New Data on Fathers and their Children

Two recent articles on the relationship between fathers and their children give new data on this important issue. The articles are Our Fatherhood Crisis , by Glenn Sacks and Robert Franklin, published on June 21, 2009 in The Washington Times (http://washingtontimes.com/news/2009/jun/21/our-fatherhood-crisis/?feat=home_commentary), and Obama’s Father’s Day Criticism of Dads Misses Mark by Glenn Sacks and Robert Franklin (http://lifestyle.msn.com/your-life/family-parenting/article.aspx?cp-documentid=20440872&page=print). I want to quote some of the most relevant facts that appeared on these articles:

1 - Professor Rebekah Levine Coley lead a recent Boston College study of low-income minority families, and found that when nonresident fathers are involved in their adolescent children's lives, they worked as an important protective factor, decreasing markedly the incidence of substance abuse, violence, and delinquency.
Writing about this study, MSNBC health and science writer Linda Carroll explains that:

"When it comes to preventing risky teen sex, there may be no better deterrent than a doting dad. Teenagers whose fathers are more involved in their lives are less likely to engage in risky sexual activities such as unprotected intercourse, according to a new study...While an involved mother can also help stave off a teen's sexual activity, dads have twice the influence."

2 - Professors Kathryn Edin of Harvard and Timothy Nelson of the University of Pennsylvania conducted a study of low-income, unmarried fathers and found that most strive to be good parents but often are thwarted by the children's mothers' interference. They found that these dads provide what monetary support they could, but focused on the non-financial aspects of fatherhood. These aspects include educating their daughters about relationships with males and teaching their sons how to defend themselves.

Ms. Edin's soon-to-be-published subsequent studies (Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing) found that when mothers move on to have new partners their actions are "strongly associated with increases in the probability that the biological father will have no contact with his child.” When fathers move on to have subsequent partners and children, they largely retain their desire to be in their original children's lives. According to Ms. Edin: "The evidence points more strongly to the role of mothers 'swapping daddies' than it does to the role of fathers 'swapping kids.'" A single mother's new partnership "may provide strong motivation [for her] to put the new partner in the 'daddy' role." The biological father is then less likely to be involved because the mother is more likely to exclude him and/or because he may feel he's now redundant.

When a mother wants to exclude her children's father from their lives, she can push him out easily. Family courts usually award custody to mothers, and are extremely lazy enforcing fathers' visitation rights. In most states, mothers are allowed to move their children thousands of miles away from the children's fathers, destroying the fathers' bonds with their children.

3 - Dr. Perry Crouch is a gang intervention specialist in Los Angeles. He states that only about half of one percent of the gang members he deals with have fathers in their lives.

4 - Michigan Attorney General Mike Cox, after examining hundreds of pre-sentencing reports detailing the family histories of convicted criminals, found that the common denominator of those cases was that one parent, usually the father, was missing from the home.

5 - In Growing Up With a Single Parent: What Hurts, What Helps, sociologists Sara McLanahan and Gary Sandefur analyzed data from five different studies and concluded that children of single parent families are more than twice as likely to drop out of high school as their peers with two parents, they're also less likely to go to college if they do finish high school, and more likely to be both out of school and out of work, proving that fathers and educational performance are also strongly linked.

6 - The Urban Institute report titled What About the Dads? tells that even when fathers inform child welfare officials that they would like their children to live with them, the agencies seek to place the children in the foster care system instead, pushing fathers away from their children.

Readers should also check out the statistics on these issues gathered by the people of Fathers and Families: http://fathersandfamiliesorg.siteprotect.net/site/infores.php

The singularity of fathers

On this Father’s Day, first I want to congratulate all those fathers who read this blog and who fight for the cause of joint custody. Second, I want to use this celebration to highlight the singularity of fatherhood.

In days like this, always someone, in all good faith, approaches us to congratulate us for being father and mother at the same time. Although I almost understand the goodness behind this congratulation, I should object it because it is born from a radical confusion between the roles of the father and the mother. Being father and mother simultaneously is impossible. Those of us who believe in joint custody, we do so precisely because we know that the roles of father and mother are not, I repeat, are not interchangeable. A child needs to have a father and a mother, and if one of them is not there, no matter how much the other could try to fill his or her space, filling it is impossible. Fathers and mothers bring absolutely different but equally important elements to the lives of their children.

Another face of this confusion is that many expect that fathers to be nothing more than a mother with testicles. The differences between men and women are not a mere cultural construction, but they are born at the root of male and female natures. Men are and should behave like men, in the same way that women are and should behave like women. We should not feel less for being men.

The fact that sole custody decisions are usually awarded to mothers indicates that in many cases courts tend to forget that in the development of a child, both parents have different but equally important tasks. One of the most important statements of Beck v. Beck, the 1981 case that set the foundation for joint custody in New Jersey, is:

…that although defendant’s care of the girls was more than adequate, she is limited by an inability to be both a father and a mother. 86 N.J. 493 (1981)

In other words, fathers are only capable of being fathers, but also mothers are only capable of being mothers, and their children need both: “there is a real purpose in fatherhood as well as motherhood.” (86 N.J. 493)

When courts award sole physical custody to mothers, the mother, they only repeat a gender biased prejudice that should be eradicated from the courts, especially when they are deciding the well-being of the children these courts are supposed to protect.

