I don't understand NOW, feminists or "reproductive rights."

I am re-posting this as after just re-reading it I realize that I am even more convinced that what NOW has become may be the single most insidious force in modern society actively working against American families. Originally posted in Feb 2006.

I have to admit - as much disgust as I feel at a legal system that appears to systemically award custody based on gender instead of equally or on merit- I am not one to completely discount "maternal instinct."

I do feel as though often parents offer different supports to their children. A lot of the times these differences lie in stereotypical traits - mothers are more empathetic and nurturing while fathers are more pragmatic, physical and better equipped to teach boundaries. NOT ALWAYS - but a lot of the time. This is not to say that either contribution is more important but that often parents help teach their kids differently.

I'll bite when a woman claims the bond between mother and child at childbirth is stronger. I understand that the intimacy of breastfeeding is not easily duplicated by a father. I believe that more often the mother stays home with the child(ren) and is therefore more demonstrably involved in the day to day activities. I'll even temporarily agree that a stay at home mom (or stay at home dad for that matter) should enjoy spousal support along with child support until that party is able find a position with which they can adequately support themselves - not just the first cashier position in the want ads. (Now this forces the question of what is adequate and just how long but I'm not writing legislation here so lets just use the term reasonable. I know this a cop out but I will never be convinced that every case can be handled with some "joint custody, no support" position. There are stay at home Parents and often this arrangement resulted as a joint decision based on the children's best interests - the parent at home should have a reasonable expectation of temporary support in this realignment of the family structure).

I don't understand, however, why women keep beating the "pay discrimination" horse when it is so clear that more women take time off work (and plan to take time off work) to care for children. Not just maternity leave time but often for the first few years of the child's life. Time off for maternity leave should not result in pay disparities but certainly a woman coming back to the workforce after SEVERAL YEARS can not honestly expect to make a salary comparable with the man who worked through her entire period off. Would that not be discriminatory?

NOW lists their "top priority issues" as: Abortion Rights/Reproductive Rights, Violence Against Women, Constitutional Equality, Promoting Diversity/Ending Racism, Lesbian Rights and Economic Justice.

On the NOW site they list the median salary for male registered nurses as $36,868 and female registered nurses as $35,360. So the woman makes 96% of the males salary... This is certainly not the .74¢ for every dollar they were talking about the paragraph earlier. Nor is a male teacher at $33,800 with a female at $32,292. Could these small disparities have anything to do with more women taking time off to care for children? I can't prove it but it seems a hell of a lot more reasonable than as a result of pervasive wage discrimination.

They do get to the .74¢ with their salary numbers for computer operators- but the final example of cashiers have women making 83.3% of the males salary. I can't begin to consider all of the variables that would have to be accounted for in order to fully compare salaries by gender but I can say that it seems irresponsible to continue to cry about .74¢ on the dollar and then only produce one example of such a disparity while completely ignoring the fiscal impact on mothers who ELECT to stay home either temporarily or permanently after their children are born.

I don't understand feminists who assert that they need an "Equal Rights Amendment" while simultaneously fighting against all legislative efforts to equalize parenting post divorce. I'm not talking about the cases in which the father/mother is a demonstrated abuser of any ilk - but the run of the mill divorce with two involved and caring parents.

I would think women would prefer such a system as if one begins to think logically about who should be preferred in a custody case (as though any parent should be instantly preferred without considering the case and facts) it would have to be men. At least from the speculative point of who is less likely to abuse their children (if we want to use the issue of who *may* be abusive) it seems women are more frequently the perpetrators of abuse or neglect of children.

It appears children in mother headed households are also more likely to be under the poverty line when compared with father headed households. The CRC has a wonderful chart but you can see the census info here. Now, one might say that this is a result of men not paying child support effectively forcing these women into poverty. I mean, come on, you have seen those "deadbeat dad" commercials. Except that actual "deadbeat dads" account for somewhere around 10% of those who have accrued arrearages in child support. In reality, far more non custodial mothers default on their support orders than fathers.

I can't imagine why men would be at all hesitant to pay - it couldn't have anything to do with the fact that some researchers are now claiming as many as 30% of "fathers" may not be biologically related to their children.

So NOW stands for equal rights - but not equal rights for men or children. Their rights come after our wonderful feminist population has been sufficiently (*equally*) served.

They also list "lesbian rights" as a top issue - listing Equal Marriage Now as a related issue. Not being particularly religious, I won't go into what a conflict this position could be for a religious woman - but honestly, how can you claim to desire "equal" marriage rights for gay women while publicly bashing the fatherhood movement?

In this link there is a heading titled "Relocation Laws Keep Women in Their Place." That is asinine - relocation laws keep children in their communities. Women can go wherever they want - they may just have to do so by voluntarily leaving their children. To in any way assert that women should be able to move at will with children (moving them away from their fathers and community) just because they are women may be the pinnacle of an outright discriminatory and inherently UNEQUAL position. This is a quote from the link above: "Feminists vow to educate legislators and judges that ex-husbands are sometimes more interested in exerting control over and making life difficult for their former wives than in maintaining beneficial relationships with their children and that the needs of the children and custodial parent must be given priority."

Absolutely no commentary on how children do better with meaningful contact from both parents. No mention of the hypocrisy of this position. No substantive mention of the welfare of the children - just a warning about "abusive or controlling ex-spouses and sexist judges" with no evidence to back up the claim that either of these alleged groups are conspiring to keep women in their geographical place.

And finally, "reproductive rights." I'm sorry but considering it takes both genders to "reproduce" should not reproductive rights be offered to both parents? Not in the cases where the mother is in danger but in truly elective abortion should not both parents have the opportunity to offer to raise the child? Is it fair to the child or to the father to let a woman unilaterally decide to abort a child just because it is "her body?"

I'm not anti-abortion per se but I certainly think that provided a father willing to raise the child it is just insane to allow the woman to abort just because she wants to. How did women make unregulated fetus killing a primary position? Again, this also seems a very difficult position for a woman of a religious background. Apparently you cannot be religious and "dedicated to making legal, political, social and economic change in our society in order to achieve our goal, which is to eliminate sexism and end all oppression." (That is what NOW says it stands for anyway - can't say I'm convinced).

