Category: Blog

February 6, 2019 by Robert Franklin, Member, National Board of Directors, National Parents Organization

I swear, it’s hard to read this stuff (Canton Daily Ledger, 2/4/19).  That’s a fact even though I’ve been reading scurrilous, uninformed opposition to shared parenting for over a decade now.  By now though, I think the information on shared parenting should be sufficiently well-known that commentators should at least be conversant with the basics.  I understand that family lawyers will, for the most part, oppose shared parenting regardless of facts or a decent regard for children.  They do it to protect their income streams.  It’s a moral abomination, but I expect it.

But Deb Robinson doesn’t seem to be a lawyer.  She’s just someone who influences public opinion via the column she writes for the Ledger.  As such, you might think she’d make the effort to educate herself at least a little on the topics she chooses to write about.  Indeed, she may do that with other topics, but when it comes to shared parenting, she shoots from the hip. 

It seems there was an op-ed published somewhere, sometime by someone in Illinois that encouraged the state’s legislators to pass a shared parenting bill this year.  Robinson doesn’t like it.  Why?  According to her, her ex-husband was a bad man, so bad in fact that his kids should be deprived of his parental input.  Needless to say, we’re not entitled to hear from him on the subject, but let’s assume Robinson’s telling the unvarnished truth.  So what?

She admits that men don’t have a monopoly on bad parental behavior; she admits that the proposed legislation has multiple “outs” for judges when faced with abusive parents, unfit parents, etc.; and she admits that, under the proposed law, shared parenting would just be a starting point and judges could order non-equal time arrangements in appropriate cases.

But Robinson is so dead set against shared parenting she simply can’t grasp what those things mean.

I don’t believe government should be involved in this with blanket judgement for all.

Come again?  Somehow there are all those exceptions in the bill of which Robinson is perfectly aware, but, in her mind, they add up to a “blanket judgement (sic) for all.”  When you want a mule to understand something, you swat it upside the head with a two-by-four.  With Robinson, I don’t know what it takes.

Then there’s this:

I think [shared custody] is great when a couple comes to the determination their relationship isn’t going to work, but they gladly put aside their differences to co-parent their children.

Of course if Robinson knew the science on shared parenting, she’d know that, even when parents don’t “put aside their differences to co-parent their children,” shared parenting is still usually a better arrangement than sole or primary custody.  Indeed, it tends to ameliorate parental conflict over time.  So it’s not just the parents who get along with each other who make shared parenting work.  Many others do too.

But Robinson’s ignorance doesn’t stop at shared parenting or the bill before the Illinois legislature.  She seems to know little or nothing about what takes place now in family courts.  For example,

[The op-ed] notes in various places there are multiple safeguards throughout to make sure the parents are safe and capable caregivers.

My question. Who determines they are safe and capable caregivers?

The court?

Uh, yes.  In other words, Ms. Robinson, the exact same person would make those determinations under a shared parenting regime as makes them now – the judge.  Does she imagine that, through some magic, no one under a sole/primary parenting system ever need determine whether a parent is a “safe and capable caregiver?”  If she understands that judges in family courts do that every day, then why is their doing so only a problem if the law presumes shared parenting?  It’s an obvious question, but one of which Robinson is blissfully unaware.

Then she offers this excuse for her opposition:

I think it should be decided on a case-by-case basis, as it is now, by a judge who is familiar with that particular case in front of him/her.

That’s in part just a rehash of her previous false claim that, in some way, with all those exceptions to the shared parenting rule, judges can only order shared parenting, that it’s a “blanket judgment.”  Her statement also assumes that judges aren’t making blanket judgements now, but they’re doing exactly that.

If they’re not, how does Robinson explain the fact that, in 1993, 84% of primary custody went to mothers and today it’s just under 82%?  Does that sound like careful consideration of each case or does it sound like judicial bias in favor of mothers and against fathers?  Is she aware of the many surveys demonstrating judges’ strong preference for maternal custody?  Bias is, by definition, not an individualized assessment.  And bias is exactly what fathers face, and mothers use, in custody cases. 

What about the study conducted by Leading Women for Shared Parenting of custody outcomes in North Dakota courts that shows an astonishing preference for maternal custody?

Nope.  Robinson’s made the most basic error of all; she’s offered an opinion about a subject about which she’s woefully uninformed.  She has an opinion, alright.  The problem is that it’s not supported by easily-available facts.

I have an idea for Robinson.  She should google “Shared Parenting” and see what she comes up with.  Better yet, she could go to the website for the National Parents Organization and learn a bit about the matter.  If she’d done that, she’d know that bills like Illinois’ take into consideration the real problems that can arise when one parent isn’t fit.  More importantly, she’d know that, when parents are fit, as the overwhelming majority of them are, shared parenting is by far the best arrangement for children.  And she’d know why that’s the case.  She’d know that kids form powerful attachments to their parents very early in their lives and that it’s a traumatic blow to their psyches when a court tosses a parent out of their lives.  She’d know that such an order should be made only in the most obvious cases of unfit or dangerous parents, but judges, ignorant of the science on shared parenting as Robinson is, do it all the time.

Education is never wasted, Ms. Robinson.  You should get yourself some sometime.

February 4, 2019 by Robert Franklin, Member, National Board of Directors, National Parents Organization

The estimable Prof. Linda Nielsen has done a lot of work on father-daughter relationships.  She’s currently working on a second book on that hugely important subject.  Until its publication, this article by Brigham Young University Professor Timothy Rarick will have to do (IF Studies, 1/16/19).

Rarick and his wife came across a man in London’s Hyde Park holding a sign that read “Thank you for not breeding. From the unborn children, animals, and the environment.”  The man has three daughters, but still felt it appropriate to instruct others not to have any.  But when Rarick spoke with the man, it turned out that “He clearly has bought into a belief that is quite common in our society today: Fathers are not very valuable and even useful to their children—especially to their daughters.”

Quite common indeed.  For example, some 32% of separated British mothers believe men should play little or no part in their children’s lives (apart, I assume, from paying for their support).  But, like so much of the popular discourse and belief about fathers, that directly contradicts the facts about girls’ well-being.

