Wednesday, November 25, 2009

Well, this is no surprise...

I love the way these idiots always try to compare themselves to the civil rights movement in this country...by using the names of Martin Luther King or Malcolm X. Those men were fighting for a group of people who had NO POWER historically or at the time of the movement...as opposed to these MRA idiots who've hoarded power since civilization began and are just mad now because they see it slipping away from them.

Gag me with a spoon already...

http://www.doublex.com/print/9316

Published on Double X (http://www.doublex.com)

"Men's Rights" Groups Have Become Frighteningly Effective

They’re changing custody rights and domestic violence laws.

By: Kathryn Joyce

Posted: November 5, 2009 at 7:45 AM

At the end of October, National Domestic Violence Awareness Month, members of the men’s movement group RADAR (Respecting Accuracy in Domestic Abuse Reporting [2]) gathered on the steps of Congress to lobby against what they say are the suppressed truths about domestic violence: that false allegations are rampant, that a feminist-run court system fraudulently separates innocent fathers from children, that battered women’s shelters are running a racket that funnels federal dollars to feminists, that domestic-violence laws give cover to cagey mail-order brides seeking Green Cards, and finally, that men are victims of an unrecognized epidemic of violence at the hands of abusive wives.

“It’s now reached the point,” reads a statement from RADAR, “that domestic violence laws represent the largest roll-back in Americans’ civil rights since the Jim Crow era!”

RADAR’s rhetoric may seem overblown, but lately the group and its many partners have been racking up very real accomplishments. In 2008, the organization claimed to have blocked passage of four federal domestic-violence bills, among them an expansion of the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) to international scope and a grant to support lawyers in pro bono domestic-violence work. Members of this coalition have gotten themselves onto drafting committees for VAWA’s 2011 reauthorization. Local groups in West Virginia and California have also had important successes, criminalizing false claims of domestic violence in custody cases, and winning rulings that women-only shelters are discriminatory.

Groups like RADAR fall under the broader umbrella of the men’s rights movement, a loose coalition of anti-feminist groups. These men’s rights activists, or MRAs, have long been written off by domestic-violence advocates as a bombastic and fringe group of angry white men, and for good reason. Bernard Chapin, a popular men’s rights blogger, told me over e-mail that he will refer to me as “Feminist E,” since he never uses real names for feminists, who are wicked and who men “must verbally oppose … until our flesh oxidizes into dust.” In the United Kingdom, a father’s rights group scaled Buckingham Palace in superhero costumes. In Australia, they wore paramilitary uniforms and demonstrated outside the houses of female divorcees.

But lately they’ve become far more polished and savvy about advancing their views. In their early days of lobbying, “these guys would show up and have this looming body language that was very off-putting,” says Ben Atherton-Zeman, author of Voices of Men, a one-man play about domestic violence and sexual assault. “But that’s all changed. A lot of the leaders are still convicted batterers, but they’re well-organized, they speak in complete sentences, they sound much more reasonable: All we want is equal custody, for fathers not to be ignored.”

One of the respectable new faces of the movement is Glenn Sacks, a fathers' rights columnist and radio host with 50,000 e-mail followers, and a pragmatist in a world of angry dreamers. Sacks is a former feminist and abortion-clinic defender who disavows what he calls “the not-insubstantial lunatic fringe of the fathers’ rights movement.” He recently merged his successful media group with the shared-parenting organization Fathers and Families in a bid to build a mainstream fathers' rights organ on par with the National Organization for Women. Many of Sacks’ arguments—for a court assumption of shared parenting in the case of divorce, or against child-support rigidity in the midst of recession—can sound reasonable.

But do any of their arguments hold up? Many of the men for whom Sacks advocates are involved in extreme cases, says Joanie Dawson, a writer and domestic-violence advocate who has covered the fathers’ rights movement. The great majority of custody cases, in which shared parenting is a legitimate option, are settled or resolved privately. But of the 15 percent that go to family court—the cases that fathers’ rights groups target—at least half include alleged domestic abuse.

Unsurprisingly, this argument is missing from MRA discussions of custody inequality and recruitment ads, which cast all men as potentially innocent victims “just one 911 call away” from losing everything they have earned and loved. These rallying calls, and the divorce attorneys hawking men’s rights expertise on MRA sites, promising to “teach her a lesson,” serve as what Dawson sees as a powerful draw for men in the midst of painful divorces.

While MRA groups continue to expand their base of embittered fathers and ex-husbands, they’ve cleaned up their image to court more powerful allies. RADAR board member Ron Grignal, the former president of Fathers for Virginia and a former state delegate candidate, organizes the group’s Washington lobbying activities. In 2008, RADAR partnered with Eagle Forum for a conference at the Heritage Foundation about the threat that VAWA poses to the family. Grignal argues that state interpretations of VAWA are so broad they could cast couples’ money disputes as domestic violence, enabling unwarranted restraining orders that then win women’s divorce cases for them. Politicians, Grignal says, are increasingly on board with men’s rights movement concerns.

