You are dead wrong! Government has everything to do with it. You need to do further research and you will see what’s happening to men is no accident.

To Ben Siegfried,

What you are fogetting is women have to do something bad like have an addiction or arrest records or somthing thing like that to lose custody of their children, but on the other hand men don’t have to do anything at all to lose custody just being men. This is true you need to do a little research to. I’m sure some women do get the short end of the stick on occassion but you can not compare that to the short end of the stick that men get at all, it’s not even in the same ball park.

37.8% of single mothers are divorced, 41% never married, and only 6.5% widows. Brookings Institute, “Assessing the Impact of Welfare Reform on Single Mothers”, Part 2, 3/22/04

“The strongest predictor of whether a person will end up in prison, is that they were raised by a single parent”. C.C. Harper and S.S. McLanahan, “Father Absence and Youth Incarceration”, Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Assoc., San Francisco, CA, 1998

In 1996, 70% of inmates in state juvenile detention centers serving long sentences, were raised by single mothers. Wade Horn, “Why There Is No Substitute For Parents”, IMPRIMIS 26, NO.6, June, 1997

72% of juvenile murderers, and 60% of rapists came from single mother homes. Chuck Colson, “How Shall We Live?” Tyndale House , 2004, p.323

70% of teen births occur to girls in single mother homes. David T. Lykken, “Reconstructing Fathers”, American Psychologist 55, 681,681, 2000

70% of drop-outs, and 70% of teen suicides come from single mother homes. Wade Horn, “Why There Is No Substitute For Parents,” IMPRIMIS 26, N0. 6, June 1997

70% of runaways, 70% of juvenile delinquents, and 70% of Child murderers, come from single mother homes. Richard E. Redding, “It’s Really About Sex”, Duke Univ. Journal of Gender Law and Policy, Jan.1, 2008

“Girls raised without fathers are more sexually promiscuous, and more likely to end up divorced.” Wade Horn, “Why There Is No Substitute For Parents”, IMPRIMIS 26, No.6, June, 1997

“After controlling for single motherhood, the difference between black and white crime rates disappeared.” Progressive Policy Institute, 1990, quoted by David Blankenhorn, “Fatherless America: Confronting Our Most Urgent Social Problem,” New York, Harper Perennial, 1996, p.31

63% of all youth suicides,
70% of all teen pregnancies,
71% of all adolescent chemical/substance abusers,
80% of all prison inmates, and
90% of all homeless and runaway children, came from single mother homes.
Bob Ray Sanders, “Hey Y’all, Let’s Fill The Hall (Of Fame), Ft. Worth Star Telegram, Oct.28,2007
Mona Charen, “More Good News Than Bad?”, Washington Times, Mar.16, 2001 (citing Bill Bennett, “The Index of Leading Cultural Indicators: American society at the end of the 20th Century., New York, Broadway Books, 1994)
Children brought up in single mother homes are:
5 times more likely to commit suicide,
9 times more likely to drop out of high school,
10 times more likely to abuse chemical substances,
14 times more likely to commit rape,
20 times more likely to end up in prison,
32 times more likely to run away from home.
Chuck Eddy, “The Daddy Shady Show”, Village Voice, Dec. 31, 2002

“America has more than twice as many teenage births as other developed nations.” Isabel V.Sawhill, to House Committee on Ways and Means, Subcommittee on Human Resources, June 29, 1999

86% of American teen births are out of wedlock. Dr. David Popenoe, “The Future of Marriage In America”, Rutgers Univ., The National Marriage Project, 2007

600,000 out of wedlock births in 1979. Patrick Fagan and William H.G.Fitzgerald, “Why Serious Welfare Reform Must Include Serious Adoption Reform. Heritage Foundation Reports, July 27, 1995

“(I)n a recent study by the Baltimore-based Annie E. Casey Foundation. Comparing statistics for its Kids Count report, the organization reported that Detroit ranks No.1 in unmarried births among the nations 50 largest cities. Of the 16,729 babies born in Detroit in 1997, 13,574 were black, 1,679 were white and 817 were Hispanic. Seventy-one percent were born to unmarried mothers. This compared with a state average of 33 percent and a 50-city average of 43 percent.”

Detroit is the worst offender on our list of America’s most dangerous cities, thanks to a staggering rate of 1,220 violent crimes committed per 100,000 ”

Less than 1% of children born to never married women were placed for adoption from 1989 to 1995. U.S. DHHS, Child Welfare Information Gateway, “Voluntary Relinquishment For Adoption, Numbers and trends, 2005

In 2003, there were 1.5 Million unwed births, and less than 1% were put up for adoption. Fagan and Fitzgerald (above)

Only 4% of college graduates have illegitimate children, and only 16% of college graduates get divorced, compared to 46% of high school dropouts, who marry in smaller numbers to begin with. Dr. David Popenoe, “The Future Of Marriage In America; “The Frayed Knot – Marriage in America”, The Economist, May 26, 2007

50% of single mothers are below the poverty line, their children are 6 times more likely to be in poverty than children with married parents. Chuck Colson, “How Shall We Live”, Tyndale House.

