The Marriage Movement Is Very Dismissive of Non-Custodial Fathers
September 27, 2007 | Posted by ANCPR Glenn Sacks has made an excellent point here about the Marriage Movement and Non-custodial fathers. Once you are branded an ncp, you really aren’t considered a parent in the same way that the custodial parent is, and the child support and custody laws reflect this. Your primary role becomes financial, and to support the custodial parent in their role.
I’m quoted on the marriage movement and federal marriage programs in Mary Meehan’s recent article Marriage as social medicine (Lexington Herald-Leader, 9/25/07). According to the article:
“[Sacks] said the pro-marriage movement has become ‘kind of a mania’ and is ‘very dismissive of non-custodial fathers.’ It makes the assumption, he said, ‘that no man will take responsibility unless the government coerces them to do it’ and puts responsible fathers on the defensive.”
One of my criticisms of the marriage movement and its influential thinkers–including David Blankenhorn, author of Fatherless America: Confronting Our Most Urgent Social Problem, and Elizabeth Marquardt (pictured), author of Between Two Worlds–is its view of divorced fathers.
It has always amazed me how the writers cited by Sacks, in addition to many more opinion makers, seem to be blind to what most people on the street seem to know: it’s not the fathers who are abandoning their children. It is the social policy of family destruction that is exiling them, driving them away, alienating them, and in the end dehumanizing them to the point where there are many fathers who are broken men. It’s a policy that rewards people for being bad, for comitting adultery, for lying in court, for making false claims of abuse. It’s a national disgrace.
When our government says, “Hey, if you do THIS, we’ll get you some money.” Guess what, a whole lot of people start doing THAT. It seems insane to push for marriage programs, while at the same time offering money, lots of money (alimony, child support, and many social benefit programs for “families”, defined as mother and child) to people who deliberately destroy families.
The day will come, far in the future I imagine, when people will look back on these times as insane and barbaric.
Categories: Custody, Marriage Movement, NCP Fathers, News | 
Tags: | 
4 Comments »
Fathers aren’t abandoning their kids. The mothers make the fathers do it. After the hassles of dealing with the ex alot of the fathers just give up. Fathers do love their kids. But sometimes they have to wait till their children are grown up and hope and pray they will undersstand their side. Unfortunenately that isn’t always the case. Children has both parents still if the ex will just let the father be involved. Not as a piggy bank either! Fathers do love their children just as the mothers do.
What is it going to take to finally get some recognition for fathers? Maybe someone “important” will unfortunately have this happen to them and have the finace to get these laws changed.
Scapegoating must be so much fun. Accountability sure isn’t, I can tell from these types of sites.
“It’s a policy that rewards people for being bad, for comitting adultery, for lying in court, for making false claims of abuse.” – What a disgrace to say women and children lie about abuse. First you refered to it as “false memory syndrome”, now it’s “false allegations.”
Men (Bala & Schumann) make more false allegations than women (usually about neglect). According to credible agencies like the ABA and so forth, most allegations of abuse are made in good faith rather than the malicious (misogynist) nature you speak of.
Nauseating. Really nauseating stuff.
The comment by tgifemist is really bogus. Occasionally I get emailed by really pissed off individuals like this one,and I never answer them, but when it is a comment that shows up on this website, I generally rely on the regulars on this website to comment them to hell, but lately, with the news being so dire, and all consuming, comments are not happening anymore. People are really freaked out about the economy, as well they should be. In fact, it is my opinion that people should be a lot more freaked out than they are. I’m seeing a complete collapse of public order. So much ballyhoo about so-called Anthrogenetic Global Warming, when we are actually headed into an iceage!
But, let’s address some of the nonsense in tgifeminist’s comment.
1. Women and children don’t lie about abuse? Perhaps the problematic word here is lying. The problem is that people can be terribly mistaken about the actual events they are a part of. For example, there have been several cases where a man convicted of rape was sentenced on the strength of the victim’s eyewitness testimony that they were the perpetrator, yet years later, dna evidence clears the convicted man. Was she lying? No. But she was wrong. She nailed the wrong guy, and he spent much of his life in prison, and the rest of his life overcoming the damage caused by simply believing someone’s word on anything. In court, the standard has always been that for a conviction, there must be corroborating evidence. There must be more than just someone’s word. The same applies to testimony as to abuse. On the other hand, women in divorce simply do lie. That’s a fact. They lie. The reason? There is a two pronged incentive to lie. 1. custody (read revenge, and not “best interest of the child”; and 2. child support… money. So, given the incentive, how can you not tell a little white lie, like, “he has a violent temper”, or, he frightens me, or, he yelled at me over the phone, or he threatened me, etc. Are there such things a male batterers? Of course there are. There are creepy people, what can I say, but most men are very protective of women and children. To punish the majority for the sins of the minority is madness. You can’t have a valid justice system that is based on hearsay and lies. One wrong does not cure another wrong. Period!
2. Men make more false allegations than women? Who is this person kidding? Look at the numbers… from the US census, 85% of sole custody parents are women. What can we know from this? That most men simply don’t want to get into a catfight, and so the woman wins in court, because she is willing to catfight. It’s as simple as this. Every father I have ever known knows exactly what I’m talking about.
Lest anyone think this is misogynistic, let me say this, I blame the system itself, and those who have corrupted it with their ideologically driven drivel. We’ll never restore justice until we get rid of the ideologies, and we hold fast to basic principles of justice that have evolved over millennium. Assault is assault. Period. Battery is battery, period! We’ve got laws against this kind of thing. A man who beats a woman should face serious consequences. But, women have to acknowledge that women sometimes are at least partly to blame. For example, I’ve known of plenty of situations where the woman in an intimate relationship knows just how to push the buttons of the man. He goes for years, not saying anyrthing,and then one day he cracks. Tell me, who is really to blame in situations like this?