Divorce, Child Custody, and "Traditionalism" (A Worthless Word)

TooGood Reports ^ | 3/14/02 | Isaiah Flair

[Good Tidings Of Great Joy]

Rudy Giuliani, the former Mayor of New York City, was denied the time he sought to spend with his own children.

This is how American divorce courts treat fathers, purely out of anti-fatherhood sexism. Even a father who did so much for the city of New York, and by extension for the spirit of all America, cannot get fair treatment from the divorce courts.

I don't agree with Rudy Giuliani on a number of things, and his affair with Judith Nathan is one of them.

However, he is by every credible account a good father, and that must be the pre-eminent consideration in his child custody proceedings.

He should not, just as millions of other faultless fathers should not, have been reduced to being merely a visitor in the lives of his own children.

The whole concept of child-custody proceedings as a winner-take-all situation, heavily weighted against even the best fathers, is ridiculous.

So are the words of the judge in Rudy Giuliani's case, as she rejected his bid to spend more time with his own children:

"A more traditional visitation schedule reflects the historical division of responsibility for the children in this family," she said.

What on Earth does "traditional" mean, so used? That fathers being reduced to every-other-weekend visitors in the lives of their own children is now something "traditional"?

So used, the word "traditional" is now a word that means nothing. Is the single-mom welfare scenario now "traditional" because it has been prevalent for a few decades?

Is anything that has become the status quo for thirty years or more "traditional" no matter how socioculturally deleterious it may be?

By every measure, children from homes where the father is not majorly involved are more likely to get into drug use, crime, violence, and all manner of things not good for them.

Are these things "traditional"? Has the feminist counterculture become the Establishment Culture in these United States?

Actually, the answer is yes, it has.

And according to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, "traditional" is defined as "an inherited, established, or customary pattern of thought, action, or behavior (as a religious practice or a social custom)".

Under that definition, fatherless homes, and mistreatment of fathers in child custody cases, qualifies, technically, as "traditional". Which is one reason I don't believe in traditionalism as a concept.

I do, however, believe in Fatherhood. And our society complains so much about those fathers who abandon their children, while totally disrespecting the millions of fathers who want to spend all the time they can with their children.

The latter breeds the former, folks.

Enough is enough, and it's time for a change.

There must be in every state in the nation a legislatively instituted presumption of joint residential child custody, to be shared by both parents, in the event of a divorce.

There are a small percentage of parents who are unsuited to child custody due to their criminal histories. Thus the rebuttability of the presumption. However, most parents are decent people. The fathers are, and the mothers are. To suggest that either of them is less capable or less valuable as a parent, for sons and daughters alike, is pure, undiluted sexism.

Children, whether infants or teenagers or any age in between, need their fathers and their mothers equally.

Equally in terms of actual time spent.

Traditional, not traditional, I don't care.

The word has become less than meaningless.

Joint residential custody is the right thing to do.

And it is the best interests of the children, not to mention society at large.

In lieu of legal protection for fatherhood, every single other address of every other social problem is simply spitting in the wind.

[Good Tidings Of Great Joy]

True.

[Good Tidings Of Great Joy]

Jurisdog: You have laid out nothing. You started with negative comments, and then complained when two or three posters returned such in kind.

All you have offered is bias.

You want specific case-by-case examples?

Check out Mens News Daily or Dads Against The Divorce Industry, or simply run a google.com search on Father's Rights. Case-by-case examples are legion.

You claim massive amounts of invisible support, while throwing out ad hominem attacks to Nick Danger and others.

Meanwhile, your bias supercedes common sense: children need both parents, and they need them in the same time-proportion that they had them while the marriage held. Such joint residential custody arrangements are not the norm at all, and need to be.

[Proud2BAmerican]

Recently read a study that showed kids raised by single dads are better off than kids raised by single moms.

[Nick Danger]

I'm still waiting for a serious attempt to point out some specific instances of bias that seem unfair or harsh.

Your insistence that the only legitimate analytical technique or "serious approach" is to make lists of specific cases that we can analyze one-by-one after-the-fact is bogus. It marks you as a lawyer, with a lawyer's penchant for driving while looking in the rear-view mirror; and as one who is refusing to see the bigger picture, and hence the real problem.

It is as if, presented with a camel with a broken back, you insist that we examine the straws individually to see if any of them were heavier than they should have been. If, upon information and belief, we claim that all of the straws were to specification, you will presumably argue that everything is fine, even though our camel now has a broken back. It is a lawyerly response, I grant you that. But this is why so many people think that lawyers should be kept in cages, and far away from policy-making positions.