85% of homeless families are single mother families. Barry H. Waldman and Stephen P. Perlman, “Homeless Children With Disabilities, “ The Exceptional Parent, June 1, 2008 (American Academy of Developmental Medicine and Dentistry

90% of welfare recipients are single mothers. Jason DeParle, “Raising Kevion”, New York Times, Aug. 22, 2004

There were 3 million single mothers in 1970 and 10 million in 2003. U.S. Census, Table FM-2, All Parent/Child Situations, by Type, Race, and Hispanic origin of Householder, 1970 to 2003

The illegitimacy rate went up more than 300% since 1970. House Ways and Means Committee, Nonmarital Births to Adults and Teenagers and Federal Strategies to Reduce Nonmarital Pregnancies, appendix “M”, 2003

From: James D Carmine
Subject: FATHER your own? No! Foster parent someone elses? Sure!
The sickest problem is I can legally raise someone else’s kids and get paid for it by the state, but I am not allowed to see my own child for more than 4 days a month. Of course I can also live with some other father’s kids as well as spend most of his money, so long as I am shacking up with his
ex. Thank you Liberal lunatics. Seems I can raise anyone’s kids but the ones I really love. MY OWN.

There were never any charges, indictment and DCYF ultimately closed the case as unfounded, withdrwe and closed the case based on the “suspicion” of mom’s involvement.

The court awared 100% residential responsibility to mom and $2,000 per month in child support to dad along with the only way for dad to see the children was in supervised visits.

Greg

American manhood isn’t what it used to be, either, as many divorced men will duplicate their error and prove their lack of virility by, first, marrying a divorcee, and second, having sex with an older woman. I may get lonely from time to time, but I’ll tolerate it since the latter is an offense against nature, and outdoor sports and moderate drinking are preferable activities anyway.

Never voluntarily place oneself under the jurisdiction of the Family Court.

In other words never marry the State,

Second. Inappropriate use of no fault divorce filings. Not sure if you understand the issue. Let me know what you think. In a no fault divorce, the plaintiff (usually the female) is allowed to break her marital contract without penalty, extracting full financial benefit (in community property states such as Arizona) without consequence. Likewise in equitable distribution states (e.g. Michigan, North Carolina), no fault divorce enables the plaintiff to make claim against the defendants assets and income without consequence. Previous to the no fault divorce law, breaking the marital contract without cause resulted in the plaintiff losing claim to the defendant’s assets and income. With cause meant, I think, adultery, spousal abuse, or child abuse. Under “traditional divorce law”, unless the plaintiff could prove cause, the defendant was allowed to retain ownership of assets and income. Note that I said prove cause.

Arizona allows the use of the “covenant marriage law” to re-establish traditional divorce law for the couple that chooses to enter a covenant marriage. My current wife and I have chosen to enter a covenant marriage, as both of us are staunch in our belief that marriage is for life and the couple should make every effort to work out their differences. The covenant marriage law is available to each citizen on the Arizona Supreme Court web site … an excellent summary of it can there be found. I do not know if other states have a covenant marriage law. In a covenant marriage, there is no such thing as no fault divorce.

Third. Inappropriate use of false accusations and refusal to cooperate in order to acquire legal sole custody and parenting time of the children of the marriage primarily for the purpose of controlling the father’s income and maximizing child support payments to the mother. As we have discussed, this issue can be resolved by changing the existing statute to a presumption of 50/50 joint legal/residential custody unless either parent can be proven unfit. Note that I said, proven unfit. Such a statutory change must explicitly exclude a parent having to prove fitness.

In my research regarding the evolution of custody law, I discovered that until recent times custody was rarely awarded to a divorcing woman … instead, the children were considered the responsibility of the father and nearly always awarded to the father. Why this was changed, I don’t know. Current research seems to indicate that equal access to each parent is in the best interest of the child’s health … and thus I’m puzzled why the states in general award as little time to the father as they do. In Arizona, the generally accepted award is, as you know, every other weekend and Wednesday afternoon.

So, I’ve summarized more concisely my bully platform for family law reform.

I’ve also been monitoring the Arizona State Domestic Relations Committee and am completely disgusted with it. It appears to be simply a sham by the State of Arizona to appear to be in compliance to the federal requirement for regular review of child custody rules and laws. In my opinion the committee is a waste of our time and energy and serves only to prevent, delay, inhibit, or stifle addressing the necessary changes to statutes to fix our seriously broken family court system.

My three cents worth.

enjoyed your story …

I’ll talk to you when I can … been very, very busy with young men leaving home, going to high school, etc.

The government is simply trying to deal with the problem of fatherless families; they did not create the problem.

I would assert that at each juncture of government interference that there was also an abdication of duty and responsibility from the Church. We ceased teaching the roles of older men and women in the church in Titus 2, we ceased teaching on Biblical roles for men and women in the family, we ceased practicing judgment and discipline in the local church, and we ceased being hospitable enough to even know that marriages were in trouble until they were beyond repair. We wasted more than a generation telling young high school grads that if God called them, that he called them to ministry, not to the university, or business school or law school to be an influence there, as if the only ministry that existed was paid clergy. We removed the salt from society, and we ceased to be salt ourselves. It is inappropriate to blame the government for our won moral failures.

It is not Big Brother’s intrusion into our lives that got us in the end: It was our own love of pleasure, riches, ease and entertainment. We loved something besides the truth.

I have to note though, the irony of these realities against the current wave of born again constitutional stalwarts hosting tea parties and challenging the status quo in Washington of late. With all the hoopla and Henryesque rhetoric filtering through the media about a return to constitutional ideals and basic liberties, the paucity of discussion on men’s issues reduces the whole affair to shenanigans-as-usual among politicians, libertarians included.

Without a far reaching counter-feminist backlash there can no reclamation of personal liberties.

It is understood that to publicly embrace the men’s rights movement is political suicide in the mainstream given the modern misandric zeitgeist and especially the feminist governance currently in power. It is that movement though, in my opinion, that represents the only plausible hope for substantive change.

How much abuse men will endure before they look past partisanship and staged politics to make that happen remains to be seen.