The dynamic between fathers and their daughters has been characterized by one expertas the most “fragile and unstable” when compared to other parent-child relationships. It can be further described as one of the most powerful and vital relationships to individuals, communities, and nations. For instance, fathers have a profound impact on their daughters’ body image, clinical depression, eating disorders, self-esteem, and life satisfaction, to name but a few.

But of all the unique contributions a father makes in his daughter’s life, perhaps there is none of greater significance than in the area of sexual development and activity and romantic relationships.

·         Numerous studies have discovered female pubertal timing occurs later in girls whose fathers are consistently present in their life.

·         An extensive body of research has revealed that early pubertal maturation in girls is associated with a variety of negative biological, psychological, and social outcomes, including, mood disorders, substance abuse, adolescent pregnancy, and a variety of cancers of the reproductive system.

·         Fatherless daughters are seven times more likely to become pregnant as teens.

None of that is new; we’ve known it for decades, but of course it’s worth repeating to a culture that seems bent on believing the most bizarre and unsupportable notions about fathers and children.  But, to his credit, Rarick takes the matter a step further.

Sadly, many adolescent girls in our sexualized Western world today find themselves in a tragic predicament. The conditions in our culture of both rampant fatherlessness and sexual promiscuity are incompatible with forming secure and healthy relationships with boys and with establishing stable families for the next generation. A young girl’s sexual development can significantly outpace her neurological and emotional development—the very resources needed to guide her sexual choices.

What he might have added is that gender feminism has always been an avid supporter of fatherlessness.  For at least 40 years now, gender feminism has promoted the notion that women don’t need men at all and certainly not to raise a child.  They’ve told us that the family is the most dangerous place for women and girls.  They’ve told us that, since women can do anything that men can, men are only good as a source of money.  To that end, they’ve turned away from the egalitarian feminist desire to place more of the childcare burden on fathers so mothers can work and earn more, and toward greater transfers of wealth in the guise of “child support” and “spousal support.”  Gender feminists have always opposed shared parenting and any legislation that would reform child support or alimony.

And of course “sex positive” feminism has always encouraged women to behave sexually as much like men as possible.  With the pill readily available and very inexpensive, that take on women’s sexuality found favor with many women and still does.

The problem, as usual with extremist feminism, is that it ignores the biology of the matter.  Feminism generally has always erroneously described male-female relationships as primarily a matter of politics, i.e. a power dynamic.  So it’s no surprise that the 1847 Declaration of Sentiments was a self-consciously political document.  The same has held true through the battles of First Wave feminism for the vote, Second Wave feminism for other rights and opportunities, books like Kate Millett’s Sexual Politics, all the way to today when we’re routinely told by feminists that men are powerful and privileged and women, aren’t.  

 The reality is that male-female relationships are now and always have been far more a matter of biology than anything else.  Women were once girls and, until very recently, girls had fathers present in their lives.  They formed attachments to them that were purely a matter of biochemistry and their fathers did likewise.  As Rarick says, that early connection predicts how a girl will act toward men when she’s an adult and much, much more.  The irony for feminists being that, when a girl has a strong attachment to a present father, she’s much more likely than girls without that attachment to grow into a strong, healthy woman, i.e. the type of woman feminists claim they desire.  The feminist attack on fathers, men and the family tends strongly to produce women who form dysfunctional relationships with men, or none at all.

Gender feminists don’t like it, but they ignore biology at their peril.  For far too long we’ve pretended that the feminist narrative of male-female relationships deserves respect.  It doesn’t.  It deserves the ash can.  Sensible scientists like Rarick, Nielsen and countless others point us in the right direction, but they can’t make us go there.

Only we can do that.

February 3, 2019 by Robert Franklin, Member, National Board of Directors, National Parents Organization

Did you know that there’s a sub-specialty of Pediatrics called “Child Abuse Pediatrics?”  I didn’t until I read this article (WXYZ, 1/29/19).  Did you know that a physician can become board-certified in that specialty through the American Board of Pediatrics?

Did you also know that many people reject the very concept of that specialty because they doubt that any doctor can accurately intuit the cause of a particular injury?  They can diagnose the results of physical traumas to the body, like broken bones, ruptured spleens and many others.  But what caused those injuries, in the absence of reliable descriptions of what happened, edges into the realm of guesswork.

A law professor at the University of Wisconsin says Dr. Mohr’s way is a recipe for disaster.

“It’s just a recipe for error and for injustice,” said University of Wisconsin Law School Professor Keith Findley.

Findley says Child Abuse Pediatricians have a huge amount of influence with the jury, and when they make a medical diagnosis of abuse, your presumption of innocence is gone.

“So to say that doctors can diagnose the conduct and intent of some third party actor is really beyond, beyond what medicine can support,” Findley said.

But few readers of this blog will be surprised to learn that Child Abuse Pediatricians are often relied on to the exclusion of other medical experts in assessing allegations of child abuse.  In Michigan, one such pediatrician is Dr. Bethany Mohr of C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital.

They are called Child Abuse Pediatricians, and they say their mission is to protect children. However, local parents, attorneys and even some doctors say some of these specialists are tearing families apart.

The Parker family says they were emotionally and financially devastated after a false accusation of child abuse. Their lawyer says she’s had to fight against the same Child Abuse Pediatrician who accused the Parkers about 20 times, and they want to warn other families.

That doctor is Bethany Mohr.  She doesn’t work for Michigan CPS, but “communicates closely with them.”  To me that sounds like she’s their go-to doctor, the one CPS can rely on to err on the side of taking kids from parents.  Indeed, Mohr’s own public statements tend to suggest exactly that.

“How many kids would potentially be in harm’s way if we only filed on things that were really clear cut,” Dr. Mohr asked during the presentation.

Her response: “Tons of kids.”

That sounds like someone who sees herself standing between kids and abuse more than someone who dispassionately analyzes facts in the context of children’s and parents’ legal rights. 