I find that I am not resolutely anything one way or another. There are tenets of all political parties that I agree with, there are self described feminists that can make a lot of sense as are there proponents of the fathers movement that are reasonable and dedicated to what I consider worthy and laudable goals.

But I'm sorry - most of what I see on the NOW site looks like crap. I simply cannot begin to comprehend an organization who purports to seek equality but uses the most unequal of methods.

And really, the thought that goes through my head every time I read feminist nonsense of this ilk - all of these efforts have and will visit themselves on the boys of this country. I'm quite sad for my 8 year old stepson - he has a long road ahead.

I found this quote today ~ apparently Ms. Lewis was an actress.

You don't have to be anti-man to be pro-woman. ~Jane Galvin Lewis

NOW seems stuck in yesterday

NOW seems stuck in yesterday

This is the latest article by Cathy Young.

Excerpts:

The feminists of 1966 were interested in justice for all. They were highly critical of the notion that breadwinning should be the man's sole or primary burden and that a married woman automatically should be entitled to financial support from her husband during marriage or after divorce.

In more recent times, however, NOW and its state chapters have tended in almost knee-jerk fashion to side with women in the debates over divorce, often advocating higher and more long-term spousal support.

While paying lip service to the idea of equal parenting, NOW steadfastly has opposed efforts to broaden the rights of divorced fathers.

With the exception of a few chapters, it has staunchly opposed such proposals as joint custody and mediation instead of litigation.

Ten years ago, NOW issued an "Action Alert against fathers' rights," which accused divorced men who seek a role in their children's lives of abusing power "in the same fashion as do batterers."

The top resolution adopted at its 1999 national conference was another call to arms against the fathers' rights movement, asserting that "women lose custody of their children, despite being good mothers, despite a lack of involvement of the father with the children, and regardless of a history of being the primary caregiver." (That undoubtedly has happened in some cases, but to this day it is still far more frequently fathers who experience such injustice.)

NOW's 1966 statement declared that women must seek equality "not in pleas for special privilege, nor in enmity toward men, who are also victims of the current half-equality between the sexes -- but in an active, self-respecting partnership with men."

Sadly, many of the organization's policies and practices have betrayed this principle.

Feminism is still needed in 2006, at a time when social conservatism is on the rise and when many conservative women's groups that claim to offer an alternative to the women's movement promote retrograde and limiting notions of gender roles.

But what's needed is a call for equality, not special privilege or enmity toward men. NOW's feminism is not its foremothers' feminism, and that's too bad.

Glenn Sacks and A330

This is all from the latest Glenn Sacks newsletter. You can subscribe by clicking here.

Excerpts:

James Hays of the Coalition of Fathers and Families New York, which is sponsoring the New York Shared Parenting Bill, informed me yesterday that your faxes have completely shut down the fax machines of the 16 members of the Assembly's Children & Families Committee. The committee members have asked us to stop, and we complied immediately.

Five thousand of you have faxed or emailed the committee members in support of A330, the shared parenting bill. FaFNY wants to deliver your letters personally to the committee members this week, and has asked that you continue filling out the letters form. To write to the committee members with your support for this bill, click here.

This bill has been locked up in committee for 12 years! The vote on the bill was set for March 28 but has been postponed until April 4. This may be a maneuver designed to allow the bills' opponents--which include the New York Chapter of the National Organization for Women--to make their impact felt. New York is a battleground state for shared parenting and fatherhood. Again, to support the bill, click here.

New York NOW Defends Mothers' Veto over Fathers' Fatherhood

Pappas wrote a revealing letter to a shared parenting activist explaining her opposition to A330.

In opposition to A330 Pappas writes:

"Many women who are victims of domestic violence and women who have had to endure watching their children be abused, would disagree with [the bill]. Many women have said, 'forced joint custody sent my children right into the arms of their abusive father.' We believe that joint custody should be agreed upon by both parties and if one party disagrees, then there is usually a good reason. A woman who is victim of violence should not have to be victimized again by the courts. This is what forced joint custody does" (emphasis in original).

The old domestic violence bugaboo. A330 only applies to fit parents--abused women would get sole custody.

Pappas' views amount to this--if mom wants a dad to remain a dad, fine, but if not, too bad. Feminist family law proponents essentially seek to give mothers veto power over fathers' fatherhood.

Your Tax Dollars at Work

The New York State Coalition Against Domestic Violence's opposition to A330 is a fine example of your tax dollars at work--the coalition receives government funding, probably from the Violence Against Women Act.

One of the things about VAWA which I find the most objectionable is the fact it results in state-funded radical feminist lobbying. Whenever our movement tries to bring fathers and children together, these groups are always among our most vocal and influential opponents.

In California, for example, they opposed AB 1307, the California Shared Parenting Bill, and were instrumental in defeating it last Spring. These groups were also among the leading opponents of Gary LaMusga, a heroic father who fought an eight-year battle all the way up to the California Supreme Court to prevent his two boys from being moved out of state. To learn more about the LaMusga case, click here.

Are You a High Earner Paying Child Support?

Family law reform activist Josh Gonze is looking for high-earners who are paying child support. He says his state has no ceiling on child support and that he is "searching for published legal precedent where a court placed a limit on child support on the grounds that the statute produces excessively high child support." Those interested can respond to Gonze at reformfamilylaw@hotmail.com.

WANTED: Women Who Aren't Insane

Wanted: A Few Good Sperm

This is from the NY Times which means you may need to register to read it. Try Bugmenot for login info.

The only thing I can say about this article that does not involve expletives is THANK GOD I HAVE A REAL, ACCESSIBLE, DEVOTED AND LOVING FATHER. As much as I question decisions my mother has made I don't think she could ever be as selfish as the women chronicled.

Excerpts:

Karyn said she hoped to join a population of women that everyone agrees is expanding, although by how much is hard to pin down because single mothers by choice (or choice mothers), as they are sometimes called, aren't separated statistically from, say, babies born to unwed teenagers. Between 1999 and 2003 there was an almost 17 percent jump in the number of babies born to unmarried women between ages 30 and 44 in America, according to the National Center for Human Statistics, while the number born to unmarried women between 15 and 24 actually decreased by nearly 6 percent. Single Mothers by Choice, a 25-year-old support group, took in nearly double the number of new members in 2005 as it did 10 years ago, and its roughly 4,000 current members include women in Israel, Australia and Switzerland. The California Cryobank, the largest sperm bank in the country, owed a third of its business to single women in 2005, shipping them 9,600 vials of sperm, each good for one insemination.

