Category: Blog

Indianapolis, IN–Credit Indianapolis Star cartoonist Gary Varvel for this so-true-it’s-painful depiction of the fatherless modern American family. The picture in the upper left of the album is the saddest of all. Ouch.

Below are some recent articles and items of interest from Fathers & Families’ latest News Digest.

Paul McCartney attempts to settle Heather Mills divorce (TransWorldNews.com, 1-22-08)

Minimize the impact of divorce on your credit (San Louis Obispo Tribune, 1-22-08)

Shared Parenting Bill (WSAZ.com, 1-22-08)

Proposal helps deployed service members in custody cases (Associated Press, 1-23-08)

Man must pay child support for daughter who’s not his (Courier News, 1-24-08)

China divorce rate rises by 20% (BBC, 1-25-08)

Hogan divorce battle getting ugly (ABCactionnews.com, 1-25-08)

Like tax preparers in April, divorce lawyers brace for January (The Virginian Pilot, 1-26-08)

Woman on trial for attacking police in custody dispute (The Plain Dealer, 1-28-08)

Officials arrest deadbeat parents in sweep (Houston Chronicle, 1-28-08)

New York, NY–Roger Clemens, future Hall of Famer, welcome to family court. No, Roger isn’t getting divorced–in fact, former teammate Jose Canseco wrote that Clemens was very devoted and faithful to his wife Debbie during his baseball career. What I mean is this–Clemens has been accused in the Mitchell Report of using steroids. Clemens hotly denies this but throws up his hands in exasperation, repeatedly asking, “How do you prove a negative?” Well, how do you?
This is exactly the position that so many fathers are in when faced with false accusations of domestic violence or child sexual abuse in family court. How do you prove that you didn’t molest your daughter two years ago? How do you prove that you didn’t hit your wife six months ago? It’s very difficult–and very unfair for the falsely accused. In family court, hundreds of thousands of fathers have faced the same dilemma Roger Clemens does right now, but the stakes aren’t just their reputations, but whether or not they’ll be driven out of their children’s lives. It’s a terrible place to be. (As to the side issue of whether I think Clemens is culpable or not, I really don’t know. I hate to judge him unfairly, but just as there certainly are some men who do beat their wives despite their protestations of innocence, there were plenty of ballplayers who took steroids, and Clemens might have been one of them. I will say this–his excellent performance in his later years is not an indicator of steroid use, and may actually be proof against it. Because of Clemens’ exceptionally high strikeout ratios, it could have been expected that he would be effective far, far longer than other pitchers. People tend to think Clemens had some off years in Boston and then rebounded in Toronto, where he allegedly took steroids. There are a couple problems with this. One, his best year in Toronto occurred before he is accused of talking steroids. Two, his career in Boston didn’t slide nearly as much as people thought–a lot of it was bad run support, and even in off-years he still had a lot of strikeouts. Fenway Park back then was also a hitter’s park, and it could be expected that Clemens’ performance might improve after leaving it. Why would Clemens’ longevity indicate that he didn’t take steroids? Because steroids wreck the body over time. The steroid pattern is a sudden improvement, a few great years, then injury upon injury and an early retirement. If Clemens was taking steroids in any great measure, I’m skeptical he could have lasted as long as he did.)

Los Angeles, CA–“My own father, Randolph, was born in 1915, in Athens, Georgia. He does not know his biological father, and various men passed in and out of his and his mother’s life.

“At age 13, my father came home one day and, according to his mother’s boyfriend, ‘made too much noise.’ My father and the boyfriend verbally squabbled, with the mom siding with the boyfriend.

“His own mother threw him out of the house. As he walked down the street, she yelled, ‘You’ll be back–either that or in jail.’ Not much of a start. A black Southerner without a father, disowned by his mother, during the Depression…

“No, my dad and I did not always get along. Gruff and blunt, my dad often intimidated my two brothers and me. But we never doubted his love or his commitment to his family.”

In nationally-syndicated radio talk show host Larry Elder’s 2002 book Showdown: Confronting Bias, Lies, and the Special Interests That Divide America, he has an excellent chapter called “More Dads, Less Crime.” Larry is a fatherhood advocate who believes that fathers, particularly black fathers, have abdicated their responsibilities to their children.

I’ve had various contact with Larry over the years (one of my newspaper columns is reprinted in Showdown), and I have raised the issue of fathers being driven out of their kids lives. I’m not sure to what degree Larry believes me.

