There aren't many invariable rules in life, but I'm pretty sure this is one: if you hear someone say "his lack of presence" when he means "his absence," you're dealing with a bureaucratic mentality, possibly in its terminal stages.  Look out for trouble.

Not long ago, according to this article, in North Coventry, Pennsylvania, a father arrived at the West-Mont Christian Academy intending to talk to a kindergarten teacher about his child who is a student there (Daily Local, 11/18/09).  He talked to a teacher who walked with him to a public lobby where he was to wait to talk to his child's teacher.  While waiting, the man went upstairs and looked at some student artwork that was displayed in a hallway.  The kindergarten teacher arrived, they talked and the man left.

Now, if I were the school administrator, I wouldn't be too concerned about any of that.  But the administrator was Dr. James Smock and Dr. James Smock is a man who says "his lack of presence" when he means "his absence."  And that, if my rule holds true, means trouble.  Judge for yourself.

When confronted with the threat of a father talking to a teacher about his kindergarten-age child, and moreover a father who might have seemed agitated and who had left the premises, Dr. Smock took action.  He "locked down" the school, took the children out of classes and placed them all in the gymnasium.  He called the police, the K-9 Korps and the fire department.  The police called the Emergency Response Team.  They in turn blocked off the streets immediately surrounding the school.  Residents huddled in their houses afraid to set foot outdoors, as police officers swarmed over the buildings, grounds and rooftops, pistols unholstered and held aloft.

The man, of course, was never found, having left the premises long before.  In any case, he is known to school staff and "not considered a threat."

The "incident" began at 7:55 a.m. and ended almost three and a half hours later.  In other words, an entire morning was wasted.  How many police and fire department personnel were involved, we don't know.

Would a mother's presence (lack of absence?) at her child's school occasion such hysterics?  If a mother came to her child's school, spoke with a teacher briefly about little Johnny and then left, would the administration call the police and fire department, lock down the school and terrorize the neighbors?  Don't we all know the answer?

Students ourselves, we've learned our lesson well: men are dangerous to children.  Never mind that year after year, statistics show more children to be hurt or killed by women than by men.  The misandric part of our public discourse teaches us otherwise and there's essentially nothing that tells us the truth.

So after the whoop-di-do died down, Dr. Smock issued a press release that read in part,

Because of our cooperation with the police department here and our safety team that was in place, no children were at risk.

The truth of course is that the police, the dogs and the fire department had nothing to do with it.  No children were ever at risk.  Period. 

But Dr. Smock would never say that.

Thanks to Pankaj for the heads-up.

A while back, I posted a piece about two separate Canadian surveys that show overwhelming support for equally-shared parenting laws.  Each showed support of around 78%.  At the time (and maybe still), there was a bill before Parliament to establish the presumption of equally shared parenting in divorce and custody cases.  The bill was given little chance of passage, so I pointed out the radical difference between what Canadians say they want and what their elected "representatives" are willing to do.  The message "we know what's best for you; now run along and play" seems to be more and more common on the part of people who are elected and paid by their constituents to serve their interests.

This letter to the editor reflects much the same thing (Metro Daily News, 11/18/09).  The writer is targeting a Massachusetts state representative, Alice Peisch, and a senator, Cynthia Creem.  He points out that voters in Peisch's district overwhelmingly support changing the Bay State's law to establish the presumption of shared parenting, but again, Peisch knows better than the people who vote for her.  She opposes equally shared parenting.

Creem is worse.  As chairwoman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, she wields considerable influence over bills heard there.  Unfortunately for residents of the state, that means that if they're going to benefit from real alimony reform, Creem has to agree.  And she doesn't.  She's substituted her own bill for one supported by many lawyers' groups, non-profits and again, voters in her district.

Unsurprisingly, Creem's law practice has long depended on family cases and most notably, alimony cases as its bread and butter.  As the letter points out, her conflict of interest in the matter is clear.

To succeed in our mission, fathers' rights advocates must be able to demonstrate political influence at the state level.  Clearly, that's what's behind the decision by Fathers & Families to employ a lobbyist in Sacramento.  But what's also needed is to show elected officials that they ignore fathers' issues at the risk of their jobs.  If the anti-dad forces in Australia succeed in rolling back equally-shared parenting legislation there, pro-fathers-and-children folks will need to bounce some of them out of office in the next election.