Buying sperm over the Internet, on the other hand, is not much different from buying shoes. (emphasis mine)

Karyn carried a wallet-size copy of the donor's photo between her MetroCard and her work ID. (She carries a picture around of this guy - she has developed some sort of emotional attachment to a freaking picture and yet she sees no problem with bringing a child into the world who will have no formative relationship with this man - THEIR FATHER.)

Last October, when I visited the Manhattan apartment of Daniela, a 38-year-old German advertising executive who had recently been inseminated with the sperm of a male friend, her guest room was peppered with toys belonging to the young son of a visiting friend who had broken up with the boy's father by the time he was born. "They got a child out of love, and the parents couldn't deal with one another," Daniela, who asked that I use only her first name, told me. "And now she lives in Germany; he lives here. He doesn't pay any money if he doesn't see the child. So there's a constant battle over it. The child is torn in between. She has to deal with the father. I won't have to deal with the father." (emphasis mine - but really this is just sick. It's not just about you, it's about the child's relationship with its father.)

She was also attracted by the idea of a donor of another race. "I believe in multiculturalism," she said. "I would probably choose somebody with a darker skin color so I don't have to slather sunblock on my kid all the time. I want it to be a healthy mix. You know how mixed dogs are always the nicest and the friendliest and the healthiest? If you get a clear race, they have all the problems. Mutts are always the friendly ones, the intelligent ones, the ones who don't bark and have a good character. I want a mutt." Her African-American friends questioned this strategy, suggesting that her child's life would be harder if he or she was perceived as nonwhite, but Daniela said: "If that's what I believe, I have to go by that. And it might help the world also if more people are doing it that way." (Okay - she is comparing her future child to a mixed breed dog - lovely.)

"I see so many women who are in unhealthy relationships, where they really just try to get married and then have a child and break it off," Daniela said. "If they would consider this as an option, I think they would be happier, and the children would be happier." (Their children would be happier fatherless. I bet. However, it is equally sick to get married in order to get pregnant and then initiate a divorce. I am truly staring to believe that everyone should be temporarily sterilized when they hit puberty and then have to pass some extensive psychological tests before they can plan to have children.)

"One of the things that was so powerful about deciding to have a baby on my own was saying, I'm taking charge of this piece of it; I'm not going to wait around for a guy to give it to me. And my feelings about what I want from men right now are really changed. I don't actually want a big relationship. Now I want occasional companionship and sex." (emphasis mine)

For all the comparisons between being divorced with children and having them alone, there are critical differences: an ex-husband who spends any time at all with his kids frees up pockets of time when a woman could potentially see someone new. Even minimal child-support payments would reduce the financial burden on her, and substantial ones could allow her to work less. Perhaps most important, a child with only one parent is immensely dependent on that parent, and the mother of such a child tends to feel her responsibility acutely. It can be painful — and expensive — to leave your child with a baby sitter after a whole day away, just to go out on a date.

"I want my son to have a full sibling," she said. "I want to feel like he has one person in the world who is a complete blood relative after I'm gone. I did not want my son to feel deprived, that the other sibling had a father and he didn't." (emphasis mine. This statement was from a woman who was using the same donor to bear a second child. How funny that she is so insistent her child have a full blooded sibling - but can completely ignore the need to have an available father.)

Q. is one of several people in the group with a keen desire to meet her donor one day. And they aren't sitting idle; one woman had magnified his baby picture, in which the donor is blowing out candles on his birthday cake, to the point at which a first name may be legible. Another mother has a hunch about the donor's provenance based on the way he pronounced certain words on his audiotape. At the Washington Single Mothers by Choice meeting, I met a woman who had easily identified the donor for her 9-month-old son using Google. "The person left specific enough information for me to just type in those words and click," she told the group. "But what to do with that information? I'm bound to keep him anonymous as per the contract, but what about when my son says: 'What do you know? Tell me anything about my dad."' (Okay - this is all just too much. These women went to a sperm bank to find an anonymous donor but are now searching out these donors... So maybe they don't so much want to do it on their own they just couldn't find anyone willing to knowingly impregnate them. Okay, that is cruel but jeez these men donated under conditions of anonymity. So these women don't care about the benefits that come from having children with a willing and involved partner - they also don't care about contractual obligations of anonymity AND they are admitting that their children will want to know about their other parent - that their children will be missing out compared to children in traditional families. BUT this was still the best thing they COULD DO FOR THEMSELVES so screw the long term.)

Whenever he was in earshot, Shelby spelled out the word D-A-D; lately Christopher had become fixated on the idea of a daddy. "He goes to a day care, and he's the only child of a single mother in his class. I think they spend a lot of time talking about Daddy," she told me. Christopher had referred to a neighbor as Daddy, as well as Regis Philbin. "Interestingly, he doesn't call my boyfriend Daddy; he's 'mamma's friend.' The other day, I said, 'Someone special's coming to see you today — do you know who it is?' I expected him to say [her boyfriend's name]. But he said, 'Daddy?"' The single mothers by choice I spoke with generally hold that the story of their children's origins should be told to them from the time of birth, long before the child is old enough to understand it. But Shelby feels that at 2, Christopher is too young to hear that he doesn't have a father. (the emphasis is always mine)

Her boyfriend usually visits on Sunday mornings. "A huge wave of relief comes over me," Shelby said. She can relax or do dishes or take a nap. "I feel, like, Wow, this must be what it's like to have a husband every day of the year. I can do my own thing, but I love to just stand across the room and watch them together."

Societal Shift in Role of Fathers

Societal Shift in Role of Fathers

This is the latest article from Wendy McElroy.

Excerpts:

On March 28, the New York State Assembly's Children & Families Committee is scheduled to hear Bill A330 on shared parenting. The bill seeks to establish "the presumption in matrimonial proceedings for awarding shared parenting of minor children in the absence of an allegation that shared parenting would be detrimental to the best interests of the child."

