Posted on 07/06/2002 5:00:19 AM PDT by buccaneer81
A 'marriage strike' emerges as men decide not to risk loss
By Glenn Sacks and Dianna Thompson
Katherine is attractive, successful, witty, and educated. She also can't find a husband. Why? Because most of the men this thirtysomething software analyst dates do not want to get married. These men have Peter Pan syndrome: They refuse to commit, refuse to settle down, and refuse to "grow up."
However, given the family court policies and divorce trends of today, Peter Pan is no naive boy, but instead a wise man.
"Why should I get married and have kids when I could lose those kids and most of what I've worked for at a moment's notice?" asks Dan, a 31-year-old power plant technician who says he will never marry.
"I've seen it happen to many of my friends. I know guys who came home one day to an empty house or apartment - wife gone, kids gone. They never saw it coming. Some of them were never able to see their kids regularly again."
Census figures suggest that the marriage rate in the United States has dipped 40 percent during the last four decades to its lowest point since the rate was measured. There are many plausible explanations for this trend, but one of the least mentioned is that American men, in the face of a family court system hopelessly stacked against them, have subconsciously launched a "marriage strike."
It is not difficult to see why. Let's say that Dan defies Peter Pan, marries Katherine, and has two children. There is a 50 percent likelihood that this marriage will end in divorce within eight years, and if it does, the odds are 2-1 it will be Katherine, not Dan, who initiates the divorce. It may not matter that Dan was a decent husband. Studies show that few divorces are initiated over abuse or because the man has already abandoned the family. Nor is adultery cited as a factor by divorcing women appreciably more than by divorcing men.
While the courts may grant Dan and Katherine joint legal custody, the odds are overwhelming that it is Katherine, not Dan, who will win physical custody. Overnight, Dan, accustomed to seeing his kids every day and being an integral part of their lives, will become a "14 percent dad" - a father who is allowed to spend only one out of every seven days with his own children.
Once Katherine and Dan are divorced, odds are at least even that Katherine will interfere with Dan's visitation rights.
Three-quarters of divorced men surveyed say their ex-wives have interfered with their visitation, and 40 percent of mothers studied admitted that they had done so, and that they had generally acted out of spite or in order to punish their exes.
Katherine will keep the house and most of the couple's assets. Dan will need to set up a new residence and pay at least a third of his take-home pay to Katherine in child support.
As bad as all of this is, it would still make Dan one of the lucky ones. After all, he could be one of those fathers who cannot see his children at all because his ex has made a false accusation of domestic violence, child abuse, or child molestation. Or a father who can only see his own children under supervised visitation or in nightmarish visitation centers where dads are treated like criminals.
He could be one of those fathers whose ex has moved their children hundreds or thousands of miles away, in violation of court orders, which courts often do not enforce. He could be one of those fathers who tears up his life and career again and again in order to follow his children, only to have his ex-wife continually move them.
He could be one of the fathers who has lost his job, seen his income drop, or suffered a disabling injury, only to have child support arrearages and interest pile up to create a mountain of debt which he could never hope to pay off. Or a father who is forced to pay 70 percent or 80 percent of his income in child support because the court has imputed an unrealistic income to him. Or a dad who suffers from one of the child support enforcement system's endless and difficult to correct errors, or who is jailed because he cannot keep up with his payments. Or a dad who reaches old age impoverished because he lost everything he had in a divorce when he was middle-aged and did not have the time and the opportunity to earn it back.
"It's a shame," Dan says. "I always wanted to be a father and have a family. But unless the laws change and give fathers the same right to be a part of their children's lives as mothers have, it just isn't worth the risk."
Dianna Thompson is the founder and executive director of the American Coalition for Fathers and Children. She can be contacted by e-mail at DThompson2232@aol.com. Glenn Sacks writes about gender issues from the male perspective. He invites readers' comments at Glenn@GlennSacks.com.
Society has a problem when one might consider prison as a desirable solution to this situation. $940 per month is WAY more than it costs to cloth and feed a kid.
Yeah, and she makes 40k to boot.
Pre-nups can address some of this, if they're properly drafted and the court upholds them. However, it is very common for the court to decide that the pre-nup shouldn't be enforced for any number of reasons--for example, the man and the woman should each have their own lawyer rather than having one lawyer write the agreement for both of them.
