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.
Gordon E. Finley, Ph.D. is Professor of Psychology at Florida International University.
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mruffolo said,
After a few years of marriage, my wife divorced me. Publicly, she says I am abusive. Privately, she says that I did not make her happy.
After the experience of divorce court, while sharing the situation with friends and family, I learned quickly that the complaint department is closed to men.
Instead, the message I receive loud and clear is pay up and shut up.
Thanks feminists. Thanks for altering Father’s Day and to the feeling of another Visitor’s Day.
Our country cares more about pets and whales than for the men who help design, build, and maintain our cities, homes and workplaces.
June 11, 2006 at 1:29 pm
etarking said,
The real problem is a civil rights issue, in which millions of certainly innocent children and their almost certainly innocent fathers are deprived of their right to the unimpaired relationships of an intact family.
At the moment it probably sounds ridiculous to say that fathers are denied their civil rights systematically and in great numbers. It also sounds ridiculous to say that children are damaged by fatherlessness as badly as they would be by motherlessness.
Unfortunately, these things sound ridiculous to most people because they simply haven’t thought about them, and because of a force that stills thought: the aura of depravity. I’ve written about this elsewhere, and the idea is simply that men are dangerous physical, sexual, and power abusers. Society needs a wide variety of protections against men, because they are all on a continuum of abuse, with every man on a hair trigger, ready to turn into a monster in an instant. Men are like pitbulls — no sensible person would allow them in the same house with children.
Actually, men are more like black men. We say the same things about men in general today that some deplorable people used to say about black men in the Jim Crow era. That was clearly a civil rights issue (still is), but people didn’t see it that way until black people managed to educate them.
Fatherlessness is the most pervasive cause of psychological and social problems in youth, and these last for the young as they mature. We are throwing out the father with the bathwater, and it hurts the baby badly.
Before we can have a civil rights movement, the victims have to be aware of what’s eating them, and we don’t have that yet. Despite the fact that all of the suffering comes out of a pattern that has been with us for decades, men don’t see themselves as a disadvantaged class. While they don’t see the situation clearly, men and those who love them can’t do their duty to fix it.
So, what we need is an equality movement. Parental equality and respect for the family, for all of its forgotten benefits to children. This is bigger than VAWA. Social programs and the courts and the lawmakers need reeducation to the necessity of parental equality. My hope is that people will wake up to the truth about what they are seeing every day, and I remain hopeful.
-Eric
June 11, 2006 at 4:02 pm
Joyanna Adams said,
Still, a child needs at least one parent to care for it full-time under the age of three. Not all woman or men have parents who are willing to raise their children while they work. And day care centers are certainly not the answer.
Also, no fault divorce leaves a woman with children..not as rich as you might suppose.
You’d be surprised…for every man that is being taken to the cleaners, there is a woman who cannot even find the x husband…
But the family unit is being politically attacked from the left, who want the family to give up to the state. It has been a long fight for them, but we see the damage…everywhere.
June 11, 2006 at 5:08 pm
MyGirlsMatter said,
That’s an idealistic vision, however the problem remains that what goes on in the Family/Divorce Courts and DV Industry and Child Support Racket is largely unreported and flies under the radar.
The Family Courts in particular are a kind of Star Chamber unencumbered by the reporting and documenting requirements of the criminal justice system.
You can’t even get the actual data of how cases are being decided because there are no records.
Family Court judges are terrified of feminist reprisals should they “go easy” on fathers or even attempt objectivity in their decisions.
Orders of Protection are routinely granted with no proof of cause, and all a woman filing for divorce needs to do to secure full child custody is to make a false allegation of domestic or sexual abuse.
VAWA is like a guillotine poised to descend on every man’s neck should he ever assert himself in a disagreement with a woman.
Feminism has nearly achieved its primary goal of destroying heterosexual unions and nuclear families, because today no thinking man would be so foolish as to marry.