In short, a parent seeking sole custody (most commonly the mother) would assume the legal burden of proving why a shared arrangement would harm the child.

Father's rights advocates view New York as "a battleground state" not only because of the influence its policies exert but also because New York is one of the few states to resist a national trend toward statutes favoring joint custody.

Because A330 is vehemently opposed by mainstream feminist organizations like the New York Chapter of the National Organization for Women, the bill's hearing may become raucous. But, given that almost three dozen State Assembly members have endorsed the bill as sponsors or co-sponsors, A330 stands a good chance of passing.

The Feminist Anti-Kid Crusade

New Carey Roberts article: The Feminist Anti-Kid Crusade

Sacks, Allred Debate New CA. Supreme Court Move-Away Decision

In relation to the post below, Glenn Sacks debated attorney Gloria Allred last Friday about this case and move away cases in general. What follows are verbatim excerpts from an email. You can visit GlennSacks.com or His Side with Glenn Sacks for more information or to sign up for email updates.

Excerpts:

California Supreme Court Rules Against Dad in New Move-Away Decision

From 1996 to 2004 move-away determinations were based on the Burgess decision, in which a custodial mother was allowed to move her two children 40 miles away from their father. Burgess was disastrous for children because it was interpreted by California courts to permit moves of hundreds or thousands of miles. In some cases, courts have even allowed children to be moved out of the country, as far away as Australia, New Zealand, and Zaire.

In 2004 the California Supreme Court decided the LaMusga case in favor of the father, Gary LaMusga, who sought to prevent his ex-wife from moving his two young boys from California to Ohio. LaMusga, who is unable to follow his children because he operates a small business and is tied down by weighty child support obligations, had fought the move for eight years. In siding with the father the court explained that "the likely impact of the proposed move on the noncustodial parent's relationship with the children is a relevant factor in determining whether the move would cause detriment to the children."

Soon afterwards a handful of extreme feminists prevailed upon former California Senate President Pro Tem John Burton (D-San Francisco) to introduce SB 730, which would have abrogated LaMusga and given custodial parents almost unlimited move-away privileges. We organized to fight the bill, and generated thousands of calls and letters in opposition, as well as a lot of media attention. To everybody's surprise, Burton withdrew SB 730, and LaMusga was preserved.

Fortunately the new decision in Brown vs. Yana will not have the impact of Burgess or LaMusga--it is more technical and limited in scope, and the father's underwhelming legal effort and behavior hurt him. To learn more about the new ruling, see Court Rules Parents With Custody Can Move (Los Angeles Times, 2/2/06).

To learn more about California move-aways and the LaMusga case, see my co-authored column Is a Pool More Important than a Dad? (San Francisco Chronicle, 5/4/04) and read my LaMusga radio commentary here. To read a feminist view of the move-away issue, see Allred's column "Moving Matters in Custody" (Los Angeles Daily Journal, 10/3/02).

I discussed how this issue would be viewed if we switched the genders in my column California NOW Takes Stand Against Working Mothers (Sarasota Herald-Tribune, 2/23/04), and argued in favor of a current Wisconsin move-away bill in my co-authored piece AB 400 Will Help Wisconsin's Children of Divorce (Wisconsin State Journal, 12/3/05). I clashed with feminist law professor Carol Bruch, who authored the mother's brief in LaMusga, on PBS's Los Angeles affiliate KCET last year--to watch, click here.

Sacks, Allred Debate New California Supreme Court Move-Away Decision

For example, Gloria often says that restrictions on move-aways unfairly restrict custodial moms from moving, while not restricting noncustodial fathers. I answer that in these cases both parents are free to move wherever they want--it is the children who may not be moved if a court determines that it is against their best interests.

Gloria often says that restrictions on move-aways keep custodial parents "held hostage" in their neighborhoods, and that they should be able to "move on with their lives." I respond that both parents retain responsibilities to their children after divorce which are sometimes inconvenient or limiting, and ask "Would we argue that noncustodial parents' responsibility to pay child support holds them 'hostage?' Do we condone the behavior of divorced parents who decide to drop out of their children's lives or stop paying child support because they've decided to 'move on with their lives?'"

Another Bizarre Father Screwing

According to the article Not guilty, but not off the hook (2/6/06):

"A man who spent 13 years in prison after being wrongly convicted of murder faces a debt of more than $38,000 in child-support payments that started accumulating while he was locked up...

"A federal judge released Souter last April 1.

"In 1987, before his conviction, [Larry] Souter was ordered to pay $100 a week in his divorce with Christine Souter. He stopped paying when he went to prison in 1992 but didn't ask to have payments suspended until 1995.

"Court documents show that in 1997, he owed $23,000 in back support. As of last month, interest and penalties had pushed it to $38,082.25.

"Federal law prohibits judges from retroactively wiping out such debts...

"David Sarnacki, an attorney for Souter's ex-wife, wrote in a court filing that his client 'has endured the substantial burden of raising her two children without defendant's contribution of child support.'"

I love the quote from his ex-wife's attorney. Yes, he didn't pay child support because he was in prison framed on a murder charge. I guess we should be grateful the lawyer didn't refer to Souter as a "deadbeat dad." That'll probably be next. One would also think that after seeing her ex-husband rot in jail for 13 years for a crime he didn't commit, she would feel so damn sorry for the poor guy that she would back off. I guess not.

In the article Wrongly convicted man tries to move on after prison (Flint Journal, 1/7/06), Souter had discussed putting his life back together and his plans. Now he may be headed back on the road to jail.

I wrote about California legislation designed to deal with the problem of ex-offenders and child support in my co-authored column Schwarzenegger Should Sign Bill to Reduce Prisoner Recidivism (Riverside Press-Enterprise, 9/21/05). The Bradley Amendment, under which child support arrearages cannot be retroactively forgiven, is the cause of countless bizarre injustices, and often hurts deployed military personnel. In my co-authored column Laws must protect the rights of military dads (Army Times, Marine Corps Times, 3/28/05) family law attorney Jeff Leving and I wrote:

"[Child] support orders are based on civilian pay, which is generally higher than active duty pay. When reservists are called up to active duty they sometimes pay an impossibly high percentage of their income in child support.