“On domestic violence, I’ve had both state and federal legislators tell me they know that this process is out of control,” says Grignal. “They’re afraid if they support [reforms] they’ll be tagged as ‘for domestic violence.’ But I’ve had Democrats on Capitol Hill tell me they agree with everything I say. A member of the Congressional Black Caucus told me that his brother can’t see his kids, and his wife threatened to throw herself down the stairs to ruin his political career.”

Some domestic-violence protections do seem to have unintended effects, such as mandatory-arrest policies that compel police to take someone into custody in response to any domestic-violence call—a policy that has been criticized by RADAR as well as by some domestic-violence advocates, who say it imposes an absurd equivalence between largely nonviolent family spats or insubstantial female violence and serious abuse. But groups like RADAR are criticizing the law for the wrong reasons. In fact, the effect of mandatory arrest in conflating women’s low-level violence with battery, seems very close to RADAR’s campaign for viewing women as equal domestic abusers.

One potent idea advanced by MRAs is the claim that men are equal victims of domestic violence. Mark Rosenthal, president and co-founder of RADAR, makes a very personal argument for the phenomenon. Rosenthal, who doesn’t call himself an MRA, grew up with a mother who he says terrorized the entire family and hit her husband frequently. The true impact of the violence, he says, was more than physical and eclipsed his petite mother’s ability to inflict serious injuries. Rosenthal wants to see an appreciation for women’s nonphysical abuse incorporated into domestic-violence policy. “It’s not about size,” he told an audience at a law enforcement domestic-violence training. “It’s not exclusively about physical attacks. However, it is about a pathological need to control others, and women are as prone to this as men.”

RADAR and other MRA groups base their battered men arguments largely on the research of a small group of social scientists who claim that domestic violence between couples is equally divided, just unequally reported. Most notable are the studies conducted by sociologist Murray Straus of the University of New Hampshire, who has written extensively on female violence (and who Dawson saw distributing RADAR flyers at an APA conference). Straus’ research is starting to move public opinion. A Los Angeles conference this July dedicated to discussing male victims of domestic violence, “From Ideology to Inclusion 2009: New Directions in Domestic Violence Research and Intervention,” received positive mainstream press for its “inclusive” efforts.

While some men certainly are victims of female domestic violence, advocates say the number is closer to 3 percent to 4 percent, rather than the 45 percent to 50 percent RADAR claims. Jack Straton, a Portland State University professor and member of Oregon’s Attorney General's Sexual Assault Task Force, argues that Straus critically fails to distinguish between the intent and effect of violence, equating “a woman pushing a man in self-defense to a man pushing a woman down the stairs,” or a single act of female violence with years of male abuse; that Straus only interviewed one partner, when couples’ accounts of violence commonly diverge; and that he excludes from his study post-separation violence, which accounts for more than 75 percent of spouse-on-spouse violence, 93 percent of which is committed by men.

All in all, advocates say that cherry-picked studies from researchers like Straus, touted by the MRAs, amount to what Edward Gondolf, director of research for the Mid-Atlantic Addiction Research and Training Institute, calls“bad science.” Statistics suggesting gender parity in abuse are taken out of necessary context, they say, ignoring distinctions between the equally divided “common couple violence” and the sort of escalated, continuing violence known as battery—which is 85 percent male-perpetrated—as well as the disparate injuries inflicted by men and women.

“The biggest concern, though, is not the wasted effort on a false issue,” writes Straton, but the encouragement given to batterers to consider themselves the victimized party. “Arming these men with warped statistics to fuel their already warped worldview is unethical, irresponsible, and quite simply lethal.”

In this, critics like Australian sociologist Michael Flood say that men’s rights movements reflect the tactics of domestic abusers themselves, minimizing existing violence, calling it mutual, and discrediting victims. MRA groups downplay national abuse rates, just as abusers downplay their personal battery; they wage campaigns dismissing most allegations as false, as abusers claim partners are lying about being hit; and they depict the violence as mutual—part of an epidemic of wife-on-husband abuse—as individual batterers rationalize their behavior by saying that the violence was reciprocal. Additionally, MRA groups’ predictions of future violence by fed-up men wronged by the family-law system seem an obvious additional correlation, with the threat of violence seemingly intended to intimidate a community, like a fearful spouse, into compliance.

MRA critics say the organizational recapitulation of abusive tactics should be no surprise, considering the wealth of movement leaders with records or accusations of violence, abuse, harassment, or failure to pay child support. Some advocates call MRA groups “the abuser’s lobby,” because of members like Jason Hutch, the Buckingham Palace fathers’ rights “Batman,” who has been estranged from three mothers of his children and was taken to court for threatening one of his ex-wives.

Contrary to RADAR’s claims, domestic-violence advocates say that not only do abuse accusations not automatically win custody cases for women; there are a rising number of custody decisions awarded to abusive fathers, as judges see wives eager to protect their children as less cooperative regarding custody. More than half the time, studies have found, wives’ accusations of domestic violence are met with counter-accusations from husbands of “Parental Alienation Syndrome”—a medically unrecognized diagnosis that suggests mothers have poisoned their children into making false accusations against their fathers.

