With fathers day upon us we’ll certainly see in the MSM a bevy of pseudo father stories of “father figures,” including mothers as father figures, who stepped up and “did it right.” This is one of the reasons I don’t read or watch any MSM. But even in so called father friendly pieces we see the gynocentric bias towards viewing fathers from the perspective of the wants and needs of women and how society thinks fathers should behave towards their children. The obligatory virtue signaling “I’m one of the good fathers” and social distancing from those other “deadbeat dads” will be loud while ignoring the pitfalls of marriage and fatherhood for men which are, in part, driving down marriage and birth rates.
As is the norm the writings regarding fathers on fathers day ignores the fathers who were there financially and emotionally there for their children, who were disenfranchised by a system which demands their financial contributions to the point of debtors prison and which does nothing to foster and reward active involvement, indeed a system which punishes any attempt to be more than a visitor. It will ignore the father who had a unilateral divorce forced on him controlling his assets and income in the present and future, losing his custody and children in a court system which sees him the same as the out of wedlock father, a wallet and a visitor. Marriage is now made a negative over out of wedlock couples as the married father is subject to alimony and loss of his residence and business in addition to being made to pay ‘child support” for children he isn’t allowed to raise.
Misandrist gynocentric and chivalrous white knight views abound in all media outlets, the Epoch Times, New York Post, Heritage Foundation, and ABC/WFTS Tampa Bay examples follow. Being active in the parental/fathers rights movement for over 25 years I have submitted multiple op eds, letters to the editor, and rebuttals to coverage including to Epoch, the Post and Heritage and the response has been mostly crickets. And year after year we get the same “(’m a morally superior) married father and your should be also or the (I’m a morally superior) actively involved father unlike the “deadbeats” around me stories, which are many and the norm. Stories of disenfranchised fathers who are struggling and fighting to be a father are few and far between. Even if they do appear they have the obligatory “unlike those other deadbeats” commentary, as if active involved fathers are the exception and not the norm.
In From Neglect to Nurturing: A Fathers Day Transformation (6-16-23 Epoch Times) Adam B. Coleman relates his experience with his absent (deadbeat) biological father. He relates how he treated “his extramarital children as the least important.” From this I surmise he had extramarital siblings. While I can see the negative emotions his lack of relationship with his father placed upon him I see no similar negative emotions in this piece for having a mother who chose to have a children out of wedlock with a married man. Why is a man’s unwillingness to be a father denigrate while a woman is free to abort, abandon with no penalty, or give up for adoption without the “deadbeat” mom label?
He further speaks of the abandonment when they became homeless twice and he didn’t help them and how his mother would try to force the relationship. Missing here is the fathers perspective on the matter. Was the father paying “child support” which is actually an excise tax if the mother is on welfare as it returns to state coffers which financially strained him? Was he beholden to his current wife under threat of divorce, facing loss of access to his other biological children, loss of his house and further financial strain? If he paid his child support on time and in full didn’t he meet his paternal obligation as defined by government and much of society?
I’m glad to see Mr. Coleman had a good relationship with his own son but missing from his piece is did he marry his son’s mother and raise him (and his other siblings?) in an intact 2 biological parent home? If not, can we pass judgement on him for not doing so and for being an “absent” “visiting” father? He says his son understands he isn’t perfect and I can only wonder if his life circumstances cloud his understanding of why his father did what he did which removes his ability to see his father (and mother), as individuals? It’ not that I agree with what he did, but I wasn’t him so who am I (or anyone else) to pass judgement? One of the challenges of family is to accept and understand them as individuals with their own set of life challenges and move on in life not making the same mistakes as them as we ourselves mature.
As evidence of the one sided perspective of the media, even balanced or conservative media, Adam B. Coleman continues his discussion in This Fathers Day, let’s encourage dads to be in their kid’s lives – and maybe save some in the process (6-16-23 New York Post). His discussion here is more general regarding the problems of single parent (mostly single mother) homes and the decision to form them by divorcing our spouse is harming children. He has valid points, many of which parental/fathers rights advocates and disenfranchised fathers agree with. Yes, children do fare better in a 2 biological parent home and absent that a shared parenting arrangement (no less than 35% of access time for a parent).
He states Fathers Day should be a “day for advocating reconciliation for the fathers of America who regrettably choose themselves over their children” and further states, “Our Government can’t pass a law to make fathers get involved in their child’s life” showing ignorance of the federal government policies which have disenfranchised fathers and continue to do so. It is common to blame the father, this has been occurring since Moynihan’s Report pointed out the crisis of 25% out of wedlock birthrate in the African American community in the 1960s. Unfortunately across all communities and across time the focus is on “what is wrong with men and fathers.”