"For example, a California naval reservist who has three children and who takes home $4,000 a month in his civilian job would have a child support obligation of about $1,600 a month. If this father is a petty officer second class (E5) who has been in the reserves for six or seven years--a middle-ranked reservist--his active-duty pay would only be $2,205 before taxes, in addition to a housing allowance. Under current California child support guidelines, the reservist's child support obligation should be $550 a month, not $1,600."

A reasonable reader unfamiliar with the wonders of the child support system would probably think 'OK, but the courts would just straighten it out when the reservist gets back--certainly they wouldn't punish him for something that happened because he was serving.' However, the federal Bradley Amendment prohibits judges from retroactively modifying child support beyond the date which an obligor has applied for a modification. Reservists can be mobilized with as little as one day's notice. If a reservist didn't have time or didn't know he had to file for a downward modification, the arrearages stay, along with the interest and penalties charged on them.

"When the arrearage reaches $5,000--a common occurrence during long deployments--the father can become a felon who can be incarcerated or subject to a barrage of harsh civil penalties, including seizure of driver's licenses, business licenses and passports."

This is a particularly long newsletter so I am going to cut the excerpts here. However, Glenn also discusses child abduction, the campaign against PBS "documentary" Breaking the Silence, Newsweek coverage of The Trouble With Boys, domestic violence laws, Italian custody laws, and female inmates - amongst other topics. Visit his site to read the newsletter here.

Feminists' Double Standards About Child Care

This is the latest article by Phyllis Schlafly. I tried to make some cuts to keep the post relatively brief - but this is in fact most of the article. Click on the article title to link to the source and read it in full.

Feminists' Double Standards About Child Care
by Phyllis Schlafly

Excerpts:

Feminist ideology taught that the duties of the housewife and mother were (in Friedan's words) "endless, monotonous, unrewarding" and "peculiarly suited to the capacities of feeble-minded girls." Society's expectation that a mother should care for her own children was cited as oppression of women by our male-dominated patriarchal society from which women must be liberated so they can achieve fulfillment in workforce careers just like men.

Demanding that husbands take on equal duties in child care, the National Organization for Women passed resolutions in the 1970s stating, "The father has equal responsibility with the mother for the child care role."

n 1972, "Ms." Magazine featured pre-marriage contracts declaring housewives independent from essential housework and babycare, and obliging the husband to do half the dishes and diapers.

Then-ACLU attorney Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote in her 1977 book "Sex Bias in the U.S. Code" that "all legislation based on the breadwinning-husband, dependent-homemaking-wife pattern" must be eliminated "to reflect the equality principle" because "a scheme built upon the breadwinning husband [and] dependent homemaking wife concept inevitably treats the woman's efforts or aspirations in the economic sector as less important than the man's."

Feminist literature is filled with putdowns of the role of housewife and mother. This ideology led directly to feminist insistence that the taxpayers provide (in Ginsburg's words) "a comprehensive program of government-supported child care."

The icon of college women's studies courses, Simone de Beauvoir, opined that "marriage is an obscene bourgeois institution," and easy divorce became a primary goal of the feminist liberation movement. Three-fourths of divorces are now unilaterally initiated by wives without any requirement to allege fault on the part of the cast-off husband.

As divorces became easy to get, the feminists suddenly did a total about-face in their demand that fathers share equally in child care. Upon divorce, mothers demand total legal and physical custody and control of their children, arguing that only a mother is capable of providing their proper care and upbringing, and a father's only function is to provide a paycheck.

Gone are the demands that the father change diapers or tend to a sick child. Feminists want the father out of sight except maybe for a few hours a month of visitation at her discretion.

Suddenly, the ex-husband is targeted as a totally essential breadwinner, and the ex-wife is eager to proclaim her dependency. Feminists assert that, after divorce, child care should be almost solely the mother's job, dependency is desirable, and providing financial support should be almost solely the father's job.

It is settled law in the United States that parents (note the plural) have a fundamental right to the care, custody and control of the upbringing of their children. But feminists have persuaded the family courts, upon divorce, to acquiesce in feminist demands that the mother typically be given 80 to 100 percent of those fundamental rights that belonged to both parents before divorce.

What's behind this feminist reversal about motherhood? As Freud famously asked, "what does a woman want?"

The explanation appears to be the maxim, Follow the money. Beginning in the mid-1980s, the feminists used their political clout to get Congress to pass draconian post-divorce support-enforcement laws that use the full power of government to give the divorced mother cash income proportional to the percentage of custody time she persuades the court to award, but unrelated to what she spends for the children or to her willingness to allow the father to see his children.

Since the father typically has higher income than the mother, giving near-total custody to the mother enables the states to maximize transfer payments and thereby collect bigger cash bonuses from the federal government. When fathers appeal to the family courts for equal time with their children, they are opposed by a big industry of lawyers, psychologists, custody evaluators, domestic-violence agitators, and government bureaucrats who make their living out of denying fathers their fundamental rights.

It's time for a national debate and discussion of the taxpayer incentives that favor divorce, the anti-marriage feminists, and the resulting exclusion of fathers from the lives of their children.

CPB Ombudsmen Report on "Breaking the Silence"

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting Ombudsmen has now weighed in on "Breaking the Silence."

CPB

Excerpts:

The experts provided by Lasseur/Tatge debunk PAS as "junk science." At one point the film states that PAS "has been thoroughly debunked by the American Psychological Association." Contacted for verification by a number of critics and viewers, the APA's communications director stated:

"The American Psychological Association does not have an official position on parental alienation syndrome--pro or con."

In this case it appears that Lasseur/Tatge plainly got it wrong. In a statement released to their website, the producers now say something quite different than they did in the film:

"We do not make the assertion that the phenomenon of alienation does not exist, simply that PAS seems to be wrongly used as scientific proof to justify taking children away from a protective parent."

My conclusion after viewing and reviewing the program and checking various web sites cited by critics is that there is no hint of balance in Breaking the Silence. The father's point of view is ignored as are new strategies for lessening the damage to children in custody battles. There is no mention of the collaborative law movement in which parents and lawyers come to terms without involving the court, nor of the new joint custody living arrangements.

