Child Support Guidelines are UNFAIR! Lets join together to fight them!

Canadian mosquitoes rule
CA NA DA ! , CA NA DA ! , CA NA DA !
I worked as a guide for a while at a hunt camp in northern Ontario ,
and we had a bunch of Americans up from Texas one year
and outside the main lodge was a humming bird feeder ,
and when they asked what was going on around the feeder ,
I casually replied , " mosquitoes "




"Phil #3" wrote in message
nk.net...
You'll not get me riled by pointing out the obvious, which is: Americans
are
hated world-wide because we demand other countries abide by US principles.
However, in northern Manitoba the mosquitoes are big enough to mate with
birds, even when the birds don't want to
Phil #3


"%" wrote in message
...

"Phil #3" wrote in message
nk.net...
From what I hear and read, things are not as rosy a picture as
Spiderham
paints.
From all indications, Canada is even more feminist than the US, if that
is
possible.
Phil #3


'
its true , Canada is a terrible place
its all flooded and everyone wants to ,
fly airplanes into our buildings

Some info for you to mull over..


Fatherhood Statistics



Index



* Affirmative Action

* Child Abuse

* Child Murder

* Child Custody

* "Child Support"

* Discrimination Against Men

* Divorce

* Domestic Violence

* Education

* Family Breakup

* Fatherlessness

* Incarceration

* Life Expectancy

* Single-Mother Households

* Suicide Rate

* Taxation

* Wealth

* Welfare



Important Articles on Fatherhood



---------------------------------------------------------------------



Armin Brott on Battered Domestic Violence Statistics



---------------------------------------------------------------------



Mark Charalambous, Coalition for the Preservation of Fatherhood on
Discrimination Against Men



---------------------------------------------------------------------



COPS -- Coalition of Parental Support -- Fatherlessness



---------------------------------------------------------------------



Kingsley Morse on Fatherlessness



---------------------------------------------------------------------



John A. Rossler on Domestic Violence



---------------------------------------------------------------------



James Sniechowski & Judith Sherven on Domestic Violence



---------------------------------------------------------------------



Callifornia Governor Wilson's Fatherhood Summit On Fatherlessness



---------------------------------------------------------------------



Affirmative Action



* Affirmative action is discriminatory against men by design, and benefits
women more than it does any other "minority group" [i.e., men are a
"minority group" because they constitute 48% of the population, but
affirmative action does not work to their benefit].



---------------------------------------------------------------------



Child Abuse



---------------------------------------------------------------------



Child Murder



* Per the Department of Justice, 55% of child murders are by their own
mothers, and 6% are by their biological fathers, making mothers 9 times more
likely to murder their children than biological fathers.



---------------------------------------------------------------------



Child Custody



* Don King or 909-698-5834) has official State of
California statistics that show only 3.4% of California fathers get custody.



* This data is from "Advance Report of Final Divorce Statistics, 1989 and
1990," National Center for Health Statistics, Sally C. Clarke In 1990, from
19 reporting states, percent of custody:



Awarded to husbands: 8.7

Awarded to wives: 72

Awarded to joint custody 15.7

Awarded to other persons: 1.3

Awarded to combination: 2.4



* As we know "joint custody" often means maternal custody in practice. So a
safe estimate on the basis of these figures is that mothers get custody
between 80 to 85 percent of the time. Note that fathers get custody only 8.7
percent of the time.



* Even in cases where both parents agree to joint custody, 33% are awarded
to the custody of the mother anyway, and even in cases where both parents
agree to father custody, 13% are awarded to the custody of the mother. [Anne
Mitchell, Attorney, single mother, founder FREE]



* The Associated Press cited the fact that 97% of the persons to be
prosecuted by Maine under this child support collection law are fathers.
That statistic was provided by officials of Maine. Do they explain why these
statistics are so out of balance between genders? Most studies of fathers
pre-divorce show that about 66% or two thirds of them want custody of their
children. Read Richard Warshak's book, The Custody Revolution, for a
description of some of the mistaken beliefs about the parenting abilities of
men that result in sex discrimination in child custody decisions. Contrary
to the equal abilities of either parent to nurture a child, the custody
decisions after divorce give women sole custody in 90 percent of divorces.
Parents retain joint custody in 5 to 7 percent of divorce custody cases.
Only in 10 percent of all divorce custody cases are fathers able to retain
their parental status. This loss of parental rights is not related to any
crime or innate inability to nurture children. The loss of NCF parental
rights is due strictly to the gender bias of the Family Court system.



---------------------------------------------------------------------



"Child Support"



* "90.2% of fathers with joint custody pay the child support due."

U.S. Bureau of the Census: 1988



* "79.1 % of fathers with visitation privileges pay the child support due."

U.S. Bureau of the Census: 1988



* A study by the Institute for Research on Poverty at the University of
Wisconsin-Madison found that "dead-beat dads" were really impoverished dads.
In their comprehensive study, they found that "... 52% of the nonpaying
fathers had incomes of less than $6,155 per year ... ." [18 Dallas Morning
News, pg. 5. April 26, 1993.]



* ... The PFS pilot experience ... lays bare several sobering realities
about the potential of 'enforcement only' strategies for increasing
(financial) child support collections from the parents of AFDC children. ...
The hard truth is that many noncustodial parents do not pay because they
have no income. Before they can pay, they need jobs.[Gordon Berlin, Senior
VP, Manpower Demonstration Research Corporation. Subcommittee on Human
Resources, House Ways and Means Committee. March 15, 1994.]



* Mothers get custody of our children 92% of the time in divorce, which is a
100% failure by fathers for all practical purposes. No matter what we did,
we could not have lost any bigger than this, especially when "child support"
is nothing more than disguised alimony which almost no woman pays.



* Because men receive custody of children so rarely, they pay more than
their proportionate 92% share of child support payments. "Child support
awards" paid by the man are much higher than those paid by the woman, and
men are almost 2 times more likely than women to make those payments.



* This opens the possibility of a minor female to seek out a minor male
child from a wealthy family, and use him as a means of obtaining a part of
that wealth. Our current Family Court system empowers women by 92% with the
raising of children, (see the US

Bureau of the Census, Series P-23, No 173, 1989; Child Support & Alimony,
Bureau of the Census, Series P-60, No 173, September 1991). A system that
places an unfair distribution of monetary "child support" on the
Non-Custody-Parent (NCP), without any form of tax relief, and with no
accountability about where and how that support money is spent.



* "Noncustodial Fathers: Can They Afford to Pay More Child Support?", by
Elaine Sorenson (202) 857-8564 of The Urban Institute. 2100 M Street N. W.
Washington, D.C. 20037 (202) 833-7200 is a highly theoretical and
hypothetical study which sets out to prove that noncustodial fathers can pay
more child support. It did NOT PROVIDE OR PRETEND TO OFFER ANY ACTUAL
EVIDENCE OF nonpayment of child support.



The data related to child support payments reported by the Bureau of the
Census (Current Population Reports, Series P-23, No 173, 1989), show that 75
percent of all child support

owed is paid.



Total amount of child support owed.... $14,800,000,000 (NOT $34 billion!)



Amount received......................................$11, 100,000,000



Composed of paid in full.............................$7,600,000,000



Paid in part.............................................. $3,500,000,000



* President Clinton recently stated on national television, that $34 billion
was owed in unpaid child support. This number is a fabrication and
incorrect. [Jerry W. Lester, Ph.D. 2476 Bolsover, Suite 428 Houston, Texas
77005 (713) 528-6565]



This concept of child support debt non-payment by choice is not supported by
a report from the Government Accounting Office (Report: GAO/HRD-92-39FS,
January 9, 1992). On page 19 of that report the following reasons were given
for not receiving payments:



Father not able to pay............66%

Unable to locate father............5%

Other.................................29%



* Only $50.00 of any monthly payment collected in Texas is turned over to
the custodial parent. The rest is used to "reimburse" the state for welfare
payments. The scam being perpetrated on taxpayers is as follows: Citizens,
including NCFs, pay taxes to support child welfare payments. They agree to
shoulder that financial burden because human beings care about children.
They vote for laws to collect support due to children for the same reason.
But state officials are keeping the money collected from NCFs. Using the
excuse of poor children to pass harsh collection laws, allows them to
effectively raise the amount of tax money collected from a particular group
of citizens, NCFs. Money collected from "Deadbeat Dads" is paid into state
general revenue coffers. So we see campaigns to raise taxes to pay child
welfare, then laws to collect child support, but what is missing is the step
which turns over all of the collected child support to the children in whose
name it is collected. It is instead directed into the pockets of those
bureaucrats enforcing the collection measures. [That's your tax money at
work! -Tom Williamson NCFM]



---------------------------------------------------------------------



Discrimination Against Men



Custodial mothers who receive a support award: 79.6%

Custodial fathers who receive a support award: 29.9%

Non-custodial mothers who totally default on support: 46.9%

Non-custodial fathers who totally default on support: 26.9%

(Data obtained by asking custodial parents)



Non-custodial mothers who pay support at any level: 20.0%

Non-custodial fathers who pay support at any level: 61.0%

(Data obtained by asking custodial parents)



Single mothers who work less than full time: 66.2%

Single fathers who work less than full time: 10.2%

Single mothers who work more than 44 hours per week: 7.0%

Single fathers who work more than 44 hours per week: 24.5%

Single mothers who receive public assistance: 46.2%

Single fathers who receive public assistance: 20.8%



Source: Technical Analysis Paper No. 42, U.S. Department of Health and

Human Services, Office of Income Security Policy, Oct. 1991; Authors: Meyer
and Garansky



* As to Old Age Survivors Insurance (the traditional social security) and
the Disability Insurance programs (they are reported together for reasons
known only to the government). There were 36.5 million recipients in 1992.
Of those 25.7 million were retired. Retired men numbered 13.4 million.
Retired women numbered 12.2 million. Spouses (read wives) numbered 6.1
million. So men = 13.4 women = 18.3 the rest are children of retired or
deceased workers. Another form of social security payment SSI is paid to
disabled or blind individuals who earn below $446/month. Almost 60% of the
recipients are mentally retarded or mentally disabled. Not separately listed
are those disabled by drug addictions. There is also no gender breakdown. So
if the cost of maintaining women is higher (seven years longer support) why
doesn't the government charge equitably higher amounts for women in the
system than for men. Any reasonable insurance program would base its charges
on its costs or payouts. But we see here a hidden mechanism to transfer
money from men to women [Dr. Jerry Lester]



Dr. Lester: What you present here is a vital piece of information which is
CRUCIAL to solving our social pathology, which is due in part to gender
inequality in productivity, earnings, and federal spending. In this era of
feminists' demands for gender equality, they should get it. And it cannot be
equitable to propose that such payments be divided proportionately to the
mere population of each gender (e.g., if women are 52% of the population
then they should receive 52% of the benefits), IF their proportionate
CONTRIBUTION is significantly smaller in the first place.



Rather than dividing federal funds by POPULATION, such funding should be
divided by CONTRIBUTION. If men earn 65% of the income in the country, but
because of the graduated income tax pay 75% to 85% of the taxes, then true
gender equality demands that men as a group receive 75% to 85% of the
benefits. Assuming that the lower (75%) figure is accurate, then the $360
Billion welfare tab must be reapportioned as follows:



Current More Equitable

Males $36 Billion $270 Billion

Females $324 Billion $90 Billion



IF men pay more than 75% of the taxes, then even MORE than $234 Billion must
be shifted from females to males to arrive at an equitable proportion. This
is about $3,600 per working male per year, or $108,000 per working male over
his 30 year career. And if this amount, rather than subsidizing welfare
queens year after year, had been successfully invested at an average rate of
6% per year, it would now be worth more than $300,000. If each of the 65
million male US workers had been able to KEEP this money rather than forking
it over to Uncle Sam, and if each one had saved it in a modest savings plan,
Personal Savings, rather than being $212 Billion, would now be $19,712
Billion (i.e., more than $19 Trillion).



Any other scenario would not represent "equality", and we want "equality"?
Can our social pathology be reduced with this lopsided inequality? It would
be pure unadulterated sexism to propose that it can. But clearly this is
more than an "equality" issue. Personal Savings is the lifeblood of any
democracy, and we don't have any. With a Public Debt of $5 Trillion on which
interest payments would sop up our total Personal Savings in several months,
"Personal Savings" is just an accounting error. And fatherlessness would not
be such a major problem if those who earned it were able to keep and invest
it. The fact that females live 7 years longer than males and cost more in
medicare, or collect 58% of Old Age Survivors Insurance, must be remedied
with this gender equitable solution.



