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.
If the husband isn't giving you a legitimate reason to grab up the kids and run for it and if he treats you well and with respect, it is YOUR DUTY as a woman and mother to stand by him through the poor times and weather them till the good ones return, not play horse changer in mid-stream.
Remember, you may not be as good as you THINK you are at choosing men the next time...Your ex MIGHT have been a stroke of luck you'll NEVER live to repeat!
Married Freepers just don't understand how slim the pickings are these days...whether at the local pub or the local church, most young, single women in this nation are Oprahtized, confused, money grubbing dingbats (or worse) that any man with a brain wouldn't have anything to do with! I know because I've dodged the bullet twice now. I'd like to think that "she" is out there, but the more I date and the more women I meet these days, the more pessimistic I get. If you're in college, I imagine you know exactly what I'm talking about.
Okay, flame away, you happily married folks who haven't been in the dating game for years.
Scouts Out! Cavalry Ho!
| Marry in haste, repent at leisure!
As for the reaction of the men in this article, simple algebra tells us that as 'repent' increases, the amount of time which constitutes 'haste' must also increase. For sufficiently high values of repent, haste becomes longer than the typical human lifespan. |
Has the women's vote caused this? Serious question with some nasty implications, but look at how our government has changed since that time.
While this may be true, the majority of children in fatherless homes were born out of wedlock. Men refusing to abstain from casual sex and their slavish donations to sperm banks has far more to do with this problem than the judicial system, yet men can't seem to see it. In some areas in Europe, children born out of wedlock has reached 75%. Think about that. 25%, 50%, 60%, and men couldn't see what was happening. Now they're demanding rights to their children, but what leverage do they have now that they have taken themselves out of the family.
Unfortunately, I don't see this changing any time soon. I saw another article in which young men said they were putting off marriage because they can get sex without it. What this means is that their female counterparts will be able to have babies without marrying them, but men can't seem to see this.
None of this is to disagree with the points made in the article above, but only to point out that there are other sides to this issue. Men have the power to put a stop to this, but are more interested in proving their manhood instead. Until men change their priorities, things will only get worse.
Overwhelmingly, men are the more "at risk" of the two sexes, given the way the State treats marriage and its dissolution. Add to that the prevalent belief among women that their troubles can be largely laid at men's door, and you have a formula for disaster. As if we could possibly make it worse, not even prenuptial contracts can safeguard a divorcing man's possessions, as judges in divorce actions now routinely discard them as the "fruits of emotional coercion."
There is no absolute defense. Even Miss Right can transform into Miss Militant Gender-War Feminist Harridan. That being the case, it's more of an act of bravery to marry in America today than it's ever been before, and I salute any man who's got the guts for it -- but I also commend the good sense of any man whose doubts about how his marital enterprise might end cause him to shy away from the altar.
Marriage is not for the dubious, the grasping, the self-absorbed, or the faint of heart. If you're one of these, spend a couple of years in the Army and get straightened out and toughened up first. You owe it to your children-to-be.
Freedom, Wealth, and Peace,
Francis W. Porretto
Visit the Palace Of Reason: http://palaceofreason.com
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.
We're all so conditioned to viewing men as bad guys that it has blinded us to the observation that government is operating a system that routinely rips fathers out of their childrens' lives. This is a very weird thing to have in a human society. I can't think of any examples from history of a society where government took human young away from their parents on a routine basis. This is inhuman, and that we do it at all tells us that our government and our culture fundamentally view men as sub-human animals. One would not do this to human beings.