Installment 15. If Men Have All the Power How Come Women Make the Rules?
Share this compelling intro to the Men's Movement with your skeptical friends.
Treatment of Fathers in Divorce
Respect for fatherhood is good for all men whether they have kids or not, just as equal employment opportunity is good for all women, whether they are looking for a job or not. Disrespect for fatherhood is based on bad stereotypes about all of us. Those stereotypes affect you adversely in every relationship you have.
If raising kids is so menial and degrading, why do women fight us so bitterly in divorce for the opportunity to do it?
It’s not menial and degrading, of course. But by describing it that way women hope to make it unattractive to us so they can keep it for themselves. “What big strong man like you would want to change diapers and burp babies all day?”
Don’t be fooled by the claim that we win half of all custody battles. Most of the men who invest tens of thousands of dollars in full fights for custody are the ones with extraordinarily solid cases. So even if the claim were true it would still mean that of the very most winnable cases, half still lose.
“The high success rate of men in custody battles is another contender for the Phony Statistics Hall of Fame.”
— Cathy Young in her 1999 book Ceasefire!: Why Women and Men Must Join Forces to Achieve True Equality
It is widely reported that men’s standard of living goes up after divorce. But did any financial advisor ever tell you to get married, raise kids and then have your wife divorce you so your standard of living would go up?
Let’s focus on the Standard of Loving, a measure of the affection, caring and closeness that one feels with one’s children; it clearly plummets for most fathers after divorce.
If someone kidnaps your children, and you save a few dollars each month on food and clothing, do you feel that your standard of living has risen? [Thanks to Fred Hayward, director of MR, Inc.]
For a man to be considered half as good a parent as a woman, he has to be two times better.
Some people say we seek custody only as a way of bargaining for lower child support payments. An equally sexist comment would be that women seek custody only to live in the household the father will provide for the children.
The rebuttable presumption of innocence in crime cases (“innocent until proven guilty”) is not “forced acquittal.” Similarly, a rebuttable presumption for joint custody is not “forced joint custody,” as its detractors try to label it. A father should be presumed a valuable parent unless someone can prove otherwise.
If joint custody is a bad idea, then we need Affirmative Action in custody decisions to remedy entrenched biases against fathers.
Would we expect a mother without custody to continue to cook and clean for her ex-husband? Then why do we expect a noncustodial father to keep providing money, especially to an ex-wife who interferes with his “visitation” time? Why do we enforce child support, but not “visitation” rights?
It is admirable that a man facing divorce is reluctant typically to say anything to sully the reputation of, as he might put it, “the mother of my children.” Why is a woman unlikely to evidence similar concern or even to use the phrase “the father of my children”?
Consider this as a definition of “family”: A group of people guided by one or more adults whose purpose is to ensure harmony between the sexes for future generations by honoring fatherhood as well as motherhood, manhood as well as womanhood, masculinity as well as femininity; not necessarily the same thing as “a woman with children.”
Children who grow up with single mothers are nine times more likely to develop bad opinions of the non-custodial parent than are children who grow up with single fathers.
— derived from a speech by Warren Farrell, Ph.D., author of Father and Child Reunion, on the National Mall in Washington, Fathers Day 2002
If society wants fathers to be more invested in their kids, fathers need to know their investment is protected.
Equal Parenting Opportunity Commission
The US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission works “to ensure equality of opportunity by vigorously enforcing federal legislation prohibiting discrimination in employment. It uses investigation, conciliation, litigation, coordination, regulation in the federal sector, and education, policy research, and provision of technical assistance to achieve this end.”
We need a commission whose mission statement substitutes “parenting” for “employment.” Isn’t equal parenting at least as important to a healthy nation as equal employment?
Isn’t bias against men as fathers at least as harmful as bias against women as employees?
“If the mother tells you one thing [about how much child support she’s getting] and the father tells you something else, then the father is a God damned liar.”
— a nationally respected demographer moderating a child support discussion panel at a conference in 1988, quoted by Sanford Braver, Ph.D. in his 1998 book Divorced Dads: Shattering the Myths
Does anyone feel a chill?
In July 1986, I met with Anne Rosewater, Deputy Staff Director of the US House of Representatives Select Committee on Children, Youth and Families in Washington. I said that men often feel frozen out of government action on family issues.
Ms. Rosewater said nothing could be further from the truth. “Here,” she said. “Take our mailing list form. Tell your people we want to know what’s on their minds.”
It was only when I got home that I noticed the problem.
“Listed below,” the form said, “are the categories which now comprise our mailing list. Please check the three you have the greatest interest in, and return to us. We will do our best to keep you informed of the Committee’s work in these areas.”
The form included twenty-two categories in alphabetical order. Women’s Issues was one. I looked at the middle of the list. Literacy, Mental Health, Military Families.
Men’s Issues? Nowhere to be found. Fathers’ Issues? Ditto.
I wrote to Ms. Rosewater. She ignored my first letter, but after I sent another she wrote that she was “reluctant” to add men’s concerns to the form. “It is not possible for every group or individual to be represented on the list,” she said, as if fatherhood was a marginal, narrow, special interest in the eyes of the Special Joint Committee on Children, Youth and Families.
Finally, I wrote to the congressman who chaired the Committee.
In April 1987, I received a new mailing list form with no cover letter, explanation, apology, gratitude or invitation to make further contact. The form listed Men’s Issues—tacked on at the end, out of alphabetical order, and below Women’s Issues.
I filled out the form and checked “Men’s Issues,” but never received a single piece of information from the committee before it ceased operation years later.
There is much more to be said about the unfairness visited upon fathers in divorce. Two of the best sources are:
Father and Child Reunion: How to Bring the Dads We Need to the Children We Love by Warren Farrell, Ph.D. (January 2001)
Divorced Dads: Shattering the Myths by Sanford Braver, Ph.D. and Diane O’Connell (October 1998)