In Massachusetts, Creem, with her obvious multiple conflicts of interest and Peisch, with her disdain for the desires of her constituents, have painted large electoral bulls-eyes on their backs.

When parents are at loggerheads, there should be much more done to sustain the interests of the father and child. When a mother turns her child against the father, when a mother refuses to comply with a court order on contact, nothing is done because it is felt sanctions against her would not be in the interests of the child. But is the situation as it stands in that child’s interests? We pay only lip service to the rights of a child to have contact with a father and we need to do better.

This article is another one to address the findings of the Mishcon de Reya report on the impacts of divorce in the United Kingdom (The Times, 11/17/09).  I discussed another article in the Telegraph in a previous piece, but this one adds information and some suggestions.

For example, the report found that more than one-third of children lose all contact with their fathers after divorce.  It goes on to report just why that is.

But what makes keeping in touch so difficult?

One answer could be suggested by a finding of the Mishcon de Reya report — one in five divorcing spouses admitted to having the primary objective of making the experience as unpleasant as possible for his or her former partner.

Parenthetically, I wonder what all those people who deny the existence of parental alienation of children have to say about that.  When 20% cite that very thing as their "primary objective" post-divorce, it's hard to figure how they can pretend parental alienation is a figment of some evil FRA's imagination.  My guess is that we'll never know since they'll probably give that datum a pass.

And given that it's fathers, not mothers whom children are losing, and it's mothers, not fathers who get primary custody in 85% - 90% of cases, it's not hard to figure out who's doing most of the alienating.

But the article goes on to site some fairly commonsense things divorcing fathers and mothers can do to make things better.  Unfortunately, many of those seem to assume some sort of residual goodwill between the exes.  And if that existed, the problems children have stemming from divorce would probably be much fewer and less severe. 

I suspect that there is a large percentage of parents who truly do their best to get along after they split and who mostly succeed.  I also suspect that there is some percentage who will remain out to get the other regardless of everything.  And I finally suspect that there are a lot of parents for whom counselling and mediation would be a great help.  It's not that they'll feel much better about the other spouse, but they can learn to focus on the child's wellbeing and understand that, while he/she may want nothing to do with the other spouse, the child doesn't feel the same way.

It's been many years since feminists like Katha Pollitt at The Nation waxed apoplectic about a Washington, D.C. mother who lost custody of a child to her ex-husband.  The woman was a hardworking senior aide to, if memory serves me, a Congressional representative.  As the job requires, she pulled long hours, leaving home early in the morning and often not returning until long after the children were in bed.  She missed school meetings, playdates, birthdays.  Her husband, on the other hand, quit his job so he could take one with greater flexibility.  That was because he wanted to take more part in the kids' lives, and that's just what he did.  He was the one who stayed up with them when they were sick, attended soccer games and helped with homework.

So when it came time for the couple to split up, the judge granted primary custody to the dad, i.e. she applied family law in a gender-neutral way.  And feminists hit the ceiling.  This was, they cried, a slam against working mothers.  The mother was being penalized for working.  Somehow they contrived to overlook the fact that the judge who signed the order was herself a working woman.  Somehow they also overlooked the fact that this was what gender-equality looked like.  After all, for decades, the same thing had been done to millions of working men without a peep from the "gender-equality" crowd.

Now, what was only true occasionally back in the early nineties, may become more the norm.  Particularly with the recession having thrown so many men off the job, more and more men are becoming Mr. Mom out of necessity.  Their wives are bringing home the bacon and they're taking the kids to school, meeting with teachers, arranging sleepovers.  That's all pretty sensible.

Still, feminists can't quite seem to get their hands around the concept that, as long as we're still awarding custody to the main caregiver, mothers who've opted for a career may lose the children in a divorce.  Lisa Belkin's piece here is far calmer and more open to the concept of gender equality than was Pollitt's screed, but she's still got the sneaking suspicion that it's all a plot against - you guessed it - working women (New York Times, 11/17/09).

On the positive side, Belkin actually gets a figure correct - about 2.2 million fathers now have primary custody.  We should erect a monument to the event.  But the title of the piece ("More Fathers Are Getting Custody in Divorce") says, and the body suggests, that fathers are getting primary custody in ever greater numbers.  She calls this phenomenon a "new reality for working mothers."  To put it bluntly, Belkin, and the people at Working Mother Magazine who produced the information she's alarmed about, are making that up.

