The Sadness of the American Father

...Many conservative critics of the "divorce culture" see it as a false panacea that promises harmless divorce...

...she may sincerely see little value in this bond...

...It is not, as the Syrians like to claim, "holy Arab territory", of which not an inch can ever be ceded...

...Gloria Steinem and friends do pay occasional lip service to nurturing fathers (while reserving their most blistering contempt for the old-fashioned fellow M~o thinks that supporting and protecting his family makes him a good father even ifhe's never cooked his kid's favorite meal...

...more recently, he was arrested for going to the house in violation of a restraining order which had expired...

...FLAME is a tax-exempt, n o n - p r o f i t e d u c a t i o n a l 501(c) (3) organization...

...It didn't matter that when Marcia Clark filed for divorce (apparently because she no longer found Gordon's company intellectually stimulating), she admitted in her petition that he had always had an equal role in raising the boys...

...Typically, the father is reduced to a role that leaves him with most of the obligations of traditional fatherhood-such as breadwinning-and few of the rewards...

...When fathers' groups propose such modest measures as allowing divorced fathers who are asked to pay for day care expenses to have a say in choosing child care or to provide it themselves, feminists clamor that this would "allow non-custodial Dads to control child care decisions made by Morns...

...Be their dad...

...Legal Aid represents only "primary caretakers"-read mothers-in child custody cases...

...But this crowd has a funny way of promoting any kind of fatherhood, even the most "progressive...

...It seems to work out well, even for nations that (as between Cuba and us) are hostile to each other...

...In 1995, when the estranged husband of O.J...

...Norman Podhoretz once wrote that such "Mr...

...But most important of all: The Golan is totally indispensable for the defense of Israel...

...Still, in their dealings with Israel, they act as though they were victors and in a position of great strength...

...The official government line is that the Arabs (under Syrian l e a d e r s h i p ) must mass their resources to "libe r a t e all occupied Arab land...

...Simpson prosecutor Marcia Clark filed for temporary custody of their two young sons during the trial, Ellen Goodman wrote a column titled "Guilty of Success" lamenting that working women were victims of bias in court and that Gordon Clark might simply be engaging in no-holds-barred "post-marital warfare...

...I believe that where you have minor children involved, in most states there really is no such thing as no-fault divorce for fathers," says Detroit attorney and fathers' rights activist Phillip Holman...

...While these groups are often derided as "right-wing," the...

...But it's a very incomplete and ultimately misleading view of what is happening to American fathers and families...

...It makes little sense to malign any of them...

...Polovchak, now himself the father of a six-year-old son, opposes sending Elian back to Cuba...

...Arizona State University psychologist Sanford Braver, the author of a major study summarized in his eye-opening book Divorced Dads (1999), found that only 15 percent of fathers, compared to more than two-thirds of mothers, managed to obtain the custodial arrangements they wanted...

...NOW, in recent years, has made the battle against the fathers' movement a top priority...

...Meanwhile, where are the liberals who have shown such enthusiasm for fathers' rights in the Elian Gonzalez case...

...Such approval should be by a super-majority - namely by a majority of all eligible voters, and not just by a majority of those voting...

...Biologically, of course, men and women can never have quite the same connection to their children...

...Surveys show that the maiority of divorcing fathers would like to have at least joint custody...

...At a time when more than a quarter of children in the United States are growing up without a father in the house, the idea that children are better offwith two parents has become something of ai~ uneasy consensus (though there are still 40 June 20 o o _9 The American Spectator those who say everything would be peachy if "society" just provided adequate support to single mothers...

...That makes it incomprehensible why our President, who, like the American people, is i n t e r e s t e d in the survival of Israel, presses t h a t country to relinquish the Golan...

...Groups that make a show of their concern for the poor rarely extend this concern to indigent "deadbeat dads" whose child support arrearages mount while they are unemployed...

...Many social conservatives who affirm the importance of fathers also share the belief that men's natural attachment to their children is weak at best, and that they' must be either coaxed or coerced into accepting a paternal role...

...On ABG's This Week With David Brink&y, Cokie Roberts fumed, "I mean...the number of men who have been working in court and no one has ever talked about taking their children away...

...but this statistic refers mostly to cases in which the father has custody by mutual agreement, not to custody disputes...

...Most men do not need to be conscripted into fatherhood...

...What used to be a wilderness has become, under Israeli administration, a successful province, with prospering cities and flourishing agriculture...

...while the mother was back in Cuba, he would have been sent home immediately...

...But their idea of equal parenting seems to boil down to this: You, Dad, will change half of all the diapers, make half of all the breakfasts, and do anything Morn needs you to do to free her to tote her briefcase to the office...