The producers apparently do not subscribe to the idea that an argument can be made more convincing by giving the other side a fair presentation. To be sure, one comes away from viewing the program with the feeling that custody fights are a special hell, legally, emotionally, psychologically. But this broadcast is so slanted as to raise suspicions that either the family courts of America have gone crazy or there must be another side to the story.

One critic who reached CPB cited reports that the Mary Kay Ash Foundation is providing a stipend so that every battered women's organization in the country can put on private screenings of this film for their local judges and legislators. If so, PBS may find it has been the launching pad for a very partisan effort to drive public policy and law.

PBS says it has received around 4,000 letters, calls and e-mails about Breaking the Silence. The National Organization for Women issued an action alert calling for mail supporting the program. Glenn Sacks used his radio show to promote mailings objecting to the broadcast. Jan McNamara the director of corporate communication at PBS says the program is now under official review. That's good. Along with the motives of its sponsor (The Mary Kay Ash Charitable Foundation), Breaking the Silence needs to be reviewed for accuracy, fairness and balance.

UPDATE: BloggingBaby is also talking about this...

VAWA: Making Divorce Easy, Profitable and Fun

realitycheck.org


Excerpts:

The linchpin of the VAWA marriage wrecking-ball is a series of state-level laws enacted at the behest of local N.O.W. chapters. These laws define “violence” in the broadest possible terms. For example, the Illinois Domestic Violence Act defines any action that causes a person to experience “emotional distress” to fall within its umbrella of abuse.

Word is beginning to leak out that VAWA represents a grotesque violation of men’s civil rights. Worse, people are hearing that VAWA is based on a bald-faced lie – that in truth, women commit half of all domestic violence. [www.ifeminists.net/introduction/editorials/2005/0629roberts
.html]

Normally Senate hearings feature witnesses who voice the full gamut of opinions. That’s democracy at work. But at Tuesday’s Judiciary Committee hearings, only hand-picked apparatchiks who were willing to spout the VAWA party line were invited to speak.

A few men who claimed to be DV victims had requested to testify at the hearings, but they were sent away since obviously they were liars. In politically-correct society, only people who tell the truth enjoy the right to free speech.

And in the House of Representatives, VAWA operatives plan to skip the committee hearings altogether. They plan to bundle VAWA into a larger Department of Justice bill and steam-roller a floor vote by the end of the month. That’s warp speed by Washington standards.

Long Live The Matriarchy!

Pointing a finger at feminist hypocrisy: Long Live The Matriarchy!

Do fathers have the edge in divorce?

Another article by Cathy Young: Do fathers have the edge in divorce?

It is a common perception that while women may face bias in some areas, men are on the receiving end of discrimination when it comes to child custody - which goes to fathers, recent data show, only 16 percent of the time. Some feminists, like former National Organization for Women President Karen DeCrow, embrace equal rights for divorced dads. Yet many others have been loath to acknowledge that there is bias favoring women in anything.

Mostly, these feminists argue, fathers don't want custody - and when they do, they have the edge: Judges frown on working women who spend less time with the kids than did traditional moms, while working men who spend more time with the kids than did traditional fathers are hailed as great dads; non-working women may be denied custody because they can't support the children.

In the 1986 book Mothers on Trial, radical feminist psychologist Phyllis Chesler claimed that 70 percent of mothers in custody battles lost. This was based on a very non-random sample of 60 women, mostly referred by feminist lawyers or women's centers. While even sympathetic reviewers commented on the sloppiness of Chesler's research, her "finding" that fathers are likely to win contested custody cases was often presented as fact.

Similar numbers have cropped up again, most recently in Karen Winner's Divorced From Justice: "Contrary to public belief, 70 percent of all litigated custody trials rule in favor of the fathers," shouts the jacket (italics in the original). A national alert on father's rights groups issued by the National Organization for Women - urging members to combat proposed laws encouraging joint custody and mediation - also states that "many judges and attorneys are still biased against women. ..."

Where do these figures come from? One respectable source is the 1989 Gender Bias Study of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, which reported that when fathers seek custody, they win primary or joint physical custody 70 percent of the time. In The Divorce Revolution, Lenore Weitzman reported two-thirds of fathers asking for custody in California succeeded.

Maybe, some fathers' advocates say, men only seek custody when they have a chance because there's something wrong with mom. Explaining why few non-custodial mothers pay child support, the Gender Bias Study notes "women who lose custody often [have] mental, physical, or emotional handicaps" that impair their earning ability.

That aside, the high success rate of men in custody battles is yet another contender for the Phony Statistics Hall of Fame. The figures do not refer to contested cases. Weitzman acknowledged that when fathers got sole custody, it was typically by mutual agreement; of cases that went to trial, two-thirds were won by women. The work from which the Gender Bias Study gathered its numbers did not separate contested and uncontested custody bids, but showed that mothers filing for sole custody received it 75 percent of the time (the rest usually received joint legal/primary physical custody), while the "success rate" for fathers was 44 percent.

A Stanford study of more than 1,000 California couples divorced in the 1980s suggests conventional wisdom is right. If both parents requested sole custody when filing for divorce, it was awarded to mom in 45 percent and to dad in 11 percent of the cases, with joint physical custody for the rest. (When she asked for sole custody and he for joint custody, the odds were 2-1 in her favor.)

Most of the disputes were negotiated. Just five couples went to trial vying for sole custody - and one of these cases resulted in a victory for the father.

The answer is not to help fathers win more custody fights but to have fewer fights. In Michigan, the Legislature is considering a "shared parenting" or joint custody bill - the Senate substitution bill for House Bill 5636 - opposed by the state's NOW chapter. There's ample room for discussions of the best way to ensure children of divorce still have two parents. But disinformation shouldn't be part of the debate.

Cathy Young is vice-chair of the Women's Freedom Network.

Karen DeCrow

More info in reference to Karen DeCrow that comes with little tracking info. Click here for site.