The facts, as reported by the U.S. Census Bureau, indeed show a shocking trend - toward sameness.  From 1993 through 2005, the numbers and percentages of mothers and fathers with primary custody essentially haven't changed.  As Belkin noted, about 2.2 million dads now have primary custody of their children.  Guess how many there were 16 years ago.  If you guessed 2.184 million, you were right. 

And mothers with custody?  In 2005 there were 11.406 million versus 11.505 million in 1993.

So, in 1993, 83.97% of U.S. mothers had primary custody of children.  By 2005, that figure had plummeted to 83.86%.  That's a drop of 0.13%!  No wonder feminists are sounding the alarm.

But apart from the actual data which clearly show that there's been no change whatsoever in which sex gets custody of children, there's the abstract issue of gender-neutral application of custody laws.  As I said, Katha Pollitt was outraged at the idea in the 90s, but Belkin seems a bit more open to the concept.  At least she questions his assertion when an attorney refers to gender-neutral application of custody laws as a "raw deal" for women.  But then she lapses back into this:

You could also argue that working women are held to a higher parenting standard than working men, paying a price for not conforming to the cultural expectation that mothers be more hands-on than fathers. 

Yes, and you could also argue that the sun revolves around the earth; it just wouldn't be very convincing.  In what way are working women held to a higher standard than are working men?  Belkin doesn't let on, preferring to rely on that time-tested feminist chestnut - the unsupported assertion.  But the simple fact remains that what's happened to men for decades can happen to women, and for the exact same reason.

All of which doesn't make this "sauce-for-the-goose/sauce-for-the-gander" approach sensible.  It makes it fair, but still not the best way to go about custody post-divorce.  The same arguments for equally shared parenting apply when the mother is the chief earner as when the dad is.  Children need both parents.  The fact that one parent spent more time at work than the other is largely irrelevant to the child and its needs.  Equally shared parenting is still the best idea for making sure that children don't lose a parent when the parents lose each other.

Maybe one day feminists like Belkin and Pollitt will get the message so many of us got long ago.

In the United Kingdom, a recent poll has revealed some facts about the children of divorce and the divorce process itself that are at once disturbing and completely expected.  This article reports on the the survey conducted as part of the 20th anniversary of the Children's Act of 1989 (Telegraph, 11/16/09).  It polled 4,000 parents and children who reported among other things,

• Tens of thousands of children a year are losing contact with their fathers because of “failing” family court system;
• One in three children whose parents separated or divorced over the last 20 years disclosed that they had lost contact permanently with their father;
• Almost a tenth of children from broken families said the acrimonious process had left them feeling suicidal while others later sought solace in drink, drugs or crime;
• They complained of feeling “isolated” and “used” while parents admitted having used children as “bargaining tools” against each other;
• Lawyers said the study showed that the court system itself was making family break-up more acrimonious with children used as "pawns";
• [The lawyers] warned that so-called “no fault” divorces were encouraging warring parents to channel their “bloodletting” into disputes over contact.

In short, this British poll shows what many advocates for fathers and children have been saying for years - that our divorce system is bad for everyone involved, but mostly for the children who have to endure increased acrimony and the loss of one parent, usually the father.  The poll corroborates what Prof. Edward Kruk of theUniversity of British Columbia has said time and again, notably in this paper and this paper.  Children do better with a father and a mother in their lives; fathers who care for children are more likely to be employed, and less likely to be in jail or on drugs or alcohol than are men without children; mothers of children with an involved father have more time and energy to pursue a career.

Fathers, mothers, children and society are all on the same side in this debate.  All do better when children are raised by both biological parents.  When divorce happens, all do better when conflict is kept to a minimum and parenting afterward is equal or as close to it as possible.

We know these things.  But the gulf between known facts and established public policy is enormous.  Even a casual comparison between what should be and what is, is jaw-dropping.  An intelligent space alien would surely conclude that we are insane and bent on self-destruction.  Come to think of it, the word "insane" crops up time and again in discussions of family law and policy.  As well it should.

Still, articles like the one linked to keep cropping up.  Sincerely concerned adults will not stop trying to make right what has gone so disastrously wrong over the past 40 years.