---------------------------------------------------------------------



Divorce



* The US divorce rate is 10 times higher than at the turn of the century and
4 to 10 times higher than other industrialized nations. 85% of those
divorces being filed by the mother and 15% by the father suggests that the
incentives for mothers to get divorced are about 6 times stronger than the
incentives for fathers.



* In 1988 divorces filed involving families with children, 64.9% were filed
by women, which is down from 71.4% filed by women in 1975; 28.8% were filed
by men, which is up from 25.6% in 1975; and 6.3% were filed jointly, which
is up from 2.6% in 1975. [National Center for Health Statistics, Monthly
Vital Statistics Report,Vol. 38, No. 12 (S) 2, May 21, 1991.]



---------------------------------------------------------------------



Domestic Violence



* Cathy Young states rates of domestic violence are roughly equal between
spouses.



* In another announcement, Health and Human Services director, Donna
Shalala, has announced a one million dollar grant to the Texas Council on
Family Violence to establish a NATIONAL hot line for domestic violence. The
grant is paid for out of funds made available through the Violence Against
Women Act. In a press release announcing the Hot Line, HHS stated, "In the
United States, a woman is more likely to be assaulted, injured, raped or
killed by a male partner than any other type of assailant".[That's your tax
money at work! -Tom Williamson NCFM]



---------------------------------------------------------------------



Education



* My attention to that bias was drawn about 15 years ago in mainland China
by a primary school headmistress. I had noted the fairly universal
gender-equality, with the blatant exeption of primary school teachers that
were 99+% female. Her suggestion seemed to be: By age seven or eight boys
have been so brainwased to accept the role dictated by women, that they can
be safely let loose. I don't know about the USA, but here in Aussie the main
enemy of equal rights for men are other men themselves that feel equal
rights are "Unchivalrous" "Unmanly" etc.(While the women safely grin in the
background). Maybe men have to be educated first. And nothing will change as
long as the zero to seven's are under the sole influence of women, I think.

Peter Stuy

---------------------------------------------------------------------



Family Breakup



* While television and the movies gather headlines as the motivation behind
teen violence, school administrators blame "family breakup" for violence in
the schools. [Survey by the National School Boards Association as reported
in the Washington Time, January 1994. 77% of school administrators blame
"family breakup" for violence in the schools]



---------------------------------------------------------------------



Fatherlessness



* What struck me especially was Blankenhorn's statement that controlling for
fatherhood status erases the relationship between poverty and crime, and
between race and crime. That's worth mentioning. [Gordon Little]



* The quality of the early father-child relationship is linked to the son's
and daughter's later adjustment in adolescence and adulthood. The Father
Factor and the Two Parent Advantage:



Reducing the Paternal Deficit, pg. 1. Henry Biller, Ph.D., Psychology
Department, University of Rhode Island. April 15, 1994.]



* As fathers have been excluded from their children's lives, with the
marriage rate falling and the divorce rate rising, SAT scores have fallen to
all-time lows while teen births and the crime rate have exploded. The
divorce rate, teen birth rate, and the crime rate each doubled between 1975
and 1990. SAT scores fell in 1975 and then dipped below 900 for the first
time in 1980. They have remained at that low level. ["Index of Leading
Indicators." Washington Times. March 16, 1994.]



* Subsequently, unwed pregnancy and childbirth have become a "job" for too
many women. In 1960, only 15% of teen births occurred outside of marriage,
in 1991, 69% occurred outside of marriage. More than 25% of all births are
to unwed mothers. The failure rate among users of contraception is
approximately twice as high among "poor" women as among "non-poor" women.
["Trends in Teenage Fertility", pg. 26. Child Trends, Inc., May 4, 1994.]



* Teenage pregnancy rates reflect this trend. Data compiled by Child Trends,
Inc. indicate that 18% of teen pregnancies resulted from a decision by the
mother to become pregnant, 40% resulted from the mothers' ambivalence toward
pregnancy, and 42% of teen pregnancies were terminated (abortion). [Facts at
a Glance, pg. 2. Child Trends, Inc., January 1994]



* "Ambivalent teens were just a likely to have a baby during the next two
years as teens who unequivocally wanted a child. ["Trends in Childrearing
and Implications for Reform", State-Federal Assembly, National Conference on
State Legislatures. Presentation by Child Trends, Inc., May 4, 1994.]



* Children who grow up without a father present, even when adjustments are
made for income, are 75% more likely to need professional assistance for
emotional problems, twice as likely to repeat a grade of school, and more
likely to suffer a wide variety of other disorders including anxiety, peer
conflict, and hyperactivity. [National Center for Health Statistics, June
1991 study of 17,100 children in various family structures. Children living
with a mother and step-father fared worse on most indicators.]



* "One clear message from the accumulated divorce research is that children
profit by continued exposure to both parents" [Visitation and the
Noncustodial Father - Mary Ann P. Koch, Carol R. Lowery, Journal of Divorce,
Vol. 8, No. 2, Winter 1984]



* "Children who were able to maintain post-divorce relationships with both
parents were better able to adjust to the divorce." [Visitation and the
Noncustodial Father - Mary Ann P. Koch, Carol R. Lowery, Journal of Divorce,
Vol. 8, No. 2, Winter 1984]



* "The continuing involvement of divorced fathers in families where mothers
maintain physical custody has become recognized as an important mediating
factor in the adjustment and well-being of children of divorce." [The Effect
of the Post Divorce Relationship on Paternal Involvement: A Longitudinal
Analysis - Constance R. Ahrons, Ph.D., and Richard B. Miller, Ph.D.,
American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, Vol. 63, No. 3, July 1993]



* "Children recover more rapidly from the emotional trauma of parents'
separation when they maintain close ties with their fathers." [Family Ties
after Divorce: The Relationship Between Visiting and Paying Support - Judith
A. Seltzer, Nora Shaeffer, Hong-wen Charing, University of Wisconsin,
Journal of Marriage & the Family, Vol. 51, No. 4, November 1989.]



* "Adolescents who reported closer relationships with their non custodial
fathers were assessed as displaying fewer internalizing problems."
[Interparental Conflict, Relationship with the Noncustodial Father, and
Adolescent Post-Divorced Adjustment -

Gene Brody and Rex Forehand, University of Georgia, Journal of Applied
Psychology, Vol. 11, No. 2, April - June 1990]



* "Fathers economic and social involvement with children diminishes some of
the negative consequences of living with a single mother" [Family Ties after
Divorce: The Relationship Between Visiting and Paying Support - Judith A.
Seltzer, Nora Shaeffer, Hong-wen Charing, University of Wisconsin, Journal
of Marriage & the Family, Vol. 51, No. 4, November 1989]



* "When both parents share the social and economic responsibilities of child
care, children appear to adapt better to their changed living arrangements
than when mothers bear these responsibilities alone." [Relationships between
Fathers and Children Who Live

Apart: The Father's Role after Separation - Judith A. Seltzer, University of
Wisconsin-Madison, Journal of Marriage and the Family, Vol. 53, No. 1,
February 1991]



* "Fathers have much to offer their adolescent children in many areas,
including their career development, moral development, and sex role
identification." [Increasing Our Understanding of Fathers Who Have
Infrequent Contact With Their Children - James R. Dudley, Professor,
University North Carolina, under a grant from Temple University, Family
Relations, Vol . 40, No. 3, July 1991



* "Fathers who spend time with their children teach them values."
[Relationships between Fathers and Children Who Live Apart: The Father's
Role after Separation - Judith A. Seltzer, University of Wisconsin-Madison,
Journal of Marriage and the Family, Vol. 53, No. 1, February 1991



* "Fathers and children who maintain close touch through visiting
communicate regularly in other ways as well." [Relationships between Fathers
and Children Who Live Apart: The Father's Role after Separation - Judith A.
Seltzer, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Journal of Marriage and the
Family, Vol. 53, No. 1, February 1991



* "Frequent contact with the father is associated with positive adjustment
of the children." [The Effect of the Post Divorce Relationship on Paternal
Involvement: A Longitudinal Analysis - Constance R. Ahrons, Ph.D., and
Richard B. Miller, Ph.D., American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, Vol. 63, No.
3, July 1993]



* "Fathers play a significant role in terms of adolescent functioning" [The
Role of Paternal Variables in Divorced and Married Families - Amanda Thomas
and Rex Forehand, American Journal of Othopsychiatry, Vol. 63, No. 1,
January 1993]



* "Males who reported high levels of inter-parental conflict and a good
relationship with their fathers were perceived [by their teachers] to have
fewer internalizing problems. A similar set of results emerged for the
female adolescents" [Interparental Conflict, Relationship with the
Noncustodial Father, and Adolescent Post-Divorced Adjustment - Gene Brody
and Rex Forehand, University of Georgia, Journal of Applied Psychology, Vol.
11, No. 2, April - June 1990]



* "Significant correlations were found between the father's reports of
positive relationships with their adolescent offspring and teacher reports
of less anxiety/withdrawal on the part of the adolescents." [The Role of
Paternal Variables in Divorced and Married Families - Amanda Thomas and Rex
Forehand, American

Journal of Othopsychiatry, Vol. 63, No. 1, January 1993]



---------------------------------------------------------------------



Incarceration



* Men are convicted of crimes for which women are not equally charged, and
receive longer prison sentences for equal crimes [from 5x to 20x times
longer per some recent TV programs].



---------------------------------------------------------------------



Life Expectancy



* Males = 72.3 years, females = 79 years, which is 6.7 years or 9.3% longer
[National Center for Health Statistics]





---------------------------------------------------------------------



Single-Mother Households



* Juveniles committed to juvenile prisons in Texas:



1% are from single father homes

20% are from 2-parent homes

79% are from fatherless homes



Single father homes constitute 4% of households, single mother homes
constitute 37%, and two parent homes constitute 59%. The children of single
mother households are 8.5 times more likely to be in juvenile prisons than
children of single father households. Children of single father households
are 35% less likely than the children of two parent households to be in
juvenile prisons.



* The US Office of Technology Assessment commissioned Howard Dubowitz to
evaluate child abuse, through a health program . His report dated May 1987
entitled "Child Maltreatment in the US" points out:



The increase in the number of mother-headed households and the corresponding
decrease in father-headed households parallelled a 158% increase in child
abuse and neglect in the 8 years from 1976 to 1984. 2.3% of sexual abuse of
girls was by biological fathers, and 17% by stepfathers. 37% of child
maltreatment occurred in mother-headed households, versus 23% in all US
families. 44,700 children were sexually abused in 1979 which was .07% of all
children below the age of 18 years of age.



Why was this report, which reveals the shocking realities of father-absence
so effectively ignored by the media? Because girls in the custody of their
divorced and remarried mothers were 7.4 times more likely to be sexually
abused by their stepfathers than those in father-headed households, and this
is very revealing of the abject failure of the feminist ideology. It is
proof of the complete bias of the feminist media. It illustrates that the
*welfare* of children is SECOND on the list to the *rights* of women. Out of
64 million fathers, 1,034 of us allegedly did abuse our daughters, but
62,998,966 of us did NOT.



The failure by the report to state what part of the other 80.7% of the
children who were sexually abused were abused by their mothers is also
revealing. It is possible, and entirely probable, that half of that 80.7%
were abused by their mothers, which makes mothers 17.5 times more likely
than biological fathers to sexually abuse their daughters.



* FEMALE-HOUSEHOLDER FAMILIES MOST LIKELY TO STAY POOR, CENSUS

BUREAU SAYS



Persons in female-householder families were the most likely demographic
group to be chronically poor, according to the results of a survey released
today by the Commerce Department's Census Bureau.



One in five female-householder families (19.5 percent) reported income below
the poverty threshold during the 24-month period of 1991-92. That was more
than any other age, race, or Hispanic-origin, employment, disability, or
family status group discussed in the report.



The finding is reported in "Dynamics of Economic Well-Being:



Poverty 1991 to 1993 (P70-45), based on data collected in the Survey of
Income and Program Participation.



Compared to persons in female-householder families, 1.3 percent of persons
in married-couple families were poor for all 24 months in 1991-92.