...With a few exceptions--such as former NOW President Karen DeCrow-- feminists have shown little regard for their hallowed principles of equal rights and gender neutrality when it comes to fathers...

...Since the creation of the State of Israel in 1948, the Syrians shelled the settlements of n o r t h e r n I s r a e l almost daily and made life there intolerable...

...Why then the insistence that tiny Israel deprive itself of an area that is totally vital to its survival...

...It was (in a great-power play) ceded by Britain to the French mandate, following World War I. When the French in 1941 granted Syria independence, the Golan became part of that country...

...The real problem is that in America in the year 2000, almost any father, "old" or "new," can find himself a "father without children...

...Almost all of our revenue pays for our educational work, for these c l a r i f y i n g messages, and for r e l a t e d d i r e c t mail...

...Yet surveys of divorcing couples suggest otherwise...

...Fathers complain of being treated as "checkbooks" and "visitors...

...Men and women will always bring their sexual identity, an intangible male or female je ne sais quoi, to what they do...

...Reviewing Braver's Divorced Dads, Publishers Weekly sniffed that "readers with more fluid, less patriarchal notions offiamily life will find much here to question"-- even though Braver repeatedly stresses his support for many aspects of the women's movement, and specifically for flexible parental roles for men and women...

...Never in the history of the world has a defeated aggressor successfully insisted that territories lost during its aggression be returned to it before being willing to make peace with the victor...

...I can see certain similarities between the way I'm being treated as a father in family court, and the way people were treated under Communism...

...According to Ms...

...The Golan, a plateau approximately the size of the borough of Queens in New York, has, since biblical times, been a part of Palestine...

...According to NOW, the bill would be 44 Ju~e 200o _9 The American Spectator "bad for women and children" because it would supposedly encourage women to marry abusive men...

...Social conservatives who favor traditional sex roles are unlikely to look kindly on the activist fathers' crusade to eliminate the legal system's preference for mothers as custodial parents...

...Unmarried fathers should not be automatically presumed to be the "deserters," either, though there are no reliable studies on breakups between unwed parents...

...if the father had died on a journey to the U.S...

...Only the woman has to be there at birth, and only a man can be unaware of his child's existence...

...It is sad that the Israelis, being in a position of total strength, would consider such humiliating conditions...

...In the early 197o % California courts ruled that two small children whose Czech refugee father died shortly after arriving in the U.S...

...From such assumptions, it clearly follows that the cause of fatherlessness is willful male abandonment of children...

...Take the suggestion, laden with a presumption of guilt, that before the father's custody claim could be considered, an effort should be made to find out why Elian's mother left him...

...Other commentators, including Ellen Goodman and the Washington Post's Richard Cohen, have made the same point: It's only lingering prejudice toward men as parents that has kept the boy on American soil...

...Actually, if the roles had been reversed, it's far from clear that the outcome would have been different...

...To many people, the idea that women are more likely to dump their spouses seems so counterintuitive that they are tempted to look for some alternative explanation: Maybe the wife formally files for divorce, but the husband has already moved out and is living with some floozy...

...While the battle over Elian may not be primarily a fathers' rights issue, those who want to turn it into one are raising the right questions for the wrong reasons...

...others proclaim the fatherless household to be just another wonderful addition to the mosaic of diversity...

...Nonetheless, it must be said--however queasy one feels about the idea of returning a child to a modern-day slave CATHYYOUNG is the author of Growing Up in Moscow (Ticknor Fields) and Ceasefire!: Why Women and Men Must Join Forces to Achieve True Equality (Free Press...

...Dad may show up at the scheduled time and find no one home...

...others speak of a movement for fathers' rights--a notion that, not long ago, would have seemed bizarre...

...In many ways, our culture today encourages such thinking...

...Tammy Bruce, then head of the Los Angeles chapter of the National Organization for Women, warned that if Clark lost, it would mean that "punishing women for...balancing families and careers is now in vogue...

...Why not let a hundred fathers bloom...

...The feminists still badger men about participating equally in child-rearing (in a TV debate in 1996, NOW President Patricia Ireland declared that "men need to take equal responsibility for the family"-just a few months before NOW issued an "Action Alert on 'Fathers' Rights'" comparing men who seek a role in their children's lives to batterers...

...42 Ju~ e ~ o o o _9 The American Spectator Almost i r r e s i s t i b l e pressure is being exerted on Israel to s u r r e n d e r the Golan Heights to Syria, in order to achieve peace with t h a t country...

...In Steinem's pet project, Ms...

...If feminists are consumed with hatred for the unreconstructed masculinity of the Old Dad, conservatives are far too inclined to get paranoid about the "androgyny" of the New Dad...

