'deadbeat dads' is unfair totally missed the picture. Because most of these fathers are at or below poverty level, most likely their children are also living at or below poverty level. A payment of even $100 per month would be a significant asset for these children.

"Even a meager contribution -- paid regularly -- could mean decent clothing, school supplies such as a computer or maybe even more groceries. And the reason these fathers owe so much money is that they are not contributing one dime to their children's care.

"Family courts are quite capable of dealing with unemployment or health problems, but those dads who are working and who choose not to make any contribution to the well-being of their own offspring rightly belong in jail."

What the judge doesn't seem to understand is that by creating artificially large arrearages (and a draconian enforcement system), the state drives fathers--many of whom would ordinarily pay something and try to stay a part of their children's lives--underground.

There were also a couple sympathetic letters by L. Huggins and Robert Gartner.

How Fathers Fall Behind

Since When Beating up on 'Deadbeat Dads' is Unfair (Houston Chronicle, 1/7/07) I've received numerous letters from Texas fathers caught in the child support system. One letter, from "Bill", provides a nice example of what the child support system sometimes does to men. Bill writes:

"I was assessed child support of $1,100 in Oct 2005 which was 30 percent of my income. I notified the judge I had just lost my teaching job in September, 2005. She yelled 'too late!' and banged the gavel.

"I have been out of work and homeless for 14 months, living in my van and now a storage locker, surviving by selling my possessions. I got a job at Wal-Mart in December 2006 making $1200 a month. I assumed they'd take 30 percent out, but I just got a letter from the state of Texas they'll still be taking out $1,100.

"I can't make it to work without gas money, car payment, insurance and phone. I will have to quit and go work under the table again. Please help! I have a Masters in music Ed. but in Houston they will only hire beginning teachers to save the districts money!"
 

I've commented on the film "Pursuit of Happyness" in my co-authored column Dads Finally Get Fair Shake in the Media (Chicago Sun-Times, 12/24/06), and also on my blog at Feminist Blogger Says It's OK to Abandon Your Kid for 'a Better Life'--if You're a Woman. I think it's an important film.

John Maguire is the Managing Editor of The Liberator, the American Coalition for Fathers and Children's sixteen page Shared Parenting print publication which is mailed quarterly to state and federal officeholders.

Maguire has an interesting new article out called Legislators concerned about families must see the movie 'Pursuit of Happyness'. The article is available on the ACFC's website here.

To join the discussion on this issue, click here.
 

As I've previously noted, over the past year feminist groups comprising what I call the "Feminist Family Law Movement" (FFLM) have been increasingly worried about the fatherhood movement. In particular, the FFLM asserts that family law courts are biased against mothers, and that abusive and/or molesting fathers are using false claims of Parental Alienation Syndrome to win custody of their children away from loving, protective mothers. This was the theme, for example, of PBS's anti-father film Breaking the Silence: Children's Stories.

At last year's conference there was an enormous amount of criticism of our movement and yours truly, particularly over our coalition's successful campaign against Breaking the Silence (I was told that retired family law judge Sol Gothard was particularly beautiful, explaining to the conference at some length what a terrible person I am).

As I've previously mentioned, the Genia Shockome case is one of the leading cause celebres of the BMCC and the FFLM. Mo Hannah, Chair of the BMCC, is one of Shockome's most visible supporters. In honor of this year's BMCC, I have co-authored a new column, Shockome Syndrome. In the column, which runs over 5,000 words, Mike McCormick, Executive Director of the American Coalition for Fathers and Children, and I explain:

"'Shockome Syndrome' [is] the Feminist Family Law Movement's predilection for making cause celebres out of alienating, deceitful mothers who lost custody not because of biased family law courts but instead because they abused or mistreated their children. The media's tendency to believe the FFLM's claims and make heroines out of these mothers is part of Shockome Syndrome, as is the enormous pressure brought to bear on the family law judges who held these mothers accountable for their actions.

"The effect of Shockome Syndrome is exactly what the FFLM intends. Shockome Syndrome makes it harder for decent, loving fathers to preserve their relationships with their children in the face of false accusations and parental alienation. Yet as noxious as Shockome Syndrome is, it's a disease with an easy cure--a dose of skepticism."

To read the full column, click here. To join the discussion of this new column on my new blog, click here.