In one recent case, Genia Shockome, a Russian immigrant, was fighting for custody of her two children with her ex-husband, whom she charged had beaten her so severely that she suffered post-traumatic stress disorder and who had told her she “had no right to leave” since he’d brought her to the United States. The judge in the case sided with her husband’s counter-claims of Parental Alienation Syndrome and awarded him full custody (and later sentenced Shockome to 30 days in jail while she was seven months pregnant). When her attorney, Barry Goldstein, co-author of the forthcoming book Domestic Violence, Abuse and Custody, criticized the judge in an online article, the judge retaliated with a complaint, and Goldstein was given a five-year suspension. Goldstein says the sanction represents a chilling pressure on attorneys, who may now fear penalties for criticizing a court’s gender bias that will interfere with their duties to their clients and that could result in women deciding not to leave abusers out of fear they won’t get a fair trial.

If cases such as Genia Shockome’s are the fodder of mainstream fathers’ rights advocates like Glenn Sacks—who ridiculed her claims and loss of custody as an uncredible “cause célèbre” for feminist family-law reformers—what Sacks calls the movement’s “lunatic fringe” is more vitriolic yet.

Within the ranks of the men’s rights movement, vigilante “resisters” are regularly nominated and lionized for acts of violence perceived to be in opposition to a feminist status quo [3]. In a few quarters of the movement, this even included George Sodini, the Pittsburgh man who opened fire on a gym full of exercising women this August, killing three and leaving behind an online diatribe journaling his sense of rejection by millions of desirable women.

Sodini’s diary was republished widely, including on the website of a popular men’s rights blogger, “Angry Harry,” who added his assessment of the case [4]. “MRAs should also take note of the fact that there are probably many millions of men across the western world who feel similar in many ways, and one can expect to see much more destruction emanating from them in the future,” he wrote. “One of the main reasons that I decided to post this diary on this website was because the western world must wake up to the fact that it cannot continue to treat men so appallingly and get away with it.” In a phone interview, Angry Harry said, “Of course there will be more Sodinis—there will be many more,” likening him to Marc Lépine, a Canadian man who killed or wounded 28, claiming feminists had ruined his life, or Nevada father Darren Mack, who murdered his estranged wife and attempted to kill the judge in their custody battle. (Also among this number is John Muhammad, the “D.C. Beltway Sniper,” whose involvement in a Washington father’s rights group and history of abuse is described in his ex-wife Mildred’s newly-released memoir, Scared Silent [5].) Perhaps, Angry Harry mused, that as the ranks of online MRAs grow, “the threat” of their violence “may be enough” to bring about the changes they desire.

Glenn Sacks dismissed Angry Harry as an "idiot" without real power in the movement, and yet he cautiously agrees that what Sacks calls "family court injustices" could lead to future violence.* “I want to be careful in wording this,” he says, “but the cataclysmic things I’m seeing done to men, it’s always my fear that one of these guys is going to do something terrible. I don’t want to say that like I condone it or that it’s OK, but it’s just the reality.” The movement seems eager to supply more martyrs. After Sacks wrote about a San Diego father who shot himself on the city’s courthouse steps over late child-support payments, numerous men wrote Sacks, telling him, “They’re taking everything from me, and I want to go out in a big way, and if I do, will you write about me?”

I asked RADAR’s Mark Rosenthal about the ties between groups like RADAR—claiming, however cynically, to have egalitarian motives—and the blunt anti-feminist positions of men’s movement allies like Chapin or Angry Harry. “I’d like to suggest that what you’ve just done is interview Martin Luther King and Malcolm X,” he told me. “In any movement, there is going to be a reasonable voice and people who are so hurt, who are so injured by the injustices, that they can’t afford to step back and try to take their emotions under control. But no movement is going to get anywhere without extremists.”

38 comments:

PolishKnight said...

I'll agree with you, NYMOM, but not for the reasons you would expect (as usual.)

Firstly, MRA idiots haven't "hoarded power" since civilization began because otherwise we wouldn't be having this conversation. Indeed, Malcolm X was a muslim and ultimately would have opposed women's equality (if he didn't already) AND MLK was a marxist who preached equality and forgiveness out of one side of his mouth but was a race hustler like Jesse Jackson.

Genia Shockome is a hilarious case where she tried to lie through her teeth and got caught. She even blew off a $70K a year job just to avoid paying "child" support. It looks like women don't care much about children when someone ELSE is taking care of their property. Read the court transcripts on Glenn's site, they're hilarious. It's so unfair when men have rights, isn't it?

Glenn's Cult? said...

Ah I see PK has found you :-) well PK never fear, it will be less than a decade and you MRA's will have a new and even more furstrating "Genia" to deal with.

Only problem will be you will not be able to back me down and I will NEVER go away. So start preparing dude.

Oh and NYMOM great work, I plan to add you to my reader.

virago said...

"Ah I see PK has found you :-) well PK never fear, it will be less than a decade and you MRA's will have a new and even more furstrating "Genia" to deal with."

In PK's case, it'll probably be his own wife.

PolishKnight said...

V, stop obsessing over my wife. I told you, I'm taken. Shouldn't you be in the kitchen cooking?

virago said...

"V, stop obsessing over my wife. I told you, I'm taken. Shouldn't you be in the kitchen cooking?"