Thanks to Jeremy for the heads-up.

I can't agree with the headline of this piece, but then, I'm not sure the writer does either (The Guardian, 10/26/09).  And beyond the headline, it's a pretty good piece.

"Men Should Be Encouraged to Be Full-Time Fathers" is not an idea I can support.  For decades now, feminists have rightly argued that full-time parenting tends to mean full-time dependency on someone else to earn the money it takes to support you.  If that's not a good idea for women (and it's not), it's not a good idea for men either. 

The goal I see is easy to understand - couples raising their own children with each earning part of the family's income and each doing part of the domestic work including childcare.  That certainly doesn't mean a slavish conformity to all tasks shared 50/50; obviously, couples will work that out themselves.  But what it does mean is that in the event of divorce, each adult would be able to support him/herself and care for the child.  Into the bargain, family law would respect the child's right to - and interest in - a relationship with each parent. 

Now, to me, that doesn't seem like a radical notion, but it seems remarkably hard for some people to grasp.  My guess is that the writer of the article, Anushka Asthana, probably does get it, although I'm not sure she really appreciates the many systemic barriers between fathers and children.  Like another Guardian piece by Richard Reeves, Asthana's fails to notice the fact that short-end-of-the-stick laws like those governing parental leave are just part of a vast array of laws, customs and societal notions of men and fathers that clearly show that we still see men primarily as earners and fathers secondarily, if that.

A recent study in the U.K. shows that men don't tend to take the meager parental leave the country offers them, and Asthana grapples with the reasons for that.  She seems to understand that social norms tend to produce parental leave laws that say loudly and clearly that mothers are valued at home with the kids and dads are valued at work.  Asthana sees that, until we change social and legal concepts of men and women, we won't change the roles we play.

Now, before anyone throws up his/her hands and cries out "But men and women are different; gender is not just a construct!" let me make myself clear.  Fatherhood is not a social construct.  Men's desire to be fathers is biological; our bodies produce the same hormones that are designed by nature to connect us to our children that women's do.  What I'm arguing for is not to construct a New Man in a Brave New World.  I'm arguing for society to get out of men's way and allow fathers to fulfill the role we're designed to play - that of hands-on, caring father.

And that means we have to stop telling men in all the ways we do - in law, popular culture, public policy, etc. - that fatherhood is unimportant to us and that we're no good at it anyway.  From conception to adulthood and beyond, our western English-speaking cultures tell men in countless ways that we are unimportant to children except as a wallet.  As long as we do that, men will get the message and even the meager parental leave we give them will be left unused.

According to this article, Australian Attorney General Robert McClelland has been "urged" to recommend the "Canada model" of child custody to replace Australia's shared parenting statute that is barely three years old (The Australian, 10/26/09).  Just who's doing the urging, the article doesn't tell us.

But whoever it is, it's clear that the writer is all for it.  She suggests that Canada requires courts to decide what form of custody would be in the best interests of the child, rather than presuming that shared custody would be.  Under that approach, courts would consider factors such as "the roles played by each party before separation."  That's code for "since Mom worked less and did more childcare, she gets custody."

Don't believe me?  In Canada, according to the country's official statistics agency, Statistics Canada, 9.1% of fathers get primary custody following divorce.  That's even worse than United States courts that grant custody to fathers a whopping 16% of the time.  In short, whoever is urging Australia's Attorney General to recommend Canada's model of child custody post separation or divorce, must think the radically anti-father conditions that prevail in so many country's are just grand. 

As usual, those systems penalize fathers for working and supporting their families by depriving them of real relationships with their children post divorce.  They also encourage mothers to file for divorce.  In the U.S., some 70% of divorce actions are filed by women, and studies such as the massive one done by Margaret Brinig and Douglas Allen show that the main encouragement to do so is the almost certain knowledge that they'll get custody.  So the type of custody system being urged on Mr. McClelland is the same type that results in high divorce rates.  I wonder if they mentioned that.

And of course it's also the system that results in high separation of fathers and children.  Whatever the anti-dad crowd may claim, the existing system in Canada overwhelmingly tends to make non-custodial parents into visitors in the lives of children.  Since so many non-custodial parents are fathers, that mostly means children miss out on paternal relationships and influence.  But the fact that mothers usually aren't the non-custodial parent doesn't mean the same thing doesn't happen to them.  As Dr. Susan Stewart showed in her 1999 study, non-custodial fathers and mothers alike become what she called "Disneyland" parents.  The great irony of course is that this all occurs under a system that supposedly looks first to "the best interests of the child."