The median time spent in poverty during this period for persons in
female-householder families was 6.4 months compared with only 3.9 months for
persons in married-couple families.



Other findings:



* Among children under 18, 8.5 percent were chronically poor, compared with
3.2 percent of adults 18 to 64. Children constituted 48 percent of the
chronically poor.



* Of persons who were poor in 1991, 21.6 percent were able to escape poverty
in 1992.



* Of all the population subgroups looked at in the report, only African
Americans lost ground in the likelihood of their escaping poverty. For those
who were poor in the previous year, their exit rate dropped from 17.4
percent in 1991 to 13.0 percent in 1992.



* Half of all periods of poverty lasted longer than 4.3 months.



* The median duration of poverty was longer for African Americans (5.8
months) than for Whites (4.1 months). For Hispanics, it was 5.0 months, not
statistically different from the other groups.



* The median duration of poverty during 1991 through 1993 period was 4.0
months for adults 18 to 64; 4.7 months for children under 18; and 7.0 months
for the elderly (65 and older).



The Office of Management and Budget determines the official poverty index
for families based on such factors as family size, family income, number of
children under 18 years old, and the consumer price index. Chronic poverty
refers to a situation in which families stay below the poverty cutoff every
month during the 1991 to 1992 period.



* WASHINGTON -- In 1970, 12 percent of kids under 18 lived under a
single-parent family; in 1995, 36 percent of kids live this way. Children
are most likely to live with a never-married parent (35 percent) as with a
divorced, single-parent (37 percent).



DURING THE PAST DECADE, MORE AND MORE CHILDREN ARE LIVING UNDER A
SINGLE-PARENT HOUSEHOLD



Percent:



40

38................................................ ..?

36..........................................X...X

34...................................X...X

32

30.......................X...X...X

28...................X

26...........X...X

24...X...X

22

20

......'83 '84 '85 '86 '87 '88 '89 '90 '91 '92 '93 '94 '95



Two Census Bureau reports -- published each year -- keep up with the
trend: - HOUSEHOLD AND FAMILY CHARTERISTICS: MARCH (P20-477), THREE OUT OF
TEN MOTHERS ON AFDC BEGAN CHILDBEARING BEFORE AGE 18



WASHINGTON -- Approximately 29 percent of the 3.8 million mothers 50 to 44
years old who receive Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) had
their first child before they turned 18, according to Census
Bureau -STATISTICAL_BRIEF-.



Never-married mothers were 48 percent of the mothers in the 15 to 44 year
age group on AFDC. The 1.8 million never-married mothers supported 4.2
million children, or an average of 2.4 children per mother.

Entitled "Mothers Who Receive AFDC Payments -- Fertility and Socioeconomic
Charateristics," the BRIEF focuses on mothers in the childbearing years.



Covered are mother's age, race and ethnicity, education, and poverty status.
It also focuses on foreign-born mothers receiving AFDC.



AFDC mothers tended to have more children than those who did not receive
AFDC payments. The AFDC mothers average 2.6 children each compared with 2.1
children born to mothers not receiving AFDC. Altogether, 9.7 million
children were dependent on mothers receiving AFDC.



Recently completed study by CATO (?) Institute reveals that in 9 States,
money received by welfare recipients EXCEEDS the starting salary for a
TEACHER!...and in all 50 States, exceeds the minimum wage.



---------------------------------------------------------------------



Suicide Rate



* Women attempt suicide four times as often as men, but men succeed three
times as often as women. Men out number women 25 to one in the prison
system. Two thirds of all grade repeaters are boys, women out live men by
eight years (largely due to issues involving life style), 80% of the deaths
of boys between the ages of 15 and 24 are caused by accidents, suicide and
homicide (in that order) -



Note: These statistics are not the current year, but these facts have
remained very consistent for a long period of time. [MEN'S RESOURCES
HOT-LINE - NCFM]



* The suicide rate amoung men is five (5) times higher than for women, yet
there are no "men's studies" programs to understand why.



* Faludi didn't bother to mention that the male suicide rate had been higher
all along. The "suicide gap" between men and women only got worse. Roughly,
over the last generation, men's suicide rate in the U.S. went from about 15
per 100,000 each year to about 19, while women's rate went down from about 7
to 5.2 or so. The observation that women's suicide rate peaked in 1960 was
interesting, since this was the time of the so-called "problem that had no
name."



---------------------------------------------------------------------



Taxation



* Men constitute 58% of the workforce, earn an average of 42% more than
women, and earn 66.2% of the nation's total income, while women earn 33.8%.
The graduated income tax places the majority of in the highest tax bracket
and the majority of women are in the

lower tax bracket, leaving men paying up to 90% of all federal income taxes.

---------------------------------------------------------------------



Wealth



* Women hold 65% of the country's wealth today. [Fortune Magazine]



---------------------------------------------------------------------



Welfare



* The percent of those receiving one or another form of welfare who are
males range from 5-15%, while famales receive 85-95%, making welfare a $360
Billion transfer of wealth from men to women.



* Women have a 7 year longer life expectancy than men, yet women's studies
and women's health programs get 100% of the gender-related health program
spending.



* In a study by the Cato Institute, to match the value of welfare benefits,
a mother with two children would have to earn as much as $36,400 in Hawaii
or as little as $11,500 in Mississippi. In New York, Massachusetts,
Connecticut, the District of Columbia, Hawaii, Alaska, and Rhode Island,
welfare pays more than a $12.00 an hour job--or more than two- and-a-half
times the minimum wage. In 40 states welfare pays more than an $8.00 an
hour job. In 17 states the welfare package is more generous than a $10.00 an
hour job. Welfare benefits are especially generous in large urban cities.
Welfare offers the pre-tax income equivalent of a $14.75 an hour job in New
York City, $12.45 in Philadelphia, $11.35 in Baltimore, and $10.90 in
Detroit. In 9 states, welfare pays more than the average first year salary
for a teacher. In 29 states, welfare pays more than the average starting
salary for a secretary. In 47 states welfare pays more than a janitor.
Indeed,

in the 6 most generous states, benefits exceed the entry level salary for a
computer programmer. $$$ are pre-tax equivalent of welfare benefits for
single mother over the age of 21 with 2 children, aged 4 and 1.



Hawaii $36,400 $17.50 per hour

Alaska $32,200 $15.48

Mass. $30,500 $14.66

Conn. $29,600 $14.23

DC $29,100 $13.99

NY $27,300 $13.13

NJ $26,500 $12.74

RI $26,100 $12.55

CA $24,100 $11.59

Virginia $23,100 $11.11

Penn. $19,700 $9.47 (#22 on the list)

Illinois $19,400 $9.33

Texas $15,200 $7.31 (#44 on the list)

Mississippi $11,500 $5.53 (#51, last)

This report did not include certain education benefits, job training
benfits, child care costs, etc.



The Institute just listed the normal living expenses for a single parent and
2 children:



AFDC cash benefits (Alaska was #1, followed by Hawaii and NY)

Food stamp benefits (Hawaii was #1, followed by Alabama and Arkansas)

Medicaid benefits (Louisana was #1, followed by OK and Indiana)

Housing benefits (DC was #1, followed by Mass & Hawaii)

Utilities benefits (Texas was # 1, followed by Vermont & Minn)

WIC benefits (Hawaii was #1, followed by Alaska & CT)



The study does not define the total single-parent-welfare cost to each
state. The study's authors -- Michael Tanner, Cato's director of health and
welfare studies; Stephen Moore, Cato's director of fiscal policy studies;
and David Hartman, CEO of Hartland Bank in

Austin, Texas--conclude that if Congress or state governments are serious
about reducing welfare dependency and rewarding work, the most promising
reform is to cut benefit levels substantially.



* Report to the Chairman, Committee on the Budget, U.S. Senate BUDGET
ISSUES - GDP ANALYSIS BROADENS BUDGET DEBATE GAO/AIMD-94-41



As our analysis of the data shows, the United States in 1970 and 1989 ranked
last among the nine countries in gross fixed capital formation as a share of
GDP. Health care consumption presents a sharp contrast to the findings about
gross fixed capital formation: health care consumption in the United States
has grown dramatically as a percentage of GDP



The United States ranked second among seven nations\3 in both 1970 and 1987
in resources devoted to education although the differences between the
various countries is generally small.



Economic Allocations Across Countries (1990 or most recent year for which
data are available, percent of GDP)



Transportation

Non-resident

Resident

Communication

Health

Defense

Ed. Consumption

Other

Country Year ential dential cations tion tion

------- ------ ----- ----- ----------- ----- ------ ---- ------ -

---

Australia 1990 17 5 10 8 2 5 54 0

Canada 1987 14 7 11 8 2 6 50 1

France 1988 15 5 11 8 3 5 51 1

Germany 1989 15 5 9 8 2 4 50 6

Italy 1990 15 5 8 7 2 5 57 1

Japan 1990 26 6 6 6 1 3 50 1

Sweden 1989 16 5 10 8 2 5 53 1

U.K. 1990 16 3 11 6 4 4 58 -2

U.S. 1989 12 4 11 11 6 6 50 -1



---------------------------------------------------------------------



The Battered Statistic Syndrome

by Armin A. Brott [appeared in the Washington Post, July 1994]



By now, everyone knows about the murder of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald
Goldman. But there's a third victim of these tragic killings:



The truth about the prevalence of domestic violence and female
victimization, a truth that is daily being maimed almost beyond recognition
by the irresponsible use of statistics.



Consider, for example, the wildly varying statements being issued on all
sides regarding the number of women who are supposedly beaten by men in the
United States. The National Coalition Against Domestic Violence, for
example, estimates that more than half of married women (over 27 million)
will experience violence during their marriage, and that over one third
(over 18 million) are battered repeatedly every year. Shocked by these
statistics--both of which are frequently quoted in the media--I called the
NCADV and asked where they came from. Rita Smith, the group's coordinator,
told me these figures were only ""estimates.'' From where? ""Based on what
we hear out there.'' Out where? Battered women's shelters and other advocacy
groups.



Common sense should tell you that asking women at a shelter whether they've
been hit would be like asking patrons at McDonald's whether they ever eat
fast food. It would be irresponsible and intellectually dishonest to apply
those answers to the country as a whole. But when there's a sensational
story to run, common sense and intellectual honesty are rarely taken into
consideration.



Even those who have a public responsibility to be accurate on these issues
sometimes falter. According to Donna Shalala, Secretary of Health and Human
Services, for example, 4 million women are battered each year by their male
partners. But where did Shalala get her figure? From a 1993 Harris poll
commissioned by the Commonwealth Fund. Two percent of the 2,500 women
interviewed said they had been ""kicked, bit, hit with a fist or some other
object.'' Apply that to the approximately 55 million women married or living
with a man and you get a total of 1.1 million. So where did the other 2.9
million come from? They were women who said they had been ""pushed, grabbed,
shoved, or slapped.'' That's a form of abuse, to be sure, but is it what
most people would call battering?



By far the worst distortion of the numbers of battered women comes from
Miami talk show host Pat Stevens, who appeared on a segment of CNN's
Crossfire show called ""OJ on the Air'' in June. Stevens estimated that when
adjusted for underreporting, the true number of battered women is 60
million. No one bothered to tell Stevens-or Crossfire's millions of
viewers--that 60 million is more than 100% of all the women in this entire
country who are currently in relationships with a man. Instead, Stevens'
""estimate'' and the other ""facts'' on battered women all serve to fuel the
claims that there's an ""epidemic of domestic violence'' and a ""war against
women.''



How many battered women are there? ""Because many feminist activists and
researchers have so great a stake in exaggerating the problem and so little
compunction about doing so, objective information on battery is very hard to
come by,'' writes Christina Hoff Sommers, author of Who Stole Feminism: How
Women Have Betrayed Women (Simon & Schuster, 1994). But Murray A. Straus,
head of the Family Research Laboratory at the University of New Hampshire,
and Richard A. Gelles, a sociologist at the University of Rhode Island, who
have been tracking spousal abuse for over 20 years, have come up with what
are widely believed to be the most accurate estimates available--the
National Family Violence Survey (NFVS).



Their Survey, sponsored by the National Institute of Mental Health, found
that 84% of American families are not violent. In the 16% of families that
do experience violence, the vast majority of that violence takes the form of
slapping, shoving, and grabbing. Only 3-4% of all families (a total of about
1.8 million) engage in ""severe'' violence: kicking, punching, or using a
weapon.