But Polish Knight, I would really love to cook for you. I'd make sure to season your turkey with plenty of ex-lax. It will certainly keep you going.:-)

PolishKnight said...

After THIS thanksgiving, I could use it! (We ate way too much!) Just grabbing those online black friday deals (better than waiting in a real line.)

I hope all of you are having a nice holiday.

NYMOM said...

So far so good.

I've been off since Monday but my holiday really just started as I was running errands, cleaning and doing laundry for the first three days of it...

Anyway I know what you mean about the digestive problems. My grand daughter brought her dog along with us on Thanksgiving and he had so much turkey and other side dishes from people feeding him scraps under the table that he's been sick since we got home last night.

PS: a horror since he slept in my bed last night (and after I just cleaned up all the linen...)

Nuff said...

We're on our way out shopping for bargains as well...trying to find some Uggs in Manhattan for less then $150, no easy task either.

Anonymous said...

Thanks for the holiday wishes NY and PK.

My best to you all.

The turkey leftovers in the fridge are calling...

Richard

PolishKnight said...

The author appears to engage in projection squared as she attributes the behaviors of feminist man-haters to MRA's including playing the victim and appealing to chivalrous patronage. Even if her claims that only 3 percent of DV victims were men is true, that doesn't excuse clear bias against male victims with laws literally named "violence against women act" (note that it's not violence against women AND CHILDREN act).

Imagine if, say, a famous black woman athlete was being chased by a jealous white husband with a golf club and had her back window smashed and she was injured when her car went into a tree. Why, the police would be investigating and would press charges. Oh, wait, that won't happen. Hence, the low rates. Jim Crow sees 97% of racism against whites, therefore that's the facts. Like Global Warming "science". Only statistics that support your claims need apply...

(I mentioned this case to a black woman and she chuckled that she knew this story of his was a cover to avoid looking bad after his wife gave him a beating for cheaing on him. DV is funny when it's done against men! Haha!)

virago said...

Glad you enjoyed your holiday NYMOM! I spent Thanksgiving weekend deerhunting, and we'll have plenty of venison for Christmas! No exlax! (oh, if someone is a vegetarian, or a member of PETA-save it!):=)

Val said...

Sorry to hear about your puppy's "turkey enteritis" - I can relate! The carb overload on Thanksgiving did a number on my GI tract, but thankfully I'm better now ;-)

virago said...

NYMOM, it's been recently reported that working mothers are losing custody to stay at home dads. In general, a lot of responses from men seem to be, "Yeah, see how you like it!" I say, "Working mothers with stay at home husbands still get the shaft!" Here's why:

http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/33/tschwartz.html?page=0%2C1

"In other ways, the job of a stay-at-home dad is less demanding than that of the average stay-at-home mom. Stereotypical patterns persist, even among couples who have reversed their roles as parents. Working fathers still often play minimal or secondary roles when it comes to child care. Women who work full-time while their husbands stay home commonly take on a lot of household and parenting responsibilities in the evenings, such as putting their kids to bed. Sociologist Arlie Hochschild has labeled this phenomenon the "second shift.""

The same article:

"In a 1996 study (which he outlines in "The Involved Father"), Frank asked several hundred couples a question: When both parents are available, which parent does the child go to? Among families in which the mother was the primary caregiver, the child went to her 78% of the time. Among families in which the father was the primary caregiver, the child still chose the mother 56% of the time."

virago said...

Other sources:

http://articles.latimes.com/1997/aug/24/news/ls-25337

"According to a study presented last week at the American Psychological Assn. convention in Chicago, many of these breadwinner moms revert to traditional roles when they come home from work, making dinner, giving the baths and managing the bedtime routine--even when their husbands stay home 45 hours a week or more. Unlike traditional fathers, the breadwinner moms tend to know their child's schedule, friends and classes even though they are at work all day. Despite appearances, researcher Robert Frank, a part-time teacher at Loyola University Chicago, said, "I wouldn't describe it as a 'second shift.' Maybe that's because I'm a male." He's also been a stay-at-home dad for the last 11 years."

And I say bullshit Dr. Frank-it is the second shift in reverse-only this time, mom is sole breadwinner and primary caretaker when she's at home. Some more from Dr. Frank:

http://www.babiestoday.com/articles/family-life/stay-at-home-dad-families-2872/

"Regis Dansdill, a stay-at-home dad for five years from Wheaton, Ill., says, "My staying home has forced us to communicate better." Dr. Frank says there's a solid reason for this. "When Mom comes home, Dad needs to tell her what has happened today, and she wants to know, because she is taking over as the primary caregiver.""

virago said...

Here's another example of a great stay at home dad:

http://www.usatoday.com/life/lifestyle/2005-06-15-stay-at-home-dad_x.htm

"There are other issues of disagreement, particularly housecleaning and similar chores. "He's not like most full-time moms, who do all the house stuff," she says. "I keep telling him if you're going to be home all day, there's other stuff that comes with it." Paranzino has a simple answer. "I signed on to do the kids — not to do the house."

The couple, married for almost 10 years, relies on a maid service to supplement what they can do in their spare time. Heather does the laundry, but Paranzino says he'd just as soon send it out."

