Good read.



Three and a half decades after the rise of the feminist movement, American gender politics have begun to come full circle.



http://www.glennsacks.com/why_are_there.htm

I can't access that site from work, Sixee, but I can tell you that the feminist movement has never been a monolithic bloc, and that there have always been 'antifeminist' movements headed or populated by women, including Phyllis Schafely's 'Eagle Forum', and numerous others. In addition, it's a frequent tactic for antifeminist groups led by men to prominently trumpet women, particularly women who hold extreme positions, and promote them into positions of visibility in those organizations, in order to say, in effect: "look, women want this too!" and to undermine/blunt potential attacks by women.

It does seem that, after a generation and a half of women (who had first hand experience of very real discrimination and oppression) delaying marriage and childbearing, and trying to 'do it all' as a means of liberating themselves, that a shift has occurred and that younger women are less cynical about marriage and childrearing - and are much more likely to seek 'balance' in their lives between self-actualization and nurturing. However, it should be stated that they are starting from a significantly altered set of expectations than my generation was 25 years ago - men now expect to be involved in childrearing, women are permitted to have a meaningful career and full participation in the society, and the playing field is much more even, even in revisionist terms, than it was for my generation or my mothers'.

To give you an idea just how much things have changed, and what a profound influence this has on consciousness and the mindset of people with regard to gender politics, consider this: When I started school in 1968, and our little group of tykes was asked what we wanted to be when we grew up, the boys had a wide variety of responses (although 'cowboy' figured prominently ;) ). For the girls, the choices were much more circumscribed: we were told that we could be nurses, or teachers, or stewardesses, or of course housewives. *Men* were doctors, or Presidents, or truck drivers. (just as an additional aside, I opted for Stewardess because it seemed glamorous and one got to travel. I was told, by my own family no less when I showed them the picture I drew, that that would not be a good choice for me because 'you had to have cutesy-cutesy to be a stewardess', and it was suggested I consider being a nurse instead :) ). At my first 'real' job (in the plastics industry), I was passed over for promotion for a man with lesser experience and qualifications 'because he had a family to support', and expected to train him for the job that should have been mine as the senior technician, no less (this scenario was by no means an isolated incident there, either).

Today, little girls growing up can see themselves as Air Force fighter jet pilots (or, of course, nurses or housewives). They can participate in sports with the goal of becoming a professional athlete, if they so choose. Title IX was a gleam in someone's eye when I entered high school and sports opportunities were nonexistant. A LOT has changed in the last 40 years.

I think that the current movement among this generation of women has more to do with wanting to balance the priorities in their life, and to *have* the right to choose to be a stay at home mom, than a true antifeminist backlash. I can't imagine, at least I fervently *hope* that women would not willingly disenfranchise themselves from the very real and substantial gains they have made in the past two generations (but history has a habit of taking two steps forward and one and a half steps back if one considers just the 20th century with regard to women's rights :) ).

Regards,
Nydia

P.S. I apologize if the above was off topic. It occurs to me that the page you linked is probably related to the 'fathers' rights' movement with regard to child custody arrangements in particular. I've visited several of these sites, and some are quite hateful, but isn't it interesting that we now have a generation of men who have grown up expecting to, or wishing to, being the primary nurturing figure in a child's life? (ignoring the more cynical issues of 'possession' of the children, what constitutes 'fair' child support arrangements considering the persistent difference in wages, and 'punishing' the other spouse ;) ).

-Nydia

Actually the site has to do with a story on why fathers are denied the right to see thier children, and the women that have decided to try and help them.
The Women's Movement doesn't involve cutting fathers out of a child's life.

The Women's Movement shouldn't involve cutting fathers out of a child's life.

I'll reserve further comments until I get home from work and can read the article tonight, but I don't think the women's movement seeks to do any such thing - however, the sad reality is that in this day and age many women still end up getting involved in abusive relationships, or otherwise may have legitimate reasons for not wanting the father to have contact with the children (*two* of my friends were in such situations, in one case the daughter was being sexually as well as physically abused). I also have a friend who was in the opposite situation; the mother was drug addicted and neglected the children, who ended up being raised by the grandfather.

