DadTalk

Staying Married Is ‘Green’

Imaginary couple:

“Hon, we can’t get divorced.”

“Why not?”

“It’s bad for the environment.”

“What, yelling produces more carbon dioxide or something?”

“No, but setting up separate households does.”

“So we’re stuck together?”

“It seems so.”

Fortunately, my wife and I get along fabulously, so we won’t be contributing to global warning by splitting up. But divorced households apparently are responsible for an extra 73 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity use, reports the Los Angeles Times.

Divorced families, which account for 15 percent of the 110 million households, use 3.7 rooms per person compared with 2.5 for married couples, reports the Times on a study being published in the Proceedings of the National Academies of Science. As a result, divorced couples use 46 percent more electricity than married ones.

I’m guessing divorcees use 56 percent more water because at least one of the parents can shower without a kiddy brawl interrupting a few moments of bliss.

So there you have it. Staying married is “green.” I await our bonus carbon credits in the mail.

States Often Keep Most of Poor Dads’ Child-Support Payments

Some policies make so much sense you just want to pin a blue ribbon on the government officials that thought them up. Take for example, the collection of child-support payments from absent fathers, most of which state governments keep.

Why would a state hunt down a delinquent dad, garnish his wages and then keep some of the money meant for his wife and kids? Because those wife and kids are a welfare burden on the government of course. I guess getting mom and the kids off of welfare by passing the money directly to them is counterintuitive.

If you think I’m making this up, read this confusing article in The New York Times, which reveals that about half the states keep ALL of the child-support payments to parents on welfare. In most of the other states, about $50 a month actually makes it to the parents.

While studies show dad is more likely to pay if he knows the money is going directly to his family rather than funding welfare programs, states don’t know how to break their addiction.

And while the Bush Administration was planning on fixing the problem, budget woes shifted the child-support enforcement burden back on the states. Translation: States don’t feel particularly motivated to give dads’ money back to spouse and kids anytime soon.

Let’s give a big round of applause to lawmakers who keep these family-unfriendly policies in place.

Should You Buy Paternity Tests From a Drug Store?

When I look at my kids, I have zero doubt they are mine and Anne’s. Appearance, mannerisms and behavior are all dead giveaways.

Besides, I was there when they were born, and we have the ultimate proof detector: they love books.

For some parents, such clarity is lacking. A few years ago there was a case where two children were switched in the hospital and it was years before the discovery made. There was another case last month in which two Czech moms decided to keep the reversed children, reports the Australian News.

Such cases are rare. Far more common are men – rightfully or wrongfully – who doubt their “dadliness.” Consider the black-haired dad who has a red-haired daughter. And where did that nose come from, anyway?

It was bound to happen sooner or later, but Rite Aid stores are now selling a paternity test kit called Identigene in California, Oregon and Washington, reports The New York Times. “There is a curiosity and a need to know that can be provided discreetly, conveniently and affordably at retail,” Douglas R. Fogg, chief operating officer of Sorenson Genomics, tells the Times.

Fighting the Good Fight for Fathers’ Rights

I have had trouble keeping up with a recent onslaught of dads’ rights stories. Here are three of the more recent ones:

Court Blocks Father’s Book on Custody Battle
A Massachusetts Family Court Judge has banned the content of a book because – well, it’s so complicated you’re going to have to read the entire story. But the gist is this: Man wins only 10 hours a week with his son, so he writes a book about how “corrupt” he finds the Massachusetts Family Court. The judge, who is the focus of at least one chapter, bans usage of impounded court records, which essentially guts the book.
– Lowell Sun

Australia Close to Approving Dads’ Rights Bill
A bill that might improve divorced fathers’ access to their children is in the final stages of approval in Australia. Activists feel the changes in the law don’t go far enough because the bill will not guarantee equal time with both parents.
– The Sydney Morning Herald

Registries Trip Up Honorable Dads
Does a father have the right to adopt a child that his former partner wants to give up for adoption? The New York Times explored this issue, but I didn’t have time to get in a post. Essentially, the bureaucracy is designed to prevent men from exercising this right. Even when men have faithfully sought out custody, near-secret registries are used to prevent a man from taking custody of his child. Cathy Young, an editor at Reason, does a good job of explaining the whole thing.
– The Boston Globe

Study: Children of Divorcees More Likely to Feel Parental Tug of War

Picture this: as a child, your mom was June Cleaver and your dad was Indiana Jones. The two divorced when you were 10 and while one argued for washed hands and good manners, the other dragged you along on dangerous adventures.