What a laugh! Most stay at home moms don't get maid service even when dad can afford it. And when does a woman ever get away with," I signed on to take of the kids-not do housework!" But mom still gets laundry duty!

Another great example:

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,338616,00.html

"For the most part, SAHD homes are the same as other households, except that Dad — not Mom or another caregiver — oversees the home front. There are, however, a few differences. Once they get home, female partners tend to do an equal share of the housework and cooking, unlike male partners in traditional households, who leave most of those tasks to their wives."

And:

" And dads' management styles can appear testosterone driven. Building inspector Larry Picarello recalls moms in the neighborhood "freaking out" when they came over and found his two boys, Forest, 10, and Luke, 8, climbing ladders and scaffolding on the site where he was building a new house in Pomona, N.Y. Doug Ingram, a graphic artist in Decatur, Ga., whose wife Karen is an attorney, potty trained his son Nathan, 4, by acting like "a drill sergeant," he says. "We had potty-training boot camp. Once I sensed Nathan was ready, I enforced a 48-hour media blackout: no video games, no TV, just potty. He was trained in 48 hours.""

Sorry Doug Graham, that's child abuse! I got my kids trained in under 5 hours using a Betsy Wetsy doll and a potty chair. There's a book on how to do it from your local bookstore, and it works great. Much better than your potty training boot camp, asshole! And I wasn't even a stay at home mom for fuck's sake!

Here's another magazine article talking about the wonders of stay at home dads! Wow, the kids cried every time mom left for work, and he whines, "They love her more!":

http://greatergood.berkeley.edu/greatergood/2009june/Smith.php

I love it when they talk about how kids are bonded to both parents and there's high levels of involvement from both mother and fathers in working mother/stay at home families. Well, that's easy! Working mothers still do more than their share of childcare/housework despite the stay at home dad, and kids are more bonded to their mothers anyway! Yeah, I'm sure that stay at home dads aren't all like this, blah, blah, blah *exceptions noted*, but I doubt that's the case for most of them. They seem to consider themselves as daddydaycare until the real parent gets home from supporting the family. I use to be into the "Primary caregiver" rule to decide custody, but women get screwed no matter what! I'm with you NYMOM-mothers give birth and are the primary parent no matter what they do.-unless unfit, mothers should have custody. It's that simple!

NYMOM said...

Again, Virago, 100% on point there.

I know dozens of these so-called stay-at-home dads. They don't do laundry, they don't pick up groceries unless it's ordering a pizza or something. Some cook but don't clean and the mess they leave behind simply isn't worth the meal as they manage to use every pot, plate, fork and spoon preparing a relatively simple dinner and guess who is expected to clean up? The working mom that's who....

Generally the women I know in this situation spend all their 'free' time picking up after the mess these stay-at-home fathers leave behind when they are home all day alone with the kids...

Some don't even walk the dog claiming they are too busy with the kids.

When I was home with my kids I didn't even ask my ex to pick up the dry cleaning, never mind clean the bathroom...I did everything related to the house and the kids. The standard is much higher for women as stay-at-home mothers I'll tell you that...I was even baking my own bread...

PolishKnight said...

NYMOM, statistically there are very few SAH dads. Despite me having lived in a dozen cities and knowing thousands of people over my life, I think I've met maybe two. Census figures shows that the total number of SAH dads is in a fraction of a percent.

So your experiences are not only exceptional in that you generalize about SAH dads as house slackers, but even having met so many of them. I'm not saying that you're lying, but I do have to conject that it's possible that you met a number of men that this label would apply to but are not ideal stock either for househusbands or as normal fathers. Perhaps just unemployed losers with some time at home. Perhaps they are the spouses or boyfriends of welfare mothers or lower class women and you did social work.

In any case, even if some men aren't very good around the house most I have known were not slobs and especially with the attitudes of young women of my generation (late 1980's) and onward, slobbishness was about equal between the genders. As I pointed out, the wife of a friend of mine was a slob while he, being of swiss background, was incredibly fastidious.

In addition, even as V has accused me of being a whiner and having problems with women due to my attitude, the same could easily apply to both of you as well. Perhaps your negative perceptions of men is due to a self-fulfilling prophesy: It's easy to justify your bad attitudes about men especially when they provide a convenient excuse for your own sexist demands.

Baking your own bread? Hahahaha! Most suburban housewives if they bake their own bread view it as a luxury and it costs a lot more to use the fancy breadmakers than to just pay a few bucks for the french bread at the store. Martha Stewart has made millions selling FANTASIES to women craving a return to the simple life of not having to earn a living (like us men) and going back to the 1950's.

I was laughing my head off when a young career woman griped to me that her husband lacked ambition and didn't work harder so she could "sacrifice" and become a SAH mom. I replied with that kind of attitude, who can blame him? She got these big saucer like eyes like this is something she hadn't thought of before.

PolishKnight said...

"Working fathers still often play minimal or secondary roles when it comes to child care."

Also in the news, career mothers often play minimal or secondary roles when it comes to child care paying nannies, daycare, or even just underpaid illegal immigrants to look after their children.

