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by Gordon E. Finley |
June 12th, 2006
We must act quickly, lest Fathers become yet another member of an exponentially expanding Endangered Species List.
As we look forward to the quantity and quality of our lives in the 21st century we face an unprecedented challenge. As a nation, it is critical for all men, women, and children to cease denying the silent epidemic of the demise of fathers from the lives of our children and acknowledge the consequences for both children and fathers. Here are the horns of the dilemma we are facing.
On the one hand, we have a vast empirical research literature showing that both children and fathers benefit on almost all conceivable outcome indices when they are involved in each others' lives as the children are growing up and being guided by their fathers into adulthood and beyond.
On the other hand, we have the following widely accepted contemporary demographics: one-third of children are born to women who are not married at the time of delivery (and presumably do not have a father involved in the child’s life on a continual basis); 50% of first marriages end in divorce and another 17% end in permanent separation yielding an effective two-thirds marital dissolution rate for first marriages; the divorce rate for second and subsequent marriages is about 10% higher; and the cookie-cutter formula used by most states grants physical custody to mothers about 85% of the time with the father being awarded infrequent visitation along with child support and alimony obligations.
Along with these demographics, we also have a vast empirical research literature showing that the outcomes for both the children and fathers of divorce along with never-married fathers unquestionably are negative as compared to the children and fathers of intact marriages. The negative outcomes for fathers of divorce specifically include deep depression, alcohol abuse, substance abuse, joblessness, and a sharp rise in suicide rates.
Focusing more narrowly on Men’s Health Week beginning June 12 and ending on Fathers Day June 18, 2006, we are left with the question: What can be done to improve the lives of children and fathers in 2006? While there likely are as many proffered solutions as there are authors, I wish to focus on three.
First, by any public health standard, the one-third non-married birth rate represents an epidemic worthy of intervention. As a point of comparison, the rate was 4% in the 1950’s. What this comparison illustrates is that the non-married birth rate is a social behavior which is subject to change by changing social conditions and political activism — such as the sexual revolution, the women’s movement, and welfare incentives, all of which began in the 1960’s. By the same token, the rate can be reduced by changing social attitudes and financial incentives.
Second, a minimum of two out of three divorces are initiated by wives. In my view, this is because mothers get all of the marbles in divorce. Specifically, and with some state to state variability, mothers not only get the children (about 85% of the time) but they also get half of the marital assets (sometimes mostly the father’s assets) plus the father’s income to support her and the children often in the former marital home along with the tax benefits associated with the children. By contrast, the father gets to pay for and furnish an apartment and, if lucky, is awarded alternate weekends with his children, perhaps an evening in between, and perhaps half a summer and other holidays. Critically, when the children are with the father he must feed, shelter, clothe, and entertain them with whatever he has left over after he continues to pay child-support and alimony to his ex-wife.
Clearly, all the current legislative incentives to divorce belong to the mother and none to the father. The solution to increasing father-child relationships post-divorce — and as a critical fringe benefit to reduce the divorce rate as the incentives to divorce disappear — is to change existing state family law on three fronts: (a) Establish a presumption of equal shared parenting; and (b) establish equal financial responsibility for both mothers and fathers along with legally mandated financial accountability for both; and (c) change the child support models from income sharing models to child cost sharing models.
Third, the greatest threat to intact families in America today is the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) and particularly the unfettered granting of groundless ex-parte restraining orders against fathers which removes the father from his home, his children, and requires him to immediately begin making child support payments or face debtor’s prison. VAWA is – for women – an exquisitely and intricately well-crafted man-eliminating machine, the full scope of which is beyond this brief piece, but the details of which may be found in a series of Special Reports and Op-Eds at www.mediaradar.org. The simple antidote to VAWA is to neuter the Act by making it victim service oriented rather than gender destruction oriented so that it serves victims rather than targeting boys and men.
In closing, the bad news is that the health of fatherhood in 2006 is grim. The good news is that we got where we are today not through natural disasters but through woman-made disasters — which can be reversed. Thus, we have the opportunity this Fathers Day, as we have every Fathers Day, to enhance the quality of life of America’s children and fathers through new political initiatives and public policy. However, we must act quickly, lest Fathers become yet another member of an exponentially expanding Endangered Species List.
adoptaowl@aol.com
Visit their website at: http://psych.fiu.edu/Faculty&StaffPages2/Finley/Finley.htm
Responses to "The Health of Fatherhood"
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Guys its simple:
-get rid of the ridiculously draconian and stupid Bradley amendment (look it up if you don't know)
-tie child support to basic minimum support amounts no matter what the father's income, no matter if he is a doctor, Corporate CEO, sports star, lawyer, brick layer, auto mechanic or even unemployed (separate CS guidelines can be implemented for those cases) and allow it to be tax deductable for the father or non custodial parent or taxed from the receiving parent.
