Now that the welfare reform bill has passed, big surprise: Welfare mothers will get help under the new law, with job training and counseling, medical care, day care for the children, maybe more education.So, what else is new? Not much:And for the men? Nothing. Their only role is to pay child support.
Stuart Miller, who lobbies for the American Fathers Coalition, puts it like this: "As long as we teach men that their only value is as a cash cow and a sperm donor, we are not going to teach them to be parents."Not much at all.
In fact, in three out of the last four elections, it has been the Democrats who have actually been hurt by the gender gap.Democrats lost those elections because they did so poorly among male voters. In 1984, Democrat Walter Mondale trailed Republican President Ronald Reagan by 25 points among men. And in 1988, Democrat Michael Dukakis got 16% fewer male votes than Republican George Bush. Their losses had little to do with female voters.
Like most politicians these days, Dole has a well-defined objective: get elected.
To do that, he needs to stop pandering to the pop feminists, and work with the
people who can give him a real chance at the White House.
As most everybody knows, Bob Dole thinks he needs to focus his campaign on wooing women. Most voters are women, surveys and the previous general election indicate Clinton won because of women, and the pineapple who would be president wants to be their next best man.
What he's ignoring (besides the male vote) is that most women are not feminists:
A survey of more than 18,000 women for Parents magazine turned up some surprises. Sixty-eight percent of the working moms say they work for money, not emotional or intellectual satisfaction, up 12 points in seven years. Big majorities of mothers prefer part-time work to full-time work when their children are young. A mere 4 percent say they would choose full-time work. Though 49 percent of working mothers say they envy at-home moms, only 11 percent of at-home moms envy working mothers.Moreoever, most young mothers said they "prefer the lifestyle of the 1950s, the decade the feminists love to hate"
If Mr. Dole really wants to win female voters, he's going about it all wrong.
That’s the gist of the new "parental responsibility" laws. First, parents are denied the right to control their kids, then the state throws the book at them if their kids misbehave. On the other hand, given that most families with misbehaving children are headed by single mothers, we could see a significant rise in the number of fathers who get custody after mom is sent to the slammer.
The climate for this new wave of get-tough-on-parents laws may be ideal. The call for a return to traditional family values is echoing through every political race. At the same time, there is widespread sentiment that government cannot do it all and that some of the burden should be shifted to individuals.A sign of the times.
No one will apologize, the newspapers are unlikely to say the charges were dropped, and if they do it will be as another example of an "accused rapist" going free. He’s a man, she must have had her reasons, so even if he was innocent of the actual crime, it’s just too bad.
If the injured party is a woman, however, that’s different. King County prosecutors in Seattle dropped charges of jewelry theft against Won Ja Kang for lack of evidence, and now she is suing the City of Seattle and two newspapers:
All defendants are accused of libel, slander, invasion of privacy by false light, and negligent, reckless and intentional infliction of emotional distress. The city and (the police detective) also are accused of unlawful arrest, malicious prosecution, tort of outrage and violations of civil rights under a section of federal law that allows for punitive damages.When it happens to men, it's not big deal; when it happens to women, it's a federal case.
Passionate pleas about "millions of women and children thrown into poverty" have lost their ability to shock.Columnist Walter Shapiro probably didn’t mean to reveal this bias against men. Likely, he doesn’t even consider the issue of impoverished men (almost 80 percent of the homeless are men) worthy of concern.
That’s the problem with a maternalistic society -- men don’t count. And when men are marginalized, there’s no one left to support the women and children.
Everyone just assumes this problem (pregnancy-related deaths) has been solved.Far from it: between 1987 and 1990, 1,453 pregnancy-related deaths were reported, but according to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, the actual number was more than twice that -- perhaps as many as 20 deaths per 100,000 live births -- or 0.02 percent.
In response, Schroeder plans to introduce legislation to improve maternal health. Why not? With the male mortality rate so high, it’s useless spending money on men; better to spend it where it will do the most good: on those who already have the best chance of survival.
Specifically, the Goldsmith oeuvre satirizes some of America’s social phenomena, particularly the various ways in which women don’t get a fair shake in our society. "First Wives Club," a smashingly successful first novel that had been previously rejected by 27 publishers, takes aim at the "trophy wives" phenomenon in which middle-aged wives are dumped by successful corporate men in favor of much younger wives.Would these "middle-aged wives" be the same women who reject nurturing "nice guys" in favor of Donald Trump-wannabes? Gee, my heart breaks. Justice can be so unkind.
Says Goldsmith, "I’ve always specialized in biting the hand that feeds me."
Do tell.
Too late to hold your breath, they’re already at it again. Reports Carey Quan Gelernter:
Recently accepted figures show that, a year after divorce, women suffer on average a 30 percent drop in their standard of living; divorced men enjoy an average 10 percent increase.What they always leave out is that most divorces are initiated by women, and the transfer of assets: she gets the house, he gets the payments, she gets the car, he gets the payments, she gets the health insurance, he gets the payments, she gets the kids, he gets the child support payments and the courts seldom if ever enforce his visitation rights.The reasons for the gap are simple. Women usually make less money than men. And census reports show only half of the 76 percent of women who were awarded child support receive it in full each month.
Democratic pollster Celinda Lake says the gap between young, college-educated men and women is so vast that she is beginning to worry about who these people are going to marry.If the experience of 30- and 40-somethings is relevant, the unfortunate answer is, one another.