Plus state laws vary, so what's valid in one state might not be in another. And some states limit the length of time that a pre-nup can be enforced. I believe, for example, that California law kills all pre-nups after seven years of marriage. Supposedly, that was one of the reasons Tom Cruise divorced Nicole Kidman--their seventh anniversary was approaching and he didn't want her to escape the limits of their pre-nup.
My attorney (also a divorce lawyer) agrees. He only half-jokingly tells me if I ever get married to spend a lot of money on a prenuptial agreement...it justs makes a divorce a more lucrative challenge for a good divorce attorney.
See The Feminist Absurdity, for an analysis of the irrationality of Feminism. See The Lies Of Socialism, for the more general Leftist War on reality.
It is obvious from a great many psychological signs, that we are designed to seek mates; that that pursuit is the most important pursuit in life. Where so many rationalize reasons to forgo the quest, we have a very sick society. This needs to be addressed; but of course it will not be, until we start electing hard nosed Conservatives to a lot more positions of authority.
William Flax Return Of The Gods Web Site
I agree 100%. But I have yet to see a woman without a committee. There is at least one, usually more, that knows how to hint, then retreat, suggest, then retreat, tell a negative tale, then retreat, until the woman has for all practical purposes made a decison and thinks it is her own. I know this because I have eavesdropped, shamelessly. And when you confront her with the conversation, she is totally unaware anything like that went on and will deny it vehemently. 
Good question!! It could be true. Many women pay little attention to politics and politicians. They trust the advice of Oprah, Katie Couric, the local NEA, or any "strong" NOW actvist to whom the media give face time. Being easily swayed politically, many women also have very strong "herd instincts" - making them a great Voting Bloc! And with their preferred "minority status" there are politicians falling all over themselves to accommodate their wishes.
She's aware. She just thinks that by denying, you will beleive her and think that no such conversation ever takes place.
Some basic FAQs:
If my partner and I live together long enough, won't we have a common law marriage?
Contrary to popular belief, even if two people live together for a certain number of years, if they don't intend to be married and present themselves to others as a married couple, there is no common law marriage. More particularly, a common law marriage can occur only when:
1. a heterosexual couple lives together in a state that recognizes common law marriages
2. for a significant period of time (not defined in any state)
3. holding themselves out as a married couple -- typically this means using the same last name, referring to the other as "my husband" or "my wife" and filing a joint tax return, and
4. intending to be married.
Unless all four are true, there is no common law marriage. When a common law marriage exists, the couple must go through a formal divorce to end the relationship.
Which states recognize common law marriage? Common law marriage is recognized only in the following states:
Alabama
Colorado
District of Columbia
Georgia (if created before 1/1/97)
Idaho (if created before 1/1/96)
Iowa
Kansas
Montana
New Hampshire (for inheritance purposes only)
Ohio (if created before 10/10/91)
Oklahoma
Pennsylvania
Rhode Island
South Carolina
Texas
Utah
| Men who choose poorly shouldn't complain so much about the consequences of their own choices
Suppose tomorrow it is decided that a divorcing woman may, as easily as she can now get a restraining order, have her husband shot. She goes down to the courthouse, fills out a little form, and they send a sheriff out to shoot the husband dead. I agree that today this seems preposterous, but maybe in ten years or so this will be seen as the next logical step. At that point, will you still be saying that, "Well, men have to live with the consequences. They have to be more careful about whom they marry." It just seems to me that at some point that whole line of argument becomes ridiculous. If we have young men avoiding marriage in droves, that is a signal that it is already ridiculous. I don't think this discussion is useful to the extent that we pretend that we're fixing anything by telling people that they need to make better decisions. We might save a few heartaches doing that, but we are not going to produce perfect people, and human beings are not going to stop making mistakes. The issue is more properly what system awaits those who make such mistakes, however many there are. Even if there were only one divorce per year in the United States, we would not want it to be administered by government in as unjust and capricious a fashion as is the norm today. |
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Permit me a bit of reductio ad absurdum. For what you said to make sense, there has to be some reasonable association between the size of the mistake and the size of the penalty for making it. What this thread is about is that the penalty for making these sorts of mistakes has been increasing, to the point where they are now quite onerous and intolerable, but seemingly only for men (with some minuscule number of exceptions). My question is, at what point does it no longer make sense to pretend that men are not only responsible for making the mistake, but they are prohibited from complaining about the size of the penalty for making it, or about the fact that they are singled out by sex to pay the entire penalty for what was probably a two-person mistake?