But the reality is that kids in the U.S. are statistically very safe from abuse at the hands of their parents or anyone.  The Administration for Children and Families reported for 2015 about 3.2 million reports of suspected child abuse or neglect.  A whopping 80% of those reports were judged by CPS agencies to be meritless at the outset.  About 680,000 involved some level of abuse or neglect and only about 180,000 involved abuse.  That’s out of about 73.6 million children under the age of 18 according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s figures for 2016.  That in turn is about 0.24% of kids who suffer abuse each year.

But Mohr’s position is that there are “tons of kids” whose abuse exists but isn’t clear-cut.  Much of the abuse of those 0.24% of kids was surely as plain as the nose on your face.  So in fact, the children imagined by Mohr who are abused but the abuse isn’t clear are quite rare.  Tons?  Hardly.

Now, Mohr may well offer the “better safe than sorry” defense to her actions.  That is, if a doctor suspects abuse, it’s better to remove the child from the home and let the legal system decide if abuse actually occurred.

But such a position ignores important facts.  The first and most important is that removal from the home is itself traumatic to children.  Without knowing for certain that abuse suffered in the home would be worse for the child than removal, it’s hard to justify taking the kids away.  Second, innocent parents pay a steep price emotionally and financially when they see their children taken by CPS and have to fight the system to get them back.

Back in 2015, the 7 Investigators showed you how several parents had to battle allegations of abuse and neglect, even though they say their children had medical causes for their illnesses and injuries.

Ultimately, none of their parental rights were terminated. The Parkers say their experts showed the court that Dylan’s rib fractures were caused by brittle bones from a severe vitamin D deficiency, not abuse. The case was dismissed.

“By the middle to the end of the trial, we were indigent, we were already petitioning the court for funds for our last witness,” said Jimmy Parker, Dylan’s father.

 So Dr. Mohr’s “better safe than sorry” stance cost one family untold heartache, emotional trauma to the child and the family’s life savings.  Who’s sorry now, Dr. Mohr?

Meanwhile, at least one doctor doesn’t mince words about Dr. Mohr.

“I’m seeing a great number of families that are being torn apart because they’ve been falsely accused of child abuse,” said Dr. Douglas Smith, a retired University of Michigan Pathologist. “There are simple explanations or medical conditions that explain the injuries to the child.”

Dr. Smith volunteers his expertise for families facing abuse allegations from Child Abuse Pediatricians, including eight who have been accused by Dr. Mohr.

“I think Dr. Mohr misleads families,” Dr. Smith said. “She examines the child but she doesn’t treat any of the injuries. She will be the number one witness against the family if they’re prosecuted.”

And that, as far as I can tell, is the sole function of a Child Abuse Pediatrician.  She doesn’t treat the child, but she does testify against the parents.

February 1, 2019 by Robert Franklin, Member, National Board of Directors, National Parents Organization

The APA is at it again, this time with a YouTube video denigrating men.  It comes to us courtesy of Division 51 of the APA whose thoughts on masculinity found such favor in the recent and much criticized Guidelines for Psychological Work with Men and Boys.  (NB: I am reliably informed that Division 51 and Area 51 are two different things.) 

I have a friend who’s a psychologist and was, for a time, on an email listserv for Division 51.  He tells me the place was a hotbed of radical feminist ideas about men and masculinity, a fact borne out by the Guidelines.  Indeed, so anti-male were the members of that listserv that at least one man was removed from it due to his unseemly interest in men as victims of domestic violence.  Such notions aren’t welcome in Division 51.

With that background, the video comes as no surprise.  Like the Guidelines, it takes on faith that men embody “violence, anger, war, abuse, prejudice and misogyny” and apparently nothing else.  How nice it must be to be a woman who is, just because of her sex, free from any and all of those traits.  I can only imagine.

Now, the video is a cheerful little piece.  Like the guidelines it pretends, oh so sincerely, to want only to help morlocks men.  Its chirpy voiceover explains that, despite men’s universal tendency toward “violence, anger, war, abuse, prejudice and misogyny,” there is hope.  What a relief!  How to describe my gratitude toward the APA for delivering me and the rest of men from our loathsome selves?  Words fail.

How can the APA deliver us from the evil that is us?  Simple.  All we need is compassion.  To those readers who think men already have compassion, be assured that we do.  I know that because the video tells me that “compassion has no gender.”  So, if men are already compassionate and compassion is the cure for what ails us, then why are we ailing?  Why are we all about “’violence, anger, war, abuse, prejudice and misogyny?”

Unfortunately, the video doesn’t explain that obvious contradiction, but it does give us a hint.  It tells men that we “need to reclaim compassion as a masculine trait.”  Ah, so we have it, but compassion went somewhere that we can’t access and now we need to go there and get it back.  Or something.

Allow me to encourage members of Division 51 to get out more or, failing that, just watch more TV.  If they did, they’d see men’s compassion on display very frequently.  Just wait for the next natural disaster and see who it is who digs out the campers buried in an avalanche, saves women and children caught in a hurricane or enters a burning building to carry out a child.  Perhaps the denizens of Division 51 could rummage through the mess that is their memories for images of September 11, 2001 when male police and firefighters risked their lives to help and sometimes save others.

All that of course is more than just compassion; it’s heroism.  But to view those images and not see compassion is to not see the images at all.  Does someone believe that the men doing those things weren’t/aren’t masculine?  Apparently someone at Division 51 does, but the rest of us aren’t so blinkered.  We see and we know what we see.  And what we see is men doing what men have always done from our earliest days as a species – protecting and helping those who need it.

None of what I’ve said about men is news.  It’s there for all to see.  So we can only wonder where the members of Division 51 came up with their plainly misandric view of men.  I can’t say for certain, but if pressed, I’d hazard the guess that they spend so much of their time looking at war, crime and other forms of violence, in which men certainly predominate, that they fail entirely to look at the other side of the masculine coin.  More accurately, I’d say that their worldview is happy to account for the former and pretend that the latter doesn’t exist.  That’s a form of anti-male bigotry that’s become an all too common part of public discourse these days.  But because it’s common doesn’t mean it makes sense.