Apparently all that's fine with whoever is whispering in McClelland's ear that shared parenting is not good for kids.

But let's not forget first principles.  Fathers, mothers, children and society generally do better when children have two parents involved in their lives.  On a whole range of social indicia, children are happier, healthier, better adjusted and more productive.  Mothers whose children have an active father in their lives have more money and are more able to participate and advance in the workplace than are those without.  Fathers who are actively involved in their children's lives are more likely to be employed, out of jail and off drugs and alcohol than are those who aren't.

The reason that there's a massive movement toward shared parenting is because the child custody systems in the U.S., Canada, the United Kingdom, etc. are failing everyone - children, fathers and mothers alike.

I've said it before and I'll say it again - those who oppose equally shared parenting have the obligation to explain to the rest of us why they believe the current system that shuts children off from their fathers and vice versa, is acceptable.  It's worth noting that they never do. 

Intoning the mantra of the "best interests of the child" won't change obvious facts.

A case decided November 10, 2009 by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals could have an enormous impact on fathers' rights to their children.  (Note: The case is not yet published, so I can't provide a link to it.)  It holds that even a divorced father with no right of physical custody must be given the opportunity to have custody of his child before a child protective agency can place it in foster care.  Failure to do so by a county child protective agency can subject the county to a suit for damages by the father under the federal civil law governing deprivation of constitutional rights.

To put it bluntly, this is a huge win for non-custodial parents.

The opinion in Burke, et al vs. County of Alameda California, et al now governs everyone within the jurisdiction of the Ninth Circuit which encompasses California, Alaska, Washington, Oregon, Hawaii, Idaho, Arizona, Nevada, Montana and the territories of Guam and the Northern Marianna Islands.  Unless overturned by the United States Supreme Court, Burke is binding precedent throughout the Ninth Circuit. 

The Ninth is the largest federal circuit and one of the most influential on the others.  Of course the opinion in Burke doesn't govern cases in other circuits, but, given that it was a case of first impression (i.e. a similar case had never been decided before by that circuit) there, it may well be looked to by other circuits in deciding similar cases.  It may also be looked to by the Supreme Court should a similar case reach that level.

David and Melissa Burke lived together and apparently were married.  Melissa's 14-year-old daughter "B.F." lived with them.  She was the natural daughter of Melissa and Clifton Farina who had divorced some years before.  David was her stepfather and Clifton was a non-custodial dad.  Frustratingly enough, the opinion doesn't tell us whether Clifton had an order of visitation, but it seems that he did not because the opinion says that he had no right of physical custody.  Nevertheless, he saw his daughter fairly often even though B.F. testified that his new wife didn't like her and being around her was uncomfortable for the girl.  Melissa had sole physical custody of B.F.

When B.F. complained to an Alameda County Sheriff's officer that David hit her repeatedly and often fondled her breasts, the officer, without a warrant, removed her from the Burke home and placed her with the county child protective services agency.  CPS in turn placed her in some form of protective care.

David, Melissa and Clifton Farina sued Alameda County and the sheriff's deputy under federal statute 42 U.S.C. 1983 which allows civil suits against municipal and state entities which "under color of law" deprive someone of their constitutional rights.  The trial court granted the county's motion for summary judgment, holding that neither the Burkes nor Farina had any claim against the county on which they could prevail at trial.  The Ninth Circuit agreed that the Burkes had no claim and that the sheriff's deputy was immune from suit.

But the circuit court reversed the trial court as to Clifton Farina.  It said that, even though he had no right of physical custody, Alameda County could not lawfully ignore Clifton as a possible custodian of B.F.  Failure by the county to "explore the possibility of putting B.F. in his care" violated his constitutional right to a familial relationship and association with his daughter.  His case was returned to the trial court so a jury could hear and decide his claim for damages against the county.

On this blog, both Glenn and I have written about the outrageous preference on the part of CPS agencies for foster care over father care.  Those agencies routinely bypass fathers altogther and place children in foster care.  I reported on an Urban Institute study that showed that, even though CPS agencies know who the father is in some 88% of cases that come before them, attempts to contact him are made in barely over half those cases.  Glenn has written about a girl to whom Orange County, California lied repeatedly over many years, solely to keep her from her father and in foster care.

