I’m quoted on the marriage movement and federal marriage programs in Mary Meehan’s recent article Marriage as social medicine (Lexington Herald-Leader, 9/25/07). According to the article:
“[Sacks] said the pro-marriage movement has become ‘kind of a mania’ and is ‘very dismissive of non-custodial fathers.’ It makes the assumption, he said, ‘that no man will take responsibility unless the government coerces them to do it’ and puts responsible fathers on the defensive.”
One of my criticisms of the marriage movement and its influential thinkers–including David Blankenhorn, author of Fatherless America: Confronting Our Most Urgent Social Problem, and Elizabeth Marquardt (pictured), author of Between Two Worlds–is its view of divorced fathers.
In Fatherless America, Blankenhorn has many good things to say on the importance of fathers and of intact families. In one email exchange with David, I told him that I had been reading his book on a Sunday when my wife and kids had gone to see a movie, and that while reading it I kept looking out the window to see if they had come back yet–the book really made me want to be with my kids.
Yet Blankenhorn errs by placing almost all blame for family breakdown on fathers, who allegedly “abandon” their children. A couple years ago there was a little three-sided debate over this assertion between Blankenhorn, Stephen Baskerville and I at the Family Scholars blog here.
Marquardt does make a substantive effort to be gender-balanced in Between Two Worlds, and she makes a good case that what children need are married parents, though she overstates it a bit. Yet Marquardt is very opposed to shared parenting and has a low regard for the contributions of noncustodial parents after a divorce. To her credit, she acknowledged this issue at the Children’s Rights Council conference last year, explaining that her previous analysis seemed to end at family breakdown, providing no answers for the millions of families which have already broken down.
The Herald-Leader article mostly deals with federal marriage programs. One is the “Bluegrass Healthy Marriage Initiative, one of the federally funded programs, [which opertaes] under a three-year, $1 million grant with the goal of promoting marriage and increasing the amount of money unwed fathers pay in child support.”
I’m all for promoting marriage, but some of these federal programs seem to be more oriented towards fathers-as-wallets than serious attempts to create stable families.
We did a His Side with Glenn Sacks show on this a few years ago called “Bush’s Marriage Initiative: A Step Forward for Families or a State Intrusion?” The show featured a debate between Stephen Baskerville, a critic of the Initiative, and Rozario Slack of First Things First, one of the most prominent advocates of the proposals. To learn more and to listen to the show, click here.
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Thomas said,
So in my view fatherlessness is a manifestation of a screwed up court system.
BTW - thier arguement - off the record - was that I was just trying to get out of paying child support.
September 26, 2007 at 12:07 pm
hmh1497 said,
Our government seeks to force married couples to remain married with fear. They seek to marginalize parents that have kids out-of-wedlock by pinning a scarlet letter on them. They seek to force parents out of their children’s lives so that they can turn them into mind-numbed robots and future clients of the state.
Oh ya, tyranny is alive and well and living right here among us.
Our government, run by trial lawyers, know that their client base is largely those people that belong to the “Great Duped Society”. These are the people that believe the liberal Democrats and the big-brother Republicans, trust that Ahm-a-nutta-job is telling them the truth, and have become accustomed to the Big Lie that government grants rights. Whenever a person is down on their luck, demoralized, somewhat depressed or just plain helpless, as in our children; the trial lawyers swoop in and take them.
Shakespeare had it right, kill all the lawyers. Frankly, they are a larger threat than any terrorist will ever be to our freedoms.
Blankenhorn and Marquardt are sinister and evil pawns of their employers!
September 26, 2007 at 12:59 pm
hmh1497 said,
September 26, 2007 at 1:09 pm
Roger F. Gay said,
http://mensnewsdaily.com/secondaries/roundtable/roundtable.htm
September 26, 2007 at 3:09 pm
college activist said,
Go ahead, get married, and get yolked like cattle!!!
http://www.mattweeks.com/strike.htm
September 26, 2007 at 3:19 pm
donnieboy57 said,
September 26, 2007 at 3:26 pm
Robert Stevens said,
I have been doing research for several years now and am very close to perfecting these processes. I have had some sucess against the GiSKERS( government sponsored kidnapping and extortion racket). I have, by trial and error, mostly error, figured out how the court system* really works. I have found out how they manage to get away with totally ignoring the constitutional rights of people. hint: The system they operate under is not based on the constitution it is based on commercial law ( a system based on contracts and fictional entities, not real people)
If anyone has questions, email me: powerfulthirsty@yahoo.com
* The only real court in this country, ie one operating as an Article 3 court is the Supreme Court. All other so called courts are infact equity tribunals operating under article 1.
September 26, 2007 at 7:33 pm
mruffolo said,
Justice is mostly politics when viewed as groups of people.
September 27, 2007 at 1:32 am
conservativation said,
Marriage contracts not breakable by unilateral action lacking punitive measures will stop this crime.
September 27, 2007 at 7:22 am
Lloyd Selberg said,
It’s been years since I have communicated with Blankenhorn et al. It appears little or nothing has change in the last decade other than government funding for the marriage movement.
September 27, 2007 at 8:11 am
DcFather said,
Think about it. These a-holes like Blanjenhorn must not be allowed to play this game any longer, and exposing the reality that government is mass-producing fatherless children then blaming it on fathers could be the catlyst that would end the corruption and exploitation of children and fathers by greedy lawyers, hate-filled feminists, and PC politicians.
It would be very interesting to see what the percentages were when asking different parties for the same cases:
1. Government caseworkers involved
2. Mothers
3. Fathers
My guesses for claiming “abandonment” are, 90% (government), 80% (mothers), and 10% (fathers). If the study is solid, it could bring an end to the family destruction racket, as it would expose the corruption. At a minimum, it could be the catalyst to force some questions to get some honest answers for a change.
In my case, the state would call it “abandonment”, the mother would call it whatever she has been telling the children to alienate them from me, and anybody who spoke with me about it for a few minutes would clearly see outrage at having been driven away, even six years after the corrupt court got all the money it could get then got rid of me.
I sure hope Dr Baskerville at least starts to blow the lid off of this phony garbage spewed by government sleaze like Blankenhorn in his new book.
September 27, 2007 at 11:14 pm