Meanwhile, how does Division 51 figure, at least by implication, that women never engage in war, violence, abuse, etc.?  After all, those traits are directly associated in the video only with men.  And yet we see women doing all that and more every day and throughout history.  Are the people who produced the video aware of the depredations of female monarchs and other heads of state since the dawn of human history?  Are they aware that Queen Victoria presided over the genocide of tens of millions of poor Indians via the expedient of starvation and disease?  Do they know that women commit twice the abuse of children that men do?  What about domestic violence?  Have they looked into the mountain of literature demonstrating that women are at least as likely as men to assault an intimate partner?

I suspect they know nothing of the sort for the same reason they’re blissfully unaware of men’s compassion; they don’t want to think about it, because that would interfere with their worldview, so they close their eyes and ears to anything that might do so.  Stated another way, they’re profoundly ignorant of the very thing in which psychologists are supposed to be expert – human behavior.

As I’ve written before in discussing the Guidelines, the APA is becoming less and less relevant to men and boys.  Any psychologist who embraces the nonsense peddled by Division 51 should be shunned.  He/she will be of no help, only harm.  There are plenty of capable therapists who don’t subscribe to D-51’s bigotry.  If you’re shopping for a therapist, get it clear from the get-go what his/her take on the Guidelines and the video is.  And act accordingly. 

January 31, 2019 by Robert Franklin, Member, National Board of Directors, National Parents Organization

What’s been for many years a quiet change in family laws may be about to become one in the U.K. as well (The Star, 1/30/19).  It seems one Member of Parliament, Louise Haigh of Sheffield, intends to put forward a bill terminating the parental rights of men who rape women who then become pregnant.  Similar bills have been considered – and several have passed – by state legislatures here in the U.S.

But, as Haigh and her supporters will likely discover, what seems to be an open-and-shut case for reform is a bit more complicated than they might think.

At first sight, there’s not a lot about such bills to disagree with.  After all, if a man forces himself on a woman, why should he be rewarded with a child and rights to that child?  Feminists who put forward these bills invariably ask why such a woman should be required to have an 18-year relationship regarding the child with the man who raped her.  It’s a good selling point.

One problem though arises when we remember that these bills come against a backdrop of those same feminists’ incessant efforts to expand the definition of ‘rape.’  They promote the bills with the assumption that what the man did was forcible rape, while, out of the other side of their mouths, trying to change the definition of rape to virtually anything undesired by the woman.  They’ve had considerable success on U.S. college campuses doing exactly that.

And if they’re successful with the current pitch, will it be long before they’re arguing that other forms of sex should also terminate a man’s parental rights?  Drunken sex?  Sex under false pretenses?  My guess is that those and other efforts will follow hard on the heels of the current one.

Now, what the article doesn’t mention is quite an important issue – fathers’ obligations.  Haigh’s bill would terminate a rapist father’s parental rights, but usually termination of rights means terminations of responsibilities.  Does Haigh argue for separating the two so that obligations to the child remain but rights die?  If so, it’ll be a landmark in family law and not a good one.  If not, do women embrace the idea that their right to child support would automatically end with a finding of wrongdoing by Dad?

But far more important is how Haigh’s bill is worded.  Specifically, is it gender-neutral or does it specify male-only perpetration?  That too is a pretty big question mark.  Would a 30-year-old female teacher who has sex with her 14-year-old male student and becomes pregnant automatically lose her parental rights to the child?  If not, why not?

The entire concept behind the prohibition against adults having sex with minors is that, until some specified age, a minor is incapable of consenting to sex.  The absence of consent of course makes sex rape.  So when women rape boys, would they lose their parental rights under Haigh’s bill?

The article addresses none of these points.  So I emailed Haigh with those questions.  I await her answers and will duly report on same when and if I receive them.

January 30, 2019 by Robert Franklin, Member, National Board of Directors, National Parents Organization

Here’s a soft piece on child protective services (The Atlantic, 1/27/19).  Writer Diane Redleaf knows enough about her topic to get her facts correct, but apparently not enough to pinpoint many of the problems CPS agencies create in the lives of parents and children.

Her basic point is that, once CPS decides a parent may have abused a child, that parent is in for a long, uncomfortable ride through the CPS system, pretty much irrespective of whether he/she abused the child or not.  With the police, we call that “You can beat the rap, but you can’t beat the ride.”  The same is true of CPS.  Caseworkers can put the fear of God into any parent, even those who know they’ve done nothing wrong.

Such was the case of David and Michelle Weidner of Peoria, Illinois, whose infant son Jacob suffered from a rare genetic disorder that was eventually diagnosed and treated.  In the meantime, they’d rushed him to a hospital where a resident misdiagnosed a head X-ray as revealing a fracture that was suspicious for blunt trauma.  It took the Weidners and multiple doctors weeks to ascertain the truth – that there was no fracture.  During that time, Jacob spent seven days in the hospital, but almost 100 days in the CPS crosshairs.  Yes, the doctors had verified that no abuse had occurred and Jacob hadn’t been injured, but still, CPS refused to let the case out of its hands.

Plus, caseworkers had done what we’ve seen more and more over the years.

According to the Weidners, a CPS caseworker then informed them that they must accept a “safety plan” calling for round-the-clock supervision of all contact with Jacob and their two other children until further notice. Otherwise, all three of their children would be put into foster care. The Weidners started to live with the terrible fear that their children might be taken from them.

Ah yes, the proverbial “voluntary safety plan” about which I’ve written so much in the past.  Those plans are “voluntary” in exactly the way the Weidners described.  Parents can agree to the plan drawn up by CPS or they can have their children taken from them.  Sound voluntary?  It doesn’t to me either.  And of course that can happen with no finding of abuse or neglect whatsoever.  After all, one doctor said there was a fracture, not that it had resulted from abuse.  So even if there’d been a fracture, which there turned out not to be, the threat of taking the children from the Weidners was made in all sincerity despite there being no finding of abuse or neglect.

