Posted on 06/15/2004 4:36:34 PM PDT by kiki04
Air-Brushing Dads Out Of The Picture June 9, 2004 by Carey Roberts
When Vladimir Lenin seized power in 1917, he knew full well that the traditional family would fiercely resist his grand scheme to consolidate state power. So he set out to ruthlessly destroy the family.
Lenin banned church weddings. Women were sent out to work in the factories and the fields. Communal dining halls, sewing centers, and day care facilities were established. Abortion was legalized. Divorce became a simple administrative routine.
So it's an interesting coincidence that over the last 30 years, an unholy alliance of feminists and liberals has also targeted the traditional family for radical transformation. In particular, they put fatherhood into their ideological cross-hairs. Father Knows Best became an anathema.
Feminists began their campaign by turning the meaning of Patriarch on its head. They changed it from a term of veneration into a word of contempt. Fathers were smeared as "patriarchal oppressors" who imposed "male hegemony" on their wives and children.
Once men had been placed on the defensive, the fem-liberals preceded to float one myth after another. Sadly, these four claims are now accepted by many Americans without question or doubt:
Men routinely batter their wives. They break up marriages. Fathers often abuse their children. Dads don't pay their child support.
But let's stop to examine the facts:
Women are just as likely to initiate domestic violence as men. Two-thirds of divorces are initiated by wives. According to a 2002 government report, "The vast majority of children were maltreated by one parent, usually the mother." Fathers who have a job and are given access to their children almost always make their child support obligations. Once the myths were firmly entrenched, feminists began to push through laws that were billed as protecting and empowering women. But they really had the effect of marginalizing dads. These programs included the Violence Against Women Act, no-fault divorce laws, and a draconian child support bureaucracy. And welfare benefits to low-income women were cut off if the father still lived at home.
And the calumnies didn't stop. Fathers were stereotyped as insensitive buffoons and as a bad influence on boys who needed to get in touch with their inner child. In short, dads were non-essential.
These efforts to undermine fatherhood were, by any objective measure, extraordinarily successful. In 1960, only 8% of children did not live with their dads. By 1996, this figure had tripled to 25%, making the United States the world leader in fatherless families.
Among Blacks, the problem reached crisis proportions. In 1950, only 17% of births were to unmarried women. By 1990, out-of-wedlock births reached 65%. So by 1996, 58% of Black kids lived with their mother only.
But the story doesn't stop there.
Family disruption begets social pathology - we know that from what happened in Soviet Russia. The fem-liberals didn't want to be blamed for the social chaos that was certain to ensue.
Somehow they had to cover their tracks.
So they concocted the Mother of All Myths -- the Abandoning Dad, the countless hordes of men who would desert family and home to indulge in a midlife fling. (Why adulterous women are routinely given a free pass remains a mystery to me.) This vastly exaggerated urban legend, endlessly recycled in women's magazines and daytime TV programs, would serve to divert public attention away from the disastrous social legislation that spawned father absence.
The rise of fatherlessness in our country did not occur because dads decided one day to get up and leave. It happened because they were pushed out.
But the myths became so deeply engrained, and fathers so completely vilified, that no one is willing to listen to their side of the story any more.
What we have witnessed is a case study in mass re-education and social transformation. Tearing down age-old social institutions without offering a viable alternative - that's the legacy of socialism over all these years.
bump for wendy
Thought you might like this one also, just keep it nice, I know a lot of people who posted on the last one had a lot of bad personal experiences and took it out on each other.
The point is not who gets screwed in family court, there are snakes on both sides, but rather why, and how it can be stopped. Children need both parents in their lives.
Who would, more than likely, get an abortion - a left-wanger or right-wanger?
Could've made a difference in Floridah...
