Friday, May 25, 2007
WHY THE DEMOCRATS SHOULD MAKE SHARED PARENTING PART OF THE PARTY’S PLATFORM
By Rinaldo Del Gallo, III, Esq.*
413-445-6789
As a proud Democrat, I had the distinct pleasure of listening to the party state chair John Walsh at a recent breakfast for Democrats. He said, “The problem with politics is that people feel that it is done to them, that nobody is listening.” He said that in the very old days, government was local. You had to knock, door-by-door. But in the 60’s, people learned about the values of television. One could instantly speak to millions. But, Mr. Walsh added, as the media has evolved, as less people watch the 6:00 PM news, television is losing the power it once had, though it is obviously still a very important media. His point was excellent—too often politics is marketed like soap. A bunch of executives get together and come up with a marketing plan and a product that they think will sell and then push it on us. It often seems that “government is being done to us, rather than for us,” he said. Instead, government ought to be like an engineering specialty shop that is capable of listening to the people, and building what they want. In other words, government was not listening enough.
The people of Massachusetts have spoken. It is now time to listen.
Shared Parenting is supported by 86% of all Massachusetts voters. (Source: 2004 public policy question put on 36 legislative districts). It only makes sense, for a political party to be successful, to address key issues that effect many constituents and which there is widespread political support. Shared parenting is not just about a political issue, as important as that issue is. It is about rethinking the entire way we do politics. Will the Democrats be a party that dictates from the top down, or will it be a real grassroots party? Shared parenting is supported by Governor Deval Patrick. As of today, May 25, 2007, shared parenting is the number one issue on the Deval Patrick website.
Because Democrats believe in equality, because we believe in family, and because we believe in ending outdated stereotypes of men and women, it is time our Massachusetts Democratic Party to embrace shared parenting and put it on our state platform. The issue is simply too important and has too much popular support to keep it off the platform.
This past weekend, on Saturday, May 19, 2006, I had the distinct pleasure of being a delegate to the Massachusetts convention. Along with Dion Robbins Zust and Pat Friedman, we passed out hundreds of fliers to delegates. We received a very warm reception by these highly engaged people. We also met some other fathers’ rights activist from the eastern part of the state. Technically, there was a misprint in the rules and we could have moved to suspend the rules for a vote on shared parenting, but we played nice. The sergeant-at-arms was very helpful. We received much support, and spoke to the people who are in charge of the Massachusetts Democratic Platform Committee. The platform comes up for consideration in 2009. To read the Massachusetts Democrat Party’s Platform, go here.
Here are some key selling points about shared parenting:
· SHARED PARENTING creates a rebuttable presumption that joint physical and legal custody is in the child’s best interest. The presumption may be rebutted by evidence showing that one of the parents is unfit (as by being violent, neglectful, abusive, or having a drug addiction impairment), or by showing that it is not practical due to no fault of one of the parents (as when one of the parents cannot find a job in the area and it is an absolute necessity to move).
· SHARED PARENTING does not end case-by-case determinations, call for “automatic” child custody judgments, or end the “best interest of the child” standard. It does assure that children will have both parents post-divorce, unless there is a good reason.
· SHARED PARENTING puts a father back in a child’s life, reducing virtually every major child-related social pathology. According to divorce magazine.com, “Fatherless homes account for 63% of youth suicides, 90% of homeless/runaway children, 85% of all children with behavioral problems, 71% of high school drop outs, 85% of youths in prison, and well over 50% of teen mothers.”
· SHARED PARENTING has voluminous scientific support. According to a major study by Dr. Robert Bauserman that was published by the American Psychological Association in the Journal of Family Psychology, which was a study of all studies on joint custody and sole custody in existence that had quantifiable data (i.e., a “meta-analysis), “Children in joint custody arrangements had less behavioral and emotional problems, had higher self-esteem, better family relations and school performance than children in sole custody arrangements.”
To see a funny spoof of Apocolypse Now, click HERE
* Rinaldo Del Gallo, III, Esq.
Rinaldo Del Gallo, III, Esq. is spokesperson of the Berkshire Fatherhood Coalition and a practicing family law attorney.
