its support. The "welfare community" (incl. researchers, workers, etc) was against the proposal, and it had little support in Congress. The OCSE didn't become the awesome powerful bureaucracy that it is today until laws were passed while Ronald Reagan was in office.

The Republican Party has not been disinvolved. Regardless of who's in power, the agenda remains the same; just promoted with a slightly different vocabulary. You should keep in mind, that while NOW was involved, it's not such politics that control the situation. In order to truely understand what's happening, you have to "follow the money trail."

Confusing the Enemy: W's Latest Buzz-Phrase is "Social Entrepreneur"

[RogerFGay]

On the other hand, it sounds like you're well on your way to understanding what's going on. Just keep reading.

[RogerFGay]

STEPHEN BASKERVILLE'S ARTICLE AVAILABLE ONLINE (PDF File Format

The Myth of Deadbeat Dads

[RogerFGay]

THAT LINK DOESN'T WORK

You have to copy-paste the address:

http://www.geocities.com/capitolHill/5910/Baskerville/Deadbeats.pdf