Time for a new feminist revolt
I try not to be the sort of blogger who puts up a link to the Guardian and says “read this great article”, but today, seriously, read this great article.
Politicians good at demonising boys in hoodies - who probably have won’t-pay fathers - say nothing much about derelict dads. Revolting fathers wearing outsize Batman pyjamas dangle off buildings for their supposed rights. (Many turn out to be deadbeat non-payers themselves.) But where is the protest against this shocking non-payment by fathers? It should be Mothers 4 Justice making the noise.
[...] From newsrooms packed with well-off divorced men resentful of paying maintenance, there came pages of tales of wicked mothers living the life of Riley on maintenance cheques.
[...] Single mothers were silent, as they always are, too busy surviving to organise rallies. (Yes, almost all “parents with care” are, of course, mothers.) Politicians have been paralysed ever since, just as they were by a handful of macho fuel protesters.
[...] Mothers keep the welfare state going in low-paid jobs and mothers suffer most from its deficits. So, 30 years on, where is the women’s campaign? Where is the ancient music of mothers clattering their saucepan lids down Whitehall for their rights?
It’s Polly, who else?
Brilliant. Bloody brilliant.
There seems to be so many (feminist) women around feeling totally pissed off at the moment, and feeling that the movement requires another kick in the arse!
I heart Polly, and this article made me want to march down Whitehall.
Polly, If the multitude of women had to give 1/2 their paycheck to the man and when you would spend time (if any) with your child and labeled as visitation you would be pissed too! How can the father move on in his life when he has nothing to build on. It’s crazy that someone like yourself can take money from the father, live good, and the father can’t make ends meet. You’d be pissed too! Let me have 1/2 your paycheck for 6 months and I’ll let you see your kid 4 times a month and get back to me on how you feel? You’d be pissed! What staggers me most is that 89% of juveniles in prison grew up fatherless, yet the same judge that sentenced that teen just awarded full custody to the mother. It should be 50/50. The reason why men are pissed is they don’t get to be much of a father with 4 days a month, the woman gets 1/2 his money. The reason why women are pissed is that they are at risk losing our money we’ve given up to the woman. Once you women get over your predicament, get an education, get a job and stop riding on the coat tails of the fathers that work hard for their money.
TheDeenster@netzero.net
Corporation for Public Broadcasting Report: ‘No Hint of Balance in PBS’s Breaking the Silence’
The Corporation for Public Broadcasting released a report yesterday which endorsed the central charges made by fatherhood advocates protesting PBS’s film Breaking the Silence: Children’s Stories. CPB Ombudsman Ken A. Bode declared that there is “no hint of balance in Breaking the Silence.” Bode noted:
“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.”
CPB’s report praised PBS’s decision to put the program under official review, noting that the film “needs to be reviewed for accuracy, fairness and balance.”
The report also criticized the Mary Kay Ash Foundation, which gave $500,000 towards the production of the film and is reportedly “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.” Bode noted:
“If so, PBS may find it has been the launching pad for a very partisan effort to drive public policy and law.”
Bode’s decision was praised by two of the protest campaign’s leaders, newspaper columnist Glenn Sacks and Ned Holstein, president of Fathers and Families. Sacks noted:
“Breaking the Silence is so flawed and extreme that any fair reviewer will see the merits of our claims. Bode looked at the information objectively, instead of ideologically, and got it right.”
The Corporation for Public Broadcasting is the largest single source of funding for public television and radio programming. Most CPB-funded television programs are distributed through the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS).
Well, Mr. Deenster, that’s a rather large chip on your shoulder there. Let’s inject a few facts into your rant:
1. Men are not biologically equipped to provide sole care for small children. We don’t lactate. So unless the mother is profoundly unfit, if there is a child of breastfeeding age involved, she’s automatically going to get custody in the event of a divorce. That isn’t bias, or discrimination - that’s biology.