Padres Sí Somos (We Are Fathers)

At this moment, when after so many years of struggle, Puerto Rico at last is at the doors of having a so needed law of joint custody, appears the pro-joint custody group Padres Sí Somos (www.padressisomos.org). The organization has the purpose of grouping Puerto Rican single fathers to serve them as support, bringing them orientation and help to deal with the daily problems and situations that they confront as head of family, in summary, to promote the development of men in their role as fathers.

The group was established by José Raúl Morales. Morales is a single father who is raising his son 7 years old son Arnaldo Raúl Morales since his first year. The problems that he has confronted as a single father served him as motivation for the creation of the organization. Currently, Morales seeks to establish alliances with diverse government agencies so they could help to provide professional services for the fathers who his group represents.

This group is an important effort that could crystallize advancements in the struggle for equality between fathers and mothers. Apart from its function as support for fathers, the group has assumed a star role in the lobbying in favor of the law of joint custody that is now under the consideration of the Senate of Puerto Rico. Padres Sí Somos is part of a new paradigm in the Puerto Rican society, paradigm that assigns equal importance to fathers and mothers in the raising of their children. In a country like Puerto Rico, where divorce is a true social epidemic, efforts to integrate divorced fathers to the lives of their children are urgently necessary.

It amazes me the wholeness of their approach and strategy. The services that the organization offers include orientation, meetings in support groups, contacts with health professionals, contacts for legal assistance, lectures, family recreational events, and workshops. Even at the purely geographical dimension, the group as structured its expansion in stages, being the first one the metropolitan zone and its surroundings (San Juan, Bayamón, Carolina, Guaynabo, Toa Baja, Trujillo Alto, Cataño, and Caguas).

Currently, the organization has 300 members, and is growing fast. I firmly believe in the power of organizations, and I have insisted from the beginning that those of us who believe in the equality of fathers and mothers should get organized in order to articulate efficiently our efforts. Organizations like Fathers and Families (www.fathersandfamilies.org) in the United States and Amor de Papá (www.amordepapa.org) in South America have been determinant factors in the advancements that the cause of joint custody has had in the recent years. I encourage all to support those groups like Padres Sí Somos that make effort to organize fathers in their struggle for our children.

A Message for Inés Quiles

Last May 14th, the political analyst Inés Quiles, in her radio show “Si no lo digo, reviento” which is aired Monday to Friday from 10:00 to 12:00 in the morning by the Puerto Rican radio station Radio Isla 1320 (www.radioisla1320.com), Inés interviewed senator Carmelo Ríos, proponent of avant-garde joint custody law before the legislature of Puerto Rico. After the interview, the microphones were opened to the public and one listeners, a father who has the custody of his children, called to criticize the law and to oppose joint custody, on the grounds that a child can not healthily adapt to life between two houses. To answer this unfounded argument, that same day I wrote Inés the following e-mail:

Inés:

I hope that you and your loved ones are well. I am Vidal Guzmán, a Puerto Rican architect resident in New Jersey, pro joint -custody activist, and knowing your commitment to our children and to joint custody, I have contacted you previously to comment on issues related to our cause.

Listening to your show today, I heard one of your listeners saying several dangerous mistakes about joint custody. I tried to call your program to correct the listener, but it was impossible to me to get in, and for that reason, I am sending you this message.

The listener, from the comfortable position of a father who has the custody of his children, said that all the studies on the subject affirmed that moving regularly a child from the house of a parent to the house of the other was harmful for the child. That, as we would in my “barrio” Mamey of Guaynabo, was invented from air. Those studies do not exist. We should not confuse the opinion of a professional with the scientific studies done by a professional. And every study has proven once and again that if there is something really harmful for a child is the absence of the father. In fact, every statistic study done to date point out that the most certain predictor of depression, criminal conduct and social inadequacy in the adult life of a child, is having being raised by a single mother. The following link connects to a brief bibliography on the subject:

http://hijosdemamaypapa.blogspot.com/2009/02/una-bibliografia-de-la-orfandad.html

The listener should read the book by Ann Coulter, Guilty: Liberal "Victims" and Their Assault on America (Crown Forum, January 6, 2009), on which the second chapter is dedicated to demystify single motherhood and to show how this supposed victims are in fact victimizing society and causing irreparable harm to their children. That chapter is rich in bibliographical references.

For a child, dividing his/her week between two homes, far from being a trauma, is an adventure that brings them fun and consolation from the real trauma that is the divorce of their parents. The listener should read the article titled “How I divide my life between my divorced parents' homes”, http://www.newsweek.com/id/174698), written by Charlotte Juergens, a 14 years old girl raised under a joint custody arrangement. In that article, she narrates how her parents divorced when she was only two years old, and how from that age until today, she sleeps at each parent’s house every other day, spending equal time with each one.

The listener complained also that joint custody would force the child to get used to two very different styles. I should remind the listener that that is was is supposed to happen in any traditional family, where father were men and mothers were women and therefore, those of us who had the privilege of having being raised by both of our parents, we developed under the guidance of two human beings distinct but equally important for our formation. Because the only way of having being raised by two parents of similar styles is having being raised by two parents of the same sex, what I see as totally acceptable, and even then there would have been differences between them. The idea of having a father and a mother is precisely to have the opportunity of receiving education from two human beings that are radically distinct, and that distinction is one that allows the development of human being that are complete, educated and used to the glorious complexity of the human race.

Feel free to share this e-mail with your listeners, and to air my phone 862-596-0118 and my e-mail vidalg@yahoo.com, in case that someone wants to contact me to discuss more about this issue.

Always at your orders,
Vidal Guzmán