Mr. Coleman points out his mother told him that his father encouraged her to abort him. I highly suspect if she had considered it herself she would not relay that to him. That said, men have NO reproductive rights. Men who are willing to be fathers have their children aborted against their will. Further, men who do NOT want to be fathers are forced to be financially responsible regardless of their wishes. And in our gynocentrically oriented society we vilify a man who doesn’t want to be a father but is forced into it yet the over 620,000 women who chose to get an abortion in 2020 get a pass on the “deadbeat mom” label.
African American women are about 14% of the population and yet they are 36% of abortions, over 130,000 in 2020. Even given the lack of male reproductive rights, can anyone show that the number of “deadbeat” non involved dads is greater than the non involved through abortion “deadbeat moms?” My experience with out of wedlock fathers is they go to extraordinary efforts to try to be an active father in their child’s life, this with no support or assistance from the groups which are publicly cajoling them to be more active. The majority are at the hospital at the birth of their child and the majority sign on as father on the birth certificate.
Once a woman decides to have a child the federal government encourages paternity establishment by paying the states incentive dollars under Title IVd of the Social Security Act (SSA). This also provides incentive payments for the establishment of the total number of child support orders, amount collected versus owed, collection of arrears, and the cost of the program. What is missing is incentive payments to states for father involvement and/or marriage. Many fathers find out that paternity offers them NO protection to access and ability to parent and raise their child.
An example is “The Good Dad Act” in Florida, recently passed legislation which proclaims to give unmarried fathers the same rights and responsibilities that the mother has. That said, Bernard Jennings was on the birth certificate as the father of his child and was primary caregiver of him for 7 years when the mother took the child and moved away. He finally located her and served papers for “visitation,” said case being put on the calendar 5 months away. The primary caregiver reduced to 2nd class parent and, if he’s lucky, visitor. See New Florida law to give more parental rights to unmarried biological fathers (6-12-23 ABC/WFTS Tampa Bay).
Also highlighted is the story of Ulysess Carwise. His daughter was given up for adoption 2 days after birth without his consent. DNA paternity was conclusive that he is the fathers, but as the court battle drags on his child was allowed to stay with the adoptive parents and she is now 5 years old and believes the adoptive parents are her parents and her father a “visitor” as the battle to terminate his parental rights drag on through multiple courts. The adopting out against the wishes of the father is a common event across the country.
The terms “non custodial” parent and “visitation” are insulting and reprehensible to parents who want to exercise both their (supposedly guaranteed Constitutional) parental rights and their parental responsibilities and they are most often applied to fathers who are relegated to second class parental status. We label fathers a “non” parent and offer them every other weekend and one mid week 4 hour dinner visit, the standard “visitation” order across the nation, and then lament the fact that fathers are not more involved in their children’s life. The right of access and enforcement for interfering are non existent and so the visitation order is a suggestion “allowed” at the discretion of the mother. 50% of mothers admit to having interfered with a fathers time with his children (Sanford Braver 1995).
Deadbeat Dad was a term often used as a pejorative applied to fathers across the board as Title IVd of SSA put fathers into a financial provider role only and was designed, not to collect ‘child support” for the mother but to recoup payments made to “single mothers” who were receiving government benefits of any kind. When the system failed due to the fact that poor mothers needing assistance had poor fathers for their children who were unable to contribute financially, the system was expanded to capture the formerly married divorced (most against their will) fathers who were already paying child support direct to the mother of their children based upon individual state laws. As such it morphed into an income transfer from husbands to wives and is touted as a government “success” for women and children.
No Fault Divorce started in CA and moved east with NY being the last state in the nation to enact it. There is a perception that married fathers are treated better than out of wedlock fathers but in fact they are labelled “non custodial” and given the same standard order of “visitation” and “child support” as out of wedlock fathers. “Child Support” (Child Excise Tax) is set as a percentage of income based upon number of children (i.e. 17% for one child, 25% for 2, etc.) with the money paid through the child support system (a federal bureaucracy with 50 state bureaucracies in each state). Unfortunately for fathers the percentages were set pre tax and as such the payer suffered the tax liability and a father of 2 children could see his $50,000 a year gross income reduced to $7487 net income and the mothers pre divorce income of $25,000 increase to a $38,557 net. “Single mothers” have a perverse incentive to have multiple out of wedlock children with multiple fathers (i.e. 2 children x 2 fathers = 34%, 2 children x 1 father = 25%).
