Received this notice from Stephen Baskerville:

My article, “Married to the State,” is published today in The American Conservative, online edition: http://www.amconmag.com/blog/married-to-the-state/.

A longer, scholarly version of this argument will be published in the January 2010 issue of The Family in America: A Journal of Public Policy.

TAC has published 3 previous articles of mine in their print edition:
“Fathers Into Felons”: http://www.amconmag.com/article/2005/may/23/00020/
“The Fathers’ War”: http://www.amconmag.com/article/2005/oct/24/00017/
“Violence Against Families”: http://stephenbaskerville.net/Violence_Against_Families.pdf

Stephen

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Married to the State

How government colonizes the family

By Stephen Baskerville

In 1947, with the baby boom in its infancy and few disposed to hearing of family crisis, Harvard sociologist Carle Zimmerman saw the long-term reality: the family had been deteriorating since the Renaissance and was nearing the point of no return. Whenever the family shows signs of dysfunction, Zimmerman observed, “the state helps to break it up.” During the 19th century, “law piled on law, and government agency upon government agency” until by 1900 “the state had become master of the family.” The result, he wrote in Family and Civilization, was that “the family is now truly the agent, the slave, the handmaiden of the state.”

To read the rest, go to: http://www.amconmag.com/blog/married-to-the-state/.

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Stephen Baskerville, PhD
Associate Professor of Government
Patrick Henry College
1 Patrick Henry Circle
Purcellville, Virginia 20132

From Turner Publishing:

Taken Into Custody: The War Against Fatherhood, Marriage, and the Family

Taken Into Custody: The War Against Fathers, Marriage, and the Family
STEPHEN BASKERVILLE, PhD

“This book is a tremendous and much-needed report on how family courts and government policies are harming children.” — Phyllis Schlafly, President, Eagle Forum

Order today at Amazon’s special price of $16.47 (regular price $24.95).

For more than 80 articles and studies in mainstream publications on the abuses of the divorce industry, see www.stephenbaskerville.net.

Baskerville has been writing and speaking on the subject of family law, and it’s discrimination against fathers for many years. It is always interesting to see how many prescient researchers and writers over the years have foreseen the destruction of the family, yet the destruction continues apace.
One of the biggest issues that I’ve ever noticed is that most fathers, when ending up in a divorce hearing, simply don’t understand that they are no longer the head of a family, if they ever were. Now,all the talk about children’s rights takes it further. When you talk children’s rights outside the context of parental or family rights, then you are talking about the state supplanting the parent, period.