It will be largely up to ordinary non-feminist women, who enjoy the power the sisterhood has bequeathed, to decide if they want to continue their predatory strategies, or whether they want to champion a massive legal reform to deconstruct feminist lethality against men.
The recent reauthorization of VAWA provides little cause for optimism.
June 11, 2006 at 8:18 pm
Roger Knight said,
You describe the problem quite well.
The Antipeonage Act is the solution.
Sream for the enforcement of the Peonage Law.
That what is being done is a felony based on present law can be quite an eye-opener!
To many people just have not had this epiphany yet.
But it will come. Sooner if we all help it along.
June 11, 2006 at 8:45 pm
amosbatto said,
Given that 50% of marriages end in divorce, there is a critical need for Americans to start reevaluating our conception of marriage. Clearly such a high divorce rate harms children and fatherhood.
Traditionally marriage was not conceived of as being an arrangement based upon love. Today, however, we have huge expectations about what a marriage should be. We have this ridiculous ideal that you should always be in love with whoever you marry, although everyone knows that couples don’t always feel romantic love. We expect our wives to be our best friends and we expect couples to do everything socially together. This was not the case traditionally. It was expected that people went outside of the marriage for recreation and friendship in traditional marriage, but that is considered less acceptable today. I have spent a lot of time in Latin America where they have low divorce rates. One thing that I have noticed is that Latin Americans take a much more pragmatic view of marriage. I’m not sure if I want to advocate the Latin American conception of marriage, since it is often very sexist and patriarchal, but I do think they have a more realistic expectations about what to expect from marriage. They don’t have the attitude that if a marriage isn’t fun or always fulfilling, you should automatically leave it. They expect couples to have bad times and they accept that the husband and wife don’t always act loving in public. Yes, they think love is the ideal, but they also accept that men may sneak off and have sex outside of marriage occassionally. I don’t want to defend this practice, but it is a practical reality that it happens. In America we assume that marital infidelity is automatic grounds for divorce, but I’m not sure that this is the best for children and fatherhood.
In short, I think we need to have a more pragmatic and realistic conception of marriage, and stop expecting people to fullfill all their needs and desires within marriage. In many other societies, there are greater social occasions outside of marriage. Also I think that our society places too much burden on the individual nuclear family, which places huge stresses on a husband and wife and easily leads to divorce if they can’t fullfill all those ideals. America has this conception that only the mother and father are responsible for the kid, but we also think that somehow the mother and father are somehow deficient if they can’t live up that. For instance, what happened to black marriages in the inner city, when most of the industrial jobs packed up and went abroad. When the black male was unemployed and no longer able to provide for his family, a lot of black marriages broke up because the black male wasn’t living up to the ideal of a good provider for the family. Increasingly, the black woman saw more demand for the service jobs which she was better at than the black male. So the woman was able to earn more than the male, because his jobs had largely dissappeared. Should this lead to divorce? No, but our unrealistic conception of marriage says that it should.
I’d also like to say that America has really unrealistic ideas of what is acceptable family behavior. For instance, in America, it isn’t considered acceptable for the family to be sitting at an bar with the parents drinking, while the kids run around underfoot. Let’s face it, it is very difficult to socialize in America as a family, so people think that you have to stay at home. If there are tensions between the husband and wife, then there are fewer ways to relieve that tension, because Americans don’t socialize much outside of their homes. I was shocked to see men drinking in Latin America in front of their kids in the park, but I ultimately realized that they had a much healthier conception of marriage and family than we do. We have this rigid idea that if the marriage doesn’t fit the ideal, then the marriage must be bad and it should end. Lots of men get hurt in this process because they loose contact with their kids.
I’m not sure how we change marriage so it is more accomodating to reality, but I do think we need to ask what are some of real stresses which make it difficult to for couples to stay together.