In short, after this case, CPS agencies can no longer do that without getting sued.  The Burke opinion is not clear on exactly what a county must do to comply with it.  But as I see it, they'll have to make diligent efforts to locate the father and assess whether his care would be superior to that of a foster home.  If it would be, he would get custody.  In short, when taking a child from its custodial parent due to abuse or neglect, a state within the Ninth Circuit's jurisdiction may no longer simply ignore the non-custodial parent.

Thanks to Ned for the heads-up.

In a move that will change the course of the family court reform movement, Fathers & Families has just hired two experienced, accomplished legislative representatives. Soon we will be launching campaigns in support of our family court reform legislation---to get involved, please click here.

California

Readers of www.GlennSacks.com are familiar with Michael Robinson's work in Sacramento on family court reform legislation, and Robinson and I have often worked together. In 2004 and again in 2006, we helped scuttle two bills (SB 730 and SB 1482) that would have led to unrestricted post-divorce move-aways. This was an important victory for California's children of divorce, and one that surprised many Sacramento insiders, including Sacramento Bee columnist Dan Walters.

Robinson and I also worked together to pass family law legislation to help military parents (SB 1082) and on shared parenting and domestic violence reform bills. In 2007 and again this year, Robinson helped build a professional coalition to scuttle AB 612, a bill that would have banned target parents of Parental Alienation from raising PA as an issue in their cases.

Robinson has also been instrumental in passing legislation on paternity fraud (AB 252 and SB 1333), noncustodial parents’ access to school records (AB 164), Collaborative Law (AB 402, AB 189, AB 3051), and protection for disabled veterans with child support obligations (SB 285). He helped create the COAP program, which allows mothers and fathers who are unfairly saddled with inflated, unpayable child support arrearages to settle them for modest cash payments.

Michael Robinson is now Fathers & Families' full-time legislative representative in Sacramento, and we will be introducing several family court reform bills into the California legislature in February. Starting soon, Fathers & Families activists will be meeting with legislators throughout the state. We want your participation--to get involved, please click here.

Massachusetts

Enzo Pastore, our new deputy director, has worked on health care reform legislation in Washington DC, Albany, NY, and Boston, MA for 15 years. Pastore designed and promoted model prescription drug legislation that was introduced in 27 states in 2001. He led a successful legislative campaign in New York in 2007 to fund special housing for senior citizens and the disabled. In 2005, he helped defeat a federal Bush initiative that would have drastically cut Medicaid funding and services.

In January, we will launch our campaign to pass HB 1400, the Massachusetts Shared Parenting bill, and Pastore will be spearheading our campaign.

Through Fathers & Families’ efforts, over one-quarter of the Massachusetts Legislature has expressed clear, public support for our Shared Parenting Bill, many of them signing on as co-sponsors. We gathered thousands of signatures to place shared parenting on the 2004 Massachusetts ballot and led a successful campaign for its passage, winning 86% of the vote. Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick told the Legislature that if they pass Fathers & Families’ Shared Parenting, he will sign it, and F & F recently met with Governor Patrick.

We need volunteers to meet with legislators, do media work, and help build our campaign--to volunteer, please click here.

Federal Legislation, plus Legislation in Texas & Many Other States

Robinson has worked with legislators and staffers in many other states on military parent legislation, and many states have passed bills modeled in part on SB 1082, the military parents bill we passed in California in 2005. These include: Florida, North Carolina, Arizona, Ohio, Michigan, Oklahoma, Utah, Mississippi, Alaska, Missouri, and others.

Robinson worked with Texas Senator Jane Nelson to pass SB 279, a bill to protect military parents' custody rights which was signed by Texas Governor Rick Perry earlier this year.

Robinson worked with Mark Sullivan, Committee Chair of the Family Law Section of the American Bar Association's Military Committee, on the National Defense Reauthorization Act (HR 2647), which was signed by President Obama last month. The bill mandates that the Secretary of Defense produce a report on child custody litigation involving members of the Armed Forces, as well as international intrafamilial abductions of servicemembers' children.