That brings me to the first serious shortcoming of Redleaf’s piece.  Nowhere does she mention the reason that, in state after state, these “voluntary safety plans” have become so popular with child protective agencies.  The reason is that they allow CPS to avoid the scrutiny of courts and the inconvenience of due process of law.  Without those plans, in order to wrest a child from a parent’s loving arms, CPS would have to go to court and produce evidence of abuse or neglect sufficient to warrant the child’s removal and a judge would have to pass judgment on that evidence.  Judges are inclined to rubberstamp the claims of CPS, so the process can be fairly quick and easy, but at least it can give the parent an opportunity to respond and produce counter evidence.

That of course is too much for CPS personnel who’d rather do it the Mob way, i.e. with threats and the parent’s “voluntary” agreement.

Threats of family separation, coupled with restrictions on families’ living arrangements during CPS investigations, are commonplace in a number of states, including Illinois. Several years ago, I co-led a class-action suit that challenged forced safety plans as unconstitutional. But in 2006, the Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit labeled safety plans “voluntary” agreements, thus disregarding a lower court’s finding that CPS routinely used express threats of child removal to coerce parents to agree to safety plans. The appellate court declared that an “inarticulable hunch” sufficed for the state to demand that parents agree to safety-plan restrictions during investigations. 

Amazing, but true.  An “inarticulable hunch” is sufficient for parents to either lose their children or their parental rights at the whim of a caseworker with too many cases and too little training.

Redleaf’s failure to mention the reason for the wholesale resort to these “voluntary” plans is, to say the least, a major failure.

Another major failure is her failure to mention money.  An intelligent person reading her article would surely wonder why CPS agencies time and again behave more like the Stassi than child protective organizations.  Redleaf hazards no answer to that urgent question.

But the answer is plain for all to see.  The Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1998 offers states significant bounties on children taken from parents, placed in foster care and then adopted.  According to one former state senator from North Dakota, the ASFA radically altered CPS behavior in favor of taking children from parents.  Redleaf rightly bemoans CPS overreach, but never lets readers know why it happens.

One thing she gets right though is that the weight of state power wielded by CPS falls most heavily on the poor.  People like the Weidners occupy a much stronger position in the field.

The Weidners had many advantages over most other families on the receiving end of a child-abuse allegation. For one thing, as white, middle-class professionals with graduate degrees, they fell on the privileged side of the color line that disproportionately brings minority families into contact with CPS. Indeed, an analysis of 2015 data showed that Peoria County took children into foster care from African American families at rates nearly eight times as high as those of the non–African American population.

Plus, she points to an abuse suffered by the Weidners that’s probably pretty common.

Channing Petrak, through her employer’s contract with Illinois CPS, was put in charge of providing medical evidence to the state’s investigative team. Though she is a pediatrician, she was not tasked with providing medical care to Jacob.

Petrak reviewed Jacob’s CT scan and interviewed the Weidners, who cooperated fully, believing—wrongly—that Petrak was part of Jacob’s specialized diagnostic team at OSF.

In other words, neither Petrak nor anyone else disclosed her real purpose in interviewing the Weidners.  She’s a doctor and the parents understandably thought she was on their side.  She wasn’t.  The idea that CPS and their contractors don’t have to disclose who they are and what they’re doing in a potential child abuse case is outrageous.  My thought is that there should be a requirement, like a Miranda warning, that informs parents of their rights, what’s going on and what can happen.

More importantly, the use of coerced safety plans should no longer be tolerated.

Redleaf’s piece is alright as far as it goes, which isn’t nearly far enough.

January 28, 2019 by Robert Franklin, Member, National Board of Directors, National Parents Organization

Here’s a must-see video about the resistance to equal parenting in Texas.  It’s by Wayne Dolcefino, who’s never been my favorite television journalist.  Dolcefino has a track record that leans heavily on shouting and much less on principled examination of issues.  Years ago, he was a product of the television news industry in which scandal and crisis are the quick route to a successful career.  And, if the news happens to be short of either, well, what’s an ambitious reporter to do but create some?

But in the video, Dolcefino is his more mature, considered self.  He’s still raking muck, but this time he gets his facts straight.

He starts with a boy, Jeremy Johnston, who looks to be about 14.  He’s sitting in the living room of a house.  Beside him on a sofa are his mother, father, stepmother and stepfather, all of whom seem to be getting along fine.  How do they manage that?  As Jeremy’s stepmother points out, they do so by behaving like adults.  They get along.  And they’re all focused on Jeremy’s welfare first and whatever grievances they have with each other, they put to the side.

Jeremy remarks about the difference in his life between sole and equal parenting: “If I had a list, it’d be from here to the moon how much better [50/50 parenting] is.”

From that, Dolcefino seques to the question “Why aren’t Texas lawmakers paying attention [to children’s welfare and shared parenting]?”  Unsurprisingly, he has the answer – lobbyists for family lawyers.

They come in the form of the Texas Family Law Foundation that’s composed almost exclusively of lawyers.  They pay lobbyists like Steve Bresnen very, very big bucks to kill family court reform like equal parenting bills that threaten the lawyer’s thick pocketbooks.

Now, Texas family law includes sections that spell out in minute detail what parenting time orders judges may issue.  Of course if parents agree on parenting time, they’re free to draft their own order that is then usually rubberstamped by the judge.  But if they don’t agree, the judge can issue one of two types of order, the Standard Possession Order or the Expanded Possession Order.  The Standard Order is the overwhelming favorite of Texas judges.

What’s most remarkable is how the Texas Family Law Foundation represents the Standard Order when it lobbies the legislature.  Put simply, it lies.  Really.  Dolcefino’s video includes a TFLF lobbyist testifying before the Committee on Juvenile Justice and Family Issues claiming that the Standard Order gives the non-custodial parent 47% of the parenting time.  That is false.

The law establishing the Standard Order is easy to read.  It provides for every other weekend, two hours every Thursday, 30 days during the summer, every other Fathers and Mothers Day, every other Thanksgiving and part of the time during Christmas break.  It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that that adds up to about 26% of the parenting time, i.e. far too little to give the child the scientifically-established benefits of shared parenting.