It is simply not true that after-the-fact analysis of cases is the only legitimate form of thought. It is merely the only one you know. But that is your limitation, not an inherent property of the Universe.

Some of us, by means unknown to lawyers, are able to foresee that eating a thousand candy bars will cause a horrible stomache ache. We find your insistence that we examine the candy bars individually for defects to be annoying and offensive, and a total waste of time. The problem isn't the candy bars. It's that the system is not designed to handle a thousand of them at a time.

In a similar way, human societies are not designed to operate in the presence of a governmental entity that systematically removes male parents from their childrens' lives as a matter of policy. We know that because there has never been a human society that had such a thing. When you think about it, it is an absolutely outrageous thing to have. It is lawyerism run amok... probably the most inhumanly cruel government policy ever devised, rivaling anything ever imposed on human beings by the most vilified tyrants in history.

If this happened once or twice in a blue moon, we could probably live with it. But when we see news reports that 60% of this nation's children are not living in the same house with their fathers, someone with more brains than a lawyer should probably stand up and say, "Folks, this is trouble."

It's a tough job, but somebody's gotta do it.

You wouldn't believe how many private messages I've received from people in support of what I've written.

If saying this was meant to bolster your case, it's a mistake. It's basically a public announcement that you yourself do not know what is true, and that you are relying on popularity measures to claim legitimacy for your arguments. That's right down there with dispensing psychological advice as an admission that you're really just blowing smoke and trying to get away with it.

Finally, I see that you are complaining now about "personal attacks." You need to understand something, and I know you are having trouble with this concept, so I will try to explain it real slowly. You are addressing half of the population as if they are sub-human afterthoughts who have no God-given unalienable right to live with, or participate in raising, their own children. Well guess what: They perceive this as a personal attack. They perceive that you are spouting unbelievable hateful bigotry, and seriously advocating that they should accept having their basic human rights abrogated by the court system because, well, they are only males and don't really matter. You are so immersed in this bigotry that you don't even know you're doing it. You think you are guilt-free on the subject of personal attacks, when in fact you are advocating policies that proceed from the assumption that these other creatures just don't matter and have no right to be treated as real human beings. Sorry, but some people are going to take that personally.

[jurisdog]

The refusal to lay out a specific allegation of what exactly you are complaining about is the death nail in the coffin of your complaint.

To a lot of people, you sound like an over-generalizing bitter person. A lot of what you say is total hogwash.

To the extent you might have a legitimate complaint (that men tend to get the short end of the stick in the family law circles) it is disserviced by your refusal to get specific.

[jurisdog]

And by the way, I love how you guys refuse to deal with what I've actually said ~ that when it comes to caring for a young child, the mother has a more important and more time-demanding role.

Of course you dont respond to that, because it's true and you know its true. You can't just skip the facts that don't help your argument.

[Don Myers]

"... Babies need their mothers, bub...they are born of woman for a reason...they come out of our bodies, we suckle them...neither of these things can a well-meaning dad do.."

You are talking about the traditional roles of men and women. You are talking about caring mothers and doting fathers. This is modern America. Women kill their babies on a regular basis. Wives cheat on their husbands, if they bother to get married at all, frequently because sex has become strictly a biological function like eating.

This is the America in which women want "equality" (whatever that means) with men until it is to their advantage to suddenly become a mere woman again who needs protection from the evil men.

Many women are opting to be single parents because they want the babies but not the man. Men have wised up, and they want equality with women. Our society has traditionally sheltered women. That time is changing. In short, to women, men are saying, "This is your age, sweetheart, get used to it."

[Harrison Bergeron]

"And by the way, I love how you guys refuse to deal with what I've actually said ~ that when it comes to caring for a young child, the mother has a more important and more time-demanding role."

You can't have it both ways, so tell us which way you want to have it? One one side, the law holds divorced women to their stereotypical roles - housebound, chained to their children, slaves to their biology and subjugated to evil "patriarchal dictates." On the other hand, the very women you say have a "more important and more time-demanding role" in the lives of "young children" mostly avail themselves of government subsidized child care that relieves them of most of that burden. The results are in - and these are fully documented and verified - it ain't working. Mothers raising their kids alone are failing en masse, their sons and daughters caught up in the truency and criminal justice systems in rates four to ten times the rate of kids raised by not just two parent families - but single fathers as well. I other words, you have no empirical data, a boxcar load of stereotypical opinions and blind prejudices, yet you expect everyone here to take you seriously because you're a lawyer. NEWSFLASH: Your profession doesn't lend you credibility in this arena of learned laymen and professionals who have made it their business to learn the facts forward and backward. Your profession is a handicap, a Scarlet Letter if you will, yet you hold it out there as if we should defer to it on your say so. Nuts.