The tentacles of the subversives are diversified, widespread and deep into the fabric of our country.
http://www.uhuh.com/nwo/communism/comgoals.htm
40. Discredit the family as an institution. Encourage promiscuity and easy divorce.
... using many of the same methods set down by the hand of the murderous Master:
Lenin banned church weddings. Women were sent out to work in the factories and the fields. ... day care facilities were established. Abortion was legalized. Divorce became a simple administrative routine.
Most feminists are liberals. All liberals are socialists. Therefore, most feminists are socialists.
Without a doubt, NOTHING is more important to the welfare of a child, male or female than a good daddy.
When I dislike my hubby or he dislikes me, our kids come first.
I just couldn't imagine raising children without their father.
Isn't there a website, www.mannotincluded.com?????
It used to peeve off so many women back in the '70s when they would say that my dad could never take care of a baby as well as they did. Then he did better. LOL!
There is a large movement called ifeminist. Basically, ifeminist believe in individual responsibility, not a patriarcal conspericy. Most of us are very conservative, antiabortion, and want a return to traditional gender roles for the benifit of the family. A woman's primary job, when she is married and has children, is to keep the harmony of the family structure. Try telling that to a marxist-feminisht (traditional feminist), and you get bashed. The marxist-feminist cares nothing for family, only for personal gains. They don't care what happens to the child in this situation, only the woman.
I may stay at home, but I *am* an equal in my relationship with my husband. We are a team. I may not bring home a paycheck, but my rewards are greater than money could ever be to me.
True, but nothing in this article, or in my experience, suggests that the "traditional" family structure is necessarily superior to other non-government-supported family structures. All the ills described in this article can plausibly be attributed to the rise of the welfare state, creating a situation in which people don't perceive the need for ANY kind of family, since if they get in any type of serious financial and/or health trouble, they're entitled to government support. That transforms the notion of family into a simple pleasure-seeking arrangement, like belonging to the country club, which in turn leads to many "family" units which are no more stable or interdependent than social club affiliations.
Lots of family structures worked well in the pre-welfare era -- widowers with live-in sisters or female cousins who took on the homemaker-mother role, parents and their married or unmarried adult children maintaining a joint household, siblings maintaining a household together, etc. Non-traditional family structures only started being hotbeds of pathology when the government welfare schemes arrived.
ping
If children don't have a father in their life it leads to pathology in both girls and boys.....I read an article once that did a survey on all the males in prison. The majority of them had some relationship with the mother and would send a card to her for mother's day. The vast majority had no relationship to a father and would not send any cards out on Father's Day.
I thought it was very telling and explained why blacks are in jail at a much higher number.....there is a much higher desertion rate by fathers in black "families".
Thanks, Shag. Carey does good work. I popped a message or two to her, but she doesn't answer me. LOL
I'll ask her for republishing permission. All of us should do the same. Her work needs to be propagated more if she's in it for getting the word out.
I thought Carey was male. :)
http://www.renewamerica.us/columns/roberts
He posted an new article a bit ago, and he is always featured on www.ifeminist.com
"I know a lot of people who posted on the last one had a lot of bad personal experiences and took it out on each other."
I missed that one. There are also popularity cliques, which perceptions about popularity sometimes lead to bad publishing decisions that tend to isolate us from mainstreaming with larger interests (like some adhering to the Newdow/Pledge weirdness, "Outright" Libertarians for homosexual "marriage," etc.--very antithetical to conservatism and fatherhood and more at home in Democrat fora).
If we can reject vanities, we'll win quickly.
That, and when many men started playing the "Eve card" as the trump card in their seemingly neverending quest for casual sexual gratification, at the expense of society.
Back in the good old days, it really wasn't all that good for most women.Hello people! Women had to fight for the right to vote andown property in the USA!
Those who refuse to learn from history, are doomed to repeat it!
" thought Carey was male. :)
http://www.renewamerica.us/columns/roberts
"
Then who's the blonde woman (about thirty-ish, slim face) whose columns were published by Mike? ...could've sworn those pictures were with Carey's columns!
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