-In cases of paternity fraud, the offending parent (ie. mother) should be automatically charged with a crime and punished by the courts.
Guys, you think you are being nice but that woman, your so called ex, will rip you to shreds, take your money and throw you out on the street and take your kids everytime. Get smart men and take up for yourselves, for once…
Comment by Dean | June 12, 2006
…and lest you think its fair being forced to pay ever increasing amounts of what the states term child suport everytime you get a raise even if its years after your divorce, remember the state gets federal dollars for every dollar they collect from you. So its in their interests to raise your CS based on your income. All they do is increase the multiplier against your income every year and voila! You pay more for your ex wife's lifestyle. BTW, what does this have to do with support if its tied to your income anyways?
Comment by Dean | June 12, 2006
But you don't understand! Men are evil! We live in a patriarchal society that was instituted with the express purpose of enslaving women. Don't you people read the right things?
Everything your ex-wife does to you is justified because somewhere down your genetic tree was a male who thought women were property. Therefore, YOU should suffer.
Men aren't even necessary. With scientific advances it will soon (if not already) be possible for women to have children without a man involved in the process. Single motherhood is more beneficial than having a brutish man around. Hollywood is blazing this trail, too. Don't you see them celebrating single moms?
A world without men will be peaceful,too, of course. Don't you see how peaceably women get along with each other? Soon our whole country will benefit from this female-only harmony.
Comment by Ron S. | June 12, 2006
Darn! I forgot about my ancestors brutishly patriarchal and thuggish past. If only we could go back and teach those men a lesson. That would show us.
Comment by Dean | June 13, 2006
While I grant that feminism has torn apart families, the unborn (literally), and set men and women at odds with each other, they had a whole lot of help. Instead of men just pressuring women into uncommitted sex and jettisoning themselves when responsibility to step up to the plate came up, women joined the team. Feminism has only proved that when it comes to selfishness, women can do it just as well as men.
I fail to understand how so many men are ending up with harpies if they are being led by their values and discernment rather than their genitals. As much as I abhore that so many women are having casual sex and no contortion can make following through with abortion a good thing, we got to this point as a society together. All I know is that my wife and I (and most of my core friends and family) saved ourselves for marriage. The notion of divorce neither crosses our minds nor our lips because we recognised we were committing before God for life to one another and our children.
This is not to moralise, but to say the debate doesn't move further ahead by the finger pointing. Society values are what they are. To not get mired in them and protect our kids from them, we need to set the standards for ourselves that women mostly needed to carry before. We need to show and expect integrity, purity, and full commitment to someone to not land in such a place. It's time to get grounded in biblical standards for marriage made with vows before God if we hope to reclaim our role. It's not a pissing contest for getting our rightful role, it is a matter of earning it.
Tom
Comment by Tom | June 13, 2006
While I can agree with certain aspects of this article, I'd like to offer the question: What would you have done to men who leave their families, or the third of men who initiate divorce with their wives, or who have promiscuous sex and have children out of marriage? What is your ideal model, a system that lets those guys off? For example, my biological father has something like 7 biological children by at least 5 different women. I'm 19 years old, my mom left him when I was a year old, she has seen a grand total of 5 child support checks from him, each for $26. He's a 100% "disabled" vet (before you get the sympathy machine going, he's disabled for "mental trauma", not because he sacrificed his body for America) and receives right around $2,500 per month from the government, most of which he uses to feed his alcoholism (which, again, before the sympathy wheels start turning, he had since he was 15 years old, well before he ever got "mentally traumatized" by Vietnam). It seems to me like this is you guys' ideal model: the guy went ahead and had 7 kids by 5 women, abused them all and left the ones that didn't leave him first, and hasn't ever had to be financially responsible for any of them (unless of course you consider $130 sufficient to support a child for 17 years, and I don't have any doubt in my mind that you do). Now don't get me wrong, I am completely and vehemently against the feminist movement, and my (step)dad actually has a friend who basically had his life destroyed by his ex-wife after they divorced (he was making $3,500 a month, a lot of money for 10 years ago in a city where the mean income is 26k per year, and living in a one bedroom apartment unable to pay all of his bills some months), and I know that the system is extremely disfunctional. But whenever I hear this topic discussed on IC, all I hear are a bunch of bitter-sounding men prepared to cast every woman on earth as a castrating, abusive, conniving gold-digger who's working the system to bleed some poor bastard dry. That's not the case anymore than the oft-stated fact that not all men are brutish wife beaters whose only interest is suppressing the entire female race.