The Secretary of Defense will submit its report to the Armed Services Committees of the Senate and the House of Representatives by the end of March. Robinson says:

"Fathers & Families can play a major role in the implementation of this legislation. We need to make sure that the impact isn't watered down, that it's powerful, not sugar-coated."

This problem affects both fathers and mothers who serve. If you are a military mother or father whose custody rights have been adversely affected due to your service, we want to make sure your story is included in the Secretary of Defense's report. To submit your story for inclusion, please fill out our form here.

Prominent Biotechnology Executive Mark Benedyk, PhD Joins Our Board of Directors

Dr. Benedyk is the head of The Pfizer Incubator, LLC, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Pfizer, Inc., the world’s largest research-based pharmaceutical company. The Pfizer Incubator was initiated by Pfizer to support life science start-ups and to explore novel approaches to discovering new medicines.

Dr. Benedyk has over 15 years experience in the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries, where he has been involved in business development, product management, and corporate fundraising. His business strategy and fundraising skills will be invaluable for Fathers & Families, and we welcome him as our newest national board member.

What You Can Do

Experienced legislative experts like Robinson and Pastore cost money, as does the organizational work we do surrounding their efforts--please make a tax-deductible gift to support our important work by clicking here.

One very affordable way to help build Fathers & Families is to make a monthly gift--to do so, click here and enter an amount under "monthly contribution."

The Family Court Reform Movement will not progress unless we engage in the political process on a professional level, as our opponents do.

Fathers & Families has the largest membership base, the highest media profile, the most funding, and now the best legislative advocates of any family court reform organization. The time to take this movement to a higher level is now, and it takes money to do it--please give generously by clicking here.

To volunteer to help, please click here.

Together with you in the love of our children,

Glenn Sacks, MA
Executive Director, Fathers & Families

Ned Holstein, M.D., M.S.
Founder, Chairman of the Board, Fathers & Families

"I am often astounded at the parenting arrangements I see that are anything but shared."

Longtime Fathers & Families supporter Lisa S. Ebert, JD, Director of Sponsored Programs and Research at the City University of New York, is a mother who shares parenting. Below, she tells her story.

Shared Parenting – It Should be the Norm
By Lisa S. Ebert, JD

My marriage ended almost five years ago. And of course we share the parenting of our two children equally. I say “of course” because I can’t imagine it any other way. I am often astounded at the parenting arrangements I see that are anything but shared.

My children, like so many others in society, have had to face the pain of parents who decided to divorce. Ours wasn’t a marriage where there were loud fights or infidelity or issues of drug or alcohol use, the kinds of issues where the children, while upset at the ending of the marriage, might also welcome the respite from some of those issues.

Rather, ours was a quiet ending to a good marriage that went bad. Our marriage was mired in painful and confusing issues which, from our 20 years together, seemed to both of us insurmountable. After it ended though, I never thought of us as a broken family. I thought of us as a family in which the parents were no longer married to each other.

We divided up the assets quietly and fairly among ourselves, and we share the custody of our children 50/50. Each month requires the two of us sitting down to coordinate calendars (he travels for work, I also travel occasionally) with the following rules in mind: the kids must have 3 nights in a row in one home, and we each have an equal amount of time with them. We split costs like tutors, clothes, summer camps, birthday parties and sporting events. For vacations, splurges, and other non-necessities, we are on our own.

Is it blissful? No, of course not. We sometimes have disagreements involving money, and parenting, as most parents do. Is it painful sometimes? Yes. My ex-husband and I were best friends for 20 years. Today, we hover between good acquaintances and captive co-parents. It is still difficult to hear my son’s occasional sorrow at not having both of his parents together for vacations anymore, or under the same roof for family game nights.

But we try, both of us, to make it easier on them and ourselves, in small but significant ways. We have “family nights” occasionally, playing a board game or watching a movie. We go out to dinner together about once a month, and we share traditional celebrations (with extended families) on birthdays and Christmas morning.

Granted, this is unusual. But it works for us. And my children seem to be thriving. I think my kids have learned, through this gradual process of replacing old traditions with new ones, that they are loved and secure and have two parents who are equally devoted to them.

Anyway, it’s not heroic. It shouldn’t be newsworthy. It’s simply co-parenting--putting the needs of your children front and center stage, over your own, to help them recover as best they can from the trauma of divorce. I hope to see it become the norm. I have every confidence that it will.

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