Category: Blog

Los Angeles, CA–I recently discussed Barack Obama’s Father’s Day father-bashing speech with Joe Hicks on KFI AM 640 in Los Angeles. Hicks is an African-American conservative who is normally very critical of Obama. But nobody unites left and right like beating up on “deadbeat dads,” so Hicks (pictured) praised Obama for his Father’s Day speech.

To Hicks’ credit, he did have some understanding of the problems fathers face in family court, but he didn’t seem to draw much of a connection between that and black fatherlessness. I made a few points:

1) It is certainly true that some black fatherlessness has nothing to do with family law issues. For example, many young African-Americans have children without ever expecting that the parents will live together and raise the child together. Family breakdown breeds family breakdown, and when you never had an intact family, and your mom never had an intact family, there doesn’t seem to be anything wrong or unnatural about creating a single mother household.

2) Nobody can force a man to be a good father if he doesn’t want to, but if we’re going to reduce fatherlessness, let’s start with the many black fathers who do want to be a part of their children’s lives but who face barriers to do so. Those barriers include recalcitrant mothers, an abusive child support system, and a family law system that places little importance on protecting a fathers’ bonds with his children. We can agree to disagree as to the extent that black fathers have voluntarily abdicated their responsibilities, but there is no question that many black fathers want to be more involved–let’s start by doing everything we can to facilitate that involvement.

3) When these black fathers want to father their kids and when they’re allowed to, they are effective. A recent study of low-income African-American and Hispanic families by Boston College found that when nonresident fathers are involved in their adolescent children”s lives, the incidence of substance abuse, violence, crime, and truancy decreases markedly. The study’s lead author, professor Rebekah Levine Coley, says the study found involved nonresident fathers to be “an important protective factor for adolescents.”

I pointed out that Obama specifically blamed all family breakdown and all fatherlessness on fathers and on fathers only. (If you don’t believe me, watch the video).

Hicks said that this was fair enough since Obama did give the speech on Father’s Day. Yet can anyone imagine Obama or any other politician or anybody anywhere using Mother’s Day as an occasion to blame mothers for anything? On Mother’s Day did Obama criticize mothers for minimizing noncustodial fathers’ role in their children’s lives? For alienating children from their fathers? For moving the children physically out of their fathers’ lives? For having children with no intention of having the father in their lives? For initiating unnecessary breakups and/or divorces?

To learn more about this issue, see Obama Again Bashes Fathers and click here and here.

Los Angeles, CA–In my recent blog post Did Anne Heche Get a Break on Her Child Support Because She’s a Woman?, I wrote:

A Los Angeles Superior Court judge just lowered actress Anne Heche’s child support obligation by 75% because Heche says she has fallen on financial hard times. Recently she was allowed to “skip” paying child support for July.

The judge may well have acted correctly in this case, but it begs the question, “If Heche can get a huge reduction so easily, why is it so hard for fathers in similar circumstances to get reductions?”

According to a recent California Department of Child Support Services report, one of the leading factors creating “deadbeat dads” in California is that fathers who owe child support are rarely able to get downward modifications on their child support when they suffer drops in income.

The post resonated with several readers. One, Fred, wrote:

I just read your comments on Anne Heche and the downward modification of her child support.  I had to tell you what just happened to me in court!

My son’s mom had accrued years of arrearages.  To try to keep the peace, I never took her to court.  Then, she fraudulently told welfare that SHE was the custodial parent, fraudulently told welfare that I was a deadbeat dad, and fraudulently collected for a year (she began working full-time 3 weeks after she began collecting).  Of course, they came after ME.

Not only has she suffered no consequences for welfare fraud, but last month, the judge formally forgave her arrearages.  Have you ever heard of a judge retroactively forgiving arrearages?!?  He didn’t even bother to ask how much her arrearages were.  He just simply ordered that, whatever they are, they be erased!

Ken, a reader, saw it and sent me the following letter:

The Anne Heche article resonates, Glenn.
 
I filed for divorce in 2003.

Continue reading “Child Support Obligors: ‘The Anne Heche article resonates…’”

Los Angeles, CA–Sonia, a reader, writes:

“Have you seen the newest Klondike Bar commercial, where the guy deserves a Klondike Bar for not looking at a pretty woman walking by? I was watching it with my husband and found it offensive.”

There are actually two Klondike commercials at the link she sent me. One of them–clip 2 “A Glass Act” is anti-male, playing on the “azy husband” myth. However, that’s not the one Sonia is referring to.