He can be reached at 413-556-6789.
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rastus said,
May 25, 2007 at 10:50 am
mruffolo said,
Though your suggestion sounds hopeful, a woman’s organization campaigning for father’s rights may have about the same chances of occurring.
May 25, 2007 at 11:35 am
mruffolo said,
“And I know I don’t even have to ask this — but would you trust this guy with your kids?”
http://www.now.org/news/note/051707.html
Woman’s groups have a powerful, well-organized lobby network with politicians.
Who will argue against a woman’s right to divorce and control the kids from the image of the abusive man?
Today woman’s organization are saying, “U.S. courts are failing to protect the life, liberties, security, and other human rights of abused mothers and children by frequently awarding child custody to abusers and child molesters.”
May 25, 2007 at 11:42 am
mruffolo said,
http://legalmomentum.org/legalmomentum/programs/njep/child_custody_resources
May 25, 2007 at 11:46 am
conservativation said,
May 25, 2007 at 11:59 am
Robert Stevens said,
You must be observant enough to realize the man haters and the would be social engineer are begining to realize that people are waking up. They are not only questioning the status quo, they are begining to speak up and these are not your hard core fathers rights advocates. These are ordinary people who are just now becoming aware of a gross injustice in the family court system.
People are gullible and trusting, but they are not stupid. They are now beginning to see just how corrupt the family courts system is and just how much injustice is suffered by fathers and men in this country.
The democrats and the republican too had better realize that change is comming and who ever gets on the bandwaggon first will dominate politics in this country for a long time.
It is still a good ways away, but change is coming and no matter how much our adversaries try, they won’t be able to stop it .
May 25, 2007 at 12:27 pm
Elder George said,
May 25, 2007 at 1:07 pm
mruffolo said,
“Going back to 1820, per capita gross domestic product in the United States
has grown an average of 52 percent for each generation. But since 1973, overall median family income has grown only 0.6 percent per year, a rate that produces a 17 percent increase in the average family’s income for each
generation. Thus, unless the rate of economic growth increases, the next generation will experience an improvement in its standard of living that is only one-third as large as the historical average for earlier generations.”
Economic Mobility Project, 2007, p. 6
Male Income Trends:
“Beginning with a comparison of men ages 30-39 in 1994 with their fathers’ generation, men ages 30-39 in 1964, we see a small, but fairly insignificant,
amount of intergenerational progress. Adjusting for inflation, median income increased by less than $2,000 between 1964 and 1994, from
about $31,000 to under $33,000 — a 5 percent increase (0.2 percent per year) during this thirty-year period. The story changes for a younger cohort. Those in their thirties in 2004 had a median income of about $35,000
a year. Men in their fathers’ cohort, those who are now in their sixties, had a median income of about $40,000 when they were the same age in 1974. Indeed, there has been no progress at all for the youngest generation. As a group, they have on average 12 percent less income than their fathers’ generation at the same age. This suggests the up-escalator that
has historically ensured that each generation would do better than the last may not be working very well.”
Economic Mobility Project, 2007, p. 5
http://economicmobility.com
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118005313993514160.html?mod=todays_us_page_one
May 25, 2007 at 1:47 pm
scottkirk said,
The democrats like rastus says; are fully indoctrinated by the feminists…and thats why they will not win another election for a long time…..
Like you say Rinaldo…it would be very wise for them to start a father friendly/man friendly dialogue..
But i believe that most democrats are too psychologically castrated….
May 25, 2007 at 3:02 pm
John Dias said,
May 25, 2007 at 3:53 pm
WLS said,
While national Republicans, typified by Wade Horn, tout fatherhood but reject divorced or otherwise disenfranchised fathers and chase `deadbeat’ dads, California has had some good, faithful supporters of joint custody and equal parenting in the state Legislature, most of whom were Republicans and are now gone as a consequence of term limits.
We’ve really let things slide as far as getting the message out where it counts.
