| As
someone who cares very much about the social and economic
welfare of mothers, I’ve been keeping tabs on the father’s
"rights" movement for several years. Although the movement
and its most aggressive advocates come across as little more than
a fringe element in a society that's still trying to figure out the
meaning of manhood and fatherhood in a half-changed world, the legislative
activism of fathers’ rights and "shared parenting"
proponents could limit the power of family courts to award custody
based on the best interests of the child. The movement's more moderate
adherents complain that the inalienable rights of divorced and never-married
dads -- particularly their right to due process and equal access to
their kids -- are routinely trampled by vindictive custodial mothers
and the family court system. Less image-conscious supporters are fond
of the kind of hateful misogynist invective that makes me want to
double-check the locks on my doors and windows at night.
Friends of father’s rights
typically interact through an expansive network of personal and
organizational web sites, blogs, and discussion forums, although
local groups also meet face to face. National membership organizations,
such as Fathers
4 Justice -- which was the subject of a May
8 cover story by Susan Dominus for the New York Times Magazine
-- organize protests and guerrilla theater to call attention to
the grievances of non-custodial dads. Most pro-dad groups are pushing
for family law reform, particularly for the legal standard of presumptive
joint custody, which, with few exceptions, would require judges
to favor joint legal and/or physical custody in all child custody
disputes. In my own state of New Hampshire, representatives of the
National Congress
of Fathers and Children (which promotes “equal opportunities
for fathers and children” -- apparently mothers don't rate
inclusion in the family equality scheme) are endorsing a bill to
cut state guidelines for minimum child support payments to the bone
and exempt fathers from paying child support when joint custody
is awarded -- even though under the terms of split or shared custody,
children may reside in their father's home as little as 35 percent
of the time.
One of the most striking
characteristics of American society in the late 20th and early 21st
century is that fathers and mothers have been forced, sometimes
reluctantly, to negotiate dramatically changed attitudes about gender,
work and family with virtually no support from the public or private
sector. Male and female roles in marriage and parenting have become,
if not completely transformed, at least more pliant. New educational
and employment opportunities for women -- and their desire for lives
that include more than being someone's wife, or someone's mother
-- contributed to skyrocketing divorce rates in the 1970s and 1980s,
and continue to reverberate through contemporary family life. A
national focus on the hardships encountered by "fatherless"
children has heightened cultural sensitivity to the socioeconomic
benefits of involved fathers (although research has yet to isolate
the negative consequences of fatherlessness from the effects of
poverty). What’s often left out of the fatherhood discussion
is that men who truly care for and about their children usually
express their commitment by maintaining a supportive, if not deeply
caring, relationship with their children’s mother. In an October
2001 commentary for Women's eNews, Robert Okun, a specialist
in men's issues and domestic violence, pointed out that many of
today’s dads, whether married, never-married or divorced,
are doing their best to stay actively involved in their children’s
lives. But of men in the organized father’s rights movement,
who typically represent themselves as the innocent victims of gender
discrimination and manipulative ex-wives, Okun writes: "Some
may very well be getting a raw deal. If so, it is essential that
divorce lawyers, psychotherapists, family service court officers,
mediators, guardians ad litem and judges educate themselves about
those circumstances and take steps to intervene when a man has been
erroneously targeted as part of a strategy in a contentious custody
complaint. However, in a dangerously high number of cases, many
of these fathers have a documented history of abuse."
Most family law and domestic
violence experts have reached the same conclusion, as have concerned
citizens who've taken the time to investigate the activities of
father's rights groups in greater depth -- notably Trish Wilson,
a freelance writer who considers exposing the shady underside
of the father's custody movement her part-time job. Ms. Wilson first
became curious about the movement when she stumbled into a father's
rights message board on AOL ten years ago. When she questioned the
accuracy of child support statistics posted on the board,
Ms. Wilson reports she was "attacked by the regulars there.
The woman who had posted the original out-of-context quotes told
me that I believed all women should have custody of their children
because they had uteruses, which is nonsense. There were similar,
ugly flames thrown at me by others. I was taken aback at how nasty
they were." Since then, Ms. Wilson has conducted extensive
research reviews and produced a series of articles disputing the
studies and data father's rights advocates use to justify their
intention to overhaul child custody and support laws. Although her
work has appeared in Off Our Backs and AlterNet,
Ms. Wilson publishes most of her analyses and commentaries on her
blog and a bare-bones personal
web site. Although NOW adopted a
resolution opposing the father's rights agenda in 1996, Ms.
Wilson notes there hasn't been much interest from mainstream women's
organizations in fomenting a counter movement. "From the beginning
there were no active organizations that worked for mothers who were
going through contested divorces," she says. "I'm one
of the few people who actually works on these issues, which disappoints
me greatly. Feminist groups have not taken much interest in divorce
and custody and how both affect women." |