...They become, in Braver's poignant phrase, "fathers without children...

...In 1998, commenting on the notorious custody fight between hotshot lawyer Alice Hector and stay-at-home dad Robert Young, David Frum argued that the presumption that the children belong with Morn should be preserved as the most sensible approach to custody issues, even if it didn't quite fit the facts in this case...

...generally have not received much support from the political right...

...Maybe if people (and yes, I mean primarily women) know that they won't be able to get their ex out of their hair as tong as a child binds them together, they'll make more of an effort to stay married...

...should stay here with their paternal grandparents, even though their mother in Coinmunist Czechoslovakia wanted them back...

...Some blame fathers for shirking their responsibilities...

...While Mr...

...Germany does not ask France to return Alsace-Lorraine, nor Poland to return the large chunks of eastern Germany that were allotted to it at the end of World War II...

...Miraculously, Israel was able to repel the aggressors and to occupy the Golan Heights...

...There are plenty of men who are doing a wonderful job, either as traditional breadwinner fathers, or as "nurturing dads" who are equal or even primary caregivers -- or as something in between...

...magazine, rare valentines to the New Dad are vastly outnumbered by screeds against the Bad Dad--the selfish deadbeat, the domineering patriarch, the ogre who beats his wife and rapes his daughters...

...Fathers Without Children For one thing, the dirty little secret of the divorce debate is that two-thirds of all divorces involving children are initiated by mothers...

...Contrary to myth, the majority of non-custodial fathers don't live in the lap of luxury and don't bail out on their kids...

...In fact, to some people of progressive views, the very idea that children need fathers is still suspect...

...co-founder Letty Cottin Pogrebin, fathers' misdeeds, from desertion and emotional neglect to violence, are "a social calamity of major proportions," while women who love their fathers have been merely conditioned to overlook their bad behavior...

...attacked Israel through the Golan and almost succeeded in defeating it...

...plantation--that some of the rhetoric from the "Let him stay" side had disturbing overtones of dad-bashing...

...Syria is a third-rate country, with a bankrupt economy, and - having lost the support of the Soviet Union - a second-rate military power...

...And that, of course, is a code word for Israel...

...Or that she wanted him to pay for babysitters, out of his 536,000 a year to her $96,ooo, instead of letting him spend more time caring for his own children...

...These attitudes also trickle down into the liberal mainstream...

...While feminists often accuse the activist fathers of being after "power and control," their own rhetoric is an unabashed declaration of maternal supremacy...

...They're quite willing, along with the feminists, to applaud and support the "New Dad" when he sues his employer over the denial of paternity leave, or an airport over putting all the diaper-changing tables in the ladies' rooms...

...Unprecedented though it would be, an agreement with Syria about the Golan would be possible and acceptable to Israel if it would bring about real peace with Syria...

...For Syria to agree to such a settlement would be a positive step toward peace- proof of their good intentions...

...Or else his exmay play the abuse card...

...It is a leitmotif of conservative social commentary that the post-t96o's loosening of cultural, moral, and legal restraints has liberated men to desert the women they impregnate, or walk away from their families to seek greener sexual pastures...

...During such time, one would hope that public opinion in Syria and in the other Arab countries had matured sufficiently for Israel to be able to afford relinquishing this strategic asset...

...The gall, the "chutzpah" of the Syrians is almost beyond belief...

...What are the facts Indispensable for Israel's defense...

...Studies show that the vast majority of divorced men who are steadily employed pay all or most of the child support they owe...

...In case any agreement on the governmental level were reached that Israel should return the Golan to Syria, such agreement would still be subject to a plebiscite of the Israeli electorate...

...Syrian newspapers and broadcasts are filled with venom and unending hatred against Israel...

...Israel must be e l i m i n a t e d . Syrian "chutzpah...

...That is what the British did in Hong Kong and what we are doing in Guantanamo...

...Some decry father absence...

...More intriguing, Rick Kuhn of the Washington, D.C.-based Children's Rights Council and John Guidubaldi of Kent State University have found that the early 199o's-which saw a high percentage of joint custody awards--experienced the greatest declines in divorce rates...

...Some traditiona]ists' beliefs about male and female natures have even prompted them to embrace feminist myths of victimized women and beastly men--such as the claim that fathers who demand expanded custody rights are not motivated by paternal feeling but by the desire to terrorize their ex-wives into settling for less money, or that gender-neutral custody laws have put mothers at a disadvantage in divorce cases...

...Perhaps it's revealing that, of all the people I know who have fled Communist or ex-Communist countries, I found one who leaned in favor of sending Elian back--a father going through a nasty divorce...