2. In the majority of two-parent families, Dad goes out to work full-time and Mum either stays home with the children or juggles the children and a job. If our family breaks up, a judge is likely to award custody to the person who has been doing most of the day-to-day childcare so far, and that’s usually Mum.
3. Shared custody is all well and good when both parents live in the same street, or in the same town. It doesn’t work if one parent moves to a different town to find work.
Now for the flaw in your “argument”. You seem to be aggrieved because the father is handing over a large chunk of “his” money that he works so hard for to a woman who is riding his coat-tails.
Let’s step back in time a little. Do you remember deciding to have unprotected sex with a woman, an act which you knew could result in the birth of a child? That act created a responsibility both towards your child and his mother. You decided to bring a child into the world, so you get to be responsible for him until he grows to adulthood. “Responsible” here means being part of his life, not just paying for him. You also get to be responsible for his mother. Why? Because pregnancy isn’t free. Many pregnant women will find that they can’t work as efficiently as they used to, or can’t work at all for several months due to sickness. When the baby is born, the mother needs to be with the baby almost constantly, to feed and nurture him. You remember you dont have breasts, right? That’s the deal that you and the baby’s mother made when you had sex. She’s going to be economically out of action for quite a while because of the pregnancy and new baby, so you get to take care of her. She’s also going to see her future economic prospects reduced as she will have less work experience than had she not got pregnant, and will also likely have to fit her career in around school holidays, children being sick and the like. That was the deal that the two of you made when you decided to have a child together - she suffers significant personal financial penalties, you agree to take care of her and to raise the child together.
Don’t like your responsibilities? Fine - keep your trousers on.
Sam,
That argument is scuppered by three points.
Firstly, I’m all for people meeting their responsibilities. Remember the phrase “till death us do part”? When my wife & I said it, we meant it. But a lot of people these days regard the words as essentially meaningless. When a man says those words and means them, he is promising to meet his responsibilities. If his wife then leaves him, it is she, not he, who has abandoned her responsibilities, both to her husband and to her children. That isn’t all cases, but it is some of them, and the courts appear not to be interested.
Secondly, a court recently ruled that a man had to pay for the upkeep of a child after his one-night-stand partner waited for him to fall asleep, retrieved the condom, and impregnated herself. The legal precedent is set: it’s not deciding to create a child that makes a man liable, but producing sperm.
Thirdly, in my parents’ case, my mother had a child, a large house, and a good job, while my father had a child, a small house, a good job, and a mortgage. As far as the courts were concerned, my father had to pay my mother. The cost of raising a child clearly isn’t the only issue.
1. If you want me to agree that people tend to have unrealistic expectations of marriage, expecting everything to be a bed of roses, I’m happy to. If you want me to agree that a significant number of people write mental break clauses into their marriage vows, I’ll agree. Is it a bad thing? Of course.
I’m sure you know as well as I that “wife leaves husband” covers a lot of ground, from “wife ran off with milkman” through “wife wan’t going to put up with husband having multiple affairs” to “wife was being beaten up by husband and escaped”. I’m not really sure what you mean by “courts appear not to be interested” - do you want them to drag her back to the marital home and chain her up in the kitchen?
The precedent set by your case 2 is absurd. Whilst it should be open to the man in that case to claim the child and take responsibility, there is no possible justification for the action taken. The woman in that case has effectively raped the man. Our man should take care, though - condoms aren’t 100% effective - they do occasionally split, and should that happen and a child results, our man is firmly on the hook.
Without going into too much detail into your personal situation, I’ll make a few general comments:
a. The duty of a parent to support his child should not be affected by anything that happens later. Specifically, acquiring other children, whether of your body or step-children, should not be a magic “pay less child support” card. If you want to take on new, additional responsibilities, that’s fine, but you don’t get to desert the ones you’ve already got.
b. The child support calculations are daft. There is no justice in the case where parent A has the child 49% of the time and parent B 51%, so B is deemed to be the custodial parent and A owes lots of money. This is a problem with the implementation rather than with the principle, though. I’m certainly not here to defend the CSA.