Both parents have good and bad qualities, but you must adopt a completely different persona depending on who you are with. Sounds extreme? Well, in a way not, according to a New York Times story on Elizabeth Marquardt, who works for the marriage-affirming Institute for American Values. Her thesis? Even “good” divorces are bad for children.

She backs this up with her comprehensive study (pdf) of adults 18-35 years, half from divorced families, half from married families. Twenty percent of those from split marriages report they had felt “like a different person with each of my parents.” Only 8 percent of children from married couples felt that way.

Children of divorced parents also were more likely to report stress, find themselves alone or feel like they didn’t have a home. Children from divorcees were half as likely to feel “emotionally safe” while growing up.

Marquardt’s study and book Between Two Worlds, which I have not read, is an attempt to fill in the knowledge gap about the national impact of divorce. There are few comprehensive studies on this issue, most likely because of the length of time needed to do such research and its extremely subjective nature.

But considering that this incomplete Times’ story quickly jumped to the top of the “Most e-mailed” list, it is clear that Americans are hungry for additional information on how divorce impacts children. Unfortunately, these studies often fail to answer one important perspective question: are children who grow up in extremely unhappy marriages worse or better off than those from divorced parentage? Whether the omission is from the Times story or Marquardt’s book, I don’t yet know.

But I did not see the question answered in the raw data, which I found here (pdf). Still, there are plenty of interesting results.

When asked how is your life as an adult, those from divorced families answered roughly the same as those from married families. Of the 755 respondents who came from divorced families, 722 reported being very happy or pretty happy. Only 6 more respondents from intact families reported feeling the same way.

In other areas, children from divorced families fared much worse. For example, by a 20 percent margin, adult children felt that their parents did a much worse job protecting them from their worries than those from intact families.

Perhaps most telling are the responses to this question: “My parents seemed like polar opposites of each other.” More than 66 percent of children of divorcees strongly or somewhat agreed with this question while only 34 percent of those from intact families felt the same way. See? June Cleaver and Indiana Jones.

Sadly, I’m only able to give you a sampling of this huge survey, which totals 154 pages and focuses very heavily on religious questions. But presuming the methods used were scientific and not biased by the author, the results show a clear indictment of how divorce can be a huge negative force in a child’s life.

Additional resources:
The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce: A 25 Year Landmark Study, by Judith S. Wallerstein, Julia M. Lewis, Sandra Blakeslee.

Columnist Blames Murder of Teen on Missing Fathers

When dads disappear from the family scene, bad things happen. In New York, teens rove the street like characters out of the “Lord of the Flies,” writes Bob Herbert for The New York Times.

Herbert is responding to a group of teenagers who killed another teenager – and beat his friends – for an iPod on a busy street. Herbert writes:

There are plenty of youngsters who grow up fine without a father in the home. But that’s not a good argument in favor of fatherlessness. Most of the youngsters getting into trouble and preying on others come from fatherless homes.

Here’s why, according to Herbert:

Kids who grow up without a father never experience that special sense of security and the enhanced feeling of belonging that come from having a father in the home. So they seek it elsewhere.

This phenomenon is not limited to big-city life. Most of us know a wild teenager or two down the street. Sometimes we can directly connect that behavior to a missing parent.

Sums up Herbert:

I don’t have the statistics to prove it, but black kids would be tremendously better off if the cultural winds changed and more fathers felt the need to come home.

For me, it’s an easy call: Moms are crucial. Dads, too.

Postscript:  Sometimes, troubled dads should disappear. I just discovered this story in the Los Angeles Times where a father used his 17-month-old baby as a shield in a shootout with police. The baby and shooter were killed.

New Zealand Boldly Attempts to Fix Child Custody Laws

While political leaders in the U.S. often talk of reforming custody laws, New Zealand has already done it, reports Stuff. The idea of “custody” is being dropped in favor of ensuring quality “day-to-day care” and parental responsibility outweigh the notion of who has “control” over the child.

This means that New Zealand courts will be less in the business of worrying about which parent gets primary custody and instead require both parents to be as fully involved with the child’s upbringing as possible. The new law even gives children the right to hire an attorney to make sure their interests are represented.

Parents who seek custody in court will first have to learn at seminars how to minimize the impact of the divorce on their children. “If there is no indication of conflict, the effect on children is not great,” says Brian Gubb, who helped develop the seminars. “If there is conflict, there are enormous problems in the children.”