...In the War of 1967 (the "Six-Day War"), the Syrians t r e a c h e r o u s l y "There is a way to make peace with Syria: Israel would return sovereignty of the Golan to Syria, but would lease the territory from it for an agreed-upon period...

...But, regrettably, the acceptance by Syria of such a solution is unlikely...

...Consistently, at least two-thirds of the time, both spouses agree that the wife wanted to end the marriage-and usually not because of adultery, wife-beating, or other grave offenses, but over such things as "losing a sense of closeness" or "not feeling loved and appreciated...

...We in the United States are well acquainted with super-majorities for matters of great consequence, such as amending the Constitution...

...As many as half of non-custodial fathers report at least occasional visitation interference, and 25 to 4 ~ percent of custodial mothers admit sometimes denying court-ordered visits to their ex-husbands to punish them for some real or perceived misdeed...

...As David Blankenhorn put it in his 1995 book Fatherless America, "Men do not volunteer for fatherhood as much as they are conscripted into it by the surrounding culture...

...What's more, men who are upset because the courts ignored their contributions as diaper-changing, bottle-feeding, baby-bathing modern fathers qualify for little sympathy from conservatives to whom the "New Dad" is a faintly repulsive symptom of politically correct androgyny...

...They enable us to pursue these goals and to publish these messages in national newspapers and magazines...

...relatively few have the resources or the stomach for a legal fight...

...It would have been the end of the Jewish state...

...Last fall, it mobilized against a congressional bill dubbed "Fathers Count," which would fund job training for indigent non-custodial parents and programs that promote marriage and successful parenting...

...But let him go to court to argue that he should have prima U custody of the children because the mother devotes 7 ~ hours a week to her career, and he's just another evil male oppressor...

...He sends his number-two man, who is instructed not to shake hands with the hated Israelis and not to enter any discussions unless the Israelis agree beforehand to every demand the Syrians have to make...

...Without the Golan, and with the Golan in the hands of those whose death wish for Israel has never been abandoned, Israel would be indefensible...

...As for policies with more teeth, joint custody is an option worth exploring...

...The Golan has since then been integrated politically and in every other respect into the State of Israel...

...But the moment she decides that she doesn't want you around anymore, you'll get out like a good boy, keep the checks coming, and stay out of her way...

...The hatred against Israel is so deep-seated that it would take progressive leaders and at least a generation or two to overcome it...

...Perhaps, in order to rebuild fatherhood, we need to appeal not to the hearts and minds of men, as Blankenhorn and others have suggested, but to the hearts and minds of women...

...Mihai Muset, a New York attorney, is an 4migr4 from Romania, where as a student he was briefly jailed under Ceaueescu for his dissident views...

...Women's groups have claimed that when fathers seek custody, they win two-thirds of the time...

...Nor do civil libertarians show much concern for fathers whose contact with their children is severely restricted by restraining orders based on uncorroborated allegations of abuse...

...Conservatives and liberals alike tend to miss the real picture of fatherhood and fatherlessness in America today--the latter, because they often can't see past the dogma of male oppression of women...

...Schoolchildren, beginning with the earliest grades, are filled with poisonous invective against the "Nazi-Zionist entity...

...Barak, the Prime Minister of Israel, appears to jump through hoops to "negotiate" with the Syrians, Syria's top man - the dictator, Hafez Assad - cannot be bothered to attend any meetings...

...I never thought this could happen in the United States," says Muset...

...Interestingly, men are also more inclined to believe that parents should stay in a so-so marriage for the children: In a 1994 poll, just a 7 percent of women agreed with this view, compared to 41 percent of men...

...as if taking men's children away had not been, for decades, the typical outcome of divorce...

...The p r e s s u r e comes, of course, from the Arab c o u n t r i e s , b u t r e g r e t - t a b l y also from the European nations and even the United States - I s r a e l ' s best and most s t e a d f a s t friend...

...If some wives are discarded after devoting their lives to their husbands, plenty of men feel they were dumped just as unceremoniously after they did their best to be good husbands and fathers...

...Braver's findings, however, indicate that joint custody and frequent contact with the father do mitigate many of the negative effects of divorce for children...

...Is there really anything to deplore about the fact that in nearly one in five two-earner families with preschoolers, the father is the principal provider of child care when the mother is working...

...But that is not in the cards...

...Fathers' advocates have been saying this practically from the day the story broke (one might even, if so disposed, see evidence of sexism in the fact that the mainstream media didn't catch on until about four months later, when all the other angles had been done to death), and some of them have been actively involved in the effort to have Elian returned...

...Such tactics are sadly familiar to American fathers who have never set foot on Communist soil...