Interestingly, the State of California now has guidelines stating that judges *must* award joint custody, unless there is a compelling reason to restrict custody or access by one of the parental parties.

Regards,
Nydia

Three and a half decades after the rise of the feminist movement, American gender politics have begun to come full circle.

The feminist movement has always been aided by sympathetic men, and American women would never have come so far so fast without their support. While women still face many problems, those problems have received a fair and often extensive public hearing.

Today, men's issues--principally fathers' issues--are where many of our nation's biggest gender inequities lie. And just as many men helped the women's movement, many women are stepping forward to help fathers, forming groups like Moms for Dads and the Second Wives Crusade. Today women make up half of the membership of the fathers' movement.

Fathers' grievances include: blocked visitation and unenforced visitation orders; "move away moms" who permit or even use geography to drive fathers out of their children's lives; acceptance by the courts of false and/or uncorroborated accusations of domestic violence or child abuse as a basis for denying custody or even contact between father and child; rigid, excessive, and often punitive child support awards; a "win/lose" system which pits ex-spouses against one another by designating a custodial and a noncustodial parent; and judicial preference for mothers over fathers as custodial parents.

According to Virginia Forton, the Executive Director of Moms for Dads, "Our current system torments non-custodial parents and their children by allowing custodial parents to drive them out of their children's lives. Children need both parents. At meetings I've seen so many fathers, with tears running down their faces, talking about the children they're no longer allowed to see. How could we, as women and as mothers, not try to help them?"

Just as male feminists have been criticized by traditionalists as dupes and opportunists, many women in the fathers' movement have been condemned by the feminist establishment. Kim Gandy, president of the National Organization for Women, says that women in the fathers' movement are used by men the way "a man charged with rape will hire a woman lawyer to represent him."

In The Price of Motherhood, feminist writer Ann Crittenden portrays these women as petty and shortsighted pawns of men. Susan Faludi, author of Backlash, likens them to Uncle Toms.

In reality, many pro-father women, such as Canadian Senator Anne Cools, North America's premier pro-father public official, came from the feminist movement. Cools was one of the most effective leaders of the battered women's shelter movement during the 1970s.

Others, like Forton and Melanie Mays, a member of the advocacy group Child's Best Interest, had little interest in fathers' rights or gender politics until they came into contact with our family court system's anti-father bias and its devastating effects on the people they love. In Mays' case, witnessing a close relative and his children being tormented by the court system spurred her to action. Other activists are grandmothers who were cut out of their grandchildren's lives when their sons were cut out of their children's lives.

At the core of the movement are second wives. Since over half of all first marriages end in divorce, and 75% of divorcees remarry, there are many second wives and second husbands who struggle with the effects of their spouse's divorces.

Many second wives who marry divorced fathers have little inkling of the maelstrom they are entering--custody disputes, access and visitation denial, sudden child support increases, and the burden of legal fees spent on fighting inequities. Some second marriages end in divorce because of these pressures. Increasingly, however, these women and others are turning to activism. According to Mays:

"The fathers' rights movement is the civil rights movement of our era. Some belittle the plight of fathers, saying ‘oh, they're men, they're privileged, what have they suffered compared to other groups?' The answer is this--whatever horrors blacks or women or other groups have endured in the past 50 years, nobody ever took their children away. What discrimination and what injustice is worse than that?"



Here's the whole article, so you can make an informed decision.

Dear Sixee:

Thanks for the article post; this reply will be much shorter :). The crux of the issue associated with this particular trumpeted movement can be found here:

At the core of the movement are second wives. Since over half of all first marriages end in divorce, and 75% of divorcees remarry, there are many second wives and second husbands who struggle with the effects of their spouse's divorces.

Many second wives who marry divorced fathers have little inkling of the maelstrom they are entering--custody disputes, access and visitation denial, sudden child support increases, and the burden of legal fees spent on fighting inequities.

To get somewhat cynical in a very earnest sense here (while acknowledging that many people, including grandparents, do get involved in the parental rights movement because they are truly concerned with what is best for children), we can reduce much of the impetus for this 'movement' to two underlying issues:

1) Female competition

2) Money

Actual concern for the welfare of the children frequently takes a back seat to issues surrounding a desire to obliterate or minimize reminders of a person's mating 'past' (and it can be convenient to demonize an ex-spouse of either gender, for the divorced person (I will not be gender specific here even though the article is) to pit the current vs the ex spouse, etc). This is very close to the heart of much female competition; male competition against other *males* (but not against females) tends to be much more direct.

