Fathers’ rights groups are unfairly shunned by the media. At best, this leaves you with Batman perched on a ledge at Buckingham Palace.
When confronted with extreme deprivations of rights, reactions differ substantially, especially as between incendiary agitation or pacifically seeking change. There was Booker T. Washington who sought advancement through personal development and industrial education, versus the radical approach of WEB Dubois who thought of Washington as an accommodationist. You had Malcolm X who had no use for the non-violent approach of Martin Luther King. There was the National Women’s Suffrage Association that was only run by women and believed that it was more important that they receive suffrage before blacks, versus the American Women’s Suffrage Movement that believed women’s suffrage and black suffrage were equally important and guaranteed men leadership positions. You had the Quaker pacifist abolitionist versus the pike-wielding guerilla abolitionist tactics of John Brown.
Yesterday, Fathers-4-Justice, a British based fathers’ rights group, again made national headlines when an alleged plot to kidnap English Prime Minister Tony Blair’s son Leo was revealed. No doubt, if there was such a plan, poetic justice was in mind. Fathers’ rights activists believe the courts have kidnapped their children. In one Internet chat group I will not name, a father writes, “When the government takes our children, is it time to take THEIR children, one might ask?”
Fathers’ rights groups quickly denounced the kidnapping plot. Faced with the publicity, fathers-4-justice founder, Matt O’Connor, has disbanded the group, although from their website, it is not clear whether the move is permanent. Some note the stories source, “The Sun,” is a British Tabloid often strewn with shrill headlines, scantly clad women, and is not noted for quality journalism. There is the motive of the British police to exaggerate what appears to be stupid pub talk (if even that) after years of embarrassing tactics by Fathers-4-Justice, including stunts like climbing the walls of Buckingham Palace, scaling St. Paul’s Cathedral and the London Eye, climbing the clock tower at Westminster, and throwing purple flour at the Prime Minister while giving a speech in House of Commons. On the website MensNewDaily.com, in an “Official Statement from an Alleged Blair Kidnapping Plotter,” Martin Mathews inculpates The Sun: “Late last night and early this morning I was approached by a 3rd party offering me £10,000 from the Sun Newspaper to lie and admit that the kidnapping plot was a Matt O’Conner idea and that he had asked me to look into it for the group.” The Sun Story troublingly lacked details, as did other news accounts, and no arrest were made. The story had suspicious timing—it came out the same day as the English announced they would be using notoriously strong-armed private debt collectors to collect child support.
The sad truth is that unspeakable deprivations are being visited upon fathers. Though they may be completely fit, they endure losing their children and their fortunes on attorney fees and mind-boggling child support orders. Children are being raised fatherless. Men are literally being sent to debtor’s prison unable to pay astronomical high child support awards, some predicated on incomes that are not real but invented under a theory known as “attributed income.” Restraining order abuse abounds, so that mean cannot even be assured they can live in their own homes. The sad truth is that the while the kidnapping plot is quickly condemned (as no doubt it should), the kidnapping of our children through systems such as the New York family court system as mine was is not treated as anathema—just bad policy.
Understandably, public support is with fathers. On a ballot question that was on over 30 state representative districts in Massachusetts, shared parenting won by an 86% margin. But the fathers’ rights movement has many problems turning this popular opinion into success. Some of the fault lies with fathers themselves. Faced with wrongs far greater than say, to pluck one out of history, higher taxes and no representative in Parliament igniting a revolution, they sit docilely by instead of joining and helping a fathers’ rights group. Fiery orations prove awkward before small audiences. Then there are the wealthy, who believe in our cause but refuse to provide the one-thing legislatures understand—lobbying money. Why don’t fathers dress up in suits and ties and appear as intellectuals on Nightline or The Charlie Rose Show? No doubt they could, but they just aren’t invited. Larry Parnas, managing editor of the Daily Hampshire Gazette admits that fathers’ rights groups are unfairly shunned by the media. At best, this leaves you with Batman perched on a ledge at Buckingham Palace. At worst, you have those that are becoming increasingly disillusioned with a movement that has produced little change over the past 30 years despite widespread public support, and who are seething that politicians and judges do not change their ways.
Much of the problem of father participation and support for such organizations lies in the fact that many of those most readily targeted are men who, despite the treatment they receive, still believe in a system that does this to us. We’ve all bought into to the feminist rhetoric that these laws protect our children more than they harm, that men are basically less nurturing than women and more to be guarded against. Men grow up learning to value sacrifice, and, given that everyone expects us to take the hit on the chin, we do. Courts presume and men, raised in the liberal credo, concur in these beliefs. Despite the costs, we men want to protect and provide for our children, and even for an estranged wife who has no similar reciprocal scruple for our support or wellbeing. That’s just our job, and tough luck.