Here's what former N.O.W. President Karen DeCrow said nearly a decade ago. The statistics are stale, but the insight is still valid. (Ms DeCrow joined what is now the National Congress for Men and Children in 1981):

IT'S IN MEN'S NATURE TO NURTURE, TOO. -- Karen DeCrow Women must join men in defeating the myth that only women can adequately nurture the young. As a feminist I have been strongly in support of joint, or shared custody since the early Seventies. It's clear that women will never have the opportunity for full participation in the world outside the home if they are designated as those solely responsible for the care of children --during an ongoing marriage or after divorce.

Researchers at the University of Illinois spent six years studying high school valedictorians, and found that the women were much more likely than the men to lower their career goals after college in order to pay "attention to families." Although 57.5% of the valedictorians were female, the women began to lower their career aspirations by the second year of college. Only 35 percent of these women who were first in their class plan to stayin the labor force full-time, while all of the men do.

Midway through college, the women studied also had lower levels of intellectual self-esteem. Dr. Joyce Van Tassel-Baska of Northwestern University, who reviewed the findings, writes: "It's a waste of an incredible talent pool." The waste of talent comes not from a mysterious disease which strikes female valedictorians at age 20. What strikes them down is the societal expectation -- reinforced by family, friends, the media, even their teachers-- that their main job in life is to have children, and anything else they do is secondary in importance. There's no place they can turn for a different message.

Do male valedictorians plan to be parents? Of course. But 100 percent of them plan to use their intellectual and creative abilities in their other sphere of "love" also: their work. Few women will have true equal opportunity if this role definition does not change. We must do two things to save female valedictorians.

First we must stop asking them when they are going to have children. (Surely brilliant young men are not often asked this question at cocktail parties.) And secondly, we must include fathers in matters of child rearing. No parental leave plan, no custody decision, no plan for child care facilities should be addressed to mothers alone. Providing shared responsibility for children, by law, is not only fair to men and more civilized for children, it's also to women's advantage.

Until women and men share parenting, there is little possibility they'll be able to share political, intellectual, economic and social goals. Because half of all marriages end in divorce, more than five million children now live with a divorced parent. Women receive child custody in nine out of 10 uncontested divorce cases. Support is awarded in only 59 percent of these cases. A recent study shows that two-thirds of non-custodial fathers stop making support payments after the first six months. The good news, however, is the same study shows that divorced fathers who have joint custody of their children make support payments promptly.

Under joint custody -- now legal in 38 states -- couples continue to share child-raising responsibilities after a divorce. They divorce each other, but neither of them divorces the children. Under joint custody, no parent has the humiliating experience of being a visitor in his own child's life. According to Webster's dictionary,"visitation" means an official visit, as for inspection, or special dispensation of divine favor or wrath. Why reasonable people would expect decades of financial cooperation from a parent awaiting special dispensation to take his own child to the zoo boggles the mind.

Twenty years ago, in the early days of the feminist movement, it was assumed that shared parenting must be the norm. In later years, responding to conditioning which has convinced many women their chief value is as mothers-- producers and tenders of children -- many in the feminist movement have, mysteriously to me, taken the position that it's to women's advantage to fight for sole custody of children. In this misdirected approach to family living, some women have resumed the attitude of possessiveness of children, attempting to eliminate fathers from the parenting role.

Early in the feminist movement, the anthropologists instructed that historically and traditionally women have been hobbled and enfeebled by sole responsibility for children. The attempt to fight against parenting by fathers is self-defeating for women. Winning sole custody and defeating the fathers movement's efforts to establish joint custody as the norm are Pyrrhic victories indeed. If men are talented enough to be doctors, lawyers, architects and college professors, let us give them the opportunity to be talented parents.

[Karen DeCrow was president of the National Organization for Women from 1974 - 1977. She is an attorney specializing in civil rights and resides in Syracuse, New York. This text downloadable as DECROW.INF from NCMC BBS]

Article by Cathy Young?

To see where I found this article click here. I was looking for info on Karen DeCrow, a former President of NOW, who is apparently for presumptive joint custody after divorce. The article is attributed to Cathy Young who currently writes for Reason Magazine. There was no title to the article and I will reprint it entirely below:

The often bitter debate over women, babies, and careers got a new twist last week when Michigan circuit court Judge Raymond Cashen gave custody of a 3-year-old named Maranda to her father, Steve Smith, in part because the mother, Jennifer Ireland, has placed the child in a day care center while she attends the University of Michigan. Smith also studies and works but his mother, who is not employed, is willing to help him care for the little girl at home. (Both mom and dad were 16 when Maranda was born.)

"Under the future plans of the mother, the minor child will be in essence raised and supervised a great deal of the time by strangers," Judge Cashen wrote. "Under the future plans of the father, the minor child will be raised and supervised by blood relatives."

Predictably, this has sparked an outcry from feminists who see a backlash against mothers who do not fit the 1950s mold. "A kind of Donna Reed cultural terrorism," columnist Anna Quindlen called the decision.

But others argue that 69-year-old Judge Cashen is no enemy of working women: his own wife taught at a community college most of her life and some of their children were in day care. Moreover, the decision was influenced by other factors: the judge felt that the child would generally have a more stable environment with her father. "Under the mother's plan, the child will not have a specific residence, being moved periodically between the University of Michigan and the maternal grandmother's home," he wrote. "Under the father's plan, the child will reside at the paternal grandparents' home for an indefinite period." (This reasoning should not endear him to fathers' rights groups that favor joint custody arrangements under which the child lives with each parent part of the time.)

Michigan attorney Kay Schwarzberg, who handles many divorce and custody cases, believes that concerns about the possible negative impact of day care on very young children can't be dismissed as mere backlash. But mainly, Schwarzberg is amused that there should be such outrage over Judge Cashen's reference to day care vs. home care in giving custody to the father, when for decades judges cited that issue in awarding custody to moms: "No one got excited about all the wonderful men who couldn't have custody because they were working and had to put their children in day care."

This theme is echoed by Al Lebow, founder of the Michigan- based Fathers for Equal Rights of America, one of nearly 300 fathers' rights groups across the country: "The real crux of this issue is that if the situation were reversed, there would be nobody from the media making inquiries." There are, he says, "thousands upon thousands of horror stories" of men denied not only custody but any meaningful access to their children. Though custody laws are now gender-neutral on the surface, fathers' advocates -- and most family law attorneys -- contend that a double standard lingers: a father has to show that he is a better parent (sometimes, a much better parent) to get the kids; a mother has only to show she's not a bad parent. Women are still presumed, particularly by older, traditional members of the bench such as Judge Cashen, to be naturally possessed of superior parenting skills.

