Grandparents and Joint Custody

Recently I received news from Spain (“Los abuelos por la custodia compartida piden a la UE poder ver a sus nietos”) that reminded me of one of the many faces of the tragedy lived by many families after divorce.

Representatives of the Grandfathers and Grandmothers pro Joint Custody Association (ASACCO) of Catalonia will meet in Brussels with members of the directive board of the European Commission of Civil Justice, to whom they will expose their impossibility of seeing their grandchildren on a regular basis after the divorce of their children.

The Association considers that their right to have a relationship with their grandchildren is not respected, and that the Spanish courts allow “a biased juridical practice that hinder the consecution of authentic justice" in these cases. The Association believes that the current Spanish law against gender violence "causes damage” in the life of these families, depriving children of divorced parents of a healthy relationship with their extended families.

We should never forget that current family laws affect not only divorced parents, but the totality of the involved families, uncles, aunts, grandparents, cousins, who after divorce lose their loved ones too. It is for this reason, because we all have divorced couples in our families, that not only fathers, but also everyone should be committed with the fight for a reform of family courts and of the laws that rule them. Thank God for people like the member of ASACCO, who have realized that when a member of a family suffers, all the members of that family suffer too.

Cathy Young and the Gender War

Cathy Young (Moscow 1963), an author, a public speaker, and a regular columnist for The Boston Globe and Reason, her articles have also appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Newsday, The American Spectator, Salon.Com, National Review, and The New Republic. She published in 1999 the book Ceasefire! Why Women and Men Must Join Forces to Achieve True Equality.

In her book, Young states that there is no war against women, and rebuts a series of controversial issues, from the incidence of domestic violence (it is not as frequent as the feminist media wants us to believe), the nature of domestic violence (she states that domestic violence is a two-way street: University of New Hampshire researchers consistently report women as often as men initiate physical violence. Furthermore, recent studies reveal that lesbians have also high rates of violence toward their own partners) Mainstream media hides or misreports these facts, fomenting this way legislation constructed on false assumptions), that male violence is directed primarily against women, or that girls are ignored in classrooms.

She offers evidence that these and other basic feminist credos are mistaken, mainly due to a feminist propensity for exaggeration, stereotyping, and over-generalization based on little or no evidence.

Young argues that the battle for equal rights is not an excuse for portraying men as fundamentally malevolent. She explains that in the '80s, a radical sector of feminism became mainstream, and equality for women began to mean inequities for men; is at this moment when she and many others became part of a new brand of feminism that looks for true equality.

One good example of this attitude towards an unequal equality, and the one that for our cause matters the most, is these feminists’ attitude toward joint custody. While they condemn men for not contributing enough in raising the kids, at the same time they demand that women should automatically have child custody following a divorce, because they have an inherent capacity to nurture children, while men do not. Young make an interesting point here: as Victorian morality believed, these feminists believe that women are the fragile guardians of good who must be placed on pedestals and protected. Young cleverly points out this "strange convergence of radical feminism and patriarchal conservatism - and the alienation of both ideologies from real life." Weirdly enough, the arguments of the Christian fundamentalist Promise Keepers and the National Organization of Women are based on the same premises.

Young believes that women and men need to learn to get along. Women have sons, husbands, fathers, and brothers. Because we have families, we cannot battle each other, we have to work together, and we have to look for each other’s wellbeing. In the final chapter of Ceasefire, Young proposes a twelve steps program for de-escalating the gender wars. These steps include:

-Do not assume sexism is the root cause of all women's problems.

-Rewrite sexual harassment law.

-Demand that husbands and wives serve as equal parents.

-Take gender politics out of the war on domestic violence.

-Stop acting as if women’s claims were more legitimate than men’s were.

In summary, the book is well written, well argued, and carefully reasoned, a book that should be read by anyone interested in real gender equality.

The Biological Necessity of Having a Father

On the webpage of the British magazine New Scientist, Linda Geddes wrote an article ironically titled “Fathers aren't dispensable just yet”, on which comments on recent research done on the biological implications of fatherhood. This research shows biochemical evidence in mice and people that suggests that fathers may play a key role in the rearing of offspring.

Several studies have already indicated the sociological and psychological effects of fatherlessnes in girls and boys. Girls reach puberty younger, become sexually active earlier and are more likely to get pregnant in their teens if their father was absent (Mairi Macleod, “Why are girls growing up so fast?”). Other studies suggest that the sons of absent fathers display lower intimacy and self-esteem.

But recent studies are indicating that fatherlessness has also physiological implications. Gabriella Gobbi at McGill University Health Centre in Montreal, studied California mice, a species on which both parents rear their offspring together. Her colleague Francis Bambico presented their findings at the World Congress of Biological Psychiatry in Paris, France, in early July.

The researchers removed the fathers from some of the mouse pups, and looked at the activity of brain cells in the prefrontal cortex, an area related to social interaction and expression of personality. Cells in pups deprived of fathers had a lower response to the hormone oxytocin, which is normally released during social interactions and pair bonding. As a result of this, fatherless mice were less interested in engaging with other mice. "Usually if you put two animals in the same cage they investigate and touch each other, but when we put two animals deprived of a father together they ignored each other," says Gobbi.

These findings are not the only ones that point out to the previously denied biological nature of fatherhood. There is evidence that when men become fathers they undergo biochemical changes that affect their behavior. Ruth Feldman of Bar-Ilan University in Ramat-Gan, Israel, studied 80 couples, and found that the transition to parenthood was associated with increased oxytocin both in mothers and in fathers.

Feldman also found that oxytocin has different effects in each sex. In mothers, high levels of the hormone caused them to be more engaged in gazing at the infant, affectionate touching and speaking in a sing-song voice. Fathers with high oxytocin played more with their child, who in return displayed more attachment to them.

"Fathers and mothers contribute in a very specific and different way" to infants' social and emotional development, says Feldman.