"Of course you dont respond to that, because it's true and you know its true."

You've gotten your responses. You just don't seem to understand them. You look foolish, all the more so because you still don't understand that you look foolish. You can use "argument by assertion" 'til your fingers get callouses from pounding the keyboard, but sayin' something is so doesn't make it so.

[jurisdog]

And yet again, you try to respond to my one single point that i consider to be in favor of the system (note that I didnt even mention all the things I have AGAINST the system) and you STILL refuse to address it.

Do you or do you not agree that when it comes to raising young children, the mother has a more important / time-intensive / demaning role?

[Jim Noble]

>>#27, hell of an argument , Nick. Good guy, brilliant mind. You have my respect<<

If you are wise, you will revere Nick Danger as a god, as do I.

Ask him about water and coconuts sometime.

[Harrison Bergeron]

"Do you or do you not agree that when it comes to raising young children, the mother has a more important / time-intensive / demaning role?"

In an intact two-parent family that is how it is set up by the traditional division of labor. In a single parent family, as ND explained quite comprehensively, full maternal custody after divorce is a relatively recent development in our society. We now have an entire adult generation of adults raised under this matertnal custody system - this segment represents 80% of those incarcerated in our prison systems nationally. Meanwhile, the children of custodial fathers have an incarceration rate lower than those coming from two parent families. While we cannot establish cause and effect, we can unequivocally declare that the system is broke. By all appearances, it's been broken intentionally and nobody intends to fix it from the inside.

[Harrison Bergeron]

"We now have an entire adult generation of adults raised under this maternal custody system - this segment represents 80% of those incarcerated in our prison systems nationally.

Clarification: This number represents all single mothers as a group, inclusive of divorced custodial mothers.

[jurisdog]

And yet again, you still refuse to answer the question.

I would NEVER say that a father is unimportant. Only a moron would say that.

My point is that the issue is extremely complicated, it also varies state by state since its a state law matter. The fact that there is indeed a bias towards women is rooted in a biological fact ~ mothers are more important to raising young children than fathers.

[Harrison Bergeron]

"...a biological fact ~ mothers are more important to raising young children than fathers."

Your "biological fact" is simply lawyerly opinion. You argue for "case by case" studies when it suits you but insist that we all agree with your opinionated sweeping generalizations. Screw that. It allows you to be the arbitor of what "important" means and to change that meaning whenever it suits your litigation needs. To say that you still think fathers are "important" in one hand while dismissing them out of the other hand is either sloppy argument technique or more of your blind anti-man prejudice.

As I told another poster: If the courts - and I'm talking about you, personally, here - really believed that fathers were important in any way, shape, or form, they would adjudicate and enforce custody agreements with as vigorously as they enforce support payment agreements. That men who actively voice this same opinion get called "whiners" and "deadbeats" as often by lawyers as by their feminist cheerlaeading section tells me all I need to know.

[Nick Danger]

And by the way, I love how you guys refuse to deal with what I've actually said ~ that when it comes to caring for a young child, the mother has a more important and more time-demanding role.

Of course you dont respond to that, because it's true and you know its true

I have responded to that. I have called it sexist bigotry.

The dominance of men in the fields of art, science, literature, and music is so overwhelming that we could -- using your logic -- justify a policy of excluding women from those fields, and in fact from even educating them.

Now seriously... is this really the direction you want to take this? What's next... that it's simply true that white women are smarter than black women, so we should take their kids away, too?

I think Harrison Bergeron is being most charitable in describing your statements as "sweeping generalizations." Personally, I lean to the theory that it's blind, arrogant bigotry.

[jurisdog]

As opposed to those other things you pointed out, the role of mother to child is biologically based, not socially/academically based.

See, in case you didn't get the memo, mother's give birth to children. Fathers don't. Likewise, mothers breastfeed children, fathers don't. Starting there, and continuing, mothers continue to play a specific role in their children's lives ~ a role that is different than that of the father.

Both roles are important. However, in terms of raising young children, the role of the mother is more important and more time consuming, and also more dependent on physical proximity and time spent with the child.

Now, I sense that fact really bugs you. Maybe its because you hate women, or you're a sexist? Or maybe you're just in denial? I really don't know, and unlike you, I'm not going to presume to know you or your motivations. One can only guess.

However, the importance of the mother to young children isn't just an opinion, its a biological fact. I'm quite confident that EVERY legitimate scientific study and every child development professional would agree. In fact, they do.