Thus the federal system placed perverse incentives for the states to make fathers “non custodial visitors and payers of child support” regardless of the former marital status and perverse incentives on women to divorce their husband or have multiple children out of wedlock. Historical two income blue collar families kept the father, mother and child out of poverty but now, by placing the father into poverty for the years of his children’s minority, and often beyond as many state mandated payments for “children” until 21 years old regardless of their relationship with their father, fathers are reduced to poverty to keep mother and child out of poverty. Further, arrears can not be reduced for any reason so a poor father in arrears often suffers collection by the state after his children reach majority and no longer need financial support, often until his children have children of their own.
The problem is not a liberal or conservative one with the federal uniparty giving incentives to the states to create single mother homes and then make fathers, and if not them, taxpayers pay for women and children. As Ronald Reagan would say, “I’m from the government and I’m here to help” should strike fear in an individual, and in his case it is poetic in that as Governor of CA he initiated No Fault Divorce and as President initiated the federal child support system which put mandates’ and awarded perverse incentives to the states, to create “single mother” homes and “non custodial fathers” whose responsibility was only financial. The liberal government subsidizes “single mother” homes and the conservative government forces the disenfranchised father to pay the costs, at the risk of debtors prison, of her decision to marry the daddy state.
One need look no further than The Heritage Foundation, the useful idiots of Reagan policy, to see the federal think tank which pushes such ideology. Yelling from the roof tops, “marriage before carriage” and the “success sequence” (We Need Committed Dads To Quiet Our Cultural Chaos 6-17-23 The Federalist), colloquialisms of the just get married and be happy crowd as they fail to recognize that men have no reproductive rights, a large part of women control who gets married, marriage is a hostile environment for men, and women file the majority of divorces as it is financially in their interest and now socially acceptable to do so. Jump in boys, a mere 50% will burn a slow death, even odds, but it worked for (morally superior) me!
Worse they ignore the assault on parental rights which began with the denial of fathers rights. Heritage denied fathers rights while still holding them responsible while inversely claiming to uphold the parental rights of mothers while holding them to no responsibility whatsoever. Enter here the Parental Rights and Responsibilities Act, pushed forth by Heritage but excluding the “non custodial” parents, fathers, of course. Here is my updated version which includes all parents, sent to them in 2019 and several times a year thereafter with no response.
Early on I had been warning of the assault on parental rights, with both the left and right taking a blind eye to the injustice, as it was bound to impact BOTH parents, including married parents. Indeed, many a “custodial” parent found themselves (after much litigation and expense) reduced to “non custodial” status and to now be poorly treated by a system they once thought their advocate but quickly learning the system is out to benefit itself. In Albany, NY in the 1990s we saw married parents dragged into family court by a school system which demanded the parents do as ‘the professionals” said, which we warned was a harbinger of things which are occurring now. The denial of fathers rights and government control of them in the 1970s has been a slow crawl to the denial of parental rights and government control of children for ALL parents in the 2020s.
Coleman would show himself to be an involved father, morally superior to his own father even though admitting the reasons for his actions were never relayed. Jennings also makes sure he’s differentiated from those “deadbeats” stating, “There are some men out there that are not doing what they’re supposed to do to be a father, but there are other men who really want to be a part of their child’s life, married or not, they want to take responsibility, they want to parent their child.” Roberts and Squires with Heritage would lecture us fathers, “We need men who are unafraid to stand up for their wives and children and who see protecting and providing for their families as their most important vocation.” How will we do that if we can legally be beat dead, driven dead broke, and disenfranchised form out families? And will we see the same treatment for mothers who “walk away” from their responsibility by abortion, abandonment, or adoption of their children this next mothers day?
Here’s a thought for those men that think to virtue signal themselves as a superior father to other fathers, woman who thinks they can define what a good father is, and government which forces fathers into visiting wallets, yet all demanding fathers be more involved, get your head out of your gynocentric orifice and recognize it is a hostile environment created by government for men to get married and for men to have children that is the problem, not men and fathers. Morally superior chastisement does nothing to fix the hostile environment and fails to recognize government created this environment and caused the problems. You can save your lectures and virtue signaling, for us fathers who were willing to be financially and emotionally responsible for our children but were beat dead, driven dead broke, and disenfranchised from our parental rights and our children your hypocritical misandrist totalitarianism is just more of a reason for us to hold you in contempt on what is for us, Fathers missing our children Day.