Anyway, in “More Dads, Less Crime,” Larry tells the amazing story of his father, Randolph Elder. An excerpt describing Randolph’s life is below. He is pictured above with Larry’s brother.

From Showdown: Confronting Bias, Lies, and the Special Interests That Divide America

My own father, Randolph, was born in 1915, in Athens, Georgia. He does not know his biological father, and various men passed in and out of his and his mother’s life. At age 13, my father came home one day and, according to his mother’s boyfriend, “made too much noise.” My father and the boyfriend verbally squabbled, with the mom siding with the boyfriend.

His own mother threw him out of the house. As he walked down the street, she yelled, “You’ll be back–either that or in jail.” Not much of a start. A black Southerner without a father, disowned by his mother, during the Depression.

He began a series of Dickensian jobs–hotel boy, shoeshine boy, valet, and cook for a white family. He became a Pullman porter for the railroad and a member of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters. He traveled all across the country and visited California, a sunny place that seemed more liberal. When World War II broke out, he joined the Marine Corps, became a cook in the military, and fed thousands of GIs. He rose to the rank of sergeant and spent some time on the island of Guam awaiting a possible military invasion of the island of Japan. But, at the end of the war, he returned to the South, seeking work as a short-order cook. “Sorry,” restaurant after restaurant told him. “You have no references.”

References? How about that wartime stint on the island of Guam, cooking for and serving soldiers while awaiting the invasion of the island of Japan? No one hired him. They all said he “lacked references.” Disgusted, my father, who had just married my mother, packed up and left for California, vowing to find a job and send for her. My father again sought work as a short-order cook. Sorry, owners repeatedly told him, we need references.

So my dad went to the local unemployment office, and informed the clerk that he intended to take the first job that walked in the door. He literally sat for hours in the office until something came through.

Corbeil, Canada–Cartoonist Lynn Johnston makes a prescient point about marriage in the For Better or For Worse cartoon above. It reminds me a bit of the line Bruce Springsteen wrote in the song he penned about his divorce:

“But for you, dear, my best was never good enough.”

Thanks to Jim, a reader, for sending it.

New York, NY–I doubt many in the men’s and fathers’ movement feel this way, but there are occasions when our feminist opponents do something so embarrassing that I end up feeling a little sorry for them. Such is the case with New York State NOW’s reaction to Ted Kennedy’s recent endorsement of Obama over Hillary.

According to the Albany Times-Union, NY NOW president Marcia Pappas (pictured), in an angry, vindictive screed which sounds like it was written by a 13-year-old, recently announced:

“Women have just experienced the ultimate betrayal. Senator Kennedy”s endorsement of Hillary Clinton”s opponent in the Democratic presidential primary campaign has really hit women hard. Women have forgiven Kennedy, stuck up for him, stood by him, hushed the fact that he was late in his support of Title IX, the ERA, the Family Leave and Medical Act to name a few. Women have buried their anger that his support for the compromises in No Child Left Behind and the Medicare bogus drug benefit brought us the passage of these flawed bills. We have thanked him for his ardent support of many civil rights bills, BUT women are always waiting in the wings.

“And now the greatest betrayal! We are repaid with his abandonment! He”s picked the new guy over us. He”s joined the list of progressive white men who can”t or won”t handle the prospect of a woman president who is Hillary Clinton (they will of course say they support a woman president, just not ‘this’ one).

“This latest move by Kennedy, is so telling about the status of and respect for women”s rights, women”s voices, women”s equality, women”s authority and our ability – indeed, our obligation – to promote and earn and deserve and elect, unabashedly, a President that is the first woman after centuries of men who ‘know what”s best for us.'”

Amazing. Ted Kennedy has been a huge advocate of women’s and feminist issues for decades, but like a carping wife with a memory that never forgets, Pappas feels compelled to remind him of every time he apparently didn’t snap to fast enough for New York NOW. Pappas says that, graciously, “women have forgiven Kennedy.” But now that Kennedy has chosen one liberal candidate (Obama) over another (Hillary), it is “the greatest betrayal,” the “ultimate betrayal,” and “abandonment.”

Note that Pappas does not mention any political differences between Hillary and Obama–it’s all about voting for a woman. This is particularly ridiculous because here the contest is between a white woman and a black man. Despite women’s struggles, white women have always had and continue to have it vastly better than black men.