Moreover, a recent study published in the Archives of Internal Medicine
found that 44% of ""severe violence'' to wives did not cause any injury, and
31% caused only a slight bruise. Still, Straus and Gelles estimate that
about 188,000 women are injured severely enough to require medical
attention. That's a horrifying number of victims, but it's a far cry from 4
million, or 18 million, or 60 million.



Another commonly accepted ""truth'' about domestic violence is that 95% of
the time, women are the victims and men the perpetrators.



Nothing could be further from the truth. The Family Violence Survey--as well
as numerous other studies have found that men are just as likely to be the
victims of domestic violence as women. But aren't these women just defending
themselves against their more violent partners? Straus and Gelles found that
among couples reporting violence, the man struck the first blow in 27% of
cases; the woman in 24%. The rest of the time, the violence was mutual, with
both partners brawling. The results were the same even when the most severe
episodes of violence were analyzed. They were also the same when only the
woman's version of the events was considered.



Even more interesting are Straus' findings, released earlier this month,
that men's violence against women--even as reported by women--has dropped
43% between 1985 and 1992. Over this same period, in contrast, assaults by
women against men increased by about 28%. Straus concludes that ""part of
the reason may be that there has been no effort to condemn assault by wives
parallel to the effort to condemn assaults by husbands.''



So where did the claim that 95% of domestic violence is initiated by men
come from? From the U.S. Department of Justice, which collects data on the
number of reports of domestic violence. But as women's rights groups
rightfully claim, reports are not always an accurate measure of the severity
of the problem. Certainly, some female victims of domestic violence fail to
call the police, fearing retaliation by their abusers. But other Justice
Department studies have shown that men, too, are reluctant to ask for help,
reporting all kinds of violent victimization 32% less frequently than women.



Confessing to being beaten up by another man, however, is a piece of cake
compared to admitting being victimized by a woman. After all, men are
socialized to ""take it like a man.'' As a result, men tend to report only
the most extreme abuse. ""They wouldn't dream of reporting the kind of minor
abuse--such as slapping or kicking--that women routinely report,'' says
Suzanne Steinmetz, director of the Family Research Institute at Indiana
University/Purdue.



Another example of how data on female victimization is distorted, is the
claim that ""domestic violence is the most common cause of injury to
women.'' The source for this claim is a 1991 study of extremely poor,
inner-city African-American women in Philadelphia--which doesn't even find
that domestic violence was the leading cause of injury.



""And even if it did,'' says Dr. Jeane Ann Grisso, one of the lead
researchers of the study, ""I'd never apply that conclusion to the total
population of American women.'' Nevertheless, Grisso's study has been
widely cited as proof that there's an epidemic of violence against women.



Some advocates have taken Grisso's study one-step further, claiming that as
many as 50% of women's hospital emergency-room admissions are the result of
ongoing abuse. At the source of this so called fact are several studies done
in the 1970's by Evan Stark and Anne Flitcraft, co-directors of the Domestic
Violence Training Project at the University of Connecticut. They compiled
their data by going through old medical records in urban hospitals and
estimating how many women were battered by using what they called an ""index
of suspicion.''



Christina Hoff Sommers has analyzed Stark and Flitcraft's methods and
writes: ""if a woman was assaulted but the records do not say who hit her,
Stark and Flitcraft classify this as a case of "probable' domestic abuse; if
she has injuries to her face and torso that are inadequately explained, they
classify it as "suggestive of abuse.'''



Apparently no one considered the possibility that someone other than a
husband or boyfriend might have been responsible for the woman's injuries.



Compare Stark and Flitcraft's results to those reached in a 1992 survey of
397 emergency rooms in California. Nurses were asked to estimate the number
of patients per month who have been diagnosed with injuries caused by
domestic violence. Estimates ranged from two per month for small hospitals
to eight per month for large ones. The California study concluded that the
number of perceived domestic violence victims was so low because many health
professionals are poorly trained in recognizing domestic violence. That may
be correct, but it's doubtful that it would account for the enormous
difference between a handful of domestic violence cases a month and the
claim that such cases account for 50% of all women's emergency room
admissions.



There's no question that many women who have been severely battered are
afraid to leave their batterers--either because they are economically
dependent, or because they fear further abuse. In one of their ""fact
sheets,'' the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence tells us that
women who leave their batterers ""increase by 75% their chances of getting
killed.'' When I asked her to explain that figure, the NCADV's Rita Smith
admitted that that statistic isn't true at all, and that the Coalition has
no concrete evidence of the effect--if any--leaving a violent partner will
have on a woman. I then asked Ms. Smith whether it bothered her that her
organization was responsible for spreading an imaginary statistic. ""Not
really,'' she said. ""We think the chance of getting killed goes up and
we're just trying to make a point here.''



In a very small number of tragic cases, abusive men do kill their partners.
But women aren't the only ones killed in domestic disputes. A Justice
Department study released earlier this month showed that 41 percent of
spousal murder victims were male. Battered women's advocates claim that
those women who kill their husbands do so only out of self-defense. But in
an extensive study of women imprisoned for murder, Coramae Richey Mann, a
researcher at the Department of Criminal Justice, Indiana
University/Bloomington found that only 59% claimed self-defense and that 30%
had previously been arrested for violent crimes.



As for the perception that women who murder their husbands are treated
harshly by the justice system, Dr. Mann found that few female domestic
homicide offenders receive prison sentences, and that those who do rarely
serve more than four or five years. These findings were confirmed by a
recent Los Angeles Times article. The article, which quoted Justice
Department sources, reported that women who kill their husbands were
acquitted in 12.9% of the cases, while husbands who kill their wives were
acquitted only 1.4% of the time. In addition, women convicted of killing
their husbands receive an average sentence of only six years, while male
spousal killers got 17 years.



Why are these statistics being battered? ""The higher your figures for
abuse, the more likely you'll reap rewards, regardless of your
methodology,'' says Dr. Sommers. Those who create and disseminate inflated
statistics are often invited to testify before Congress, they're written
about in the New York Times, and some even get to be interviewed on Oprah.



Not everyone who manipulates data does so for personal gain. Some are simply
trying to get people to sit up and pay attention to the plight of battered
women--a truly important goal. But to do so, they've created a false
epidemic. If advocates confined themselves to the truth--that 3-4% of women
are battered each year--domestic violence might still be regarded as the
unfortunate behavior of a few crazy men. But if enough people are led to
believe that 19 or 50 or 100 percent of women are ""brutalized,'' the only
logical conclusion can be that all men are dangerous and all women need to
be protected.



Is it OK to lie shamelessly if your cause is a noble one? Is half a solution
better than no solution at all? On the one hand, lying about the extent of
the problem of domestic violence has had some very positive effects, opening
the public's eyes as well as their wallets.



Battered women are now the hottest story in town and Congress is about to
pass the $1.8 billion Violence Against Women Act which, among other things,
will fund toll-free hotlines, battered women's shelters, and education and
training programs. It's certainly possible that none of this would be
happening if advocacy groups stuck strictly to facts.



On the other hand, even supposedly harmless ""puffing'' can have been some
extremely negative consequences. Inaccurate discussions about domestic
violence, for example, can quickly turn into smear campaigns in which almost
every man who hasn't exhibited his natural vicious and misogynist tendencies
yet, is expected to do so at any moment. Members of Congress, seeing a
golden opportunity to appease a large block of voters, have chosen a quick
solution rather than attempting to correct their constituents'
misapprehensions. The Violence Against Women Act, for example, doesn't
devote a nickel to the same kind of special protection for men, even though
males make up 75% of all murder victims and 61% of the victims of all
violent crime.



Women, too, are being hurt by the lies. Having fought so hard to be taken
seriously and treated as equals, women are again finding themselves
portrayed as weak and helpless--exactly the stereotypes that have been
traditionally used to justify discriminating against them. As the author and
feminist critic Katherine Dunn writes in the current issue of The New
Republic, ""The denial of female aggression is a destructive myth. It robs
an entire gender of a significant spectrum of power, leaving women less than
equal with men and effectively keeping them "in their place' and under
control.''



Worst of all, the inflation of domestic violence statistics produces a kind
of ratchet effect. The same people who complain that no one listens if they
don't exaggerate only find it that much more difficult to get people's
attention the next time around--which in turn seems to justify another round
of exaggeration. Eventually, the public either stops listening altogether,
or finds the statistics too absurd to believe. And when we're trying to
alleviate the tragedy of domestic violence, the last thing you want anyone
to do is laugh.





---------------------------------------------------------------------



Mark Charalambous, Coalition for the Preservation of Fatherhood



Child support is an award of money that one adult pays another. It is
ostensibly paid from Non-Custodial Parents (NCP) to Custodial Parents (CPs).
Because of the FACT that men are not allowed by the State to become CPs
(estimates range from 95-99% of custodial battles arrive at maternal
physical custody; in Massachusetts, I'm *still* waiting to hear of a case
where at the trial level a father is awarded sole physical custody in a
contested case. Guess what! I heard of one Wednesday night! The context was
that it made Lawyers Weekly because it was reversed on appeal! There were
abuse allegations on both sides (of course), and the appeals court ruled
that "battered women's syndrome' was not taken into account to explain the
abuse that the mother allegedly perpetrated on the father. So. To the best
of my knowledge, the rate is still: mothers 100%, fathers 0%. Also, bear in
mind that when a father does win custody -- it's cause for national
headlines! (Remember the Michigan case last year? )



So we have an environment where only one class of people, women, can be CPs
(child support recipients), and the other class, men, can only be NCPs
(child support payors). Hence, I state that ALL laws, policies, and what-
have-you, including all state guideline child support IS ILLEGITIMATE AND
INVALID prima facie. We are talking about a thoroughly discriminatory
environment against men.



I do not recognize this system of transfer of money as being anything that
resembles something that the words "child support" *should* represent. So
what exactly is it? In a time when it is politically incorrect for women to
acknowledge any dependence on men, this euphemism was conjured up. We know
what it is. It passes the duck test real well. It is POLITICALLY CORRECT
ALIMONY, state-mandated at levels that make the worst alimony story of
decades past pale in comparison.



$9,000 a month for "child support" (recent Vermont case)? Who's kidding
who?



I would ask you to consider the sex discrimination inherent in the practice
of providing welfare payments to out of work mothers, and prosecuting out of
work fathers for non-payment. I would also ask you to consider the logic of
reducing the ability of NCFs to get or keep work, as a method which will
increase child support payments. As shown above, two-thirds of the nonpayers
of ordered child support can't pay.



Laws such as those currently enforced in Maine, which strip professional and
driving licenses from fathers who fall behind in child support payments,
will help to insure that they never will be able to pay.



In contrast to the Maine policy, is one being used in parts of New York
state, called Parents Fair Share. In the Parents Fair Share program, NCFs
are provided with job training and given preference in state employment
office job placement programs. The collection rate among fathers who have
been helped in this program is near 90 percent.



The collection rate reported in one Associated Press (Houston Post, July 3,
1994) article for Maine is $11.5 million out of $138.5 million, or less than
9 percent. The program of NCF assistance, Parents Fair Share, is ten times
as effective in producing child support payments as the punishment program
of Maine.



---------------------------------------------------------------------



COPS - Coalition of Parental Support



Fathers' Absence*



* 85% of all children that exhibit behavioral disorders come from fatherless
homes.



* 90% of all homeless and runaway children are from fatherless homes.



* 71% of all high school dropouts come from fatherless homes.



* 75% of all adolescent patients in chemical abuse centers come from
fatherless homes.



* 63% of youth suicides are from fatherless homes.



* 80% of rapists motivated with displaced anger come from fatherless homes.



* 70% of juveniles in state-operated institutions come from fatherless
homes.



* 85% of all youths sitting in prisons grew up in a fatherless home.



* California has the nation's highest juvenile incarceration rate and the
nation's highest juvenile unemployment rate.



* Juveniles have become the driving force behind the national increase in
violent crime; the epidemic of youth violence and gangs is related to the
breakdown of the two-parent family.