Clip 1 “Sidewalk Talk”, the one Sonia refers to…well, it seems OK to me. But even feminist Jessica Valenti of www.feministing.com thought the commercial was insulting to men, and that’s certainly not something she says very often. What do readers think?

You can watch the two clips by clicking here.

Franklin, OH–I’ve often discussed the issue of the rights of lesbian “social mothers’–women who agreed to employ a sperm donor so that they could have children with their lesbian partners, who are the biological mothers.

I do believe that children fare best when they have both a mom and a dad, and that fathers offer much to children that mothers don”t provide. However, this is not possible in lesbian couples.

When two lesbians agree to have a child together, and when the child has bonded with both his or her biological mother and his or her social mother, I believe that the relationship between the child and the social mother should be protected. I also believe that the biological mother has a responsibility to her children and to her former partner to hold up her end of the deal with the partner with whom she created the child, and that courts should hold her to her commitment.

These cases are now becoming routine. When the relationship goes sour, the lesbian biological mom does to her ex exactly what heterosexual mothers so often do to their ex-husbands–drive her out of her child”s life. When heterosexual women do this, our society makes excuses for them and assumes that the ex-husband must have done something bad to merit it. With these lesbian breakups we can see the truth much clearer–some women (straight or gay) are vindictive, and this vindictiveness drives them to purge their exes from their children”s lives.

In the recent Fairchild custody case, the lesbian couple legally committed themselves to having joint custody, and the biological mother tried to employ the Ohio ban on gay marriage in order to deprive her ex of a role in their child’s life. Fortunately she failed, as is discussed in Court rules against gay mom on ending joint custody (Columbus Dispatch, 6/17/08).

One thing that’s interesting about some of these cases is that the lesbian biological mothers are so vindictive towards their former partners that they will gladly use anti-gay laws as a way to drive them out of their children’s lives.

Los Angeles, CA–“We had met at a [domestic violence] shelter in the city and gave support to each other. She [was] arrested three years into the relationship for trying to kill me by choking me.”–Claudia, lesbian victim of domestic violence

We’ve previously discussed the prevalence of domestic violence in lesbian relationships and how the domestic violence establishment denies or minimizes this inconvenient truth. To learn more, see my blog post Conference Report: Violence is more common in lesbian relationships than in heterosexual ones.

The following is an incident narrative from the report LESBIAN, GAY. BISEXUAL AND TRANSGENDER DOMESTIC VIOLENCE IN THE UNITED STATES IN 2006 put out by the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs.

There is a very interesting part of Claudia’s narrative. Claudia is a lesbian victim of domestic violence. Apparently at the time she was abused, a couple of her children were teenage boys. She wanted to get away from her lesbian abuser but it was difficult, in part because the domestic violence shelters wouldn’t allow her teen boys to come with her.

Get it? Here the violence is woman on woman, yet the domestic violence industry is so fixated on “only men abuse” that this DV victim couldn’t get shelter from her female abuser because she was the mother of boys.

Claudia’s Story

Claudia, 42, female, Latina, HIV +, lesbian, urban

My name is Claudia. I’m forty two years old and HIV positive. I have six children in my care; they are from twelve to twenty-one years of age. My oldest has an 11 month old baby boy. I first heard of AVP [Anti-Violence Program] when they did domestic violence training at the agency I work at.

I was in a ten-year relationship with my partner. We had met at a shelter in the city and gave support to each other. She had been arrested three years into the relationship for trying to kill me by choking me. She was arrested and spent time in jail. I had an order of protection but it ran out. After she completed her sentence she made contact with me and begged me to take her back. I thought things had changed and she’d learned her lesson. But soon after she moved in she began to carry on with the same controlling routine.

One night when I came home she was waiting for me in our bedroom. She told me that she did not want me working anymore because it was taking time away from her, and if I did not stop she would hurt my children. She also said that she had a gun. I was not going to go through that again and my tolerance ended when she threatened my kids.

I contacted AVP to see how they could help me. AVP advised me to come into their office and sign releases so we could call the necessary agencies, and my job. We did a lot of safety planning for me and my children and called ACS. Because the threats were verbal and I was willing to report them to the police, ACS thought that the case didn’t require its services.

NYC AVP called to have our family placed at a shelter but I was not willing to put my children through that again because we were separated in the past and I had young men, and they wouldn’t be allowed in a women’s shelter. We then planned to file a police report, and called my local precinct and spoke to the domestic violence officer. I filed a report for harassment. This scared my partner and she left the apartment and moved down south, but before she left she called ACS and reported that I was abusing my children.

