I have bad news for the ladies out there looking for a husband. Today's men are afraid of marriage and having kids. This is most likely because their male friends and relatives have told them what usually happens in the event of a divorce with children. In fact, some men are calling for a marriage strike.
I'm a liberal female father's advocate, activist, writer and blogger. I've been studying the effect our current family law has on families, and why the laws are written the way they are. Unfortunately I have more bad news.
We women have allowed radical feminists to take over the feminist movement, the one that used to stand for equality, and they've been negatively influencing family law. Now it's all about domination; in the case of divorce it's having complete control over the kids, house, money and dad's visitation time.
Many fathers want equal physical custody of their children after a relationship break-up. If women deserve equality, men do too, right? Then why are feminists, who claim to be about equality, opposing us whenever we introduce equal-parenting laws? I've even seen them lying during their testimony to a legislative committee. They're also changing domestic violence laws to make them even more anti-male, though the facts show males and females batter each other equally and mothers abuse children more than fathers.
Our country is in a fatherless crisis, yet men who are natural hands-on daddies are scoffed at. These men who embrace fatherhood are shown their time and influence isn't important. Our government does this by enforcing child support orders while not enforcing visitation orders. Whether the father had due process in court or not, whether blatant errors were made, when the DNA test shows he's not the father, and even when there is no child, our government punishes fathers, including throwing them in jail, for getting behind in child support.
The number one fear of children whose parents are divorcing is losing one parent. Yet millions of fathers, and some mothers are prevented from having natural, fully functioning, dedicated and loving relationships with their children after divorce. Unmarried fathers face the same problem. There are many men across the country, single and divorced, who want equal physical custody of their children, who want to help with home work, meet with teachers, take the kids to the dentist, all the normal things parents do.
Mothers and fathers tell me they don't believe 4 days and 4 evenings a month is adequate time to develop the kind of relationship necessary for the healthy development of their children. In many cases the sole custodial parent even interferes with that limited time, and in some cases cuts the noncustodial parent completely off from their child even if they've done nothing wrong.
A vindictive parent can essentially steal the child by moving the child far away, encouraging negative feelings and thoughts the child has about the noncustodial parent, or filing a false domestic violence report. The way the laws are written today, a divorcing woman can report that her husband was throwing things, say she's in fear, and with just her word she can get a temporary restraining order and emergency child custody order. One study showed half the temporary restraining orders granted were for cases where no physical harm was even claimed. Another showed the abuse claimed could not be verified fifty-nine percent of the time.
The father in a case like this doesn't get a chance to face a judge or jury; he's automatically considered guilty of abuse or potential abuse. This happens without proof of any wrongdoing, and can happen without his knowledge. Once she has the emergency custody order, he has very little, or in most cases no chance of getting equal custody. Every day innocent fathers visit their children in jail-like supervised visitation centers and take anger management classes, sometimes for years. Worse yet, some of these men not only are innocent of domestic violence, they're the victims. Some children of these innocent men never see Daddy again.
The Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) has encouraged programs that promote the idea that batterers are male, victims are female, and every child should be in the sole physical custody of it's mother. In other words, our government supports programs that vilify men. The Violence Against Women Act needs to be reformed or eliminated, and I-VAWA, the international version, needs to be rejected.
If we want men to embrace the idea of family life, we need to ensure they have equality in family law. Equal parenting laws, favored by 85% of people polled, need to be passed nationwide and a Federal Family Rights Act needs to be established immediately to protect families dealing with Child Protective Services and parents in divorce and child custody cases. The time has come to restore human and civil rights to all fit parents.
Now, back to looking for your husband. I've been working with fathers in the equal parenting movement for a few years now. These guys are some of the smartest and kindest friends I've had, and some of the most loving and dedicated daddies I've ever met. They've experienced pain and injustice at the hands of women. When they meet women who respect them, who understand that most men make great parents, they return a special kind of respect and appreciation. Come join us; you can make new friends, and have the satisfaction of helping a very honorable cause. And who knows, maybe you'll be at a rally one day and meet your future husband.
hi, I'm teri stoddard. like many other volunteers in the family rights movement I never once expected to become an activist. the truth is, it's just too darn hard to walk away. the pain and suffering these families have to endure is a disgrace.
government welfare, child support, domestic violence and child protection departments and agencies engage, recruit, control and destroy the very people they were created to help. parents and children are routinely removed from each other's lives without reason due to lack of due process in family courts.