* 71% of teenage pregnancies are to children of single parents. Daughters of
single parents are 2.1 times more likely to have children during their
teenage years than are daughters from intact families. Daughters of single
parents are 53% more likely to marry as teenagers, 164% more likely to have
a premarital birth, and 92% more likely to dissolve their own marriages. All
these intergenerational consequences of single motherhood increase the
likelihood of chronic welfare dependency.



* In 1983, a study found that 60% of perpetrators of child abuse were women
with sole custody. Shared parenting can significantly reduce the stress
associated with sole custody, and reduce the isolation of children in
abusive situations by allowing both parents' to monitor the children's
health and welfare and to protect them.



* 18 million children live in single-parent homes. Nearly 75% of American
children living in single-parent families will experience poverty before
they turn 11. Only 20% in two-parent families will experience poverty.



* The feminization of poverty is linked to the feminization of custody, as
well as linked to lower earnings for women. Greater opportunity for
education and jobs through shared parenting can help break the cycle.



* Kidnapping: family abductions were 163,200 compared to non-family
abductions of 200-300, attributed to the parents' disenchantment with the
legal system.



---------------------------------------------------------------------



DOMESTIC VIOLENCE: Some Things Have Always Been Equal



by John A. Rossler



The serious examination of violence in the family began in the mid '70s with
studies by Straus, Gelles and Steinmetz that challenged many of our
preconceived notions of violent men. Also challenged was the stereotype, the
anathema of feminists, of the "little women," docile and passive compared to
her husband. Whereas these original researchers suspected violence was a
major problem in American families, consistent with our violent society,
surprising was its high incidence: at least one act of violence occurred in
16% of families in the last year and 28% since the beginning of the
marriages ("Societal

Change and Change in Family Violence from 1975 to 1985 As Revealed by Two
National Studies," Straus and Gelles, Journal of Marriage and the Family,
8/86.)



More surprising was the virtual equality of offenses by wives to husbands.
Wives committed 48.5% of all violent occurrences, and 54.8% of all violence
termed "severe." In her 197778 Victimology article, "The Battered Husband
Syndrome," (p.501) Steinmetz (U. of Delaware) reveals "The data from the
nationally representative sample (Straus et al., 1977)... found wives
slightly higher in almost all categories (of violence) except pushing and
shoving."



"Gathered data plus insights gained from in-depth interviews, suggest that
women are as likely to select physical violence to resolve marital conflicts
as are men." (Ibid., p. 505)















---------------------------------------------------------------------



WOMEN ARE RESPONSIBLE, TOO



James Sniechowski, Ph.D. & Per Judith Shervn, Ph.D.





Forty-one percent of spousal murders are committed by wives.



The 1985 National Family Violence Survey, funded by the National Institute
of Mental Health and supported by many other surveys, revealed that women
and men were physically abusing one another in roughly equal numbers. Wives
reported they were more often the aggressors. Using weapons to make up for
physical disadvantage, they were not just fighting back.



While 1.8 women annually suffered one or more assaults from a husband or
boyfriend, 2 million men are assaulted by a wife or girlfriend, according to
the 1986 study. The study also found that 54% of all violence termed
"severe" was by women.



The Journal for the National Association of Social Workers found in 1986
that among teen-agers who date, girls were violent more frequently than
boys.



Mothers abuse their children at a rate approaching twice that of fathers
according to state child protective service agencies surveyed by the
Children's Rights Coalition.



Because men have been taught to "take it like a man" and are ridiculed when
they reveal they have been battered by a woman, women are nine times more
likely to report their abusers to authorities.



The women's movement claims it's goal to be equal rights for women. If that
is so, then women must share responsibility for their behavior and their
contribution to domestic violence. Otherwise we remain in a distortion that
overshadows the truth. Only the truth will show us the way out of the
epidemic of violence that is destroying our families and our nation.



In defending their point of view they are often disingenuous. They will rely
on a domestic-violence researcher, like Murray Straus, who, in a widely used
1986 study, reported that, "a man's assault on a woman is far more likely to
cause serious injury."



However, they do not reveal that it was Straus who also found, in that same
study, that "women are about as violent within the family as men," and
furthermore that "violence by wives has not been an object of public
concern. It has not been defined as a problem."



Rather than face the dilemma squarely, feminists classify references to
battered males as backlash, relegating the issue to the status of an
aggravating diversion and describe the men as "whiners." With that, the real
injury done to men becomes irrelevant.

---------------------------------------------------------------------



California Governor Wilson's Focus On Fathers Summit

Burbank, California June 13, 1995





Wade Horn, National Fatherhood Initiative





Our three decade [old] experiment with fatherlessness has failed.

23 million children will be sleeping in fatherless homes tonight.

The divorce rate tripled between 1960 and 1980.

40 out of 100 families divorce now compared to 16 out of 100 in 1960.

Illegitimacy has followed a geometric progression from 10.7% in 1970 to 33%
today.

40% of children in fatherless homes have not seen their fathers for more
than 1 year.

58% have never been in their fathers homes.

75% of single parent "familes" live in poverty versus 20% of 2-parent
families.



Single-parent [read: mother-headed] households produce:



60% of the rapists

72% of the murderers

70% of long-term imprisoned



And I quote: "This is not an attack on mother-headed households.



Fathers just do things differently and this can't be replaced with AFDC,
Welfare, etc." Divorce has severe consequences on children. We must change
the way we look at it. We are running out of time because soon majority of
children will be raised in single-parent "families".



---------------------------------------------------------------------



WE MUST STOP PUNISHING MEN. A woman on welfare who marries a man on minimum
wage takes a 30% income reduction. WE MUST ENFORCE PSYCHOLOGICAL SUPPORT.
The issue is father contact, not money.



[Standing Ovation]



---------------------------------------------------------------------



Sherman Block, Sheriff, Los Angeles County



Children of single-parent households commit most of crimes.

Does not know "why" fathers leave their homes. (Hasn't heard of the HHS "man
out of the house rule"??)

Must minimize this national disgrace.



Sheriff's office involved in community programs by default because there is
no other agency which can. But he must divert funds from other programs to
handle this. [i.e., there is less money for "prevention"??]





Tony Chipelow, Casey Foundation





Mother-headed households grew from 6% in 1950 to 24% today.



19 million children are fatherless.



Average income of 2-parent families is $43,000, versus $17,500 for female-
headed "families"



Young males today are far more likely not to get married, of all races, with
less than half of blacks and 78% of Latinos Single-mother "families" are 5x
more likely to be poor, 10x more likely to be extremely poor, 2x more likely
to go to jail, and 3x more likely to have children as teenagers.



A national priority should be made of 4 points:



1) Education reform.

2) Stop treating fathers as "marginal players".

3) Welfare reform.

4) Develop jobs for the 5 million who are not in the workforce.





Patrick Fagan, Heritage Foundation



Our socio-economic problems stem from fatherlessness, not from poverty.



Poverty stems from fatherlessness.



The ill-effects of fatherlessness go across the socio-economic strata,
including poor health, high infant mortality, poor cognitive development,
behind their peers, lower impulse control (more sex and violence).



When the agreement between the father & mother is weakened the social
contract is weakened, leading to increased litigation.



Crime increases across the socio-economic strata.



Present GNP much lower than it would have been with strong 2-parent
families.

This risk to the future of our nation is much greater than the risk from the
USSR could have ever been.



[STANDING OVATION!!!!]



Material needs and wants are not the problem - lack of interpersonal contact
with fathers is the problem.



BOOK OF VIRTUES made Bill Bennett and his publisher a millionaire because of
the timing of his "loyalty, honesty" presentation.



To reverse the problem might require us to raise our own children PLUS
ANOTHER CHILD.



Government must free up the family, schools, the economy, and churches to
allow them to solve the problem - government cannot solve it alone.



Government has no competence in raising children!!! Allow education to play
a larger role coupled with parental involvement. The goal is stable
marriages.







Reginald Brass, Founder, My Child Says Daddy



Described his organization's Triangle Theory - mother, father, children.



His emotional account of his dealings with the courts got a standing ovation
which helped to encourage Governor Wilson to promise a review of the
judicial system and a "judges' college".



Family courts are all we have, and they are negative, degrading, and must be
educated. [Ovation]



It would be easier for him to go to the social services department and adopt
a child than to see his own children. [standing ovation]





Timothy Johnson, 13, Big Brother Program



Had a big brother for 3 years that he waited 2 years for. Provided male
role model and someone to talk to about things he could not talk to his
mother about [like about everything a teenager thinks about?]











Anne Mitchell, Attorney, single mother, founder FREE



Governor Wilson is on the cutting edge.



In her numerous dealings with divorce cases fathers are considered
dispensable by single mothers.



Fathers do believe they have nothing to contribute under the current setup.



Enforcing child support costs $millions [she didn't say how much is
collected versus how much it costs, but David Garrod shows how it costs more
to collect than is collected]



Even in cases where both parents agree to joint custody, 33% are awarded to
the custody of the mother anyway, and even in cases where both parents agree
to father custody, 13% are awarded to the custody of the mother.



[Have a little hidden agenda, these judges???]



When fathers are so restrained from their own children they "go away".



"We must bring the dads back" got an ovation.



"We must educate the family law judges" [Sure, and we must send dogs to
training to make sure they don't bite cats]





Wolfgang Hirczy, Senior Policy Advisor, FREE



Governor has placed the issue of how the paternal role is affected by
government policy on the national agenda.



Government policy undermines the paternal role.



Few fathers have adequate access to their own children because it is
restricted by current government policy.



But it is not just government's fault. Support and advocacy organizations
AND FEMINISM think it is OK to throw the father out like dirty diapers and
tying his hands behind his back, so they can pick his pockets, and they are
the ones demanding this action from government.



[STANDING OVATION]



The legislature must assure that children's access to their fathers is
guaranteed.



[STANDING OVATION]



And they must establish paternity at the hospital when the father is most
likely to be present, to assure his involvement in the child's life.





Officer Frank Dipaol, LA Police Department



Personally started a community service alternative to jail time for
teenagers. Almost all of the 600 kids who went through his program came from
homes with no fathers. 10% of them were "turned around". [i.e., for 90% of
them it was too late for a father image]



"Oscar was one of those kids but he is now wearing a Police Explorer's
uniform rather than baggy pants."







Eloise Anderson, Director, Dept. Social Services



More important than money is parental involvement. Welfare cannot replace
the father's role.



Fatherlessness as described by the other presenters (and she knows the
statistics and rattled them off faster than could be recorded) is the root
of our social pathology.



If parents decide on divorce we must mitigate the conflict.



Marriage is for children, not for parents.



The relationship of fathers to their daughters is also very important.



[Ovation]



2 out of every 5 children live without their biological fathers.



"What happens in a childs life when he or she wakes up without a father?"



AFDC moms are usually mated to their peers, not to rocket scientists, and
thus don't have the opportunity to pay the child support ordered from them.



Gov. Wilson implemented "wedfare" which allowed welfare to married couples
so that both parents would be available to a child's life.









David Blankenhorn, National Fatherhood Initiative



40% of the children in the nation will be sleeping in fatherless homes
tonight.



We must honor the special role of our religious custodians, like the
"Promise Keepers".





PROPOSAL



An eccentric, symbolic legislative gesture would be to pass a law
prohibiting men from selling their sperm to sperm banks. This produces
children who will never, never know fathers. Their fatherlessness is
absolute.



This social movement requires guys who are prepared to commit to:



"Maximize the possibility that every child has a father".



No-fault divorce started in California - it should end here. Must get rid of
the term "no-fault".



The non-filing spouse should be shown more power and respect than the filing
spouse.



California was the first state to hold a conference on fatherhood, and it
shifted the debate dramatically. This is far bigger than both political
parties and it can be fixed. This Summit assisted in formally recognizing
fatherlessness as a problem.



University of California studies on motherhood have outnumbered those on
fatherhood by 5x suggesting alarming ambivalence about the importance of
fathers.







Jim Cook, Joint Custody Association



Biological parents obviously come first, but 3 decades ago 80% of the
children had grandparents close by, but now only 4% do.







Ken Canfield, Pres. National Center for Fatherhood



"There is a deep father wound on the face of the California landscape. We
must grieve first and then appreciate fathers."



We have a foe - it is fatherlessness - and we need tools to fight it:



1) Promote responsible fatherhood in the media.

2) Resources for training and education.



3) Prepare tomorrow's fathers before they are fathers.



How to return teen fathers to their children since there are 1 million teen
pregnancies and 500,000 teen childbirths per year, 85% of which are
unplanned.