ACS came and took the children away and placed them with my family while they did an investigation. After three days my children were returned to me. Thanks to the previous call that AVP and I had placed to ACS, the case was dropped. AVP connected me with project safe and I had my locks changed. I received domestic counseling and I’m going to preventive classes at ACS. This will help keep our family in a positive atmosphere. I am so relieved that I’m safe, and the environment in my home is positive. My children go to school not not having to worry if I am safe at home.

Charlotte, NC–I’ve occasionally criticized Christian churches for man bashing–see my blog posts Anti-Male Bias among Christian Conservatives and ‘Our pastor makes us husbands get on our knees on Mother’s Day and beg for forgiveness…husbands write all the things we’ve done wrong and give it to their wives’. I recently received an interesting letter from Paul, a reader, about his experience Father’s Day in his church:

Glenn,

I regularly read your blog and I was struck by your comment that Christianity could be anti-male (I am generalizing, but please bear with me). Today, during our Service, I began to understand what you mean.

My wife and I attend a Baptist church in Charlotte, NC. For the most part, it is a great environment. The people there are Christian in the traditional sense of the word. By that I mean they are honest, compassionate, helpful, and encouraging their brothers and sisters to embrace the Lord.

That said, the Father’s Day sermon illustrated the double standard between men and women that you so consistently strike on. The thesis of my pastor”s sermon was how fathers can be better and he issued bullet points on what men can do to be better husbands and fathers.

The first point was fathers need to work. He articulated that working a full-time job was not enough, but also noted that men should contribute more around the house. He asked poignantly, “If your kids drew a picture of Dad, would it be of dad in a lazy boy recliner, asleep with the remote in your hand?’

He then moved on to how husbands should be more forgiving. He told a joke that included as the punch line a man whose eyes had been swollen shut for several days due to his wife”s beating him. Most of the people in the congregation laughed, including my wife, but I did not. While I was not offended, I do not find humor in domestic violence.

I also wondered, if the congregation would laugh if the punch line included a wife whose eyes were swollen shut due to her husband’s fists? Somehow, I doubt the reception would have been as warm.

I could feel myself getting angry during this sermon. Would the pastor dare have the gumption to preach on Mother”s Day that mothers can and need to do a better job? Would he have the strength of character to point out that women need to do more housework? Or that women need to get more patience when it comes to dealing with their kids and learn to control their anger? Perhaps he will next year, but this year the sermon for Mother”s Day did not include any of the above.

I am sure you get many emails a day, but I am curious how many men who attended church regularly had an experience similar to mine on Father’s Day yesterday. If, as I suspect, it is at least a plurality, then I can understand why many men feel that traditional Christian churches are anti-male.
 

Los Angeles, CA–First the story, then a few comments. From When moms criticize, dads back off of baby care (MSNBC, 6/12/08):

During the first few months of a new baby’s life, every parent suffers moments of self-doubt. But new research suggests that dads might be especially susceptible to that lack of self-confidence — and that moms may be partly to blame.

Moms’ words of criticism or encouragement directly affect how involved their husband or partner becomes in the day-to-day care of their infant, finds a new study published in the June issue of the Journal of Family Psychology. When a mother criticized her partner’s child-care efforts, it often caused him to lose confidence, and even withdraw from caring for the baby. But when a mom praised dad’s efforts, he took a more active parenting role…

“Most couples said they believed fathers and mothers should spend an equal amount of time with their children,” Schoppe-Sullivan says. But after their child was born, it didn’t matter what they had said in those initial interviews; it was the mom’s behavior that dictated the dad’s involvement.

About two-thirds of the couples were first-time parents, but whether or not they already had kids at home didn’t affect the outcome, Schoppe-Sullivan says.

When the baby was 3 or 4 months old, researchers visited the families to observe them in their homes. They asked the couple to change the baby into a new outfit, and watched how the mom and dad interacted: Did the mom completely take over, while the dad stepped back? Or did they work together?

They found that the dads who knew what they were doing had partners who encouraged and complimented them as they changed the baby’s clothes. But the dads who looked less confident were accompanied by partners who critiqued their methods during the entire observation.

For Paul Skabish, a 31-year-old who lives in Garden Grove, N.J, the physical act of changing his son Paulie”s clothes was never the problem. It was the mismatched outfits he chose — and his wife”s reaction to them — that eventually caused him to resign from wardrobe duty.

“I do try to match … but my wife is kind of anal about that,” he says. After his wife’s critique of his haphazard fashion sense, he backed away from his brief stint as family fashion director, and has stayed far from it ever since. Paulie is now 4.

Of course, both Skabish and his wife, Melissa, say that their wardrobe skirmish is a small issue. But Diana Solomon, who helps facilitate parenting groups at Community Birth & Family Center in Seattle, says that many parenting disputes are over the seemingly simple tasks: What’s the best way to soothe the baby? Should we use a pacifier or not?