By what alchemy does the TFLF turn 26% into 47%?  Readers may not be surprised to learn that they lie.  You see when the law says every other weekend from 6 PM on Friday to 6 PM on Sunday, the TFLF figures that’s three days.  I’m not making this up.  Yes, from 6 PM Friday to 6 PM Saturday is one day and again to 6 PM on Sunday is one more day, for a total of two days, but the TFLF has decided it’s actually three.

But that’s not all.  Remember those two hours every Thursday night?  Most people call that, well, two hours.  Not so the TFLF.  It calls those two hours 24 hours, i.e. a full day.  And when all that’s added on to what the Standard Order actually provides, it comes up to, by my calculation, about 45% of the time.  I guess the TFLF just tossed in a couple of extra percentage points to gild the lily. 

The point being that this is what passes for sensible lobbying and law making in Texas.  Worse, it’s what passes for acting in the best interests of children.  Needless to say, it’s neither.

And of course the whole sorry business serves only the lawyers.  They take parental conflict to the bank and in Texas, as elsewhere, they fear shared parenting laws’ potential to reduce that conflict.  Reduced conflict means reduced fees for lawyers and we can’t have that, now can we.  Hey, they’ve got yacht payments to make.

As Jeremy Johnston’s mother so accurately said, “You’re not making any money off of four people who get along.”  Truer words were never spoken.  They’re words the TFLF and its hired guns hope no Texas legislator will ever hear.

Thanks to Ben for the heads-up.

January 27, 2019 by Robert Franklin, Member, National Board of Directors, National Parents Organization

In Great Britain, a court has ordered a woman to pay a man £250,000 for paternity fraud (The Sun, 1/6/19).  That’s great news, right?  After all, paternity fraud is illegal precisely nowhere.  In about five states in the U.S. there can be very limited financial consequences for lying about paternity, but a court’s awarding a defrauded man damages is all but unheard of.  But alas, the reality of the British case is far less encouraging than we might have wished.

It seems Richard and Kate Mason were married for over 20 years and had three sons including younger twins.  They divorced in 2006 and, pursuant to the financial settlement, the co-founder of the internet comparison site, MoneySupermarket.com, forked over a hefty £4 milllion.  The two went their separate ways.

Then, in 2016, Richard was diagnosed with cystic fibrosis.  He was also informed that he’d been sterile since he was born.  So he went to court to try to retrieve the money he’d been forced to pay his ex on the boys’ behalf and, recently, the court agreed.  The award of $250,000 of course looks pretty insubstantial, but we must remember that it has nothing to do with any civil wrong she committed.  There was none.  Again, there’s no law against doing what she did.  It was simply a case of her having lied about paternity and therefore received things like child maintenance, school expenses, etc. by fraud.

Remarkably, when confronted by the evidence, Kate tried to bluff.

Mrs Mason initially said “of course the boys are yours, no matter what the science might suggest” when he revealed he knew he couldn’t have conceived them, but later confessed to the betrayal when confronted by her eldest son.

Memo to Kate: the science of genetics doesn’t “suggest” anything about paternity; it demonstrates it to an almost absolute certainty. 

He believes there must have been some doubt in his ex’s mind when she fell pregnant seven years into their marriage, and thinks she “tricked” him into bringing up the boys.

Mrs Mason confessed over six to 12 times she had sex with her colleague, but was adamant he couldn’t be the dad as the pair always used condoms.

Whether they “always used condoms” or not, Kate’s claim is shown to be false by her own behavior.

Legal documents seen by the Mail on Sunday reveal Mrs Mason declared a sudden interest in Judaism when she first fell pregnant.

She also insisted all three children have Jewish middle names, something Mr Mason now believes is a clue to the identity of the real father.

So she was having sex with a Jewish man and, when she gave birth, insisted that the boys have Jewish middle names.  And she wants us to believe that she had no doubt that they were her husband’s.  Dubious, very, very dubious.

Meanwhile, like most victims of paternity fraud Richard is devastated by the news that the boys he helped raise aren’t his.

Mr Mason, from Rhos, North Wales, told The Mail on Sunday: “You don’t know what’s real and what isn’t — it’s as if I’m living in The Matrix.

“Someone says to you, ‘All you know and everything you thought solid and true is not real, and never did exist. You are not a father, you are not able to have kids, your name will not continue’.

“I still see what the boys are doing on Facebook and it’s heart-wrenching. It’s all been taken away from me.”

His anguish has been made all the worse because the boys (one is 23 and the twins are 19) have decided that Richard is at fault for suing Kate to get back the money of which she defrauded him 12 years ago.  Amazing but true.  Somehow they’ve managed to overlook both their mother’s serial adultery and her subsequent lying about paternity.  And of course those lies were as much directed at them as at Richard.  I hate to break it to them, but they actually do have a father, but Kate refuses to tell anyone who he is.

In short, her paternity fraud, like all paternity fraud, impacts Richard, the children and the actual father.  Paternity fraud is a train wreck for all concerned, except of course the woman who perpetrates it. 

There is now and never has been any protection afforded by the law to men and children who are the victims of paternity fraud.  We could easily pass laws requiring women to tell the truth about paternity and conduct genetic testing on every child immediately after birth.  But we don’t.  And we won’t.  We therefore ensure that Richard Mason will not be the last man to suffer the soul-shattering discovery that children he’s loved, supported and raised aren’t his.

January 25, 2019 by Robert Franklin, Member, National Board of Directors, National Parents Organization

This continues yesterday’s post on Dr. Anna Manchin’s vital and highly informative article (Aeon, 1/17/19).  Put simply, it should be required reading for anyone with an interest in fathers, children, mothers, families, etc. 

To recap briefly, Manchin argues that fatherhood, the investment by males in their offspring, was critical, perhaps all-important, to our species’ evolutionary success?  That’s because our big-brain strategy for survival and our upright posture mean our children are born extremely immature.  They also come, with fairly rare exceptions, one at a time.  It also means they take an inordinate amount of time to reach sexual maturity.  So how’s a species like that to survive when infants and females were under constant threat of illness, accident or death?  Females had to wean their children far earlier than do our closest primate relatives, meaning that they renewed ovulation sooner and could produce additional offspring. 