Unfortunate for men, that is. Once the kids are school age, or close to it, experience suggests that women in such relationships demand divorce, child custody, child support, and otherwise do everything they legally can to make the fathers of their children go away. Maybe it's time for men to boycott marriage.
They’re at it again:
Nancy Cort, a professor at Yale University, complains that when newly enfranchised women started voting like their husbands, no one considered the possibility that "the husbands were voting the way their wives wanted all along."How soon they forget (if they ever knew) their history. One of my great-uncles has a sign up over "his" front door that reads, "I’m the head of this house, and I have my wife’s permission to say so." The sign is almost as old as I am, and it reflects a fundamental truth about his relationship with my great-aunt. A truth that was, in the fifties and sixties, common knowledge: the husband rules the roost, and his wife rules him.
Only problem is, this increases the number of single parent families under Child Protective Service’s (CPS) supervision, and the kids are getting killed. Can’t blame the moms -- feminatics call that "blaming the victim" (dead kids count as victims only when it maligns men). So you blame CPS, instead.
Children who were supposed to be kept safe by Washington’s child-protection programs died at a record rate last year, a study by The Seattle Times reveals.You don’t want to suggest the problem is that the courts award custody of the children to mothers almost by default rather than determining custody on a case- by-case basis, so you rely on the convenient fact that among intact families too many fathers are abusive (and ignore that 61 percent of child abusers are women).
You also know that an article critical of CPS will fuel the Family Preservation Alliance’s efforts to preserve the father’s place in the home, so you frame the "Family Preservation movement" in the context of generally abusive environments rather than anything having to do with a system that discards dads, and quote out of context one of the men’s/fathers’ rights movement’s most respected authorities to support your case:
At a workshop last year in Bellevue (Washington state), Richard Gelles, a national expert on child abuse, said he’s changed his mind about trying to save families. Now, he said, he realizes that a lot of people just aren’t meant to be parents.Some people -- male or female -- are not qualified to parent, and the courts ought to determine custody on a case by case basis, with a bias for joint physical custody, rather than defaulting to mother-custody even in cases where the mother is clearly unqualified or the father is a better candidate for physical custody."Get the child out," Gelles told caseworkers.
Empowering pop feminists at the expense of children is criminal, and anyone who promotes such an agenda ought to be ashamed.
Forni-what?
Since the start of the year, the prosecutor for Gem County, where Emmett lies, has, in a bid to reduce teenage pregnancy, revived a 75-year-old Idaho law banning fornication.Naturally, the hedonists don't like this, and complain it is unconstitutional to apply the law to teenagers and not adults.
Funny, but no one seems to mind when the law ignores equal protection in child custody, domestic violence, and sexual assault cases. (When a woman is sexually assaulted, it's often called rape; when a man is sexually assaulted, he's called a damn fool for not appreciating his good fortune.)
Moreover, where's the equal-protection clause of the Constitution when irresponsible teenagers expect us, the adult taxpayers, to pay for their irresponsible behaviors?
If we have to pay, then we should have a say. Otherwise, it's taxation without representation.
(Marilyn Nichols Kane's) former husband, precious-metals consultant Jeffrey Nichols, is in jail in New York City. He owes an estimated $640,000 in back child support and pleaded guilty last month to a federal charge of leaving a state to avoid the obligation.With almost a million dollars, you might think either they have a dozen kids or he’s been on the lam a long time. In reality, he’s just over 5 years behind. They have 3 kids (2 of whom are now legally adults) who, according to Ms. Kane and the court, needed $10,000 a month to get by.
Excuse me, but $10,000 a month tax free (to the mother)? I bet there are plenty of intact working families who could get by on $10,000 for a lot longer than a month. In America, the only time the law presumes someone who made a decent living before divorce is going to make as much or more after divorce is when the person in question is a man. How often is that really true?
In a New York Times article, Sally Johnson reported that Nichols was hardly living lavishly:
Nichols has said the negative publicity surrounding his case made it impossible for him to return to his once-lucrative career as an expert and consultant in precious metals. Over the past year, he has sold Avon products door-to-door and driven a taxi.He may not have been very supportive of his Manhattan real estate dealer ex-wife, but when it comes to family court, as often as not somebody's going to get screwed, and it's usually (though not always) the man. When enough people figure out that the legal system is less about enforcing justice than serving an agenda,...well, as long ago as the summer of 1994, the Justices and family court judges in Washington state were already making plans to put in metal detectors and move judges' chambers to above first floor levels in anticipation of the violence they expect to escalate.
But hey, this guy may not have been making big bucks, but shouldn't he have been giving his money to support his kids rather than spend it all on what the article in The Seattle Times called "lavish" belongings?
According to the New York Times article, most of it was anything but:
Vince Pyskaty, who once worked for an auction house in Connecticut, had a slightly different take on the day's events. "After the great fall," he said, "the vultures circle." He shook his head. "This is basically just household junk -- it just proves that money doesn't make taste."In fact, most of the bids were very low. So what was the point? Mrs. Nichols- Kane admits it was only partly about the money. Her kids never participated in the effort, they didn't care, she says. Her real motivation? She gets to be a pop feminist icon:
As she stood on the loading dock, a woman approached to shake her hand. "You're very tenacious and brave," the woman said.One day, the tide of sexist sentiment will turn; when it does, what will she say when her grandchildren, their eyes wide with horror, look at her and ask, "Gramma, why did you hate Grampa so hard? Were you a miss...ann...drist?"Mrs. Nichols-Kane watched the woman walk away. "People like that come up to me all the time to say thank you," she said. "That's the greatest thing I'll get from this."