"children need and deserve full-functioning, natural, loving, dedicated relationships with both of their parents, equally, in and out of marriage, whenever possible." "equal means equal" - teri
I'm a sun-loving 50-something san francisco bay area native, single mom of 4 and grandmom to 1.3.
What a nice article! Women, feminist leaders have to understand that they are being played like a violin: instead of supporting the family strife they are put against men as a whole. That is done to harm the real cause which is poverty, inequality, bad healthcare, etc. The real feminist movement must have a goal to be equal to men in everything, in good and bad, in sickness and in health... with respect to both.
That's how it should be.
by
Mark Sashine (54 articles, 19 quicklinks, 252 diaries, 3605 comments)
on Monday, February 26, 2007 at 9:16:17 AM
If it is true that "males and females batter each other equally" then similar numbers of males and females should be killed in domestic situations each year. Can you show me some data to support this?
by
lwarman (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 62 comments)
on Monday, February 26, 2007 at 7:54:47 PM
1. Women are just as likely as men to engage in partner aggression.
* Psychologist John Archer reviewed hundreds of studies and concluded, "Women were slightly more likely than men to use one or more act of physical aggression and to use such acts more frequently." [Source: John Archer: Sex differences in aggression between heterosexual partners: A meta-analytic review. Psychological Bulletin, Vol. 126, No. 5, pages 651-680]
* Law professor Linda Kelly noted, "leading sociologists have repeatedly found that men and women commit violence at similar rates." [Source: Linda Kelly: Disabusing the definition of domestic abuse. Florida State University Law Review, Vol. 30, pages 791-855, 2003. Accessible at: click here ]
* An international survey of violence between dating partners in 16 countries concluded: "Perhaps the most important similarity is the high rate of assault perpetrated by both male and female students in all the countries." [Source: Murray Straus: Prevalence of violence against dating partners by male and female university students worldwide. Violence Against Women, Vol. 10, No. 7, 2001]
* Cal State Psychology Professor Martin Fiebert has assembled a bibliography of 175 scholarly investigations: 139 empirical studies and 36 reviews and/or analyses, which demonstrate that women are as physically aggressive, or more aggressive, than men in their relationships with their spouses or male partners. http://www.csulb.edu/~mfiebert/assault.htm 2. Men experience over one-third of DV-related injuries.
* Of all persons who suffer an injury from partner aggression, 38% are male. [Source: John Archer: Sex differences in aggression between heterosexual partners: A meta-analytic review. Psychological Bulletin, Vol. 126, No. 5, pages 651-680]
* Of all persons who require medical treatment as the result of partner aggression, 35% are male. [Source: John Archer: Sex differences in aggression between heterosexual partners: A meta-analytic review. Psychological Bulletin, Vol. 126, No. 5, Table 5]
* Men who are victims of severe domestic violence suffer other problems, as well [Source: Richard J. Gelles: Intimate Violence in Families, 1997]:
o 30% experienced depression
o 14% required bed rest to recuperate from the injuries
o 10% needed to take time off from work
3. Men are far less likely to report DV incidents than women.
* According to the National Family Violence Survey, female victims of DV are nine times more likely to call the police than male DV victims. These are the percentages of victims who called the police in response to the assault:
o Women: 8.5%
o Men: 0.9%
[Source: JE Stets and MA Straus: Gender differences in reporting marital violence and its medical and psychological consequences. In Straus and Gelles (editors): Physical violence in American families, 1990, Table 15.]
4. The myths about domestic violence are numerous.
These are some of the common myths about domestic violence:
* According to the FBI, a woman is beaten every 15 seconds
* 4,000 women each year are killed by their husbands, ex-husbands, or boyfriends
* There are nearly three times as many animal shelters in the United states as there are shelters for women
* Battering during pregnancy is the leading cause of birth defects and infant mortality
* Women who kill their batterers receive longer prison sentences than men who kill their partners
Richard Gelles, an internationally-recognized expert on domestic violence, refers to many of these claims as "factoids from nowhere." [click here 5. Many of these myths are based on DV studies that use biased survey methods.
* Some studies survey women but not men. Predictably, these studies yield one-sided findings.
* The DOJ National Crime Victimization Survey is flawed because persons do not consider most forms of domestic violence, such as slapping, shoving, or throwing an object at a partner, to be a crime.
* The DOJ National Violence Against Women survey prefaces the questions by repeatedly using the phrase "personal safety." Those words bias the responses because women are more concerned about personal safety than men.
* Some studies of domestic violence assess both physical and verbal abuse. That inflates and distorts the picture of physical violence.