The current stance on teen fathers is punitive, shows no support for them,
labels them as deadbeat dads.



Teen fathers desire relationships with their children but they receive no
moral support from government.







Hogan Hillings



Must promote father presence.



Fatherlessness is a problem which feeds itself - a fatherless child grows up
without a male role model and then has difficulty being a father to his own
children.







Governor Pete Wilson, California



Detroit Board of Education could not create an all male academy because it
was sued by NOW and the ACLU for being DISCRIMINATORY TO WOMEN.



"Judge missed the point that the long term benefits would also help women."

[PS - Are these decisions judges are capable of making?]



Asked "what percent of fathers would be available if they had a chance" and
got a whole room full of blank stares. [100%??]



His concern about fatherlessness is not a passing fancy which will go away.
Human costs are larger than the dollar costs, but the dollar costs are
enormous. In budget meetings he is struck by the enormous size of the
welfare and prison budgets.



Statutory rape should be prosecuted more vigorously to reduce teen
pregnancy.



The conference certainly will raise the public consciousness about the
problems of fatherlessness. A concensus was reached in five areas:



1) teen pregnancy must be stigmatized through education, media.



2) families must be strengthened because families are the best environment
for children.



3) policies must be developed to encourage and permit parenting by fathers.



4) strengthen laws holding parents responsible for children's actions.



5) must develop male role models for the children of mother-headed
households. The Governor promised a review of the judicial system and a
"judges' college" to make sure the judicial system does not remain a part of
the problem.







---------------------------------------------------------------------



FATHERING, CHILDHOOD DEVELOPMENT & US PUBLIC POLICY



by Kingsley G. Morse Jr. Copyright 1995





Introduction """"""""""""



An avalanche of data is showing that fathering is crucial to normal
childhood development. Unfortunately, children are being deprived by certain
public policies and when fathers work outside the home.



Advances in telecommuting and new laws that protect the crucial father-child
relationship may help.







Fathers are Crucial to Normal Childhood Development



"""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""" "



Quite a few statistics have been gathered on fatherlessness and abnormal
childhood development. So many are summarized in this paper that the reader
may want to take a deep breath before proceeding. The author and others
believe the implications for our society are profound.



The U.S. Census department has said that nearly one in four[1] children are
born out of wedlock in the general population. Sadly, fatherless children
are responsible for a disproportionately high percentage of juvenile
delinquency. For example, considering that only 25% of children raised
without fathers, then why are 63% of youth suicides from fatherless homes?
(Source: U.S. D.H.H.S., Bureau of the Census)



Probably because these children were deprived of adequate fathering. Here
are more disturbing statistics. Keep in mind that only 25% of children in
the general population comes from fatherless homes.



* 85% of all children that exhibit behavioral disorders come from fatherless
homes (Source: Center for Disease Control)



* 80% of rapists motivated with displaced anger come from fatherless homes
(Source: Criminal Justice & Behavior, Vol 14, p. 403-26, 1978.)



* 71% of all high school dropouts come from fatherless homes (Source:
National Principals Association Report on the State of High Schools.)



* 75% of all adolescent patients in chemical abuse centers come from
fatherless homes (Source: Rainbows for all God`s Children.)



* 70% of juveniles in state-operated institutions come from fatherless homes
(Source: U.S. Dept. of Justice, Special Report, Sept 1988)



* 85% of all youths sitting in prisons grew up in a fatherless home (Source:
Fulton Co. Georgia jail populations, Texas Dept. of Corrections 1992)



If the reader still doubts that fathering is vital to normal childhood
development, perhaps the following expert opinions will be more convincing.



"Daughters in single mother homes have more negative attitudes toward men in
general and their fathers in particular." (pg. 146 , 2, lines 5 - 8)
Interparental Conflict, Relationship with the Noncustodial Father, and
Adolescent Post-Divorced Adjustment - Gene Brody and Rex Forehand,
University of Georgia, Journal of Applied Psychology, Vol. 11, No. 2,
April - June 1990



"Children recover more rapidly from the emotional trauma of parents'
separation when they maintain close ties with their fathers." (pg. 013, Col.
2, 2, lines 13 - 24 continued on pg. 1014, Col. 1, 1, lines 1) Family Ties
after Divorce: The Relationship Between Visiting and Paying Support - Judith
A. Seltzer, Nora Shaeffer, Hong-wen Charing, University of Wisconsin,
Journal of Marriage & the Family, Vol. 51, No. 4, November 1989.



"Adolescents who reported closer relationships with their non-custodial
fathers were assessed as displaying fewer internalizing problems." (pg. 139,
1, lines 8 - 10) Interparental Conflict, Relationship with the Noncustodial
Father, and Adolescent Post-

Divorced Adjustment - Gene Brody and Rex Forehand, University of Georgia,
Journal of Applied Psychology, Vol. 11, No. 2, April - June 1990





"Fathers have much to offer their adolescent children in many areas,
including their career development, moral development, and sex role
identification." (pg. 284, col. 2, 5, lines 6 - 10) Increasing Our
Understanding of Fathers Who Have Infrequent Contact With Their Children -
James R. Dudley, Professor, University North Carolina, under a grant from
Temple University, Family Relations, Vol. 40, No. 3, July 1991



"Frequent contact with the father is associated with positive adjustment of
the children." (pg. 441, col. 2, 1, lines 18 - 20) The Effect of the Post
Divorce Relationship on Paternal Involvement: A Longitudinal Analysis -
Constance R. Ahrons, Ph.D., and Richard B. Miller, Ph.D., American Journal
of Orthopsychiatry, Vol. 63, No. 3, July 1993



"Finally, girls whose parents divorce may grow up without the day to day
experience of interacting with a man who is attentive, caring and loving.
The continuous sense of being valued and loved as a female seems an
especially key element in the development of the conviction that one is
indeed femininely lovable. Without this regular source of nourishment, a
girl's sense of being valued as a female does not seem to thrive."
(Long-Term Effects of Divorce on Children: A Developmental Vulnerability
Model Neil Kalter, Ph.D., University of Michigan, American Journal of
Orthopsychiatry, 57(4), October, 1987)



"The impact of parental divorce and subsequent father absence in the wake of
this event has long been thought to affect children quite negatively. For
instance, parental divorce and father loss has been associated with
difficulties in school adjustment (e.g. Felner, Ginter, Boike, & Cowen),
Social Adjustment (e.g. Fry & Grover) and personal adjustment (e.g. Covell &
Turnbull)..."



"The results of the present study suggest that father loss through divorce
is associated with diminished self-concepts in children...at least for this
sample of children from the midwestern United States." (Children's Self
Concepts: Are They Affected by Parental Divorce and Remarriage Thomas S.
Parish, Journal of Social Behavior and Personality, 1987, V 2, #4, 559-562)



Think of all the children who could benefit from more fathering! And beyond
the children, think of all the tax dollars we could save if we needed fewer
prisons, chemical abuse centers and other state- operated institutions!







Causes and Cures for Fatherless Children



""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""



Fatherlessness and abnormal childhood development are natural consequences
of fathers working outside of the home and certain public policies.



When their fathers leave home to go to work, children are at greater risk of
abnormal development. Before the industrial revolution, most children had
fathers who worked at home, on the farm. But the percentage of children
who've had this luxury plummeted with the obsolescence of our farm based
economy. Between 1820 and 1988, the percentage of people in farm occupations
dropped from 72% to just 3% [2].



Interestingly, recent technological advances may reverse this trend, if only
slightly. Technological breakthroughs and plummeting telecommunication costs
for phones, faxes and the internet are permitting some fathers to work at
home and spend more time fathering their kids. Working at home means
children can be fathered during the lunch hour and when their father would
otherwise be commuting to and from work. Beyond the technological advances,
trade organizations like the Home Office Association of America and the
Small Office Home Office America are lobbying for tax deductibility for
health costs and home office expenses, among other things. These bills are
the "Home Office Deduction Act of 1995" and the "Self Employed Health
Fairness Act of 1995". If passed, these will make it more economical for
families to have fathers work at home, thus promoting more fathering and
normal childhood development. Along with tax legislation for home offices,
some county planners are zoning traditionally residential areas to permit
home offices, cottage industries, and therefore more fathering and normal
childhood development.



Even if more fathers do eventually work closer to their kids, we as a
society will still need to relearn to appreciate fathers' contribution to
normal childhood development. Toward this goal, president Clinton released a
memorandum in June called "Supporting The Role Of Fathers In Families"[3].



Several public policies have been criticized by father's rights lobbyists as
harming the crucial father-child relationship.



A public policy which probably exacerbates fatherlessness and abnormal child
hood development is the use of so called "no-fault" divorce laws.



They've made divorcing easy and typically result in the children having less
time with their father. Marvin Mitchelson, a famous lawyer who specializes
in man and woman relations has been quoted as saying "The [present] easy
grounds [for divorce] and no- fault system of divorce [in some states] mean
that anyone can go to court and get a divorce with very little effort."[4]
The divorce rate rose steadily from 2.5 per 1,000 population in 1966 to a
peak of 5.3 in both 1979 and 1981.[5] Some states still don't have no- fault
laws, and those that do might consider repealing them for the childrens'
sake.



Another public policy which promotes fatherlessness and abnormal childhood
development is awarding sole physical custody of children after divorce to
one parent instead of joint physical custody. My understanding is that
several states have tried to make joint custody the default, and some
states, like Washington, even permit joint custody over one parent's
objection. Joint physical custody helps children get the fathering they need
to develop normally.

Most states don't enforce visitation agreements, which permits bitter
ex-spouses to deny children visits with their fathers. Encouragingly
Arizona, Colorado and Illinois have passed laws which enforce visitation.



Another public policy which promotes fatherlessness and abnormal childhood
development is the immunity enjoyed by bitter divorcing spouses who file
contrived restraining orders to separate children from their fathers. For
example, a Massachusetts "209A" restraining order prohibits children from
having reasonable visitation and adequate fathering, and this is routinely
justified by unproven allegations. California has recently passed a law, SB
558, which will hopefully allow more fathering in that state. It makes false
convictions of child abuse a justification for change of custody.



Another misguided public policy is the practice of putting children in
day-care when divorced fathers are willing to care for them. Some states,
like Virginia and California, have introduced legislation dubbed "Mrs.
Doubtfire" bills that would permit children to be cared for by their fathers
instead of sending them to a day care facility.



Welfare and child support from paternity suits are two more policies which
subsidize illegitimacy and fatherlessness. Preliminary data shows that two
thirds of fathers didn't intend to cause conception where the mothers were
unwed[6]. This high percentage would explain why many fathers are absent.
The rate of illegitimate births is soaring, and is now about one in four[1].
Remedial welfare legislation is often proposed in Congress, and the National
Center for Men is pressing for a federal suit to give men who would
otherwise be absent fathers the right to decline fatherhood and child
support. By making welfare and child support from paternity suits harder to
get, there would be less economic incentive to have children who won't have
adequate fathering.





Conclusion """"""""""



Studies are showing how crucial fathering is for normal childhood
development. Fathers who work at home and new laws protecting the
father-child relationship may help.





References """"""""""



[1] The U.S. Census Bureau, "Fertility of American Women: June 1992". (San
Jose Mercury News 7/14/93)



[2] The World Almanac 1991, Pharos Books, 200 Park Avenue, New York, NY
10166 (page 128)



[3] Memorandum For The Heads Of Executive Departments and Agencies, U.S.
President Bill Clinton, June 16, 1995, "Supporting The Role Of Fathers In
Families"



[4] The Jacoby and Meyers Practical Guide to Everyday Law, 1985, Simon and
Schuster, Inc., New York, NY



[5] National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS), Advance Report of Final
Divorce Statistics, 1989 and 1990, Monthly Vital Statistics Report, Vol. 43,
No. 9, Supp. For Release April 18, 1995



[6] DRAFT COPY of Unintended Births: Women's Attitudes vis-a-vis their Male
Partners' Attitudes: 1982-1990, Joyce C. Abma and Linda J. Piccinino, NCHS,
6525 Belcrest Road, Hyattsville, MD 20782, (301) 436-8731

"Dusty" wrote in message
...
Some info for you to mull over..