I’m not letting women of the hook here either - for every man who isn’t meeting his responsibilities financially, there’s a woman somewhere who is playing games with visitation rights, “accidently” being at the shops when Dad comes to collect the kids and so on. Well, listen up, ladies! I don’t care how much you hate him, and I don’t care if he slept with your sister. Unless he’s actually a danger, if he was good enough for you to have sex with, he’s good enough to see his kids. Deal with it.
> I’m sure you know as well as I that “wife leaves husband” covers a lot of ground, from “wife ran off with milkman” through “wife wan’t going to put up with husband having multiple affairs” to “wife was being beaten up by husband and escaped”.
The distinction that matters is who breaks the marriage vows first. A woman who breaks her vows to a man who never honored his is guilty of nothing.
> I’m not really sure what you mean by “courts appear not to be interested”
When deciding who pays whom how much for child support, the courts appear not to be interested in the issue of who put the child in this situation by breaking up the marriage in the first place. And they should. For instance, if a woman leaves her husband for another man, taking the children with her, that other man should be paying some child support. Or did he think taking another man’s family came with no responsibilities?
You brought up responsibility. What I’m saying is that it is ridiculous that a woman can deliberately break up her marriage just because she fancies someone else and then have the courts back her up when she accuses her ex-husband of irresponsibility.
> The precedent set by your case 2 is absurd.
Agreed.
> acquiring other children, whether of your body or step-children, should not be a magic “pay less child support” card.
On which planet? Of course it is, though there’s nothing magic about it. If my wife and I have three kids, each will get less than if we have only one. This is simply a matter of making ends meet, which is the opposite of deserting one’s responsibilities. If I spend 90% of my disposable income on my first child, then I have another child, according to you, I have either to spend only 10% of my disposable income on my second child or, to be fair to them, spend 180% of my disposable income on them both. Where does this extra money come from?
> This is a problem with the implementation rather than with the principle
I think the implementation has been flawed enough for long enough for us to conclude that there’s something up with the principles upon which it’s based.
On which planet? Of course it is, though there’s nothing magic about it. If my wife and I have three kids, each will get less than if we have only one. This is simply a matter of making ends meet, which is the opposite of deserting one’s responsibilities. If I spend 90% of my disposable income on my first child, then I have another child, according to you, I have either to spend only 10% of my disposable income on my second child or, to be fair to them, spend 180% of my disposable income on them both. Where does this extra money come from?
Obviously there is no magic source of extra money. If your first child requires 90% of your disposable income, you can’t afford another child.
If you decide as a family that you want another child, and that having that child is worth making economies, you are free to do so. It would not be responsible for one of you to come home one day with another child, and say “This is Charlie. I’ve just adopted him.” would it?
How, then, is it living up to your responsibilities to unilaterally decide that you’re going to have more children with a new partner, and so your existing children will have to put up with short rations?
You don’t just “have another child” you know - you don’t get up one morning and find that the stork has left one squawlling by your door.
> If your first child requires 90% of your disposable income, you can’t afford another child.
Who said “requires”? Not me.
Even if I had, though, that would still be errant nonsense, flying in the face of the experiences of millions of people throughout history. Like I said, you make ends meet.
> How, then, is it living up to your responsibilities to unilaterally decide that you’re going to have more children with a new partner, and so your existing children will have to put up with short rations?
Let’s just be clear about what you’re proposing here. If a woman dumps her husband and runs off with another man, and if her husband, heartbroken, eventually manages to put his life back together and find a new girlfriend or wife, that new wife isn’t allowed to have children until the ex-wife gives her permission.
If the husband runs off and has more kids, you have a point. My problem is that your opinion seems to be applied to all cases, no matter who leaves the marriage, and that the law appears to be based on your view of the world.