Comment by Patrick Mulligan | June 13, 2006
Unfortunatly even if they fixed this now it is to late for me. I won't be done with child support until I'm in my late 50's and my primary retirement earning years have been stolen. You forgot to mention that not only is unaccounted for child support paid, but also half of all medical and dental/orthodonics and eye care come ot of your pocket too. It will probably not be possible for me to ever retire given my small average income and have been forced into near povertiy by the NYS divorce laws.
My ownly choice for retirement is to look outside of this country for retirement so that I can live a half way decent life style on my meager retirement and social security.
Comment by David | June 14, 2006
I love the sacrament of Matrimony, but today, for a man to marry without fully acquainting himself with the nightmares and burdens of "family" court is to be a fool. Gentleman, imagine the most beautiful woman in the world, heck, pretend your a Mormon for a second, 10 most beautiful women in the world want to marry you. The catch is that if any part of the harem thinks you should have a richer portfolio, an appendage like the pool boy, or, perhaps, you have inquired if the dishes or wash is done (that's psychological abuse, you know. Ask any satanic prie.., errr, rather, divorce attorney, for the pamphlet entitled, "Are You A Victim?") you will lose half your earning power for the rest of your life and the ability to see your children if Angelina or Halle (just dreaming, again) decides that, no matter what The Court said, it's not good for her. I think 50 year engagements in houses or apartments next to each other may be the only alternative considering the so-called "Domestic Violence" bill of goods currently in play that is routinely part of any divorce action. God help us all!
Comment by J. Muscoreil | June 14, 2006
The difference is choice Pat, most men are forced into an 18 servitude of not feeding and clothing and educating their children but continuing a lifestyle for the ex wife and supporting greeedy state government.
-get rid of the Bradley amendment
-make child support what it is supposed to be: support, tied to a bare minimum no matter what the father's income. Then the father gets the choice to provide whatever extra his children get, not the state.
-punish paternity fraud with prison time and child support payback to the defrauded father by the state. After all, its guys like Pat and really the rest of us who allow women and the state to get away with insane family divorce issues.
Comment by Dean | June 14, 2006
Dean, good points, but let's not forget the other side of the coin. Men need to be held responsible for the children they sire too. Yes, many men are slaves to their ex-wives financial whims, but many men sire children out of wedlock and can simply walk away leaving the mother alone to deal with parenthood.
Then, coming back to one of Tom's points, this is a societal/morals issue. We have let divorce become normal in our society. "We've grown apart" was a popular excuse at some time and I think now they call it "irreconcillable differences". Somewhere along the line, marriage ceased to be a commitment.
I think this has to do with the popular religion of "Me". It's what I want that matters and it's all about ME. This can be fine if you're young and single, but when you marry that is supposed to change. You are supposed to grow up, but this seems to happen less and less nowadays. This is especially sad when children are involved. We as parents have a hard time looking past our own petty concerns and seeing our responsibilities to our kids.
Birth of a child into a marriage changes things in that marriage, or it is supposed to. It is supposed to be about two parents looking past their own concerns and looking towards the welfare of the child. This happens less and less nowadays. We don't leave behind the religion of "Me" anymore, even after having children. The children are perceptive enough to pick up on this and the cycle continues.
Yes, there are situations where one person in a relationship is physically or emotionally abusive, but that certainly isn't the majority.
Also, I wonder how much of "harpyism" is the fault of divorce lawyers who encourage their clients to get all that they possibly can regardless of need or circumstance?
On a side note, I've been married for over 20 years and have 3 kids (I know, whoopee for me). My wife and I made an informal agreement earlier in our marriage. It stated that whomever left the relationship would have to take the children with them! So far, it's held us together. :-)
Comment by Ron S. | June 14, 2006
Yes Tom, I agree there are numerous children born out of wedlock but the fact a woman cannot find the right man to pay is not the fault of the vast majority of fathers who are enslaved years after divorce to a brutal income redistribution system. BTW, the right man can be found by filing a paternity suit which is what the vast majority of these unmarried irresponsible moms do. They husband shop and usually the man is too naive to do his own DNA testing.