Corollary to this is a desire not to be burdened by financial 'reminders' of one's past obligations, or to see these as 'unfair' at whatever level of support. I'm not saying that people aren't sometimes put into very onerous child support arrangements, but considering the ratio of these to situations where the child support award is negligible or not paid at all, these cases are in the minority.

I'm interested to see if anyone else has a take on this (I know we have numerous divorced parents here); I'm about to head into lab again so won't be able to visit it again until tonight.

Regards,
Nydia

Edit: I'd like to make clear that what I was addressing here was the issue brought up by the article title: "Why are so many women in the Fathers' Rights movement?" and speculating on the motivations of some women (as well as male) activists for this cause. I was *not* making a statement one way or another about the relative fitness of male divorced parents, nor was I claiming that the Father's Rights movement was without legitimacy. I have, for better or worse however, had the opportunity to witness quite a few bitter, as well as amicable, divorces in my day and claim some familarity with the issues that drive access, custody, and child support struggles.

You need to visit a forum I frequent called Dad's Divorce Forum.
http://www.dadsdivorce.com/forum/

As a father that is completely devoted to his child, I am actually offended by some of the things you are posting here Nydia. To say this is strictly a money or a power issue is denying the underlying truth that the court system now is stacked against the father in any divorce decree. That's not to say some fathers don't ultimately win custody in divorce cases, but it IS the rarity. It is only in EXTREME cases of abuse or drug use that a father is likely to win custody of a child in a court.

While I have never been divorced (I guess I am in the <50% of marriages that haven't ended in divorce), I have seen a couple VERY close friends be ran through the ringer by the court system simply for being male. Both of them were FAR more competant of a parent than the mother, both of them are FAR better parents than the mother, and both of them care more about their child's needs by FAR than the mother. One of them had to basically pay himself into bankruptcy to win custody of his daughter from his wife even AFTER the courts had proof that the mother was a cocaine addict and smoked pot in an enclosed room with their at the time 2 year old child. The child had pot in her system on the level of a heavy daily user, and it STILL took years of custody battles for the father to win custody. The mother has never had to pay a dime of child support (lets see a father get that and not be at least on some wanted list).

The other is my best friend. His ex-wife hasn't allowed him to speak to his children because of her own selfish reasons (he is now engaged to woman he met 2 years AFTER they got divorced). He hasn't spoken to his children since March, and hasn't seen them since then either, dispite what their custody orders are. He has documented each and every time he has tried to contact the children since march (in the hundreds of attempts, basically every day). The courts won't enforce the visitation agreements and in fact have attempted to charge him with not paying his child support even though the state had the money to distribute to her, but lost the check. Somehow it's all his fault, simply because he's the man in the relationship.

You may not like what was written in the article, but it tends to be the truth on how father's rights have been trampled on by the courts over the past several decades. It's not about the money, it's not about the power, it's about loving one's child and being denied the privilege to have a meaningful relationship with the child because of a court bias against men. It would take someone completely blind to neglect that there's a serious issue with father's rights.

One of my employees' daughters is going through a nasty divorse. Her son-in-law wanted to take his kids back to Israel.. Haifa to be specific... where his family is currently living (or was until the recent Hezbollah rocket attacks.)

Remarkably, he won the right yesterday in one of Philadelphia's courts... Of course there will be appeals, but that seemed a bit odd to me.

Dear Sixee (and Taleren):

I scanned over the forum, and I want to make clear that I am *not* 'anti-divorced fathers' as some have seemed to have drawn from my posts in this thread. Clearly, there are cases where the custody and child support arrangements are stacked against the father, and as I said in my first off-topic post, we've come a long way from the days where fathers took scant hand in child raising, and acknowledgment of this and redress is a good thing. I have two divorced father friends who are excellent and devoted parents. I do think that it can come as a shock, especially to affluent white males who have historically expected privelege from the judicial system, to be in a balanced or even somewhat hostile climate with regard to divorce rights arrangements, and some of the vitriol associated with some of the more strident fathers' rights groups reflects this - while I recognize that inequities exist, I don't believe the situation is as unbalanced as some would like to make it out to be, and I believe California is on the right track with regard to how it handles both custody and alimony.