Last fall Newsweek magazine made Genia Shockome out to be a heroine in their article Why Parents Who Batter Win Custody (9/25/06). Newsweek's Sarah Childress wrote:

"It took six years for Genia Shockome to gather the courage to leave her husband, Tim. He pushed her, kicked her and insulted her almost from the moment they married in 1994, she says. She tried to start over with their children when the family moved from Texas to Poughkeepsie, N.Y. It didn't last long. Tim called her constantly at work and, after they split up, pounded on her door and screamed obscenities...The judge sided with Tim. This summer he was granted full custody of the kids, now 11 and 9. Genia was barred from contacting them."

In my co-authored column Shockome Syndrome we looked a little deeper at the Shockome case. We wrote:

"The FFLM's current 'Custody-Visitation Scandal' cause celebre is Genia Shockome, a New York mother who in 2003 lost custody of her two children, now ages 11 and 9, to her ex-husband, Tim Shockome. Genia claims that Tim had abused her during their marriage, which ended in 2000. She has drawn support from officials from many branches of the National Organization for Women, as well as from Justice for Children, the Battered Mothers' Custody Conference, Stop Family Violence, and much of the feminist blogosphere.

"Shockome's case gained national attention when she was jailed for 30 days for contempt of court by Poughkeepsie Family Court judge Damian Amodeo in May, 2005. The New York Post reported that Genia, a seven months pregnant 'Mother of the Year,' was sent 'to prison over Mother's Day,' and portrayed Shockome as a heroic mother resisting a tyrannical judge. The FFLM, including many feminist bloggers, organized a petition drive to free Genia and to get Amodeo removed from the New York State Matrimonial Commission.

"On a superficial level, Genia appears to be an excellent poster child for the types of injustices the FFLM highlights. A closer look at the Shockome case, however, reveals as many problems with the FFLM's characterization of it as one could take the time to name."

To read the full article and learn what the media and Genia's supporters didn't tell you, click here.  To discuss the article and the case, click here. To read the court documents from the Shockome case, click here.

Would You Believe Genia Shockome?

In Shockome Syndrome we discuss in some detail the problems with the way the feminists and the media are depicting the highly-publicized Genia Shockome case. Let's leave aside, for a moment, all this evidence and just consider the following question--if you were a family law judge, and Genia Shockome walked into your courtroom, would you believe her claims? Based on the court records and Genia's out-of-court statements, we wrote the following:

"Genia Shockome's supporters expected Judge Amodeo--who was presented with no evidence of any violence against Genia beyond her own statements--to simply take her word for it, and allow her to destroy the bonds between the Shockome children and their father [Tim Shockome].

"Genia claims that a video filmed at the visitation center which shows her kids jumping up and down on a couch actually shows them masturbating--an interpretation which no other participant in the court proceedings shared. To this day Genia accuses Tim of all of the following: being a pedophile who got sexually aroused by changing his daughter's dirty diapers; sexually abusing his children; masturbating in front of his children; taking his children to a sexual store; having a ferocious sexual appetite for women; having a ferocious homosexual appetite for men; being an abusive father who 'beat the kids very often, 2-3 times a day' when Genia and Tim lived together; being a wife-beater; secretly beating his former wife who had a secret miscarriage; beating Genia so she almost had a miscarriage; intimidating five of Genia's witnesses; insurance fraud, identity theft; immigration fraud; defrauding the federal government of $60,000; stealing; embezzlement; extortion; bankruptcy fraud; almost driving over Genia's neighbor's little son; and of violating a protection order over one million times. To say that Genia Shockome lacks credibility is like saying Attila the Hun had bad table manners--what judge in his right mind would take this woman's word for anything?"

To discuss the article and the case, click here.

I've written before about the child protective and foster care system's anti-father bias--see my co-authored column New Report: Foster Care System Disregards Fathers (Boston Globe, 6/8/06) and also my E-newsletter entry Los Angeles Foster Care Outrage--Father, Daughter Separated for 10 Years (7/19/06). Below is an interesting letter from one of my readers who works with Child Protective Services. He writes:

"Had a case last week where the mother beat the daylights out of the15 yr old daughter...again...and I had to do a 'safety plan' to get the family to avoid a similar type incident. After 3 hours or working with the mother AND father (they're divorced--I insisted that the father be there since daughter was with him for parenting time that day and mom picked the child up without his knowledge!), they came up with a 'plan' of sorts. The CPS worker would not let or consider giving the father any services but only mother. 