Also, there is a difference between "child support" and income support. What is the justification for tying a man's income to redistribution to his ex wife and kids if a bare minimum would suffice? Why does the ex wife of a doctor, for example have to live like a doctor's wife? Why do the kids need the so called support of a doctor when that of a bare minimum would do? If we would quit tying the notion of income to child support to income after divorce then you can bet your rear end the sheer number of divorces would drop by over half? Why? Because well over half of divorces are filed by women for no other reason than they know they can have there so called freedom, tax free income, garner new men to marry and new sources of income.
Guys, don't be naive, you should make the choice how much your children get over and beyond a bare minimum. If the courts want to hand custody over to these magnificent spoiled brats that AKA American women then they should have to pick up a fair load of the support.
Comment by Dean | June 14, 2006
-Repeal the Bradley Amendment
-Tie child support in all cases to a specific bare minimum
-Prosecute and punish with prison time paternity fraud
-Repay vicitims of paternity fraud with taxpayer dollars since we are responsible for the legislators and judges who make these stupid laws in the first place
Comment by Dean | June 14, 2006
So Tom, how do you equate personal responsibility and child support being based on a man's income even years after divorce? Especially when a bare minimum dollar amount figure would work for most children of divorce?
Comment by Dean | June 14, 2006
Although I've been married for 25 years, I see the problems many of my younger co-workers are having and quite frankly, my feeling is that while some men may be jerks, there's no shortage of women who are jerks as well. It's almost gotten to the point where I'd like to tell my son to forget about marriage, have as many girlfriends as he wants but then DO NOT COMMIT to marriage because you will be taken to the cleaners.
Comment by Expat Canuck | June 14, 2006
Dean,
I can't speak for yours or anyone else's specific circumstances. We also know that the courts are insane these days, especially with activist judges. All I'm saying is that as Christians, if we lower our standards on sexual responsibility and applying values to choosing our partners to begin with, we create our own circumstances.
You may well be one who has been meeting their obligations and endeavoured to do everything right and the relationship still went off the rails. All I know is we can question and actively challenge court decisions, but we should not turn it into hatred and vitriol toward women and griping about caring for our children (or dropping out of their lives) because the going gets rough. It is about individual character and we are to accept what consequences (justly or not) that our actions result in. I would doubt there are many men or women who can look back without realising they played a part in the demise of the relationship and should have taken steps to fix the cracks along the way.
I work with a lot of families that have created stress for themselves, their partners and, worst of all, their children. Too often these become generational issues. I know I am thankful, but don't take for granted my wife of almost 14 years and my 3 children.
Good luck to you,
Tom
Comment by Tom | June 14, 2006
Tom, you are pretty naive I will grant you that at least. But you confuse some things; its not hatred and vitriol for our young spoiled American girls, its disgust for the judges and legislators who enable American women to be just what they are…women.
Comment by Dean | June 21, 2006
Ironically, emancipation of women, has contributed in no small measure
to strained relationships. Earlier, owing to their subjugated status,
mothers could never contemplate divorce, single motherhood etc.
Consequently, they had to quietly suffer.
Today, separation and divorce are alternatives. While a good number
of estranged spouses live through a phase of great emotional trauma,
I know two couples who walked out incompatible relationships,
found new ones and, to the best of my knowledge, are happier.
Today's problem is more of a dip in couples' tolerance limits than the
availability of the alternative. Higher educational qualifications,
financial independence and greater social mobility, have given
women lot of freedom. This emancipation has impacted both men
and women. While some men find a proactive and dynamic woman
difficult to handle, some women feel listening to their husband is
being servile subjugative. That's where the problem starts.
Divorce stemming out of physical violence is understandable. What is
depressing is that most of the divorces stem out of adjustment problems.
As Ron suggested, many men and women fail to understand that husband
needs to factor the wife in any decision, and vice versa. Post-marriage,
it is no longer I; but it is We. Once the child comes, most of the decisions
tend to centre around it.
Comment by Pradeep | June 22, 2006
Nicely stated, Pradeep. I would like to clarify one thing, though. The husband doesn't need to factor in the wife in any decisions, but rather any decisions affecting the relationship need to be made jointly.
Comment by Ron S. | June 22, 2006
Ron, you said it…
Comment by Pradeep Nair | June 25, 2006