Fathers' rights activists claim that just five percent of divorced dads get custody. The figure may be too low; since there is no system of tracking custody decisions, precise numbers are hard to come by. (According to the Census Bureau, 13 percent of children in single-parent families now live with their dads.) Some feminists claim that fathers win two-thirds of all contested custody cases, due to their greater resources and male bias in courts. But they apparently get that figure by counting joint- custody decisions as unilateral male victories. And some divorced fathers' advocates say that men rarely ask for custody unless they feel they have a very compelling case (and can afford huge legal fees), because they believe the deck is stack against them.

Indeed, the motives of fathers who seek sole or joint custody are often treated as suspect. Quindlen transparently insinuated, as did a New York Times editorial, that Smith had no interest in his child and started the custody fight to avoid paying Ireland $8 a week in child support -- as if anyone could think that $8 a week was worth the inconvenience of having an unwanted child in the house, not to mention the expense of raising her! (Some activists in the battered women's movement promote the even more sinister notion that most dads who fight for custody are abusers who want to use the children to continue controlling the mother.)

Those who are up in arms about Jennifer Ireland losing her child should ask themselves if they would have been as upset if Jennifer had been James. According to Lynne Hecht Schafran, an attorney with the NOW Legal Defense and Education Fund, "Women should not be penalized for working outside the home." True. But if taking a child away from a parent is a penalty, are good fathers who lose custody of their children penalized for being male?

"We don't understand why, in this day and age, the women's movement is not interested in equality," says Lebow. Supporters of broader custody rights for fathers include former NOW president Karen DeCrow. Yet pro-maternal custody feminists argue that the child should live with the mother because she is usually the "primary caretaker." Day care clearly seems to undermine this argument: as DeCrow once quipped, if this standard were consistently applied, the children of women lawyers would be living in the Caribbean with their nannies.

Perhaps the only way to avoid biased and arbitrary decisions, and the destructive win-lose mentality of custody battles, is to institute the presumption of joint custody as the norm. No fit parent should be penalized -- whether for his gender or for her career -- by being reduced to the status of a visitor in his or her child's life.

I'm A Woman And I Think NOW Sucks

I just visited this NOW site and I have a couple things to say. Why do you have to be a Democrat to believe in women's rights? I believe women should receive equal pay, be free from sex discrimination and harassment - but I'm an independent. I think we should all be Independents as you should vote based on your feelings of the positions of each candidate. Neither of the two main parties provide platforms that I unilaterally agree with.

Does this make me a bad woman?

Moreover, I am staunchly opposed to NOW's general take on custody cases. On this site there is a page called: Demand Justice for Mother's & Children. (You can get to it from the home page under DEMAND JUSTICE, right column, towards the bottom of the page) My favorite parts from this page are the following:

As many as 50% of divorces involve family violence--and 70% of the men who abuse women abuse their children as well.

Furthermore, the vast majority of fathers who contest custody rulings are men who are abusive.

Umm, bull shit. Just so you know the first statistic came from: An analysis of the Canadian Violence Against Women (1) survey. The citation at the end lists no date. Who did they survey - only victims of abuse, reported victims of abuse, or did they cold call women? And I'm not sure who did the analysis - if it was NOW that definitely seems like a conflict of interests. Further, the statistic says 50% of divorce involves family violence - it does not qualify which party was violent. There is no direct link to back up the other two claims so...

I LOVED THIS:

What does all that mean exactly?

The most frightening of the Father's Rights groups are not content with returning to an era when it was believed that "father knows best." Rather, they seek to turn the clock back on women's rights, including their reproductive freedom, rescind the Nineteenth Amendment of the Constitution, which grants women the right to vote, and force women to return to a subservient role in the family. Janet Normalvanbreucher

Rescind the 19th amendment!! Did you all hear that - I am doing this because I no longer wish to have the right to vote and I want to stay home, make cookies and rub my husbands feet while he watches the news after dinner. Damn it - they figured me out!

This is the kind of crap I hate. Dads want to be dads to their kids - they have no interest in any of those other things, but in order to get women riled up we have to scare them that unless they resist these groups they stand to lose all of their rights and return to a barefoot and pregnant state. Many people want to overturn Roe v. Wade - they include men and women, Republicans and Democrats. Some people think abortion is murder - that is their position - and it is not because of a genetic predisposition.

Finally - and this may be the most atrocious, scrolling at the top of this site are articles like this: Man Gets 3 1/2 Years for Rape of Girl, 12. I've got a news flash for NOW - people suck! This is not gender specific either! There are bad people of every gender, race and creed.

I could use this blog to highlight all the horrific things mothers have done to their children. In fact, just looking through today's news I could cite the following:

Children starved in home filled with food - Room littered with beer cans; Kent woman had blood-alcohol concentration of 0.40 percent

Mom charged with failing to protect boy

Mom pleads guilty to caging twin sons

Teen 'divorces' mom after being sold for sex (since they cited Canada, I figure I can use Australia)

Mom gets life for starving girl

All of these articles were published in the last 24 hours.

So, I could make this blog a vendetta against women and try to utilize stats and news articles to show how cold, selfish and horrible they can be. But I don't because sadly enough there are members of both genders that could be described in that manner. I am not trying to eviscerate women - I am woman!

I am a woman from a divorced family and married to a divorced man. My own experience with my father is more than enough to show me how important a dad is - I simply cannot imagine my life without seeing my dad regularly and eventually moving in with him - as did my siblings. Witnessing what my husband has had to go through in the custody battle for his child just reinforced this for me. I don't know why this has to be a gender war. Women should have equal rights - AND SO SHOULD MEN.

NOW in New York (Or Now in New York further utilizes unsubstantiated and detrimental opinions proffered as fact)

This article is about accepting press releases and the like from advocacy groups, but it centers on a specific NOW-NY press release. Facts or Propaganda? Deconstructing Advocacy