"The daughter WANTED to live with her father due to the abuse she has endured over the years from the mother. What had to happen was that father had to file in court for custody of the daughter, yet the mother was going to receive services.  Father filing for guardianship was not an option from CPS or the mother.

"What this really is...a father was finally able to file for custody of his child but none of the agencies involved (except for mine cause I forced the issue) were going to help the father get custody of his daughter. So, it's going to cost the father a ton of money for the same thing that could have been taken care of through guardianship but the agencies involved would not help."

To join the discussion on this issue, click here.

It is said that you can learn a lot about a person from what they say about others. This axiom applies to this news release--Woman's Day/AOL Poll Reveals Majority of Married Women Would Reconsider Their Spouses: 36% Would Not Marry Their Husbands If They Could Re-Do Their 'I Do' & Another 20% Not Sure:

"A new poll from Woman's Day magazine and AOL.com finds over a third (36%) of married women would not marry their husbands if they had to do it all over again, with another 20% saying they weren't sure if they would or not. The complete poll findings are highlighted in the February issue of Woman's Day magazine...The poll, which surveyed over 3,000 American married women, provides insight into a variety of issues, including flirting, infidelity, soul mates, bedtime habits, honesty, jealousy and pop culture."

I'm skeptical about these survey results--the survey's methodology is not available, and Internet polls are notoriously unreliable. Looking at the page for their next survey--click here--it appears to be a casual, self-selected survey. In addition to the findings on whether married women would marry their husbands again if they had it to do all over, they also found that "33% of all wives sleep in the nude," a finding I find extremely difficult to believe.

On a similar note, a recent University of Queensland study addressed this issue. According to Look out for 12-year itch boys, (Sydney Daily Telegraph, 1/4/07):

"Traditionally it may be the man who gets on bended knee and asks The Question but statistically it is the woman who 12 years later decides she's had enough and files for divorce...According to a new report it is still the woman who initiates separation, while men tick the 'I don't know' box as to why their marriage ended.

"A University of Queensland study examined the gender differences between men and women and found women were not only more likely to initiate separation - they were also more inclined to cite more reasons for the breakdown.

"Cue the cartoon of the baffled man shrugging his shoulders while his weary wife packs her bags... Despite the cold, hard statistics men are still asking the question and women are still saying yes -- 100,000 couples every year say 'I do.'

"But on average about 12 years later 64 per cent of women will start divorce proceedings.

"The 'It's not you - it's me' rationalization [is often] dolled out to stunned men..."

When a man honestly doesn't know why his wife divorced him--and many men are caught completely by surprise and honestly don't know--I find it very hard to believe we can fairly throw the blame for the divorce onto him. If he were doing something genuinely wrong, such as cruelty or adultery, he wouldn't usually be surprised at the break-up.

Whenever we're discussing the subject of women's marital unhappiness, we always focus on what men are doing to make these women unhappy. It never seems to occur to anybody that the problem might be the fact that women are far more critical of men, in any situation, than men are of women.

Fix up a single male friend and a single female friend. They go on a date but don't hit it off. Ask the man what happened and he'll say "it went OK." Ask her and she'll give you eight different reasons why he's not right for her, he's this, he's not that, etc., and you might well get a brief lecture on how could you be so foolish to set her up with him.

In marriage, women's excessively critical nature turns into marital dissatisfaction. Much of what happens in marriage counseling is an utter scam, for the simple reason that the marriage's "problems" are why she's unhappy with him, what he does to make her unhappy, what he doesn't do that he should be doing, etc. It could just as easily be the guy explaining why he's unhappy because she doesn't do this, this and this, and why he's unhappy because she does this, this and this, but it rarely is.

In this common situation, there are two possibilities--either she's a great wife and he's a lousy husband, or she's far more critical of him than he is of her. The vast majority of the time, it's the latter, and the basis for discussion, is, frankly, a fraud.

As we've mentioned many times, the vast majority of divorces are initiated by women, not men. Sometimes the women have ample reason, such as abuse or, more likely, infidelity. But in a large number of divorces there is no compelling reason--it is women's hypercritical nature which often creates her unhappiness, and her actions end up hurting her husband and her children.

The divorce epidemic has harmed our children and our society. The fact that women have been able to almost completely escape any responsibility for it is one of the great public relations feats of our time.