That was all well and good, but who was going to care for all those kids?  Eventually, females began selecting as mates, those males who showed an interest in their offspring.  My guess is that those males happened to have the hormones that are present in females and that produce parenting behavior.  So the process of sexual selection produced males who cared for children.  As I’ve said many times before, we’re one of only about 5% of mammal species for which that is true.

But 500,000 years ago, our ancestors’ brains made another massive leap in size, and suddenly relying on female help alone was not enough. This new brain was energetically hungrier than ever before. Babies were born more helpless still, and the food – meat – now required to fuel our brains was even more complicated to catch and process than before. Mum needed to look beyond her female kin for someone else. Someone who was as genetically invested in her child as she was. This was, of course, dad.

Now, again as I’ve said before, those parenting hormones have receptors in different parts of the male brain than in the female brain.  That produces parenting behavior that’s markedly different between the sexes.  The fact has been noted too often to remember.  Mothers are more tender and in-focused, more verbal, etc., while fathers are more physical and tend to engage their babies outwardly with the world in which they’ve come to inhabit.

That brings us to Machin’s thoughts on paternal parenting.

[Rough-and tumble play] is highly physical with lots of throwing up in the air, jumping about and tickling, accompanied by loud shouts and laughter. It is crucial to the father-child bond and the child’s development for two reasons: first, the exuberant and extreme nature of this behaviour allows dads to build a bond with their children quickly; it is a time-efficient way to get the hits of neurochemicals required for a robust bond, crucial in our time-deprived Western lives where it is still the case that fathers are generally not the primary carer for their children. Second, due to the reciprocal nature of the play and its inherent riskiness, it begins to teach the child about the give and take of relationships, and how to judge and handle risk appropriately; even from a very young age, fathers are teaching their children these crucial life lessons…

[H]ormonal analysis has shown that, when it comes to interacting with each other, fathers and children get their peaks in oxytocin, indicating increased reward, from playing together. The corresponding peak for mothers and babies is when they are being affectionate. So, again, evolution has primed both fathers and children to carry out this developmentally important behaviour together.

Children need their fathers for their parenting that tends to differ from that of their mothers.  Through their fathers, kids learn “about the give and take of relationships, and how to judge and handle risk appropriately.”  Needless to say, that’s necessary information if one is to navigate the world and human society effectively.

Now, I’ve written much about parent-child attachment.  Well, it turns out that children attach differently to Mom than to Dad.

Likewise, a father’s attachment to his child has evolved to be crucially different than a mother’s…  In all cases, having a strong attachment relationship acts as a secure base from which we can strike out and explore the world, safe in the knowledge we can always return to the focus of our attachment for affection and help. Where parent-child attachment is concerned, the attachment between a mother and her child is best described as exclusive, an inward-looking dyad based on affection and care. In contrast, a father’s attachment to his child has elements of affection and care, but it is based on challenge.

This crucial difference leads a father to turn his children’s faces outward, encouraging them to meet fellow humans, build relationships, and succeed in the world. And it is because of this special type of attachment that studies repeatedly show fathers in particular encouraging their offspring to get the most out of their learning. It is fathers who aid the development of appropriate social behaviour, and build a child’s sense of worth.

Stated another way, mothers’ way of parenting tends to instill the sense of security and self-worth that are indispensable to an emotionally healthy, productive life.  But not everyone in life is your mother.  Everyone else, from peers to teachers to employers to life partners, will demand a certain quality  of behavior from you and your life will be happier and better if you know how to interact appropriately with others.  Fathers are vital to conveying that knowledge.

As with the rest of her article, Machin’s closing is spot-on.

Looking back at our pool of knowledge from 10 years ago and comparing it to what we know today, my conclusion is this: we need to change the conversations we have about fathers. 

I know.  I and countless others have been trying to do just that for many, many years.  It turns out to not be such an easy task.

We need to broaden our spectrum of who we think dad is to include all the fathers who stick around, investing in their children’s emotional, physical and intellectual development, regardless of whether they live with their children or not. We need to discuss the dads who coach football, read bedtime stories, locate rogue school socks, and scare away the night-time monsters. Who encourage their children’s mental resilience, and scaffold their entry into our increasingly complex social world…

And by broadening this conversation and sharing our newfound knowledge, we empower fathers to be more involved with their children, something that benefits us all.  

Again, I’ve pointed this out many times.  When fathers are given their due, everyone comes out a winner.  Kids do because they maintain meaningful relationships with both parents, fathers because they step into their all-important role as Dad, mothers because they’re freed to contribute equally to the family income, society because we solve the multiple problems of fatherlessness and the public purse because we stop spending so much on endless programs to combat the toxic results of absent fathers.

Further, a father’s special role in preparing his child to enter the wider world outside the family – shaping emotional and behavioural development, teaching the rules of social behaviour and language, helping to build mental resilience by dealing with risk, confronting challenge and overcoming failure – is arguably more important than ever before, when we are beset by a crisis in adolescent mental health, and live in a world that operates on new social rules, shaped by our digital, online lives.

Indeed.  Thanks to Dr. Machin for her hugely important contribution to the public discourse on fathers and children.

January 24, 2019 by Robert Franklin, Member, National Board of Directors, National Parents Organization

This is a necessary article (Aeon, 1/17/19).  That is, if you want to understand fathers, their relationships to mothers and their kids, you need to read and digest it thoroughly.  The writer, Anna Machin, reprises some of what I’ve said before in this blog, but adds much, much more.  Her astonishing thesis is that it is fathers and the role they play in children’s lives that separate us from other primates.  That of course is a powerful statement, given the amazing and unpredictable evolutionary success of Homo sapiens.  Is it really just about dads?

Well, no.  Countless other factors enter in, but consider Machin’s words:

[T]here is one aspect of human behaviour that is unique to us but is rarely the focus of these discussions. So necessary is this trait to the survival of our species that it is underpinned by an extensive, interrelated web of biological, psychological and behavioural systems that evolved over the past half a million years. Yet, until 10 years ago, we had neglected to try to understand this trait, due to the misguided assumption that it was of no significance – indeed, that it was dispensable. This trait is human fatherhood, and the fact that it doesn’t immediately spring to mind is symptomatic of the overwhelming neglect of this key figure in our society.  