Fatherhood Statistics



Index



* Affirmative Action

* Child Abuse

* Child Murder

* Child Custody

* "Child Support"

* Discrimination Against Men

* Divorce

* Domestic Violence

* Education

* Family Breakup

* Fatherlessness

* Incarceration

* Life Expectancy

* Single-Mother Households

* Suicide Rate

* Taxation

* Wealth

* Welfare



Important Articles on Fatherhood



---------------------------------------------------------------------



Armin Brott on Battered Domestic Violence Statistics



---------------------------------------------------------------------



Mark Charalambous, Coalition for the Preservation of Fatherhood on
Discrimination Against Men



---------------------------------------------------------------------



COPS -- Coalition of Parental Support -- Fatherlessness



---------------------------------------------------------------------



Kingsley Morse on Fatherlessness



---------------------------------------------------------------------



John A. Rossler on Domestic Violence



---------------------------------------------------------------------



James Sniechowski & Judith Sherven on Domestic Violence



---------------------------------------------------------------------



Callifornia Governor Wilson's Fatherhood Summit On Fatherlessness



---------------------------------------------------------------------



Affirmative Action



* Affirmative action is discriminatory against men by design, and benefits
women more than it does any other "minority group" [i.e., men are a
"minority group" because they constitute 48% of the population, but
affirmative action does not work to their benefit].



---------------------------------------------------------------------



Child Abuse



---------------------------------------------------------------------



Child Murder



* Per the Department of Justice, 55% of child murders are by their own
mothers, and 6% are by their biological fathers, making mothers 9 times
more
likely to murder their children than biological fathers.



---------------------------------------------------------------------



Child Custody



* Don King or 909-698-5834) has official State of
California statistics that show only 3.4% of California fathers get
custody.



* This data is from "Advance Report of Final Divorce Statistics, 1989 and
1990," National Center for Health Statistics, Sally C. Clarke In 1990,
from
19 reporting states, percent of custody:



Awarded to husbands: 8.7

Awarded to wives: 72

Awarded to joint custody 15.7

Awarded to other persons: 1.3

Awarded to combination: 2.4



* As we know "joint custody" often means maternal custody in practice. So
a
safe estimate on the basis of these figures is that mothers get custody
between 80 to 85 percent of the time. Note that fathers get custody only
8.7
percent of the time.



* Even in cases where both parents agree to joint custody, 33% are awarded
to the custody of the mother anyway, and even in cases where both parents
agree to father custody, 13% are awarded to the custody of the mother.
[Anne
Mitchell, Attorney, single mother, founder FREE]



* The Associated Press cited the fact that 97% of the persons to be
prosecuted by Maine under this child support collection law are fathers.
That statistic was provided by officials of Maine. Do they explain why
these
statistics are so out of balance between genders? Most studies of fathers
pre-divorce show that about 66% or two thirds of them want custody of
their
children. Read Richard Warshak's book, The Custody Revolution, for a
description of some of the mistaken beliefs about the parenting abilities
of
men that result in sex discrimination in child custody decisions. Contrary
to the equal abilities of either parent to nurture a child, the custody
decisions after divorce give women sole custody in 90 percent of divorces.
Parents retain joint custody in 5 to 7 percent of divorce custody cases.
Only in 10 percent of all divorce custody cases are fathers able to retain
their parental status. This loss of parental rights is not related to any
crime or innate inability to nurture children. The loss of NCF parental
rights is due strictly to the gender bias of the Family Court system.



---------------------------------------------------------------------



"Child Support"



* "90.2% of fathers with joint custody pay the child support due."

U.S. Bureau of the Census: 1988



* "79.1 % of fathers with visitation privileges pay the child support
due."

U.S. Bureau of the Census: 1988



* A study by the Institute for Research on Poverty at the University of
Wisconsin-Madison found that "dead-beat dads" were really impoverished
dads.
In their comprehensive study, they found that "... 52% of the nonpaying
fathers had incomes of less than $6,155 per year ... ." [18 Dallas Morning
News, pg. 5. April 26, 1993.]



* ... The PFS pilot experience ... lays bare several sobering realities
about the potential of 'enforcement only' strategies for increasing
(financial) child support collections from the parents of AFDC children.
....
The hard truth is that many noncustodial parents do not pay because they
have no income. Before they can pay, they need jobs.[Gordon Berlin, Senior
VP, Manpower Demonstration Research Corporation. Subcommittee on Human
Resources, House Ways and Means Committee. March 15, 1994.]



* Mothers get custody of our children 92% of the time in divorce, which is
a
100% failure by fathers for all practical purposes. No matter what we did,
we could not have lost any bigger than this, especially when "child
support"
is nothing more than disguised alimony which almost no woman pays.



* Because men receive custody of children so rarely, they pay more than
their proportionate 92% share of child support payments. "Child support
awards" paid by the man are much higher than those paid by the woman, and
men are almost 2 times more likely than women to make those payments.



* This opens the possibility of a minor female to seek out a minor male
child from a wealthy family, and use him as a means of obtaining a part of
that wealth. Our current Family Court system empowers women by 92% with
the
raising of children, (see the US

Bureau of the Census, Series P-23, No 173, 1989; Child Support & Alimony,
Bureau of the Census, Series P-60, No 173, September 1991). A system that
places an unfair distribution of monetary "child support" on the
Non-Custody-Parent (NCP), without any form of tax relief, and with no
accountability about where and how that support money is spent.



* "Noncustodial Fathers: Can They Afford to Pay More Child Support?", by
Elaine Sorenson (202) 857-8564 of The Urban Institute. 2100 M Street N. W.
Washington, D.C. 20037 (202) 833-7200 is a highly theoretical and
hypothetical study which sets out to prove that noncustodial fathers can
pay
more child support. It did NOT PROVIDE OR PRETEND TO OFFER ANY ACTUAL
EVIDENCE OF nonpayment of child support.



The data related to child support payments reported by the Bureau of the
Census (Current Population Reports, Series P-23, No 173, 1989), show that
75
percent of all child support

owed is paid.



Total amount of child support owed.... $14,800,000,000 (NOT $34 billion!)



Amount received......................................$11, 100,000,000



Composed of paid in full.............................$7,600,000,000



Paid in part.............................................. $3,500,000,000



* President Clinton recently stated on national television, that $34
billion
was owed in unpaid child support. This number is a fabrication and
incorrect. [Jerry W. Lester, Ph.D. 2476 Bolsover, Suite 428 Houston, Texas
77005 (713) 528-6565]



This concept of child support debt non-payment by choice is not supported
by
a report from the Government Accounting Office (Report: GAO/HRD-92-39FS,
January 9, 1992). On page 19 of that report the following reasons were
given
for not receiving payments:



Father not able to pay............66%

Unable to locate father............5%

Other.................................29%



* Only $50.00 of any monthly payment collected in Texas is turned over to
the custodial parent. The rest is used to "reimburse" the state for
welfare
payments. The scam being perpetrated on taxpayers is as follows: Citizens,
including NCFs, pay taxes to support child welfare payments. They agree to
shoulder that financial burden because human beings care about children.
They vote for laws to collect support due to children for the same reason.
But state officials are keeping the money collected from NCFs. Using the
excuse of poor children to pass harsh collection laws, allows them to
effectively raise the amount of tax money collected from a particular
group
of citizens, NCFs. Money collected from "Deadbeat Dads" is paid into state
general revenue coffers. So we see campaigns to raise taxes to pay child
welfare, then laws to collect child support, but what is missing is the
step
which turns over all of the collected child support to the children in
whose
name it is collected. It is instead directed into the pockets of those
bureaucrats enforcing the collection measures. [That's your tax money at
work! -Tom Williamson NCFM]



---------------------------------------------------------------------



Discrimination Against Men



Custodial mothers who receive a support award: 79.6%

Custodial fathers who receive a support award: 29.9%

Non-custodial mothers who totally default on support: 46.9%

Non-custodial fathers who totally default on support: 26.9%

(Data obtained by asking custodial parents)



Non-custodial mothers who pay support at any level: 20.0%

Non-custodial fathers who pay support at any level: 61.0%

(Data obtained by asking custodial parents)



Single mothers who work less than full time: 66.2%

Single fathers who work less than full time: 10.2%

Single mothers who work more than 44 hours per week: 7.0%

Single fathers who work more than 44 hours per week: 24.5%

Single mothers who receive public assistance: 46.2%

Single fathers who receive public assistance: 20.8%



Source: Technical Analysis Paper No. 42, U.S. Department of Health and

Human Services, Office of Income Security Policy, Oct. 1991; Authors:
Meyer
and Garansky



* As to Old Age Survivors Insurance (the traditional social security) and
the Disability Insurance programs (they are reported together for reasons
known only to the government). There were 36.5 million recipients in 1992.
Of those 25.7 million were retired. Retired men numbered 13.4 million.
Retired women numbered 12.2 million. Spouses (read wives) numbered 6.1
million. So men = 13.4 women = 18.3 the rest are children of retired or
deceased workers. Another form of social security payment SSI is paid to
disabled or blind individuals who earn below $446/month. Almost 60% of the
recipients are mentally retarded or mentally disabled. Not separately
listed
are those disabled by drug addictions. There is also no gender breakdown.
So
if the cost of maintaining women is higher (seven years longer support)
why
doesn't the government charge equitably higher amounts for women in the
system than for men. Any reasonable insurance program would base its
charges
on its costs or payouts. But we see here a hidden mechanism to transfer
money from men to women [Dr. Jerry Lester]



Dr. Lester: What you present here is a vital piece of information which is
CRUCIAL to solving our social pathology, which is due in part to gender
inequality in productivity, earnings, and federal spending. In this era of
feminists' demands for gender equality, they should get it. And it cannot
be
equitable to propose that such payments be divided proportionately to the
mere population of each gender (e.g., if women are 52% of the population
then they should receive 52% of the benefits), IF their proportionate
CONTRIBUTION is significantly smaller in the first place.



Rather than dividing federal funds by POPULATION, such funding should be
divided by CONTRIBUTION. If men earn 65% of the income in the country, but
because of the graduated income tax pay 75% to 85% of the taxes, then true
gender equality demands that men as a group receive 75% to 85% of the
benefits. Assuming that the lower (75%) figure is accurate, then the $360
Billion welfare tab must be reapportioned as follows:



Current More Equitable

Males $36 Billion $270 Billion

Females $324 Billion $90 Billion



IF men pay more than 75% of the taxes, then even MORE than $234 Billion
must
be shifted from females to males to arrive at an equitable proportion.
This
is about $3,600 per working male per year, or $108,000 per working male
over
his 30 year career. And if this amount, rather than subsidizing welfare
queens year after year, had been successfully invested at an average rate
of
6% per year, it would now be worth more than $300,000. If each of the 65
million male US workers had been able to KEEP this money rather than
forking
it over to Uncle Sam, and if each one had saved it in a modest savings
plan,
Personal Savings, rather than being $212 Billion, would now be $19,712
Billion (i.e., more than $19 Trillion).



Any other scenario would not represent "equality", and we want "equality"?
Can our social pathology be reduced with this lopsided inequality? It
would
be pure unadulterated sexism to propose that it can. But clearly this is
more than an "equality" issue. Personal Savings is the lifeblood of any
democracy, and we don't have any. With a Public Debt of $5 Trillion on
which
interest payments would sop up our total Personal Savings in several
months,
"Personal Savings" is just an accounting error. And fatherlessness would
not
be such a major problem if those who earned it were able to keep and
invest
it. The fact that females live 7 years longer than males and cost more in
medicare, or collect 58% of Old Age Survivors Insurance, must be remedied
with this gender equitable solution.



---------------------------------------------------------------------



Divorce



* The US divorce rate is 10 times higher than at the turn of the century
and
4 to 10 times higher than other industrialized nations. 85% of those
divorces being filed by the mother and 15% by the father suggests that the
incentives for mothers to get divorced are about 6 times stronger than the
incentives for fathers.



* In 1988 divorces filed involving families with children, 64.9% were
filed
by women, which is down from 71.4% filed by women in 1975; 28.8% were
filed
by men, which is up from 25.6% in 1975; and 6.3% were filed jointly, which
is up from 2.6% in 1975. [National Center for Health Statistics, Monthly
Vital Statistics Report,Vol. 38, No. 12 (S) 2, May 21, 1991.]



---------------------------------------------------------------------



Domestic Violence



* Cathy Young states rates of domestic violence are roughly equal between
spouses.