For the "women divorce men because women have to do most of the work in their families" crowd, I suggest you read my column Are American Husbands Slackers? (Tallahassee Democrat, 3/22/06). For the "it's not true that most divorces are initiated by women--men dump their wives for younger models" faction, see my column The Rise in 'Gray Divorce': It's Always Hubby's Fault (Houston Chronicle, 2/19/06).

To join the discussion on this issue, click here.

From Swedish women to overtake stupid men (12/20/06), an amazing article from a Swedish newspaper:

"Swedish men are less intelligent, lonelier and fatter than their female counterparts, a new study claims. Boys have fallen way behind in school, and there are more women than men studying some traditionally male university subjects."

Sounds sad, right? Not for some Swedish feminists.

"'In twenty years men's dominance will be broken and women will have more power in society. There will be more female CEO's and the wage gap will favour women,' researcher Ingemar Gens told magazine Attention."

I love it--boys struggling in school and men being lonely is just breaking "men's dominance."

"Experts have also observed that smart women are struggling to find common ground with members of the opposite sex.

"'There will soon be a large collective of uneducated, low-paid men who don't have any friends, and are unmarried and alone - as well as uninteresting for women looking for a relationship.'

"'This is already happening, but the problem is beginning to accelerate. This is a huge danger for men,' said Gens."

Don't celebrate yet, however--men will still find a way to rig things so they come out on top:

"While reaching consensus about a sort of ongoing male crisis, not all those Attention spoke to were certain that this would eventually lead to women assuming greater control.

"'The power of the patriarchy is so great that education and similar factors are not so important.'

"'Other things play a bigger role, such as short-cuts and networks for example," said Malena Rydell, managing editor of feminist magazine Bang.'"

One of the many things which annoy me about this article is its "You go, girl" celebration of men's struggles. When women pursue careers and achieve, we men are supposed to stand back, applaud and encourage. I consider myself one of these men, having been the primary caregiver for our children for 8½ years as my wife moved up in her career, went to law school, and became a member of the California Bar. Yet as soon as women achieve more than men, men become mocked, lame losers who are pitied at best. It's not fair to men, and it isn't particularly conducive to feminist goals, either.

I've never been one to get worked up over Affirmative Action, and I do favor it in some ways. Yet let's consider Frederik and Helga, two hypothetical Swedish applicants for a professorship at a major Swedish university. They're more or less equally qualified, so Helga gets the job. Then the jobless Frederik, a liberal man who has always passively supported women's progress, gets to hear how wonderful it is that Helga is achieving, and that men like him who have fallen behind are losers. Is that fair?

I've written about the boy crisis in education many times--to pick one, see Start of School Very Different for Parents of Boys, Parents of Girls (Washington Times, Albuquerque Journal, Omaha World-Herald, 9/12/04)

To join the discussion on this issue, click here.
 

From the Reuters article New twins makes Spaniard world's oldest mum at 67:

"A 67-year-old Spanish woman became the world's oldest new mother on Saturday when she gave birth to twins, a Barcelona hospital said.

"The woman, who became pregnant after receiving IVF treatment in Latin America, gave birth by caesarean section, a spokeswoman at the Hospital de la Santa Creu i San Pau told Reuters.

"Both the woman, from the southern Spanish region of Andalucia, and babies were in good health, the hospital said, although the new-borns had been placed in an incubator.

"The unidentified woman, who was giving birth for the first time, is one year older than Romanian Adriana Iliescu who had a baby girl in January 2005 at the age of 66. She had been pregnant with twins, but one died in the womb.

"The hospital declined to give the woman's name or specify the sex of the babies.

"The new mother will spend at least another four or five days in the hospital, which has a unit specializing in high-risk births, the spokeswoman said."

The continuing escalating ages at which senior citizen women--by use of increasingly advanced medical technology--are having kids is the height of selfishness and asininity. The asininity also applies to the way the media often applauds with a "Gee, isn't that wonderful and amazing" when a new record is set.

I'm not even speaking of the fact that when this selfish unnamed Spanish woman's twins become teenagers--and can start getting into real trouble--she will be 80 years old. If she happens to still be alive. Or that by the time her twins graduate high school, she'll be 85. Or that her twins have no father.

What really annoys me about this is the greatly increased chance that one or both of these children will be born with a birth defect or other ailment which might not even be apparent until the child is much older. What decent person would want to put a child through that?

To join the discussion on this issue, click here.

Best Wishes,
Glenn Sacks
GlennSacks.com

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