We must now grant to fathers the same right to be in the family as we have granted to women in the workplace.by Dave Usher
NOW is waging war on Promise Keepers for their big meeting in Washington. Now has waged war on them in every city Promise Keepers has been in.
PK is certainly on the same wavelength as we are in many respects, but they are not as well equipped to handle this sort of public strafing. We should be protective of their work, for it is certainly building a positive image of men and fathers in a way that no one else has matched.
When this problem occurs in your area, here is a suggested way to handle it:
NOW will call Promise Keepers a bunch of chauvinists who refuse to include women and who want to tell women what to do.
The two positions above will hang NOW by its own noose, and expose their anti family agenda for what it is.
As a practicing Christian, my first task is to do no harm. To "blame" men for the problem of father- and husband absence is more a fallacy than not.
It is important to separate-out the present-day problem of father-absence (which requires spiritual work in men's commitment to family) , from the inter generation aspect which began thirty years ago (which has been largely brought about by changes in law and public policy that have empowered women to leave marriage with few economic and social consequences).
For the past three decades it is women's organizations that have told men not to be husbands. The women's caucuses have passed a nation of laws to make this a reality. This movement goes back to the early 1900's. During this time period I have never seen one men's organization suggest that men should be able to run out on their wives or families. Today, the women's option of aborting a good husband without consequence is just as real in America as is the women's option of aborting a good baby. However, the abortion of husbands is more subversive, and far more needy of attention, because even Promise Keepers does not recognize the reality of the situation.
Statistically, women file about 75% of divorces. The majority of these cases do not involve men who left the family. Most of these cases involve that abuse of domestic violence laws (which assume all men are violent), to throw good husbands out of their homes (because we think husbands are violent). Here, the statistics inform us that between 75% and 95% of serious spousal altercations occur after separation, not during marital cohabitation. (source: National Family Violence Surveys)
In my ten years of "street experience" working the movement I have seen hundreds of good husbands and fathers who were ejected from their families simply because the wife "felt" like trying out some other man. Their children were stolen, and then they were ordered to pay for it all simply because a women who do not live by Christian principles are unilaterally empowered to do so. The system does not differentiate between men who were good husbands and those who were not. It simply ejects the husband from the home and expects him to like it.
The really tragic part of this is when I get calls from good husbands who did their best, in the belief that "divorce is something that only happens to bad guys". They call me up in shock and horror that they are now "bad guys".
Why is this? Divorce, as we know it, is a women's option. No matter what, men commonly get nothing out of a divorce other than a child support and/or maintenance order (85% of divorce cases involving children result in custody of children and the award of most marital resources to the mother). Certainly, men in the upper income categories can afford to make marital changes without dire consequences, and some do. But most middle class men cannot afford it, and they know it. They are the last to abandon marriage and the most likely to want to try to save their marriage, which is one reason why Promise Keepers has been so wildly popular.
I cannot express the urgency of this issue enough. So long as Promise Keepers continues to blame social disarray on men, it is falling into the hands of the radical feminists, who are more than happy to blame men for everything also.
It is extremely harmful, and unchristian, to blame men for what women do. It is a moral and a spiritual dilemma that should be fully addressed by Promise Keepers and a more balanced public position established.
We have 6 in 10 marriages ending in divorce, most of them being filed by women. Certainly, it is not believable to suggest that 6 in 10 men ran out on the family or were the cause of this.
Having said this, I must point out that I do not blame women. The second chapter of Timothy, 1-6 warns us of a day when men will go into the family and lead weak-willed women out of it. When we gaze over the narcissism of radical feminism, and the level to which it has become empowered to end marriages without reason (with the permission of politicians), we must place the responsibility for marriage failures on the lack of commitment by both men and women.
In the long run, our organizations should be working together very closely. You are working the spiritual plane, while we work in parallel in the world of politics, law, and the court of public opinion.
The effectiveness of our mutual work in restoring fatherhood, and in reaching the minds of normal women in valuing a husband over government, depends decisively on this crucial amalgamation.
In closing, I would point out that our mutual situation is identical to that of the pro-life movement. Had the spiritual and activist elements of the pro-life movement not worked together closely, we never would have passed the partial birth abortion legislation.
When will we stop aborting fatherhood? Are you willing to address this reality so that your constituents are not led like lambs into the slaughterhouse as they go into marriage making promises that can be instantly broken by the wife?
We must strengthen marital bonds and commitment for both men and women, on both the spiritual and legal planes. To fail in working on both of levels simultaneously is to assure spiritual disappointment for many of your constituents. We cannot expect marriage to succeed if laws abort it.
NPR's Talk of the Nation had Henry Hyde and Lynn Wolsey on to promote new child support legislation - I suppose not to hedge on it - legislation to federalize domestic relations law.
I posted this response in their Talk of the Nation discussion area:
I'm an internationally recognized expert on child support. My studies started in 1989, I have furthered the "science" of it, and among other things, submitted testimony to Congress on the subject several times. I have to add my voice to others here. It's obvious that it doesn't take an expert to see through Henry Hyde and Lynn Wolsey. But let me add a few hard and cold facts.Fact 1: No study has ever shown that only 20% of the child support owed is actually paid. This is the newest popular myth of child support. Let me be perfectly clear - the claim is false.Fact 2: The compliance rate for child support orders in the US (percent of what is ordered that is paid) is about 80% - not 20% as reported by Hyde, Wolsey and other centalists. It was about 80% before the great federalization of the system that took place through the 80s which continues today. With more than 50K+ employees in a federally created child support enforcement system today, costing taxpayers about $2 billion per year, the compliance rate is still around 80%.
Fact 3: The US compliance rate is higher than that of any other country in the world. It was that way before the federal government became involved in domestic relations and there seems little hope of improving this excellent record beyond it's historical levels. The high compliance rate in the US is linked to the relatively high standard of living (ability to pay) of Americans. Stronger, more expensive enforcement measures are expected to have little to no effect on the ability of low income fathers to pay. Thus, there is little hope that it will ever be an effective approach to down sizing the welfare system. The experience of the past 15 years provides crystal clear evidence that the opposite is true - the welfare system has now expanded to include people who don't need or want to be included, and the cost has increased.
Fact 4: There has never been any honest credible evidence presented that leads to the conclusion that the current level of federalization of the system and the spending that accompanies it is worthwhile, let alone justifying the extremism represented by Hyde and Wolsey. Any reasonably competent look at the details quickly leads to the conclusion that pork and power are the two primary ingredients in what the ultra-left has cooked up in the past 2 decades of child support reform. And it's obvious they've become addicted to it.
An important study on the subject of domestic conflict has been posted to the ACFC website at: Physical Assaults By Wives: A Major Social Problem
Dr. Murray A. Strauss, edited by Richard J. Gelles and Donileen R. Loseke. [1993, Current Controversies on Family Violence]. This report debunks many of the tabloid myths about domestic conflict in detail. (a) After adjusting for actual injuries, the numbers of cases of severe spousal abuse is only about 10% of the 1.8-million cases claimed by the domestic violence lobby ("one every 14 seconds....). (b) Women initiate serious spousal conflict more often than do men. (c) Studies generated by "womens centers" intentionally suppress unfavorable data and avoid questions that would lead to unfavorable responses. (d) Date generated from police reports is unreliable. (e) Murder rates for women are higher than than of men. (f) "the Clinical Fallacy": public policy responses to domestic conflict behave as if all conflict were clinical in nature, and do not reflect the fact the most domestic conflict is minor and infrequent in nature. (g) Cultural norms encouraging minor assaults by wives encourages wife beating.
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