But you know what really amazes me about this? These people–Pappas and NY NOW–beat us. In 2006, we launched a our Campaign in Support of New York Shared Parenting Bill A330. Pappas was the opposition’s main point person.

After we launched the campaign, NOW and other feminist groups counterattacked, launching Action Alerts and campaigns against the bill. The number of calls and letters we generated greatly dwarfed those of our opposition–by a ratio well over 10 to 1–but the Shared Parenting Bill was defeated anyway. It was a stunning commentary on the stranglehold feminist groups have over gender issues in political circles in New York and many other states.

To learn more about that battle, and to read our dueling op-eds in the Albany Times Union, click here. Pappas also criticized the fatherhood movement and my co-authored New York Daily News column NOW at 40: Group’s Opposition to Shared Parenting Contradicts Its Goal of Gender Equality (7/27/06) in her column Fathers’ Responsibilities Before Fathers’ Rights.

Tucson, AZ–The drawings above were taken from Kara Bishop’s www.postcardsfromsplitsville.com. Bishop works with Children of Divorce, a class run by Tucson, Arizona-based Divorce Recovery. The class did an art project that included “sending away” the frustrations of divorce. The website is a place where Kara says “children can share their divorce-related feelings anonymously and parents can get a new perspective on how this life-changing experience impacts their children”s lives.”

To learn more, click here. Kara can be reached at Kara@PostcardsfromSplitsville.com.

Albany, NY–New York Shared Parenting activist Deborah Fellows says that the NY Coalition of Fathers and Families will be holding a protest against New York’s boybashing “Coaching Boys into Men” campaign. The Campaign portrays boys as proto-abusers, and tells us that “violence against women” is wrong, as opposed to violence, period.

And of course, if it really were a “Domestic Violence Public Awareness Media Campaign,” we’d be made aware that women are just as likely to attack their male partners as vice versa, but any mention of that is strictly verboten.

The campaign’s main poster is pictured above. To watch their TV commercial, click here.

The protest will be held Monday Jan 28, from 7-9am at Latham Circle in Albany, NY, and I’m told that the media will be there. To join the protest, contact Debbie Fellows at dafellows2001@yahoo.com or 518-495-4044. The Coalition of Fathers and Families New York is an affiliate of the American Coalition for Fathers & Children.

The campaign’s radio ad, which can be heard here, says:

“As a dad, you”ll probably spend years teaching your son how to hit a baseball. How to throw a tight spiral and hit a receiver. How to spring off a diving board and hit the water. How to hit a one-wood and a nine-iron. How to hit the bull”s-eye. How to hit the strike zone. Hit a jump shot. Hit the open man. Hit the hockey net. And maybe the most challenging of all, how to hit the books. But the question is this, how much time will you spend teaching him what not to hit?

“Teach your son early and often that all violence against women is wrong. For tips on what to say, visit opdv.state.ny.us. Or call the State”s 24-hour hotline at 1-800-942-6906. Brought to you by the Family Violence Prevention Fund, the New York State Office for the Prevention of Domestic Violence, the Waitt Institute for Violence Prevention, and the Ad Council.”

London, England–“A Vietnamese woman who traveled to Taiwan to find the father she had never met, ended up working for him without knowing it…Their reunion only came about because she mistakenly left some keepsakes at his home, which he had given to her mother more than 40 years before. Tsai Han-chao, 77, said he could not help crying when he found out he had a daughter he never knew about.” This heartwarming father-daughter reunion is one of the most bizarre stories I’ve ever read. It is also a stunning rebuke to the Single Motherhood by Choice crowd’s assertion that kids don’t feel a sense of loss when they don’t have a relationship with their fathers.
Maid finds boss is missing father BBC, 1/22/08 A Vietnamese woman who travelled to Taiwan to find the father she had never met, ended up working for him without knowing it. Tran Thi Kham, 40, did not discover the truth until after leaving her employer. Their reunion only came about because she mistakenly left some keepsakes at his home, which he had given to her mother more than 40 years before. Tsai Han-chao, 77, said he could not help crying when he found out he had a daughter he never knew about. “Life’s ups and downs are just like television drama. How could I have ever dreamed that she is my daughter? I couldn’t stop crying when we were finally united,” he told Taiwan’s TVBS cable news channel. Ms Tran had travelled to Taiwan a few years earlier to search for her father. Her only clues were a gold ring and a photograph of him as a young man. He had given the mementoes to a Vietnamese woman he had fallen in love with in Hong Kong in 1967.