[Source: MA Straus: The controversy over domestic violence by women: A methodological, theoretical, and sociology of science analysis. In XB Arriaga and S Oskamp: Violence in intimate relationships. Sage Publishers, 1999. http://pubpages.unh.edu/~mas2/CTS21.pdf]
by
Teri Stoddard (2 articles, 0 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 13 comments)
on Monday, February 26, 2007 at 8:50:06 PM
Thanks for the info but it did not answer my question. "Partner aggression" is a pretty vague term, which can describe anything from a screaming match to a lethal injury. I'm not saying that it is okay to scream at someone, but it is clearly not the same as murder. As you mentioned, it is likely that many assaults (on men or women) are not reported to police, but a dead body is harder to hide. Do you have anything that specifically mentions actions causing death?
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lwarman (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 62 comments)
on Tuesday, February 27, 2007 at 1:54:42 AM
Although the numbers are about equal between the sexes in all areas of abuse and murder, they use different methods to abuse and murder each other. Here stands the problem with homicides.
Not all homicides between relatives are classified as acts of violence, so their figures aren't all in one place. Men do use violence to kill more often than women, by far. But women use poison and medication modifications (insulin dilution, replacements with look-a-like placebos, etc) far more often than men do.
So until we get a study funded that will look at all of this, we simply don't have all the answers.
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Teri Stoddard (2 articles, 0 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 13 comments)
on Tuesday, February 27, 2007 at 10:44:12 AM
You might want to try basing your opinion on more than
one statistic. If we want to use statistics that bash one gender or another, how about the fact that all the publicity for not paying child support focuses on men, when statistically women who are assigned child support to pay, are much less likely to pay it than men. In fact, women are found to be in default of child support payments at twice the rate of men.
Don't get me started.
What needs to happen is true equality, not women using the women's movement as an excuse to push an increasing set of discriminatory legislation against men. True equality movements dont attempt to replace one discriminatory set of circumstances and beliefs with another.
We need equal pay for both genders
We need guaranteed shared custody with equal time with both parent, no 'non-custodial' parent.
And that is just the beginning
by
Steven Leser (228 articles, 49 quicklinks, 34 diaries, 1647 comments)
on Monday, February 26, 2007 at 9:00:57 PM
I've been in the fathers' and equal custody movement for 4 years. My blog is on Mens News Daily, where I report on activities in the worldwide movement. Funny you mentioned True-Equality. I work with both of these organizations:
http://www.True-Equality.org http://www.mediaRADAR.org
Thanks for making me feel welcome.
Teri
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Teri Stoddard (2 articles, 0 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 13 comments)
on Monday, February 26, 2007 at 9:41:57 PM
By the way, where is Mar Paz? She went on a rant...
... a few months ago against "husbandry" during a time I was taking a week or two off the site, that was over and done with before I got the chance. I'd definitely like to get her take on this thread.
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Steven Leser (228 articles, 49 quicklinks, 34 diaries, 1647 comments)
on Monday, February 26, 2007 at 9:18:09 PM
I am a divorced father of one child. I fit 90% of the description of the "man" in this article.
We separated when my daughter was two. I was "granted" non-custodial status even though I left because I could not stand the mental abuse my wife inflicted on me and my child. My mistake - I should have thrown her ass on the street and called the cops but I didnt want to be confrontational.
She filed a TRO which was thankfully denied. She was granted $1100/month in temporary support which I could barely afford (45% of my gross pay). I had no place to live. I broke my neck in a freak accident, had to have surgery, lost my job and went on disability. I still had to pay 1100/ month. I got to see my daughter unsupervised a few evenings and some weekends but no overnights. Then my wife moved my daughter 250 miles away and I barely saw her the next 2 years. I spent those 2 years fighting for visitation to the tune of 30,000 dollars in attorney's fees. I fell behind on child support before I could get it modified. They took my drivers license. I had a laborer job but couldnt get to work w/o help for 2 years. Now I couldnt afford the gas or physically drive myself to see my daughter. I basically missed her from the age of 2 to 6.
I did remarry after living with my current wife for 9 years first. I helped her raise her daughter since she was 18 months old and we have two of our own. I am a dedicated family man, active in my community, coach my son's T-ball team, and am currently negotiating a settlement for the $17,000 they say I owe in back child support (even after years of wage garnishment) to a woman who has half a kid and an executive position with a six-figure salary at a bank (she was a low wage student during our marriage), two homes, three cars and two horses.
Oh, and now I have leukemia to boot but my ex- is somehow more deserving in our system.