May 25, 2007 at 9:56 pm
Rinaldo Del Gallo, III said,
For those of you not in Massachusetts, let me describe the political climate. 85% of all the legislatures are Democrats. The Governor is a Democrat. Every statewide office is run by a Democrat (i.e., Attorney General, Secretary of the Commonwealth). 8 of the 8 Governor’s Councilors (who approve judges) are Democrats.
To not have Democratic support in Massachusetts is tantamount to no government support at all. Reform MUST be had with this party, or it cannot happen (save by ballot initiative.)
Rinaldo
May 25, 2007 at 10:49 pm
thurston861 said,
By Eugene Narrett
Even natural rites of passage that ripen and occur in their own good time bring pain with them, even when pleasures attend. The problem is not in giving attention to such natural separations; the problem is in ignoring those that are unnecessary, forced, brutally harsh and, often, damaging.
I am referring again, as I have in the past, to the needless pain inflicted on parents and children separated from each other by the routine malfunctioning of our misnamed family courts. Every year during the past decade and more, nearly one and a half million children are separated from one of their parents, almost always their father, by divorce courts that don’t understand that single parenthood (in these cases aptly and grimly termed “custody”) is a tragedy to be avoided and lamented, not a situation to be wantonly and needlessly created.
Consider the following research findings that describe the feelings of children forced by family courts to endure repeated lengthy absences from one of their parents. “The most striking response among the 6- to 8-year-olds was their pervasive sadness. The impact of separation from the father appeared to be so strong that the children’s usual coping strategies did not hold up. Crying and sobbing were common, especially among the boys.”
It is sobering enough to read and reflect on such findings. To experience their living presence is agony, to stand in a doorway and watch and listen to your child cry for you, plead to stay with you and yet to be forbidden to provide the love and company for which he cries. That is a horror no parent should suffer. But that is a horror routinely meted out to millions of parents and children by the systematic and cold-blooded brutality of our courts.
How ironic that courts continue to justify this bureaucratic abuse using what is called the “tender years” doctrine, the Victorian notion that a child of less than 10 or 12 years primarily needs his mother. The court, like the welfare system, considers the father to be superfluous. As common sense and the research cited above indicate, someone forgot to tell the kids that their fathers are of secondary importance.
But as in war or terrible illness, or as a person learns to use a crippled limb, one adjusts. You know how to drive. You know the way to the motel, so you drive there. You’re hungry and tired, so you eat, shower and try to sleep. In the morning, you take yourself to the airport, the shuttle, the flight; another terminal, the car. The clouds and tunnel and toll-way pass. There’s your driveway, your house, the rooms still filled with the absent life. Baseball cards on a table; a Lego creation half built on the floor; pajamas crumpled on his pillow.
But the little soul and heart and sweet face that’s absent hasn’t gone to college, only to second grade and to a far away apartment where he doesn’t want to be, where he’s kept against his will. There is no freedom of choice here. “Choice” has acquired a special, politicized meaning that also destroys lives, families and the future.
Perhaps it has become quaint to wonder how we will be judged by those who come after us. Perhaps we have grown too sophisticated to believe or care much about the future, to care much more than throwing a few slogans at it. Too sophisticated to care about more than who has got power at a certain place and time.
A society that routinely torments the innocent and sanitizes its abuse with legalisms is perhaps already has been judged. The tragedy is that the transforming judgment has been earned by children crying at a door.
http://worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=55879
May 26, 2007 at 5:32 pm
scottkirk said,
May 26, 2007 at 7:20 pm
WLS said,
Most child `experts’ moreover now agree that joint custody is best if divorce or separation of the parents is unavoidable—EXCEPT when there is coparenting related _conflict_ between them.
The troublesome dogma currently embodied in both the law and therapeutic practice is that in that situation one parent must be chosen and the other essentially completely disenfranchised. Thus the incentive is there for the parent who stands to get the nod—into which notions of political correctness, status quo, the `primary caregiver,’ lingering vestiges of tender years, etc. enters—to intensify, or create or stage if necessary, any tendency to conflict, augment it with false accusations, and so forth as we all all too well know.