PolishKnight said...

"In a 1996 study (which he outlines in "The Involved Father"), Frank asked several hundred couples a question: When both parents are available, which parent does the child go to? Among families in which the mother was the primary caregiver, the child went to her 78% of the time. Among families in which the father was the primary caregiver, the child still chose the mother 56% of the time."

Perhaps SAH fathers don't gatekeep their childrens' affections as much as a SAH mother might?

I'm sure the soldier's children didn't run to their mother as much as their father when they were in his care...

PolishKnight said...

Adding it up

V writes: "I use to be into the "Primary caregiver" rule to decide custody, but women get screwed no matter what! I'm with you NYMOM-mothers give birth and are the primary parent no matter what they do."

Yet, you claim that isn't the case with you. That your husband gave you custody, that you got "child" support and continue to collect support even as he lives in the home (that you spent so much money on, rather than your children) on your own terms.

So V, despite all your posturing that you're a horrid victim, you really aren't unless there's something here you didn't tell us. Perhaps you're jealous that you didn't get a rich fish like Tiger Woods?

Anonymous said...

V said: "Women who work full-time while their husbands stay home commonly take on a lot of household and parenting responsibilities in the evenings, such as putting their kids to bed. Sociologist Arlie Hochschild has labeled this phenomenon the "second shift.""

Well who'da thought it? I had a second shift when my wife was home and didn't even know it! Who knew that handling bathtime, toothbrushing, vitamins, stories and bedtime turned me into the "primary caregiver" even after my wife put in a full day with the kids?

Please...

"many of these breadwinner moms revert to traditional roles when they come home from work, making dinner, giving the baths and managing the bedtime routine--even when their husbands stay home 45 hours a week or more."

It's not surprising that breadwinner moms often try to keep a finger in the domestic pie since it's been part and parcel of female identity for too many millenia.

It's similar to why men are still often ashamed of taking on the SAHD role. It's not what "real men" supposedly do.

But the number of breadwinning moms increases and the childcare gap continues to narrow even in more traditional families and I don't see why we shouldn't expect that to continue, which means we should expect less sex-role-based guilt all around in the future.

"When both parents are available, which parent does the child go to?"

That's an interesting question. I would like to further know who the child goes to FOR WHAT.

If the child is sick or hurt and needs some coochie-cooing it makes sense to go to mommy for that. You all are great at that sort of thing.

But as Wallerstein noted in her studies, when kids are trying something new or exciting or need help figuring something out, they often turn to dad instead.

It's one of the tragedies of family break-up, that kids can no longer turn to one parent or the other as their needs change from moment to moment but have to conform those needs to a schedule instead.

"Among families in which the mother was the primary caregiver, the child went to her 78% of the time. Among families in which the father was the primary caregiver, the child still chose the mother 56% of the time"

What??? The mystical magical mother/child bond is reduced by almost half just by putting dad at home all day? Say it isn't so!

But even more interesting is that over 20% of kids "go to" dad even when mom is the caregiver, mystical bond notwithstanding.

That's considerably more than the percentage of kids allowed to remain with dad after a break-up.

Thanks for the info, V.

Richard

Anonymous said...

"Building inspector Larry Picarello recalls moms in the neighborhood "freaking out" when they came over and found his two boys, Forest, 10, and Luke, 8, climbing ladders and scaffolding on the site where he was building a new house in Pomona, N.Y."

Granted. Dads tolerate a lot more risk. Nothing earth-shaking about that. It's part of our nature and something our kids need from us. Too much is bad of course but so is too much coddling and smothering which tends to be you gals' specialty. It's just one of the many ways moms and dads balance each other out to produce successful offspring.

"Sorry Doug Graham, that's child abuse!"

Oh please, turn down the drama dial.

Withholding TV and video games temporarily in the interest of potty-training is abuse? Who knew?

It's idiotic frothing like this that keeps social workers busy harrassing perfectly ordinary parents instead of using their resources to help kids who are in some kind of real danger.

It's ridiculous even for you, V.

My wife trained our son while she was an at-homer by simply putting the diapers away and telling him he was too big for them. When after two days he got sufficiently tired of the feel of his briefs getting wet that was the end of it.

You'd probably call that abuse, too.

But one thing we WOULDN'T do is liquidate their home and deprive them of one of us so we could do as we damn please.

And while we're waxing so eloquent about how helpful and egalitarian breadwinning moms are with the housework and childcare, let's not forget that it's still not very common for a SAHD to demand SOLE custody.

They're usually pretty content to step back a bit and accept JOINT custody in the event of a split. Because they recognize mom's importance even when she's out working and in any even they understand that everyone's roles have to change when the family is broken.

How many SAHM's are that egalitarian when the split comes?

Yeah, that's what I thought.

Richard

Anonymous said...

PK said: "it's possible that you met a number of men that this label would apply to but are not ideal stock either for househusbands or as normal fathers. Perhaps just unemployed losers with some time at home. Perhaps they are the spouses or boyfriends of welfare mothers or lower class women and you did social work."

My thoughts exactly, PK.

Reminds me of something I remember NY saying at Gonz's about most NC moms being SAHMs who never worked and lost their kids because they just didn't have any money, presumably.