I tell my current wife I love her because I really do (wish I had met her first) but I joke around with her that she is stuck with me for the rest of my life because I cant afford to leave her! I also tell her that if she ever leaves me - I am coming with her!
So there is your silver-lining you uber-feminists...
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BriMan (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 17 comments)
on Monday, February 26, 2007 at 10:19:34 PM
Divorced wife #1 because she cheated and put my daughter in a dangerous care situation. I got laid off (Im in IT) when the dotcom bubble burst and my ex waited until a few months of unemployment to sue for sole custody. I couldnt afford an attorney and was shellacked in court. If you have seen Gideons Trumpet on TV, you know what I mean. I was on unemployment earning 1000 a month and was hit for almost $300 per month in Child Support even though my wife was making great money at the time and didnt need my help. I almost went under completely. Moreover, until this time, we were sharing custody equally and my daughter was doing great, straight A's, lots of friends, captain of soccer team, etc.
In my opinion, the custody situation is the worst instance of gender bias in this country right now. Equal pay is up there and I will never stop fighting for that for women for an instant. But women need to do the right thing on shared custody.
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Steven Leser (228 articles, 49 quicklinks, 34 diaries, 1647 comments)
on Monday, February 26, 2007 at 11:01:55 PM
I hear this all the time. Ten out of ten men tell me that when it comes to divorce, and related law, the man always loses. They say, the woman's lawyer treats her like celebrity, listens to her rage and crying, and tries to set her up against the man. On the other hand, the father's lawyer is not interested, because there is no money in it for him. The lawyer is only a small part of the story.
I guess I would normally not find such information that interesting, if it was just a matter of small talk, or angry chatter, or putting down the ex-wife, and/or just whining about money.
But it isn't. Almost every time a man has talked about this to me,you could tell that he was really in pain. Most were in pain about not seeing the children enough. Others were in pain about how they were being treated by the ex-woman. Most never bitched about the woman, and were much more saddened, and hurt.
This is what I did. I have two boys from two different fathers. I have never been married. My older son's father died recently, and it was nice that Henry, (my son) got to live six month with him the year before.
My younger son's father lives only a few minutes away from us. When I was pregnant, he was so upset that I didn't want to get married, that he told me he couldn't stick around. I told him, he did not have to decide until it was time to sign the birth certificate. I told him that if he decided to sign it, that meant he was making a commitment to be Patrick's father. If he decided not to sign it, he was always welcome to change his mind.
He did sign it, and he was there during the birth, and he has been there ever since. I have never pushed him, and he has been a wonderful father not only to Patrick(11), but also to Henry (16) from the beginning,and all this time.
We never did any legal arrangement, with neither one. Chuck, (Patrick's father) travels with both the boys cross country to visit family every year, and he came with me to visit mine last year to Austria. He takes them skiing, and hiking, and camping. I am not usually involved with any of these events, except for the trip to Austria, and I thank him all the time, and tell him how much I appreciate him. The more I tell him to take a break, the more he does. He has his own set of friends. He is still looking for a long term, permanent relationship with a woman, and when he occasionally hooks up with one, I am usually glad to find out that I like her. (and feel comfortable having another mother around, should that happen)
I know neither one of the marriages would have worked. With the second one, my younger son often begged us to live together, so he could be with both of us, but we really did well except for sleeping in the same bed.
His dad and I hardly ever fight, we support each other, and he is now happy too that we never married. There was no ugly divorce, and that was what I was trying to prevent.
I don't own my children; they don't belong to me; I want them to have as many mothers, and fathers, and mentors, and good teachers...as they can get.
At first, and with a first baby, this is often hard to do, and it was for me too. But I soon learned, that none of my kid's fathers would steal the kids from me. I did ask them to, though.
by
Katrin R. (3 articles, 0 quicklinks, 11 diaries, 514 comments)
on Monday, February 26, 2007 at 11:02:54 PM
The problem is centered in the marriage. If there is no marriage, there's no divorce.
Now marriage is a basically unenforceable contract, so family law is created to protect the vulnerable parties in the event the "contract" is broken. This covers children certainly, and in some circumstances, an ex-spouse, although such protection is becoming almost unattainable, thanks to the polite fiction that equality, though never legislated, has been achieved between the sexes, and the full-time homemaker can just run out, find daycare and a 60 hour/week job paying 150% above poverty and never have another worry. Right.
Marriage contracts are broken when one party opts out. This can happen in many ways: any addiction (including alcohol or other drugs, extra-marital sex, workaholism, gambling, spendthrift habits), abuse of the partner or children, or just plain abandonment come to mind.