“There’s a lot of judgment, a lot of ‘you’re not doing it right,'” says Solomon. “Which really means, ‘you’re not doing it the way I do it'”…

A few comments:

1) I don’t believe the idea put forward here that dads can’t comfort their babies as well as moms. I could always comfort my daughter in the middle of the night when she was a baby. As soon as she could indicate a preference or talk, she usually wanted daddy in the middle of the night. From early on, taking care of my daughter was the most natural thing in the world for me. I discussed this time in our lives together in my recent column An Ode to My Daughter on Her 10th Birthday (World Net Daily, 6/14/08).

2) I think this maternal gatekeeping the study discusses is very real, and is a significant barrier between dads and their kids.

3) Wayne Levine, M.A. (pictured), a therapist who specializes in men’s issues and who runs men’s groups in Los Angeles, taught me something interesting about this a few years ago when I had him on my radio show. I brought up the issue of maternal gatekeeping keeping dads away, and his advice was something along the lines of this:

“Fathers need to start parenting the way they want to parent. When they do there’s no guarantee that the mother will go along with it, and that can cause problems, but men need to stop waiting for their wives’ approval. It’s like a little boy waiting for mommy to say it’s OK. Go be the father you want to be. Don’t wait–do it.”

Maplewood, MN–…30 days in jail. As if this weren’t enough of a joke, her attorney is pushing for her to be allowed to serve on home detention instead. 

She did get a fair amount of probation time, which balances things some. The new story is Wife bilked her husband in Iraq, then moved; now she’ll move to workhouse (Minneapolis Star-Tribune, 6/12/08)–thanks to Ben, a reader, for sending it.

You may recall that I covered this story back in May. About the story Jury convicts wife of forging checks while her husband was serving in Iraq (Minneapolis Star Tribune, 5/2/08), I wrote:

There are many, many truths which this case illustrates. Here’s a few:

1) It is usually the woman, not the man, who initiatives the divorce and breaks up the family, and it is often done without a genuinely compelling reason.

2) It is often husbands, not wives, who “hold out hope for reconciliation” and try to work the marriage out.

3) Many men are in harm’s way in Iraq or Afghanistan and are–let’s be blunt–stabbed in the back by their wives. Sometimes it’s through wives looting them, as in this story. More often it’s through women initiating unwarranted divorces and then moving “back home” with their kids, and then making weighty financial demands upon the father. As I explained in my co-authored column Protect Deployed Parents” Rights (Trenton Times & several others, 11/11/06), “Many married parents deploy overseas, never suspecting that their parenthood essentially ended the day they left home.” In most cases, the victimized parent is the father. It is indicative of our society’s disregard for men and fathers that there is no negative social stigma attached to these acts.

This represents a societal change, and a bad one. When my grandfather was fighting against Germany in the Argonne Forest in 1918, can you imagine what the reaction would have been if my grandmother had left him? She would have been condemned–rightly–for betraying her husband. Her relatives would have told her, “How can you betray him when he is in danger? How could you take a man’s kids away while he is abroad? Why are you breaking up your family unnecessarily?” This ethos is long gone now. (To learn more, see my blog posts Reflections on Veterans Day Part I and Part II.)

4) I had to laugh at the line “[Prosecutor] Rosenthal said that Dana Kieser left her husband essentially homeless.” Actually, we don’t have any problem with that–the wife could have made a false claim that the husband “threatened her” or that she is “afraid of him” and she would have easily gotten a restraining order which would have barred him from his home and made him homeless. Hundreds of thousands of women do this every year and nobody even blinks. To learn more, see my co-authored column Letterman Case Shows Problems with Restraining Orders (Albuquerque Tribune, 1/17/06).

5) I get letters all the time from soldiers in Iraq or Afghanistan who tell me that their wives have cleaned out their accounts and disappeared, and I doubt that 1 in 10 of them ever gets justice for it. My first thought in reading this story was “Dana Kieser must have really screwed up–women get away with this all the time.”

6) After all of this, “Dana Kieser is unlikely to serve any time in prison. The presumptive sentence for check forgery is a stayed sentence. The amount of restitution would be determined by probation officials.” So all that happens might be that she is asked to pay some of it back, though even that amount will probably be light, because, after all, she’s a single mother with two kids to take care of.

7) Dana Kieser lied and deceived but she has custody and probably will keep custody and John Kieser will face stiff child support obligations. Despite her crime and the criminal conviction, in the end, she wins and he loses.