I have a feeling she envisioned a bunch of Susie Homemakers baking cookies and arranging flowers who just got locked out of the house one day.

While I envision women who never worked because they were on welfare, doing drugs, mentally ill, in jail, or otherwise too screwed up to hold down a job. And probably dumped the kids on someone else rather than "losing" them in court.

NY gets after us for supposedly generalizing across groups with very different circumstances, but she does it all the time when it suits her case.

Richard

PolishKnight said...

I nag, belittle, and berate and things don't get better. Why?

This is an interesting article I had lost the reference to and happy I found again. It sheds a lot of light on the "lazy SAH husbands" myth:

http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/story?id=7088747&page=1

What happened is the father was laid off and does his best to help out around the home while still looking for work. The saintly mother, on the other hand, treats him like trash:

""It's the respect," she said. "I wish I could say something different, but I've lost so much respect for him. And I think the dynamics with a man and a woman is a woman has to respect her husband. And if she doesn't, that relationship just goes away." Although Eleanor's honesty is harsh, counselors say her feelings are quite common. "Often, in the cases where couples are facing role reversal ... there's significant resentment," family therapist Bruce Gregory said. "And the biggest problem with the resentment is not the resentment itself; it's that people act it out. And they end up punishing each other and withdrawing, and more tension develops in the home and nobody benefits from that."

Someone losing their job already is prone to depression but it's not helped when the other parent pounds upon them both for their inability to find work and nitpicks their housekeeping. (When such tactics are used against women by men, it's defined as emotional DV.)

Check out the video, Richard. It's sickening.

Anonymous said...

More blah!

But one positive about that video is the woman's honesty. Instead of inventing complaints about his performance as a SAHD she openly admits that it boils down to simple jealousy.

It's also amusing when women like this reveal just how little they "respect" the very role that they crave and demand that men support them in.

It's the scam of the ages and they know it.

Richard

NYMOM said...

Yes, I'm sure the soldier's children didn't run to their mother either, probably they ran to their grandmother.

The main point being that even as father custody increases children still spend most of their time with female caretakers, as men just substitute their own mothers or new girlfriend to fill the mother's role...

NYMOM said...

Yeah she's jealous alright that she couldn't hook a big fish like Tiger Woods...who will probably be bringing home AIDS to his wife and kids at the rate he's going or even Herpes or some other incurable STD...

PolishKnight said...

Gimme That! Gimmie That! Gimme gimmie gimmie gat! Gimmie dat thing!

Richard, I don't know if it's in the video but she did invent complaints about his housekeeping and cooking and followed him around looking for stuff to nitpick. Then she griped he wasn't expressing gratitude (gee, someone bashing you night and day as a loser because they don't want to support you. How can one not be grateful for that?)

One of the arguments that was made for women's equality was that it would mean that men could be able to expand their roles and spend more time with the kiddies and her income would be a "backup" so he wouldn't worry about job layoffs.

That's now all obviously shown to be a big joke.

It was just a goodie/money grab. Mo' money for Nordstrom's shopping trips. Oh, wait, men get career women crabbing that they aren't doing more housework (on her terms.) Poor schmucks.

PolishKnight said...

NYMOM remarks: "The main point being that even as father custody increases children still spend most of their time with female caretakers, as men just substitute their own mothers or new girlfriend to fill the mother's role..."

And even with all these high paying hobby jobs, women still need men to be the breadwinners and provide support either directly or through the taxpayer to keep their children from starving to death.

When women's equality can function 10 seconds without crying for a white knight to come to their rescue, I'll take it seriously.

PolishKnight said...

Sour grapes, much?

"Yeah she's jealous alright that she couldn't hook a big fish like Tiger Woods...who will probably be bringing home AIDS to his wife and kids at the rate he's going or even Herpes or some other incurable STD..."

Yeah yeah yeah, I'm sure Tiger Woods will have tons of trouble finding attractive women to go out with him after a prenup covered divorce because of those risks...

Anonymous said...

PK said: "(gee, someone bashing you night and day as a loser because they don't want to support you. How can one not be grateful for that?)"

I'm going to borrow a few pages from NY and V here and wonder out loud why he continues to take this "abuse" and allow his daughter to see her mother treating him like a "doormat" and think this is normal?

Why doesn't he just take his daughter and leave, since one stable parent is so much better for children than two who are in "conflict?"

He can file for sole custody, since "continuity of care" is obviously in her "best interests" and why should the child's routine be disrupted "just so mom can save a buck on child support?"

Speaking of which, he'll need a proper amount of child support and insurance, since the child shouldn't have a lower standard of living "just because mom doesn't know how to behave."

Maybe he can even find a "social mother" for her!

;)

Richard

Anonymous said...

Even herpes, NY? OMG!

Given that AT LEAST 25% of you lovely creatures are infected with herpes in this country, I'd say PK's comment is spot on.

R.

PolishKnight said...

Richard, never underestimate the power of seeing things from a fresh perspective when they are on TV. I'm sure his friends, relatives, and perhaps even the daughter probably had something to say after seeing that horrific display. This mother came across as a total user.