My experience is that the laws and assumptions are far less about children than they are about process and power. Our departments of social services and juvenile justice are empowered to enter a home for any small disturbance and dictate to parents a hands-off approach to parenting. Failing this, they are empowered to take whatever measures they deem fit to separate child from either or both parents, and are unanswerable to anyone for having done this. They are convinced there is never a case when the father is in the right and behaving reasonably, even where the child is clearly out of control and manipulating the situation against parents to avoid punishment.
This is but the first step in the process by which many functional homes are disrupted. From there, the wife is manipulated and pitted against husband by a legion of “helpful” community busybodies. Children are forced into therapy and onto mind disrupting drugs guaranteeing they are labeled misfits and incapable of normal behavior; and less compliant than before (and who wouldn’t be). Cycles of escalating domestic disturbance are thus guaranteed, with each cycle weakening the authority of parent and shifting it to immature hands. Finally, a parent is arrested or a child taken out of the home. Or, a father sees he’s rendered irrelevant and his marriage on the rocks, decides the greater good will be served by leaving; that to stay will only risk harm to his family. Enter the lawyers and courts, who then decide the father has abandoned his family, and is not to be trusted to provide for them or see to their wellbeing. So deciding, courts teach parents to be stingy, jealous, and uncommunicative. Or they assign one parent to be the ‘custodial’ parent, effectively terminating all authority in the non-custodial parent. But, undeviatingly, they fix on the father to bear a burden of support; all the while harassing us into evasions and thwarting our best intentions for meeting that obligation.
In the modern paradigm, our children no longer belong to us, and to say otherwise is to risk branding as a practitioner in child slavery. Today, children are regarded as entirely vested in themselves to the same degree as everyone else; except, of course, that we are all subservient to the state, the community, the “Village” … to government. None of us are to be trusted to manage our own affairs, and need the constant supervision of the state to guarantee our behavior. It does not matter that, when we say “they are ours”, we mean ours to nurture, cherish, and raise; and not the province of a nanny-state that only rescues children to consign them to a dead-end existence. Anyone who openly challenges this assumption is automatically denied rights as a dangerous throwback, who must be kept as far as possible from all children. Many of us have lost homes, jobs, self-assurance and respect in the long battles to maintain our role as father, as we know it ought to be practiced. We thought our families (mothers, fathers, brothers and sisters) and friends would stand by us, only to learn they will more often side against us. They fear to take the traditional (now contrarian) view, because it is no longer safe to do so, and because they have long since accepted the logic that says the old ways are wrong. It is fear of such further losses that keeps us in thralldom and our mouths shut.
Mr Del Gallo,
“… Restraining order abuse abounds, so that mean cannot even be assured they can live in their own homes…”
Mean ?
…or men?
What were the odds that a typo would turn “men” into “mean”, especially in a piece defending men…
Yes, the system in the United States is flawed. It punishes the father and allows the mother to have presumed control and parental rights over the children who are the offspring of BOTH parents. This is blatantly unfair and sends the message that the father is not able to take care of his children. He should at least have half parenting rights. On top of all this, the courts impose monstrous “child support” payments which usually go to supporting both mother and child(ren) since there is a bulk non-taxed amount paid to her directly which should be used solely for the child(ren) but requires no monitoring of how money is allocated. The burden is placed upon the father to prove in court that the mother is not capable of providing parenting guidance in order to just be allowed to spend time with his child(ren). This is a fatal flaw in the system and needs to be revamped and include BOTH parents in the children’s lives, just as they were before divorce or separation. It sometimes is tough to swallow, but there are some of us out here who faithfully pay out the huge sums in “child support” which do not go for the kids, and then get to spend a small portion of their lives with them. We then get to spend more money providing them with the things they need such as clothing and toys and games when with us. And on top of all this, we are then deemed “Disneyland Parents” or chastised by counselors for spoiling our children in the small amount of time we are legally allowed to get them. Meanwhile, the system allows the ex spouse to use the childrens’ funds for whatever she wants to spend it on. Blatantly a biased system. On top of all this, there is then the aspect of retaliation we have to put up with towards us for even wanting to spend time with our children. The system is messed up and needs revamping with equal parenting rights granted to both parents…Thanks for making a stand…
Dad Jay who loves his daughters London and Sierra