We never talk about how to provide for the rising costs of housing, health care, education and transportation, Americans are statistically working longer hours. This places huge stresses on marriages, which causes many to end in divorce. How many marriages break up because of arguments over money? In other societies, there is universal health care, higher education is free or highly subsidized, and public transportation lowers the cost of transportation, so there are fewer stresses on a financially strapped marriage. In many European societies, husbands and wives work shorter hours so it is easier to have a viable marriage and to raise kids. The Japanese men work longer hours than we do, but they hardly ever see their kids and the women are expected to stay home and take care of the kids. We clearly aren’t going back to that model, so we have to find another route. We also need to start asking what society can do to support kids, rather than throwing all the responsibility on the individual parents.
June 11, 2006 at 9:35 pm
Hal said,
And hence they have low divorce rates, and presumably their children aren’t torn apart by parental fighting.
This is awful, and can’t be allowed to become the norm in America. The next thing you know homosexuality would be considered “less than ideal” and the dems would never win office again.
June 12, 2006 at 4:42 am
Hal said,
June 12, 2006 at 4:44 am
bethesda_paul said,
After high school and college, it takes most men and women 15-20 years to realize the old traditional ways are best. Of course, a horrible divorce can educated a man much earlier.
June 12, 2006 at 6:02 am
conservativation said,
Some things you state concern me, for they represent the kind of partial analysis that passes so easily in todays left style excuse for debate.
You say:
1.Still, a child needs at least one parent to care for it full-time under the age of three
Assuming thats true, you leave it hanging as if you’ve addressed the full 18 years. At least go on and either say therefore one should keep that full-time arrangement, or it be changed to equal time after the age of three. It seems you suggest the former, which is one of the many traps equal parenting falls into in debate. It is fallacious if not extrapolated.
2Also, no fault divorce leaves a woman with children..not as rich as you might suppose.
If a woman files no-fault divorce, unilaterally tearing apart a family, devastating man and child, I really couldn’t care less if she ends up “not as rich”. Making sure a woman ends up nat as rich if she files no fault would slow the rate of female filings dramatically, and thats the goal. To much credibility is afforded the “my man was just a jerk” crowd. If she wants the divorce, and if he is SOOOOOO much a jerk, it should be well worth it to suffer economically. Then I’m convinced, maybe he was a jerk. Otherwise, he was likely just not “behaving” according to her model.
3.You’d be surprised…for every man that is being taken to the cleaners, there is a woman who cannot even find the ex husband…
Good, except for the kids part. It is horrible that these children have no father, and inexcusable, but to bemoan that women cannot find the man to milk him illicits zero sympathy from me. It is about the kids, not the moron who decided she didn’t feel loved, etc. etc.
June 12, 2006 at 12:11 pm
mruffolo said,
After Feminism Stole my Identity
http://www.savethemales.ca/080801.html
Reclaiming Male power in the Viagra Age
http://www.savethemales.ca/251001.html
June 12, 2006 at 4:17 pm
bethesda_paul said,
June 12, 2006 at 6:30 pm
mruffolo said,
Dr. Henry Makow, author of savethemales.ca, is Jewish.
It is not my role to defend Makow, yet I recall reading articles written that honor God and are pro-family.
Though his conspiracy theories are puzzling, he is right on, for me, when he writes about the strength of the bible’s wisdom versus failure of feminism, among other things.
Maybe allow others to read his articles to develop their own opinions. Thanks for sharing yours.
June 12, 2006 at 6:55 pm
amosbatto said,
Maybe Makow’s wife found happiness in a traditional marriage, but let’s also acknowledge that many other women haven’t. I personally don’t want a traditional wife–I want someone who feels equal to me and feels like she can challenge my opinion. What modern brain science shows is that women think in a wide variety of ways. Some are very analytical and right brain oriented. Others are more left-brain oriented. Curiously, men tend to be less diverse and are more likely to think in one way. The point is that what worked for Makow’s wife, won’t necessarily work for every woman. A feminist would tell you that feminism is about giving women a sence of self-worth, self-empowerment, and the freedom to make choices. Feminism according to most feminists should not be about forcing women to grasp for power as Makow characterizes it.
June 14, 2006 at 2:22 pm