Yeah, imagine her then getting stuck with paying him alimony for the "sacrifice" he made while being supported by her! Welcome to equality!

PolishKnight said...

Richard, never underestimate the power of seeing things from a fresh perspective when they are on TV. I'm sure his friends, relatives, and perhaps even the daughter probably had something to say after seeing that horrific display. This mother came across as a total user.

Yeah, imagine her then getting stuck with paying him alimony for the "sacrifice" he made while being supported by her! Welcome to equality!

NYMOM said...

Nothing personal here Richard but from the numbers we're talking about with the Tiger Woods situation, it's clear to me that just ONE man can be responsible for passing along a sizable percentage of infections to a large group of women...

Kind of like Typhoid Mary or in this case Typhoid Manny, if you get my drift...

Anonymous said...

Kind of like PK's feral cats, too.

R.

virago said...

NYMOM, I'm glad you agree with me. Judging from YOUR COMMENTS, I see I must've touched off the usual back lash. I didn't bother reading anyone else's comments, and I'm not going to. My opinion is non-negotiable on this point. Every time I read about how great stay at home dads are, I always read that the working mother is still doing most of the childcare/housework when she gets home. I see the same thing in the so-called stay at home dad families that I know. It's the same old crap that you see in stay at home mom/working dads, and two-income families-the second shift. There isn't any reason why BOTH PARENTS can't share childcare/housework duties when both parents are available. Like I said, stay at home dads seem to think they are daddydaycare until the real parent gets home from supporting the family. I'm with you. I think MOTHERS should always get custody unless mom is unfit. And I mean UNFIT-not some trumped up charges through false PAS allegations by some asshole dad. I'm not impressed with the so-called "stay-at-home-dad revolution". NOT AT ALL.

PolishKnight said...

"There isn't any reason why BOTH PARENTS can't share childcare/housework duties when both parents are available."

and later:

"I think MOTHERS should always get custody unless mom is unfit."

So when sexism causes women to do more housework, V says that sexism is baaaaaad! But on the other hand, sexism when it benefits women is gooood!

You're using an argument of ignorance: "Every time I read about how great stay at home dads are, I always read that the working mother is still doing most of the childcare/housework when she gets home."

No doubt real Archie Bunkers also never "see" anything that disagrees with their worldview. You ought to work as a climate change scientist. :-)

If you like, we can cite plenty of positive articles about SAH husbands but you'll simply dismiss them. In addition, you think that you should get either preferential treatment, or when you're at a disadvantage, mere 'equal' treatment. Then you shriek that the men are so greedy and didn't "share" their rights.

There are men who think like you elsewhere in the world and in a matter of seconds they put women like you in a burka and then you praise their generosity...

PolishKnight said...

Cool Aid baby, yeah!

Richard, I'm amazed, truly, that you spoke about being limited by your conscience yet here you are saying that the solution is to just let children suffer as long as western civilization holds out (and then it fails.)

And for... what? For women to have hobby jobs and a faux equality that's really just about lowering wages and living standards for _both_ genders?

The same thing goes for communism. Wouldn't it be nice if there was a benevolent dictator or politburo who could just make wise decisions about how to run everyone's lives to avoid conflict and get lots of free stuff? It's such a GREAT dream that people overlook the 100 million people murdered and the destruction of billions of lives.

At least when the Jonestown folks drank the cool aid, they knew they were being religious!

Regarding women giving up the goods to "anybody that wants a piece." I never implied or said that was the case. I said that such women were giving up the goods to a FEWER supply of men that meet their breadwinner male cravings. On the contrary, when there were more breadwinning men around, women could afford to be more choosy. Men appear to be more slackerlike due to relativity. Women have always "given the goods" to "anybody" that met their standards. They weren't vestigal virgins (otherwise we wouldn't be here!)

Regarding the new standard of oopsing men into having kids. Indeed, it's ironic that men are now the ones thinking twice about sex due to the risks of social punishment for b*stard children. Many men can simply use spermicide condoms and, in the very near future, there are new technologies such as RISUG that will make that whole paradigm obsolete. Keep an eye out for it (and wiki it up. Neat stuff!)

Regarding the single mother welfare state. Most white working class women avoided going on welfare like the plague and the concept of single mother by choice took hold with the educated marxist lesbian classes and spread down in whites. For blacks, welfare was viewed as an income transfer from bourgeois whites.

Regarding the poll numbers you have provided. You expressed misgiving at being unPC and you're pretty honest and open here (I have that effect on people). Most men may not be willing to articulate that view. Ask people if they're good drivers, for example, and to judge the driving of others and see how those numbers balanced out. :-)

There's a difference between not being afraid of career women versus willing to marry one, under ideal circumstances. For example, V would love a guy who cooks and cleans and is mr. liberated but also is a CEO and pays all the bills. In other words, a fantasy. On a realistic scale, men wind up dating down in income because women now, like then, are not useful to men as providers.

Richard, I think I can say with credibility that I don't react to things like the typical bison in the herd. I never bought into the women's equality but look the other way at their sexism paradigm. I also didn't buy a home because everyone else was. Perhaps it's just my brain chemistry.