Now, that said, do I think that is justificaton for the poor treatment that men are said to recieve at the hands of the family law system? No, I do not. In my opinion, that is simply something that should be taken into account in terms of awarding primary custody (where agreement cannot be reached between the parents) of children below the age of 4 or 5.

[Nick Danger]

The refusal to lay out a specific allegation of what exactly you are complaining about is the death nail in the coffin of your complaint.

My refusal to play 'Delphi' with you, in which we make lists of individual divorces and examine them as "cases," is certainly the nail in the coffin of your ability to deal with it. I think we have already established that in the absence of actual, detailed, after-the-fact law cases, your neurons are pretty much useless.

The other thing that's useless is going back to re-visit a bunch of old divorces. We don't have time, and it doesn't matter. The problem is the divorces yet to happen, which are being encouraged by a system that provides female parents with advance knowledge that they cannot possibly lose a custody dispute unless they shoot up with heroin in front of the judge... and maybe not even then. Is there anyone who believes that had the Yates couple in Texas divorced, that the courts would have given sole custody of the now-dead children to Angela?

People respond to the signals around them. The signal that the family court system sends women is, "Come on down! You'll get the kids, the house, both cars, most of the assets, half of his retirement plan, and more than half of his income for the next twenty years." They even have George Zimmerman on there playing a lawyer who says, "I guarantee it."

What the Hell kind of thing is this to wave in front of people going through life's daily travails unless the purpose of it is to stimulate divorces, so that people like you can earn fees?

And for this, childrens' lives are turned upside-down, they lose their daddies, their daddies' lives are ruined, men as a class are treated like animals, and the society gets to pick up the tab for incarcerating all the "socialization failures" that female headed single-parent families are known to produce. But you defend doing this because this is how you make a buck.

I think you would be better off to justify your favorite policy on the grounds that it helps you to drive a nicer car. That at least leaves the bigotry you've been spouting in the closet... where frankly it belongs. Instead of saying things that make people think you're a bigot, you could just be someone who does evil things for money. We have a lot of those around; that's not even a big deal anymore.

Yeah, I know, you still want to talk about the law cases. That's how you get to look smart. No sale. Right now you look like a sexist bigot with a law degree who wrecks peoples' lives for money, and I'm staying right where I am. This is probably not how you intended it to turn out, but nobody but you wrote your notes.

[disclaimer]

And by the way, I love how you guys refuse to deal with what I've actually said ~ that when it comes to caring for a young child, the mother has a more important and more time-demanding role.

I notice how you refuse to understand that children don't stay young, so a mother is not all they need. It's the children that grow up without dads that keep you lawyer types busy. You don't see like much of a lawyer based on the argument you made here.

[Harrison Bergeron]

"See, in case you didn't get the memo, mother's give birth to children. Fathers don't. Likewise, mothers breastfeed children, fathers don't. Starting there, and continuing, mothers continue to play a specific role in their children's lives ~ a role that is different than that of the father."

Are you sure you're an aduld with a juris doctor degree? That kind of simpleminded argument wouldn't do justice to a middle school forensics team. I can imagine everyone reading your words saying to themselves... "After breastfeeding, then what?" That "then what" happens to be state subsidized daycare for a majority of kids. By your own logic, that should cancel out all of your "maternal superiority" argument citing "scientific studies" with no names, no scientists, hell, no studies.

You chose to sink deeper into the ad hominem, to continue to refer to your opinion as "scientific" without one lick of empirical data, and to ignore the bounds of civil discourse by insisting that we answer your every nonsensical point while you ignored direct questions. Accusing Nick Danger of being some kind of "woman hater" was so blatantly amateurish and shrill sounding that not even the radical feminists use that tactic anymore. Your arguments are irrational in the face of facts. Any man or woman on this thread could have met your challenge for "case by case" arguments with tales of women being awarded child custody not on the merit of what you refer to as biological superiority, but by using the tried and true method of demonizing the father until he is seen as a threat to his own kids by the court.

Nick Danger was right, I was being extremely kind by offering up the possibility that your prejudice toward mothers might be "sweeping generalizations." Your arguments for women are so weak, so poorly thought out, and so lacking in scientific citation that one can only imagine that you are just as clumsy and inarticulate in a court of law. The only conclusion I can draw from this is that your specialty is not as an advocate for mothers, but as a legal assassin of fathers. I used to consider your profession the chosen weapon of radical feminism's deconstruction of the family. By my recent debates on FR with divorce lawyers, male and female, I now understand that radical feminism is simply a tool of your hateful, destructive profession which appears to be orchestrating a genocide on the nuclear family - the elemental building block of civilization - for profit.

[jurisdog]

I've never seen so much hatred and ignorance in a FR thread before.