Strong stuff and, as far as I can tell, accurate.  Machin is altogether aware of how neglected fathers are and have been in our society and her article seeks to change that.  But for now, the question arises “How did fatherhood become important for human babies, but not for, say, chimpanzees?”  As I’ve said before, the simple facts of our gestation, immature birth, long period of socialization, etc. all militate in favor of bi-parental childrearing.  But Machin puts meat on the bones of what I’ve said.

As any parent knows, human babies are startlingly dependent when they are born. This is due to the combination of a narrowed birth canal – the consequence of our bipedality – and our unusually large brains, which are six times larger than they should be for a mammal of our body size.

This has meant that, to ensure the survival of mother and baby and the continued existence of our species, we have evolved to exhibit a shortened gestation period, enabling the head to pass safely through the birth canal. The consequence of this is that our babies are born long before their brains are fully developed…

So, evolution selected for those members of our species who could wean their babies earlier and return to reproduction, ensuring the survival of their genes and our species. But because the brain had so much development ahead of it, these changes in gestation and lactation lengths led to a whole new life-history stage – childhood – and the evolution of a uniquely human character: the toddler.  

In short, the long period of time between birth and sexual maturity and the still longer time until an individual can get as much food as he/she consumes militate in favor of other caregivers than just Mom.  Plus, in order to keep the species in survival mode, Mom, once she stopped lactating, became fertile again and soon had another infant to demand all or most of her care.  So who could step in?

Much of the time it was other female members of the social group.

But 500,000 years ago, our ancestors’ brains made another massive leap in size, and suddenly relying on female help alone was not enough. This new brain was energetically hungrier than ever before. Babies were born more helpless still, and the food – meat – now required to fuel our brains was even more complicated to catch and process than before. Mum needed to look beyond her female kin for someone else. Someone who was as genetically invested in her child as she was. This was, of course, dad.

Although Machin doesn’t mention it, Dad was almost certainly a member of the group’s dominant male hierarchy.  If he weren’t, Mom likely wouldn’t have mated with him.  So recruiting Dad to his child’s care and protection simultaneously gave the child the status of a presumptive member of that hierarchy.  That improved the child’s possibility of survival.  Plus,

As time ticked on and the complexity of human life increased, another stage of human life-history evolved: the adolescent. This was a period of learning and exploration before the distractions that accompany sexual maturity start to emerge. With this individual, fathers truly came into their own. For there was much to teach an adolescent about the rules of cooperation, the skills of the hunt, the production of tools, and the knowledge of the landscape and its inhabitants. Mothers, still focused on the production of the next child, would be restricted in the amount of hands-on life experience they could give their teenagers, so it was dad who became the teacher.

The same holds true today. 

In all cultures, regardless of their economic model, fathers teach their children the vital skills to survive in their particular environment. Among the Kipsigis tribe in Kenya, fathers teach their sons about the practical and economic aspects of tea farming. From the age of nine or 10, boys are taken into the fields to learn the necessary practical skills of producing a viable crop, but in addition – and perhaps more vitally – they are allowed to join their fathers at the male-only social events where the deals are made, ensuring that they also have the negotiation skills and the necessary relationships that are vital to success in this tough, marginal habitat.

My guess is that, when American mothers and fathers divorce, the older the child, the more likely he/she is to express a preference for living with Dad.  If so, that would seem to agree with what Machin wrote in the previous quotation.

And of course, as I’ve said too many times to count, all this parenting behavior is rooted in our brain biochemistry.  Back in 2000, Storey, et al found the parenting hormones produced by mothers during pregnancy to be present in fathers who were exposed to their pregnant mates or immediately post-partum when exposed to their newborns.  Her findings were never robustly replicated, but others have studied oxytocin and found exactly that.  Mothers and fathers both increase their level of oxytocin output which leads to caregiving behavior.  But the oxytocin molecule finds receptors in different parts of the brain in males than in females.  Hence, differing parental behaviors.

Machin gives us more.

The hormonal and brain changes seen in new mothers are mirrored in fathers. Irreversible reductions in testosterone and changes in oxytocin levels prepare a man to be a sensitive and responsive father, attuned to his child’s needs and primed to bond – and critically, less motivated by the search for a new mate. As a man’s testosterone drops, the reward of chemical dopamine increases; this means that he receives the most wonderful neurochemical reward of all whenever he interacts with his child. His brain structure alters in those regions critical to parenting. Within the ancient, limbic core of the brain, regions linked to affection, nurturing and threat-detection see increases in grey and white matter. Likewise enhanced by connectivity and the sheer number of neurons are the higher cognitive zones of the neocortex that promote empathy, problem solving and planning.

And yet more.

But crucially, dad has not evolved to be the mirror to mum, a male mother, so to speak…

This is no more clear than in the neural structure of the brain itself. In her 2012 fMRI study, the Israeli psychologist Shir Atzil explored the similarities and differences in brain activity between mothers and fathers when they viewed videos of their children. She found that both parents appeared similarly wired to understand their child’s emotional and practical needs. For both parents, peaks of activity were seen in the areas of the brain linked to empathy. But beyond this, the differences between the parents were stark.

The mother’s peaks in activity were seen in the limbic area of her brain – the ancient core linked to affection and risk-detection. The father’s peaks were in the neocortex and particularly in areas linked to planning, problem solving and social cognition. 

And what if Mom can’t or won’t play the primary caregiver role?  Or what if, similarly, little Andy or Jenny has two daddies?

Where a child was brought up by two fathers, rather than a father and a mother, the plasticity of the human brain had ensured that, in the primary caretaking dad, both areas – mum’s and dad’s – showed high levels of activity so that his child still benefited from a fully rounded developmental environment.

Our understanding of fathers, their unique contributions to children and their hugely important role in our evolution, grows daily.  And everything we learn increases our understanding of the vital role fathers play for their children, their families, society and the species.

I’ll have more to say on Machin’s indispensable piece tomorrow.