"ME" wrote in message
...

"Bob Whiteside" wrote in message
ink.net...

"ME" wrote in message
...

"Bob Whiteside" wrote in message
link.net...

"Kenneth S." wrote in message
...
The huge disparity in custody, ME, between fathers and mothers is
a
very important issue, and I make no apology for raising it and for
calling attention to efforts to fudge the question.

A major weapon in the armory of defenders of the CS status quo is
to
pretend that men and women are equally likely to be custodial
parents.
One way this is done is to rely on anecdotal evidence: "I know
several
fathers who have custody of their children." That's what you did.

Another way is to be very careful never to talk about fathers and
mothers, but always to speak about noncustodial parents and
custodial
parents. That's what the politicians, judges, CS bureaucrats, and
feminist groups do. They try to avoid anyone even thinking about
the
issue.

Yet another way is to be careful to ensure that the actual numbers
don't leak out. So, for example, if you ask in my state about the
issue, you get told that they don't collect these numbers, and
they
don't know. If pressed, they will agree that most custodial
parents
are
mothers. They will never acknowledge the continuation of the
glass
ceiling on paternal custody, or the fact that very few custodial
fathers
even have orders requiring that they be paid CS (in large measure
because most fathers wouldn't even try to get money from the
mothers
of
their children. They are more than content to have custody.)

Finally, another way of distorting the numbers is to fudge the
joint
custody issue. In the great majority of joint custody situations,
it
is joint legal custody, but the mothers have physical custody of
the
children. That's no different from sole maternal custody, and
should
be
counted as such in the numbers.

I believe there is a fifth way of distorting the numbers to add to
your
list. And that is to ignore the statistics altogether and claim
maternal
custody is the only correct way for children to be raised.

I never said I thought that, and I don't. There are cases where the
children are better off with their fathers.

I was adding to Kenneth's list and made no mention of your comments.

(You know the
old "calf never follows the bull" theory.) This distortion method
ignores
that children are parented successfully by fathers in intact
families,
widowers raise children all the time, and CP fathers get rave
reviews
from
their adult children for the way they were raised and cared for.
And
most
importantly this distortion ignores all the statisitcs that show the
vast
majority of troubled children are the products of mother-headed
households.

okay, very unfair...."the vast majority of troubled children are the
productsof mother-headed households"....this just goes back to your
original
arguement of more mothers having custody than fathers....If only 15%
of
CP
are fathers then it is obvious that there will be more troubled
children
who
live with the mother because 85% are raised my their mother. If you
have
85
apples and I have 15 yours will find more worms than I will because
you
have
much more. So that is a very unfair thing to say that more troubled
children
come from mothers households.

There is a significant problem with this type of illogical use of
percentages -

Hey I was just going by the percentages given to me....by you...


it ignores the fact that there is an additional huge group of
children living in two-parent families. The Census reports 26.2% of
children (21.7 million children) live with a single parent (most often
the
mother), and that is the group of children who become the "vast majority
of
troubled children." The other 73.8% of children (61.1 million children)
do
not represent a significant number of "troubled children."

To use your analogy, the 85 apples have more worms if you limit the
number
of apples to only 100 apples. But in reality, there are really 400
apples,
and the vast majority of worms are being found in 85 out of 400 apples,
not
85 out of 100 apples.

The statistics are clear - children have a greater chance for success
when
they are raised in two-parent households.
Agreed.....
And the 21.7 million children
raised in mother-headed households are the ones who are most at risk to
becoming drug addicts, incarcerated criminals, teenage mothers, school
dropouts, teen suicides, etc.
And why are the children raised in mother headed households the ones most
at
risk over the ones raised in father headed households? Simply because
there
are more mother headed households than father headed households so of
course
there will be more of such 'bad apples' raised by mothers.....I really
don't
think you are seeing my point. This time lets use something other than
apples. Lets say--computers---Take a large group of computers and scan
them
for viruses--then take a significantly smaller group of computers and do
the
same....YES you are going to find more viruses in the larger group because
there was more to start with....Do you get what I am saying now? I am not
saying fathers are bad at raising children (you are clearly saying mothers
are abd at raising children) I am simply saying that there will be more of
anything in a larger group than a smaller one. Buy $100 in lottery
tickets,
you will win more $ than if you only buy $10 in tickets.....Now do you get
it?

I did not say single mothers are "bad." What I said was children raised in
single mother households are more at risk to become troubled children.

Let's go back to the apple analogy and not confuse the issue with a second
analogy. We know that over 80% of the worms found in apples are found in
the 85 apple inventory with similar apple growing techniques. We know that
less than 20% of the worms found in apples are found in the other 315 apples
because they are grown using different techniques. It seems pretty obvious
that something is wrong with the way the 85 apples are grown, since they
have such a high incidence of worms per apple.

We know that over 80% of troubled children are raised in the 85 single
mother households. We know that less than 20% of troubled children come
from the 315 households where a father is present. If over 80% of a problem
is found in mother only households there is something about the way these
children are being raised that is putting them at risk.

If father only households coupled with two-parent households produce less
than 20% of troubled children, it is not a giant leap to say when fathers a
present society produces fewer troubled children. And conversely, when
mothers raise children in mother headed households without a father present,
the risks for children to become troubled children goes up substantially.