The National Organization for Women (NOW) attacks a bill that promotes marriage and fatherhood.

At issue is the Fatherhood Counts Act of 1999, which would give $150 million in grants over five years to public and private organizations that will provide poor under- and unemployed fathers with parenting and marital-skills training, special visitation centers, classes on money management, help improving their credit records, and job training so they can meet child support obligations. As a result, the bill would enable millions of low-income parents and their children to get off welfare and could potentially save Federal and state governments billions in social services expenditures.

Sounds like something women’s groups would support. After all, wouldn’t most women want men to take some parenting and relationship-skills classes? And wouldn’t it be good for women if men could get decent jobs, support their families, and spend more time with their kids? Well, apparently that’s not good enough for NOW, which last week fired off an Action Alert, warning its members that the Act is “bad for women and children” and urging them to lobby against it.

NOW opposes anything that helps men
What’s so objectionable about Fatherhood Counts? In written testimony submitted to Congress, NOW’s Legal Defense and Education Fund claimed that the Act is unconstitutional because it ties “federal benefits available under the Act to gender (i.e., ‘fatherhood’).” Who are they kidding? Where are NOW’s constitutional objections to the billions of dollars (including over $1 million to NOW itself) that women’s groups receive under the Violence Against Women Act? And where are the objections to the millions of dollars that fund federal, state, and local Commissions on the Status of Women? Commissions on the Status of Men do not exist.

NOW complains that the bill allows states to suspend (but not cancel) child support arrearages if the father “is unemployed, underemployed, or having difficulty in paying child support obligations.” Fatherhood Counts doesn’t protect rich men who don’t pay child support. It offers help only to men who ’ve been on welfare or received food stamps in the past 24 months—fathers who are simply incapable of paying. Wouldn’t women and children be better off if these men learned some marketable skills so they could go to work instead of to jail?

NOW also claims that by promoting marriage, the Act doesn’t protect women who are the victims of domestic violence. In truth, the bill has extensive provisions that do exactly that. And NOW worries that the Act could give money to fathers’ rights groups. So what? If women’s groups get money to help battered women, shouldn’t fathers’ groups get money to work with disenfranchised fathers?

NOW harms children to hurt men
Children—the people who need the most help—are the biggest victims of NOW’s ill-conceived positions. It’s common and irrefutable knowledge that kids who have a father in their lives are less likely to smoke or abuse drugs or alcohol, less likely to become teen parents or get involved in crime, and far more likely to finish high school and go to college.

So why deny millions of children the chance to reestablish relationships with their fathers and experience the benefits that having a father around provides? And why deny poor mothers a long-overdue chance to improve their lives? It’s painfully simple: although Fatherhood Counts benefits women and children, it benefits men too.

NOW once helped empower millions of women. But today it has become so consumed by hate that it would rather harm our children (and their mothers) than back anything that might make life a little easier for men. It’s like a twisted version of Gore Vidal’s observation that, “It’s not enough that I succeed. My friends must fail.”

One really has to wonder why anyone pays any attention to NOW anymore. The group has only a few thousand members, according to the Washington Post, and Ms. magazine’s circulation is insignificant compared to the more popular women’s magazines. Clearly, women, many of whom consider themselves feminists, have begun to distance themselves from NOW’s intellectual dishonesty and harmful rhetoric. Isn’t it time that the media, Congress, and the rest of us did the same? The future of America’s children may depend on it.

Armin Brott is the author of several books on fatherhood, including his most recent book, The New Father: A Dad's Guide to the First Year. His excellent website is Mr. Dad: FAQ for Expectant Fathers