...But that doesn't mean the father-child bond is weaker or more artificial: It is simply more vulnerable, and _9 may need more safeguards from disruption...

...In a Time essay titled "The Second-Class Parent," Lance Morrow wrote that politics has been allowed to trump family' in Elian's case because "Americans have grown stupid and confused about the meaning of fatherhood" and fathers are seen as "secondary and essentially dispensable...

...the former, because they often can't see past the dogma of traditional sexual distinctions...

...N The American Spectator _9 Ju~ e 2 o o o 45...

...NOW has urged its members to fight such sinister proposals as joint custody, penalties for false charges of abuse, and encouraging mediation instead of litigation...

...Those who disappear often give up after their efforts to remain involved are systematically thwarted by their exwives...

...n the controversy over the fate of Cuban boat boy Elian Gonzalez, the familiar sparring between anti-Communists and anti-anti-Communists and the complicated debates about freedom versus family have coexisted with another theme: sexism against fathers...

...Could Israel be expected to divest itself of part of its country and of a vital s t r a t e g i c asset byjust one vote...

...just because a father's role is not distinctly "masculine" doesn't make his presence as a man less vital...

...Take the flimsy allegations that Juan Miguel Gonzalez was a wife-beater and a child abuser who should be barred front contact with his child until these charges are sorted out...

...maybe we need one that says, "They're his kids...

...Or that at the time of his custody bid, she was working 16hour days and weekends while he was usually home by 6 p.m...

...Its purpose is the research and publication of the facts regarding developments in the Middle East and exposing false propagan~ta that might harm the interests of the United States and its allies in that area of the world.Your tax-deductible contributions are welcome...

...Fatherhood is, indeed, the subject of much confusion and ambivalence these days, and is often treated less as a bond to be respected than as a problem to be debated...

...or he may be told, over and over, that Tommy or laney is sick or has a lot of homework or is out playing with friends...

...There have been public service ad campaigns with such slogans as, "They're your kids...

...But it's far from clear that we know, where to go from there, or what to expect from fathers when they're present...

...We have virtually no overhead...

...It is entirely possible that men are less pro-divorce, in both word and deed, because they pay a heavier price for it...

...What can be done about this...

...That is what the British did in Hong Kong and what we are doing in Guantanamo, Cuba...

...Almost two decades ago, what some call "Cold War ideolo~," and others coil freedom trumped both parents' rights in the ease of Walter Polovchak, the twelve-year-old boy who asked for asylum when his &nigrd parents decided to return to the Soviet Union...

...In New York, he was summarily thrown out of the family home after his estranged wife charged, with no evidence, that he had abused her...

...she may want to make a "clean break" and view the father as an intruder--particularly if she wants the children to see the new man in her life as a father figure...

...The first and longest of its 1999 resolutions was a call for action on behalf of women in divorce and custody cases, beating the drams against supposedly well-connected and influential fathers' rights groups and asserting that "custody awards are...distorted by anti-woman bias, money and politics...

...In both cases, you have no rights...

...Legal advocates Joanne Schulman and Valerie Pitt write that "forced joint custody, like forced sterilization and forced pregnancy, is a denial of women's right to control their lives"--a right that, in their view, obviously overrides the right of fathers and children to a relationship...

...Needham, Massachusetts attorney Sheara Friend describes a case in which a man whom court experts had found to be an excellent father was cut off from all contact with his daughter for several weeks--even by telephone-after his ex-wife, who had earlier made uncorroborated charges of violence, claimed that she felt frightened because he had been looking for a house in the same area where she was moving with the little girl...

...The mother who sabotages the father-child relationship is not always acting out of spite...

...Let him be their dad...

...I These disenfranchised fathers--who, in a bitter spoof of the "deadbeat dad" label, often refer to themselves as "beat-dead dads" or "deadbolted dads"-form the core of the fathers' rights movement, a loosely organized agglomeration of groups that have tens of thousands of members nationwide...

...A common affliction among divorced fathers, Braver has found, is the feeling that they are "parentally disenfranchised"-deprived of any real say in their children's upbringing, and often hampered in their attempts to maintain regular contact...

...There are enough real-life examples of such behavior for the clich& to be believable...

...Moms" were no better than men who abandoned their children...

...all they need is a real opportunity to volunteer...

...There is a way to make peace with Syria: Israel would return sovereignty of the Golan to Syria, but would lease the territory from it for an agreed-upon period - 25 or 50 years...

...You've Gotta Have Heart The state of fatherhood in America is not quite as grim as the focus on "disenfranchised dads" would suggest...

...On the practical level, fathers realize that divorce means they lose their kids...