The Care of Children Act also gives judges the power to jail parents up to three months and fine those who violate the court’s orders by up to $2,500. This gives judges better tools to help parents who are wrongfully denied access to their children by angry former spouses. Hopefully, protections for spouses of abusers remain intact.

It remains to be seen whether the new laws will help. Much depends on how New Zealand courts interpret the Care of Children Act.

My biggest concern is that families will now have to absorb the cost of a third lawyer should a child seek one. As I’ve written in earlier posts, one of the biggest problems with modern divorce is that both parents are often left financially damaged by exorbitant attorneys’ fees.

But give New Zealand credit – at least it is serious about trying to fix the child custody mess of this generation.

NYT Takes on Fathers’ Issues for Mother’s Day

I’m not really sure why The New York Times Magazine came out with a story on divorced fathers’ rights on Mother’s Day, but there’s no avoiding it. Susan Dominus paints a broad picture of how the men’s movement in England may invade American organizations hoping to even the custody-dispute playing field.

Dominus’ bias against the 50-50 parenting solution shows. She seems to be painting these men, who just want to have a larger role in their children’s lives, as either flaky, desperate or whiners.

While I’ve criticized some of the tactics used by Fathers 4 Justice in the past, many divorcees of both sexes have legitimate gripes that they have been ignored by lawmakers and the courts. And Dominus lightly brushes over the financial impact the American court system has on all members of these families.

Still, the article, which is far too long for me to capsulate here, is a requisite read for any dad – or mom – locked into a custody dispute. If anything, Dominus captures the difficulty men will have in fighting cultural stereotypes and in increasing access to their own children. Please keep in mind that The Father’s Crusade will be free only until about May 15th.

Men on Notice: Mom Gets Away With Lying in Court

A custody battle in New York proves that men are often their own worst enemy. Here’s the back story: Casino mogul John Alysworth, 54, and his wife raise four kids to adulthood. He then has an affair with ex-playboy model Bridget Marks, who becomes pregnant and has twin girls.

Marks sues for child support in what should have been a routine case. It’s easy for a judge to say, “Well, John. You played, now you pay.”

But Marks wasn’t satisfied with sticking Alysworth for $4,200 a month in child support, reports Glenn Sacks in a column he penned last year. Instead, Marks decides to punish the guy by coaching her two girls to make false sexual molestation charges against him.

I can say false, because the courts, the press and even her own expert witnesses agree that the accusations were made up. Surprisingly, the divorce court gave custody of the twins to dad, reports Sacks. Their reasoning: Marks abused the girls by making them lie about their father.

Marks turned to the television media and performed the victim role to perfection. “Larry King Live,” “The O’Reilly Factor,” and “Dr. Phil” were only too happy to help. While she continued to shred Alysworth’s credibility, he mostly stayed quiet.

But a few days ago, a New York appellate court turned custody back over to Marks on the grounds that while she was not really a fit mother, she was essentially a “good enough” one.

“The judges agreed with Family Court Judge Arlene Goldberg that the girls were coached into falsely accusing their father of abusing them – a tactic they branded as “abuse,” writes The New York Daily News. “But they declared it was too harsh a punishment to take away the kids (from Marks).”

Not surprisingly, Glenn Sacks returned to the airwaves to decry the decision. Here’s an excerpt from his radio show:

This week we had one of the most stunning and unconscionable court rulings I’ve ever seen. … Marks won custody in part due to the widespread media sympathy she created through constant theatrics, playing victim, and her determination to place her little girls in the public spotlight.

The courts apparently ignore Marks coaching, both from a legal perspective and a parenting one. Says Sacks, who is reading from the court record:

“There is ample support in the record – that the mother coached the girls to make false accusations that their father sexually abused them. The Law Guardian and the neutral expert witnesses who testified in this case – the psychiatrist appointed by the court as the independent forensic evaluator, two certified social workers retained by the Law Guardian, and two social workers who supervised the father’s visitations – all take the view that the accusations are false, and that the children were coached to make them. Even the expert witnesses called by the mother seem to have recognized that the accusations were made in a manner consistent with coaching. … Such misconduct may or may not harm the child or interfere with the child’s relationship with the other parent.”

The court then goes on to award custody to Marks.