And, of course, there are step-children. The abandoned husband isn’t allowed to see women who already have children without his ex’s permission, either. Great.
Let’s just be clear about what you’re proposing here. If a woman dumps her husband and runs off with another man, and if her husband, heartbroken, eventually manages to put his life back together and find a new girlfriend or wife, that new wife isn’t allowed to have children until the ex-wife gives her permission.
No, that’s not what I’m proposing. What I’m proposing is that you can’t rob your existing family to pay for your new one without their aquiescence. If you can afford to maintain your existing child, and also support your new family, your ex-wife need not trouble herself.
Let’s turn your example around - suppose the husband left his faithful wife and 2 kids for the newer sporty model at the office. Would you consider it just for our errant husband to tell his ex-wife to put the kids on lentils and rice because his new girlfriend is expecting?
> What I’m proposing is that you can’t rob your existing family to pay for your new one without their aquiescence.
And all I’m saying is that “family” means more than you’re letting on. You can’t chuck your husband out of the house and then complain that he’s not doing enough to support “his” family. When you chuck him out, you make it less his family than it was. And that’s your decision.
> suppose the husband left his faithful wife and 2 kids for the newer sporty model at the office.
Then fuck him. Let his jilted ex screw him in court for every penny he’s ever earned. If the debt drives him to suicide, I sympathise not one bit.
If the fathers who can’t afford to raise their new children and step-children were all unfaithful philanderers, we wouldn’t even be having this conversation. But the fathers who are chucked out of their families are treated by the courts in exactly the same way as those who break up their families.
Here’s an example. Two couples: Wife A chucks out Husband A and keeps the kids, shacking up with Bloke C; Husband B chucks out wife B and sends the kids with her. Wife B and Husband A later meet, marry, and set up house with Wife B’s kids. (This actually happens fairly regularly, as being chucked out of a marriage gives people something in common to kick-start the relationship.) According to you, Husband A is being “irresponsible” by taking on these kids who’ve been chucked out of their homwe by their father. According to you and the courts, he should fund his kids’ upkeep regardless of Bloke C’s and Wife A’s income and he should put their needs ahead of his step-children’s. According to the courts, Bloke C is not financially liable for the children whose family he has destroyed and into whose house he has come to live. How does this amount to anything other than a state-sponsored financial defense of adultery and infidelity?
Justice Is Coming!!!, are you aware that PBS in the end supported “Breaking The Silence”, despite the fathers’ rights protests? Here is PBS’ final statement:
PBS STATEMENT RE: BTS
Breaking The Silence: Children’s Stories (BTS) chronicles the impact of domestic violence on children and the recurring failings of family courts across the country to protect them from their abusers. In stark and often poignant interviews, children and battered mothers tell their stories of abuse at home and continued trauma within the courts. The producers approached the topic with the open mindedness and commitment to fairness that we require of our journalists. Their research was extensive and supports the conclusions drawn in the program. Funding from the Mary Kay Ash Charitable Foundation met PBS’s underwriting guidelines; the Foundation had no editorial influence on program content.
However, the program would have benefited from more in-depth treatment of the complex issues surrounding child custody and the role of family courts and most specifically the provocative topic of Parental Alienation Syndrome (PAS). Additionally, the documentary’s “first-person story telling approach” did not allow the depth of the producers’ research to be as evident to the viewer as it could have been.
PBS has received a substantial body of analysis and documentation from both supporters of the documentary and its critics.
It is clear to us that this complex and important issue would benefit from further examination. To that end, PBS will commission an hour-long documentary for that purpose. Plans call for the documentary to be produced and broadcast in Spring 2006. We expect that the hour-long treatment of the subject will allow ample opportunity for doctors, psychologists, judges, parent advocates and victims of abuse to have their perspectives shared, challenged and debated.
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“Breaking The Silence” is continuing to get airings in front of legislators and at conferences. Here is my Breaking The Silence page. I suggest you read it.