May 26, 2007 at 7:25 pm
Lloyd selberg said,
Anything short of a US Supreme Court ruling insuring the EQUAL enforcement of each parent’s civil parental rights will be ineffective. Presuming equally fit parents, the court must not be permitted to apply its totally subjective “best interest” criteria. The years of application of “tender years doctrine” will not be overcome.
Missouri law has gone so far as to require specific judicial findings should the court fail to insure frequent, continuing and meaningful contact with both parents after the parents have separated or dissolved their marriage. The years of case law granting all but unlimited judicial discretion to the trial courts in custody determinations makes the enacted law all but meaningless. Appeal is at best another $10,000 in the pockets of attorneys with the grounds for continued litigation.
RSMO 452-375: 4. The general assembly finds and declares that it is the public policy of this state that frequent, continuing and meaningful contact with both parents after the parents have separated or dissolved their marriage is in the best interest of the child, except for cases where the court specifically finds that such contact is not in the best interest of the child, and that it is the public policy of this state to encourage parents to participate in decisions affecting the health, education and welfare of their children, and to resolve disputes involving their children amicably through alternative dispute resolution. In order to effectuate these policies, the court shall determine the custody arrangement which will best assure both parents participate in such decisions and have frequent, continuing and meaningful contact with their children so long as it is in the best interests of the child.
RSMO 452-375: 6. If the parties have not agreed to a custodial arrangement, or the court determines such arrangement is not in the best interest of the child, the court shall include a written finding in the judgment or order based on the public policy in subsection 4 of this section and each of the factors listed in subdivisions (1) to (8) of subsection 2 of this section detailing the specific relevant factors that made a particular arrangement in the best interest of the child. If a proposed custodial arrangement is rejected by the court, the court shall include a written finding in the judgment or order detailing the specific relevant factors resulting in the rejection of such arrangement
May 28, 2007 at 10:43 pm
hmh1497 said,
WLS, that psycho-babble BS from the shrinks is just assinine.
In high conflicts, the best, I said the very, very best parenting situation is to order an equal parenting schedule; to the minute, if possible. My kids changed parents every Sunday at 6pm. They loved it and I loved it. Only Mom hated it because she wasn’t collecting her huge, windfall, child support check every week.
Any act from Congress doesn’t have teeth until it recognizes the natural, human rights issue that we all know to be self-evident. The SCOTUS has recognized the fundamental right of parents to raise their own children since the early 1900s. Custody is for criminals, not children. Our kids have a natural right to their own parents. They know it well; it’s instinctive. Why do you think they cry when separated form their parents? Our basic human rights are in peril until we end this evil. The evil of determining custody is purely a criminal action.
The Family Courts are guilty of high crimes against humanity and it happens every day in the so-called home-of-the-free, USA. If either party awakens to this evil, they will need a super-hero intestinal fortitude to fight the throngs of self-interested groups who provide tacit support to these assaults on our kids.
May 29, 2007 at 2:46 pm
Rinaldo Del Gallo, III said,
Our movement is attractive to many people in many different political stripes.
May 29, 2007 at 4:34 pm
scottkirk said,
May 29, 2007 at 5:19 pm
Rinaldo Del Gallo, III said,
Neither Democrats or Republicans can make a claim to own this issue.
May 30, 2007 at 8:35 am
DcFather said,
Democrat = Progressive
Progressive = Marxist
Marxist = feminist / anti-father / anti-equal-parenting
Marxist is feminist because gender hatred/envy divides the people a whole lot better than the class hatred/envy of traditional Marxism. Class envy allows families to stay together, and family is the enemy of big government and Marxism, and therefore Progressives and therefore Democrats by definition must and will wage war against the family, primarily through attacking its weakest link - fathers.
Not that Republicans are any better. Their strategy today seems to be slighlty smaller huge government, slightly less war against fathers and the family, and more loyalty to corporate special interests instead of anti-family government payola (tax and spend) special interests.
Neither party has or will do anything other than pursue their own agenda at the people’s expense, and that includes sacrificing the well-being of children. Equal parenting would put the people above the party, and the Constitution above the special interest groups, so it ain’t gonna happen, despite the occasional Democrat or Republican who puts children above party politics.
June 2, 2007 at 10:28 am