While I don’t know enough about either of these people to make a judgment call about their fitness as a parent, one thing is clear: we have here a precedent saying that a mom who coaches her children to lie about dad will not be punished in any way for committing perjury or harming her children to win the case.

Which brings us to why I think men are their own worst enemy. Men who make mistakes such as cheating will continue to provide fodder for the media and courts that will be used against dads who behave in an utmost proper fashion. The decision rendered by this court now puts men around the nation on notice: If you get divorced and your ex-spouse decides to lie about you in court, tough luck.

Only Lawyers Profit on Divorce in West

Parents and their children pay a high price in this country – as well as much of the Western world – when they get divorced. The only people who ever really profit are the lawyers.

While the system is unfair to both sexes, it tends to be downright hostile toward men. One case that recently grabbed the headlines involves a U.S. Navy Seal named Gary who was sent off to Afghanistan in 2003. While there, his wife moved to Israel and filed for divorce, reports the New Hampshire Union Leader.

Instead of a welcome home, Gary came back to a $2,100-a-month bill for child support and an empty nest. When the story first hit the air, Gary hadn’t seen his son in nine months and was rarely allowed to talk to him on the phone, syndicated radio columnist Glenn Sacks originally reported here.

Gary, who only has seen his son three times since he went to Afghanistan, is nearly bankrupt paying for child and spousal support, travel costs and legal fees, Glenn Sacks and divorce rights lawyer Jeffery M. Leving write in a new column.

While a recent California Supreme Court decision has made it more difficult for a spouse to move far away with children, most states do not have similar protections. Anyway, the decision was too late for Gary, whose case is based out of California.

Reservists who come home may face an even more dire situation when they switch from civilian pay to lower military pay. That’s because the federal Bradley Amendment prohibits judges from lowering child support benefits below the original amount. A drop in income doesn’t matter. Some reservists are coming home to possible felony charges and prison time if their arrears reach $5,000.

Such mistreatment from the legal system is not limited to military reservists. The courts placed two restraining orders on Christopher Kennedy of Connecticut that prevent him from seeing his children, reports The Associated Press via Newsday.

“They will not enforce a father’s motion, and they will do everything they can to rule in favor of mothers,” Kennedy tells The Associated Press. “You would honestly have to sit through a hearing to believe it yourself.”

I believe it, because it has happened to family members and friends. By court order, one relative of mine had to bring a security guard with him just to see his own three children. The distraught father had to scrimp and save for weeks at a time just to save up enough money to see his own children, before the judge finally relented. My relative’s biggest complaint? The judge automatically rules against him without even hearing his side of the story.

Some dads are beginning to fight back in this country, albeit slowly. Kennedy and other fathers, for example, are backing a bill that promotes shared parenting, which encourages judges to consider co-parenting custody arrangements. The idea is that both parents get equal time with the children. But such efforts attack the problem slowly, state by state.

Another effort, by The Indiana Rights Council, is taking a more aggressive approach by attempting an enormous nationwide class-action lawsuit. But whether the lawsuit will work is yet to be seen, and so far the press seems largely uninterested. You can read my post on the issue here, but keep in mind the dollar amounts are no longer accurate.

Just north of us, Canadian dads may be in worse shape. That’s because dads may be facing an onslaught of retroactive child support payments, reports the Calgary Sun.

It all started in Alberta courts, which decided that four dads who had been faithfully making child support guidelines owed more because of changes in income. Not new income, but increases since 1997, when Canada-wide child support guidelines were only partially implemented.

The judges fined these dads, who were not deadbeats in any way, up to $100,000 in back child support. The dads are appealing, but if they lose, fathers across Canada may have to dig deep into their wallet.

In all these cases the courts and attorneys seem determined to bankrupt dads, which results in hurting his former family as well as a new one. Which brings me back to my basic point: the Western legal system is a disaster for families.

Bad court decisions and ridiculous legal costs serve only to make dads resentful. While some men are deadbeats, did judges ever stop to think by cutting them out of family time that dads lose their vested interest in paying child support? Even if dad has limited custody rights, I’ve seen moms get away with making it impossible for some guys to see their children by claiming junior has a “cold” or a “school project.” What incentive does a dad have to pay in such situations? He still should, of course, but mistreatments as mentioned above must leave an awful lot of men feeling hopeless and bitter.

It is time for reform that does not enrich the lawyers at the expense of parents and their children. Any solution should be inclusive of dads rather than exclusive. It is time for a fair, equitable solution that protects the rights of moms, dads and most importantly, the children.