What I *am* saying is that, frequently, factors are in play *other* than what is in the legitimate best interests of the children of divorce and remarriage; issues that stem from competition between the divorced parents, and between the ex- and current spouses, that can be *either* male or female driven, or both, and that such examples are frequent, obvious, and it is often women who are the fiercest combatants in such arenas.

Regards,
Nydia

I'd have gone nuts if my exwife had cut me off from my son. Now for the last two years he has lived with me without me asking for a dime from his mother. Oh and as an aside I paid double the required childsupport so she could afford the home I had built for them.

The courts lean very heavily towards giving the woman full custody and it nearly takes an act of complete and proven case of neglect to give the Father a shot.

Luckly , or unluckly as the case maybe, he and his mother came to an agreement that it was best if he had his father very involved in his teenage years.

He always was a Daddy's boy when he was young, now that he's going on 15 he's surely spawned by something from a much warmer climet....lol

Fandros Finglaflin

But he will respect you for it layer on in life Fandros.
Although kids don't realize it at the time, they want boundries. They want parents to tell them that certain behavior is unacceptable.
Too many parents now days are too busy being friends to their children.
Children want guidance, even when they say they don't.
If you give a child everything they want, and let them do as they please, you aren't setting them up for how the real world operates.

Nice post Sixee.....

One problem that I continually see though is not the ones trying to be friends, it's the ones that barely acknowledge they even have kids that drive me nuts.

I don't think I could even function without daily contact with my kids...been married 19 years next month...hope for plenty more, if she can put up with me that long. :') Fear of losing any contact with my kids is a huge motivator to make my marriage work (amoungst other things).

Clearly, there are cases where the custody and child support arrangements are stacked against the father... I do think that it can come as a shock, especially to affluent white males who have historically expected privelege from the judicial system, to be in a balanced or even somewhat hostile climate with regard to divorce rights arrangements

The divorce and child custody laws vary wildly from state to state. In North Carolina, they are slanted towards the women.

I think that the bias (however great or small it might really be) is a case of the the law failing to catch up to modern realities coupled with a media spin regarding deadbeat dads. In the day that single breadwinner (most often male) households were the norm, these laws might have made more sense. However, they did not change all that much since those times. In fact, they were made more harsh in light of the publicity deadbeat dads were enjoying in the news a few years back.

Now, it isn't terribly uncommon for a woman to have a career of her own and earn more income than her partner. However, the laws on the books (at least in North Carolina) still assume that the woman isn't in this position.

Oh he has boundries with me alright. LoL hell he thinks I'm a tyrant atm....

We spend from the moment I get off work till bedtime in the same room together ( unless he's with his Mother or made arrangements with friends 24 hours prior ...) playing games and watching TV.

My now exgf by example fails to set boundries for her kids ( 2 14 year old boys and 1 18 year old girl) and by way of example the 18 year old failed to graduate from high school ( tho she's intelligent as hell) simply because she didn't want to go to school.

When I asked the mother to start laying down some laws so we could function on the same page her kids rioted and convinced their mother my way was wrong...lol

Fandros

you are a self proclaimed Republican Fanny, don't you know your way is always wrong???

/rib

/chuckle

Isn't that the everloving truth....

Fandros

/giggle
Oh teh h8!

I'd have gone nuts if my exwife had cut me off from my son.

Fandros Finglaflin

So how did it end up happening since your exwife wasn't the cause?

Brother, you are so wrapped up in your various psychosis (psychosi?) that you can't claim to be in a state to diagnosis anyone else.

No wait, you're the sane one..it's the rest of us that are nuts!!! ;P

Fandros

No wait, you're the sane one..it's the rest of us that are nuts!!! ;P

Fandros

I'm glad you are starting to see things my way....now if I could get Squish to do that.

/chuckle Good luck there man, I never had luck getting my now ex gal to enbrace my views...

Fandros