Yes, there are women who should never be wives and mothers: they haven't the interest, skills or abilities. These women are usually easy to spot. So why did the men marry them? Why impregnate them?
Many women learn about the ineligible men; untrained, unsuited, and not predisposed to marriage, but there are "charmers" hiding their pathology behind some heavy disguises; and there are the "late blooming rotten apples" who decide to become corrupt sometime after the marriage.
There are husbands not worth finding!
It is irrational to think that somebody who opted out of a contract with an "equal" adult partner and abandoned the family is going to suddenly become a model single parent and protect and nurture innocent, powerless children. Nobody "gets religion" in the process of getting a divorce. What went on before the decree will most likely continue after. To legislate for "joint custody" under such circumstances will not be in the children's best interests. It will keep lawyers employed, though.
If in fact the two parties can cooperate in child-rearing responsibilities, why was the marriage untenable? What kind of fraud was perpetrated, perhaps a gay person entered into a marriage with an unsuitable partner?
The injury done to the other spouse is never considered anymore-it is a quaint and antique notion. But family law is supposed to protect the children. It is not designed to protect the ex-spouse.
So I cried like a fool when I signed the decree in the judge's chambers. I knew basically what I was signing up for: relative poverty, loneliness, and lots of hard work, which was my life for 18 years of marriage, but without the abandonment, abuse, despair, and need to cover up for Daddy's failings.
I didn't expect to be signing up for many way-below-poverty years, false accusations, multiple lawsuits, custody battles in threee states, a kidnapping, and 6 years of searching for a deadbeat, gone to ground in a state that permitted such "disappearances", although we tracked him down in his $2 million mansion eventually. But being a competent adult, and having a supportive family, I coped.
Throughout, we remained a family, those of us who didn't opt out. And that was the whole point. The point of marrying, the point of divorcing, the point of persisting in doing the right thing by the children.
So no, don't look to me for sympathy for the absentee, failed husband. It takes grit, persistence, and a desire to do right to participate in any social unit. Show me a man like that, and I'll marry him. If you don't beat me to it.
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KarenDetroit (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 19 comments)
on Tuesday, February 27, 2007 at 9:45:53 AM
Wow...lots of anger there. You know, if men were the scumbags you think they are, I might agree with some of this. But I'm happy to report, you are wrong!
You think men leave their wives????? WRONG!
Women initiate, by far, the majority of divorces.
Do you think they divorced these 'scumbag husbands' because they cheated or abused the wife or kids? WRONG!
Most women, by far, say they divorced their husbands because they felt emotionally detached and bored.
Most men don't want a divorce. Most men wish they were still married to their former spouse. Men aren't the problem when it comes to divorce.
So...before you go around degrading men, I suggest you do a little research.
I shouldn't be surprised to read this. Radical feminists have flooded the media and government with false statistics and propaganda, and most of what we see of men on TV makes them look stupid. Men deserve much more respect than they're getting.
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Teri Stoddard (2 articles, 0 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 13 comments)
on Tuesday, February 27, 2007 at 11:01:30 AM
It isn't who files the papers, it's who is picking up the responsibility for dealing with the untenable situation. You have got to get your head out of whatever closet it's in.
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KarenDetroit (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 19 comments)
on Tuesday, February 27, 2007 at 11:12:37 AM
Wow...lots of anger there. You know, if men were the scumbags you think they are, I might agree with some of this. But I'm happy to report, you are wrong!
You think men leave their wives????? WRONG!
Women initiate, by far, the majority of divorces.
Do you think they divorced these 'scumbag husbands' because they cheated or abused the wife or kids? WRONG!
Most women, by far, say they divorced their husbands because they felt emotionally detached and bored.
Most men don't want a divorce. Most men wish they were still married to their former spouse. Men aren't the problem when it comes to divorce.
So...before you go around degrading men, I suggest you do a little research.
I shouldn't be surprised to read this. Radical feminists have flooded the media and government with false statistics and propaganda, and most of what we see of men on TV makes them look stupid. Men deserve much more respect than they're getting.
by
Teri Stoddard (2 articles, 0 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 13 comments)
on Tuesday, February 27, 2007 at 11:05:51 AM
A lot of unsupported opinions and non representative situati
Your statements in quotes
"Now marriage is a basically unenforceable contract, so family law is created to protect the vulnerable parties in the event the "contract" is broken. This covers children certainly, and in some circumstances, an ex-spouse, although such protection is becoming almost unattaina
