Just like it was before the "child support" industry was born. Remove the
free cash incentive, and such issues will become all but extinct.

--
Any man that's good enough to pay child support is good enough to have
custody of such child.
"DB" wrote in message
...
If you were to take the money award out of the equation, there would be no
parenting issues!


"Dusty" wrote in message
...
http://mensnewsdaily.com/glennsacks/...at-dad-survey/
Glenn Sacks, MA for Fathers & Families
New Column: Media Trashes Breadwinning Dads over Parenting Magazine's
'Mad at Dad' Survey
2009-03-06 at 12:32 pm

"Most moms have no reason to be mad at dads, and there's no evidence that
they are. Unfortunately, such a finding doesn't play to the mainstream
media's anti-family 'woman good/man bad' drumbeat. It also doesn't make
for catchy headlines."

My new column, Media Trashes Breadwinning Dads over Parenting Magazine's
'Mad at Dad' Survey (World Net Daily, 3/6/09), co-authored with Robert
Franklin, criticizes a flawed new anti-father study and the media's
uncritical reaction to it.

To write a Letter to the Editor of World Net Daily, one of the largest
content websites in the world, regarding Media trash breadwinning dads,
click on column is below.



Media Trashes Breadwinning Dads over Parenting Magazine's 'Mad at Dad'
Survey
By Glenn Sacks, MA and Robert Franklin, Esq.

"Alarming percentages of moms are angry at dads on a regular basis."
"Hell hath no fury like a mommy scorned." "Moms are angry about dad's
role."

These are some of the headlines which greeted Parenting Magazine's new
"Mad at Dad" survey which found that 31% of mothers get "little or no
help" with childcare and 46% of mothers "get irate with their husbands
once a week or more." The New York Times called the survey "disturbing,"
while a Washington Post columnist announced that mothers are "literally
killing themselves."

Is the survey a wake-up call? A shocking portrait of dysfunction in
American family life? No-it's junk science, and the New York Times,
Washington Post and other mainstream media outlets should have known
better than to parrot its outlandish claims.

To do the study, Parenting's research arm, the MomConnection, sent out
5,000 survey questionnaires to subscribers. Parenting's "nationally
representative" findings are based on the 1,000 who responded.

In the social science field this is known as a "SLOP"-a Self-selected
Listener Opinion Poll. Four out of five of those receiving surveys didn't
respond. The ones who did are more likely to have an ax to grind or be
angry-exactly the response the magazine claims its survey revealed. This
data cannot be credibly applied to the average mom or family.

SLOPs are a widely discredited methodology. For example, 35 years ago
sexologist Shere Hite used the same SLOP methodology to produce the
shocking statistic that 98% of married women were dissatisfied with their
marriages and 75% had had extramarital affairs.

However, according to Stanford psychologist Philip Zimbardo, only 4% of
the women who were given the survey responded. When the Washington Post
and ABC News did a scientifically credible survey on the same topic, they
found the exact opposite to be true--93% of women reported satisfaction
in their marriages, and only 7% reported having had affairs.

Parenting's claims that dads are derelict in their duties contradict
credible surveys on American families. According to the Bureau of Labor
Statistics' 2004 Time Use Survey, men spend one and a half times as many
hours working as women do, and full-time employed men still work
significantly more hours than full-time employed women. Yet Child Trends'
220-page study Charting Parenthood: A Statistical Look at Fathers and
Mothers in America found that in two-parent families, mothers spend only
about 35 minutes per day more with children than do fathers [2 hours, 21
minutes vs. 1 hour, 46 minutes]. And the Families and Work Institute in
New York City found that fathers provide three-fourths as much child care
as mothers do.

Mothers who are dissatisfied might want to examine their own behavior as
well as that of their husbands. Studies reported in the Journal of Family
Psychology in June, 2008 and the Journal of Marriage and the Family in
1999 show that mothers are generally the gatekeepers of fathers'
involvement with their kids. If she criticizes or insists that any way
that isn't her way is wrong, dad will often withdraw. But if she stands
aside and lets him parent, he usually does.

Another problem with Parenting's survey is that they only queried
mothers-a poor method to judge what fathers do or don't do. For example,
a 2002 Rand Graduate School study of father involvement found that "the
failure to incorporate both parties' (i.e. mothers' and fathers')
perspectives may lead to inaccurate, inappropriate.conclusions."

Credible social science researchers and journals routinely report the
details of how their research was conducted. Yet Parenting doesn't seem
to want people to know how they got their results. Despite multiple
requests, Parenting has refused to make public the questions its
researchers asked or the answers responders gave.

Are fathers shirking their responsibilities to their families? A 2002
University of Michigan Institute for Social Research survey found that
women do 11 more hours of work in the home per week than men, but men
work at their jobs 14 hours per week more than women. According to the
BLS, men's total time at leisure, sleeping, doing personal care
activities, or socializing is a statistically meaningless 1% higher than
women's. When work both outside the home and inside the home are properly
considered, it is clear that men do at least as much as women.

Most moms have no reason to be mad at dads, and there's no evidence that
they are. Unfortunately, such a finding doesn't play to the mainstream
media's anti-family "woman good/man bad" drumbeat. It also doesn't make
for catchy headlines.

This column first appeared on World Net Daily (3/6/09).