* In another announcement, Health and Human Services director, Donna
Shalala, has announced a one million dollar grant to the Texas Council on
Family Violence to establish a NATIONAL hot line for domestic violence.
The
grant is paid for out of funds made available through the Violence Against
Women Act. In a press release announcing the Hot Line, HHS stated, "In the
United States, a woman is more likely to be assaulted, injured, raped or
killed by a male partner than any other type of assailant".[That's your
tax
money at work! -Tom Williamson NCFM]



---------------------------------------------------------------------



Education



* My attention to that bias was drawn about 15 years ago in mainland China
by a primary school headmistress. I had noted the fairly universal
gender-equality, with the blatant exeption of primary school teachers that
were 99+% female. Her suggestion seemed to be: By age seven or eight boys
have been so brainwased to accept the role dictated by women, that they
can
be safely let loose. I don't know about the USA, but here in Aussie the
main
enemy of equal rights for men are other men themselves that feel equal
rights are "Unchivalrous" "Unmanly" etc.(While the women safely grin in
the
background). Maybe men have to be educated first. And nothing will change
as
long as the zero to seven's are under the sole influence of women, I
think.

Peter Stuy

---------------------------------------------------------------------



Family Breakup



* While television and the movies gather headlines as the motivation
behind
teen violence, school administrators blame "family breakup" for violence
in
the schools. [Survey by the National School Boards Association as reported
in the Washington Time, January 1994. 77% of school administrators blame
"family breakup" for violence in the schools]



---------------------------------------------------------------------



Fatherlessness



* What struck me especially was Blankenhorn's statement that controlling
for
fatherhood status erases the relationship between poverty and crime, and
between race and crime. That's worth mentioning. [Gordon Little]



* The quality of the early father-child relationship is linked to the
son's
and daughter's later adjustment in adolescence and adulthood. The Father
Factor and the Two Parent Advantage:



Reducing the Paternal Deficit, pg. 1. Henry Biller, Ph.D., Psychology
Department, University of Rhode Island. April 15, 1994.]



* As fathers have been excluded from their children's lives, with the
marriage rate falling and the divorce rate rising, SAT scores have fallen
to
all-time lows while teen births and the crime rate have exploded. The
divorce rate, teen birth rate, and the crime rate each doubled between
1975
and 1990. SAT scores fell in 1975 and then dipped below 900 for the first
time in 1980. They have remained at that low level. ["Index of Leading
Indicators." Washington Times. March 16, 1994.]



* Subsequently, unwed pregnancy and childbirth have become a "job" for too
many women. In 1960, only 15% of teen births occurred outside of marriage,
in 1991, 69% occurred outside of marriage. More than 25% of all births
are
to unwed mothers. The failure rate among users of contraception is
approximately twice as high among "poor" women as among "non-poor" women.
["Trends in Teenage Fertility", pg. 26. Child Trends, Inc., May 4, 1994.]



* Teenage pregnancy rates reflect this trend. Data compiled by Child
Trends,
Inc. indicate that 18% of teen pregnancies resulted from a decision by the
mother to become pregnant, 40% resulted from the mothers' ambivalence
toward
pregnancy, and 42% of teen pregnancies were terminated (abortion). [Facts
at
a Glance, pg. 2. Child Trends, Inc., January 1994]



* "Ambivalent teens were just a likely to have a baby during the next two
years as teens who unequivocally wanted a child. ["Trends in Childrearing
and Implications for Reform", State-Federal Assembly, National Conference
on
State Legislatures. Presentation by Child Trends, Inc., May 4, 1994.]



* Children who grow up without a father present, even when adjustments are
made for income, are 75% more likely to need professional assistance for
emotional problems, twice as likely to repeat a grade of school, and more
likely to suffer a wide variety of other disorders including anxiety, peer
conflict, and hyperactivity. [National Center for Health Statistics, June
1991 study of 17,100 children in various family structures. Children
living
with a mother and step-father fared worse on most indicators.]



* "One clear message from the accumulated divorce research is that
children
profit by continued exposure to both parents" [Visitation and the
Noncustodial Father - Mary Ann P. Koch, Carol R. Lowery, Journal of
Divorce,
Vol. 8, No. 2, Winter 1984]



* "Children who were able to maintain post-divorce relationships with both
parents were better able to adjust to the divorce." [Visitation and the
Noncustodial Father - Mary Ann P. Koch, Carol R. Lowery, Journal of
Divorce,
Vol. 8, No. 2, Winter 1984]



* "The continuing involvement of divorced fathers in families where
mothers
maintain physical custody has become recognized as an important mediating
factor in the adjustment and well-being of children of divorce." [The
Effect
of the Post Divorce Relationship on Paternal Involvement: A Longitudinal
Analysis - Constance R. Ahrons, Ph.D., and Richard B. Miller, Ph.D.,
American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, Vol. 63, No. 3, July 1993]



* "Children recover more rapidly from the emotional trauma of parents'
separation when they maintain close ties with their fathers." [Family Ties
after Divorce: The Relationship Between Visiting and Paying Support -
Judith
A. Seltzer, Nora Shaeffer, Hong-wen Charing, University of Wisconsin,
Journal of Marriage & the Family, Vol. 51, No. 4, November 1989.]



* "Adolescents who reported closer relationships with their non custodial
fathers were assessed as displaying fewer internalizing problems."
[Interparental Conflict, Relationship with the Noncustodial Father, and
Adolescent Post-Divorced Adjustment -

Gene Brody and Rex Forehand, University of Georgia, Journal of Applied
Psychology, Vol. 11, No. 2, April - June 1990]



* "Fathers economic and social involvement with children diminishes some
of
the negative consequences of living with a single mother" [Family Ties
after
Divorce: The Relationship Between Visiting and Paying Support - Judith A.
Seltzer, Nora Shaeffer, Hong-wen Charing, University of Wisconsin, Journal
of Marriage & the Family, Vol. 51, No. 4, November 1989]



* "When both parents share the social and economic responsibilities of
child
care, children appear to adapt better to their changed living arrangements
than when mothers bear these responsibilities alone." [Relationships
between
Fathers and Children Who Live

Apart: The Father's Role after Separation - Judith A. Seltzer, University
of
Wisconsin-Madison, Journal of Marriage and the Family, Vol. 53, No. 1,
February 1991]



* "Fathers have much to offer their adolescent children in many areas,
including their career development, moral development, and sex role
identification." [Increasing Our Understanding of Fathers Who Have
Infrequent Contact With Their Children - James R. Dudley, Professor,
University North Carolina, under a grant from Temple University, Family
Relations, Vol . 40, No. 3, July 1991



* "Fathers who spend time with their children teach them values."
[Relationships between Fathers and Children Who Live Apart: The Father's
Role after Separation - Judith A. Seltzer, University of
Wisconsin-Madison,
Journal of Marriage and the Family, Vol. 53, No. 1, February 1991



* "Fathers and children who maintain close touch through visiting
communicate regularly in other ways as well." [Relationships between
Fathers
and Children Who Live Apart: The Father's Role after Separation - Judith
A.
Seltzer, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Journal of Marriage and the
Family, Vol. 53, No. 1, February 1991



* "Frequent contact with the father is associated with positive adjustment
of the children." [The Effect of the Post Divorce Relationship on Paternal
Involvement: A Longitudinal Analysis - Constance R. Ahrons, Ph.D., and
Richard B. Miller, Ph.D., American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, Vol. 63,
No.
3, July 1993]



* "Fathers play a significant role in terms of adolescent functioning"
[The
Role of Paternal Variables in Divorced and Married Families - Amanda
Thomas
and Rex Forehand, American Journal of Othopsychiatry, Vol. 63, No. 1,
January 1993]



* "Males who reported high levels of inter-parental conflict and a good
relationship with their fathers were perceived [by their teachers] to have
fewer internalizing problems. A similar set of results emerged for the
female adolescents" [Interparental Conflict, Relationship with the
Noncustodial Father, and Adolescent Post-Divorced Adjustment - Gene Brody
and Rex Forehand, University of Georgia, Journal of Applied Psychology,
Vol.
11, No. 2, April - June 1990]



* "Significant correlations were found between the father's reports of
positive relationships with their adolescent offspring and teacher reports
of less anxiety/withdrawal on the part of the adolescents." [The Role of
Paternal Variables in Divorced and Married Families - Amanda Thomas and
Rex
Forehand, American

Journal of Othopsychiatry, Vol. 63, No. 1, January 1993]



---------------------------------------------------------------------



Incarceration



* Men are convicted of crimes for which women are not equally charged, and
receive longer prison sentences for equal crimes [from 5x to 20x times
longer per some recent TV programs].



---------------------------------------------------------------------



Life Expectancy



* Males = 72.3 years, females = 79 years, which is 6.7 years or 9.3%
longer
[National Center for Health Statistics]





---------------------------------------------------------------------



Single-Mother Households



* Juveniles committed to juvenile prisons in Texas:



1% are from single father homes

20% are from 2-parent homes

79% are from fatherless homes



Single father homes constitute 4% of households, single mother homes
constitute 37%, and two parent homes constitute 59%. The children of
single
mother households are 8.5 times more likely to be in juvenile prisons than
children of single father households. Children of single father
households
are 35% less likely than the children of two parent households to be in
juvenile prisons.



* The US Office of Technology Assessment commissioned Howard Dubowitz to
evaluate child abuse, through a health program . His report dated May 1987
entitled "Child Maltreatment in the US" points out:



The increase in the number of mother-headed households and the
corresponding
decrease in father-headed households parallelled a 158% increase in child
abuse and neglect in the 8 years from 1976 to 1984. 2.3% of sexual abuse
of
girls was by biological fathers, and 17% by stepfathers. 37% of child
maltreatment occurred in mother-headed households, versus 23% in all US
families. 44,700 children were sexually abused in 1979 which was .07% of
all
children below the age of 18 years of age.



Why was this report, which reveals the shocking realities of
father-absence
so effectively ignored by the media? Because girls in the custody of their
divorced and remarried mothers were 7.4 times more likely to be sexually
abused by their stepfathers than those in father-headed households, and
this
is very revealing of the abject failure of the feminist ideology. It is
proof of the complete bias of the feminist media. It illustrates that the
*welfare* of children is SECOND on the list to the *rights* of women. Out
of
64 million fathers, 1,034 of us allegedly did abuse our daughters, but
62,998,966 of us did NOT.



The failure by the report to state what part of the other 80.7% of the
children who were sexually abused were abused by their mothers is also
revealing. It is possible, and entirely probable, that half of that 80.7%
were abused by their mothers, which makes mothers 17.5 times more likely
than biological fathers to sexually abuse their daughters.



* FEMALE-HOUSEHOLDER FAMILIES MOST LIKELY TO STAY POOR, CENSUS

BUREAU SAYS



Persons in female-householder families were the most likely demographic
group to be chronically poor, according to the results of a survey
released
today by the Commerce Department's Census Bureau.



One in five female-householder families (19.5 percent) reported income
below
the poverty threshold during the 24-month period of 1991-92. That was more
than any other age, race, or Hispanic-origin, employment, disability, or
family status group discussed in the report.



The finding is reported in "Dynamics of Economic Well-Being:



Poverty 1991 to 1993 (P70-45), based on data collected in the Survey of
Income and Program Participation.



Compared to persons in female-householder families, 1.3 percent of persons
in married-couple families were poor for all 24 months in 1991-92.



The median time spent in poverty during this period for persons in
female-householder families was 6.4 months compared with only 3.9 months
for
persons in married-couple families.



Other findings:



* Among children under 18, 8.5 percent were chronically poor, compared
with
3.2 percent of adults 18 to 64. Children constituted 48 percent of the
chronically poor.



* Of persons who were poor in 1991, 21.6 percent were able to escape
poverty
in 1992.



* Of all the population subgroups looked at in the report, only African
Americans lost ground in the likelihood of their escaping poverty. For
those
who were poor in the previous year, their exit rate dropped from 17.4
percent in 1991 to 13.0 percent in 1992.



* Half of all periods of poverty lasted longer than 4.3 months.



* The median duration of poverty was longer for African Americans (5.8
months) than for Whites (4.1 months). For Hispanics, it was 5.0 months,
not
statistically different from the other groups.



* The median duration of poverty during 1991 through 1993 period was 4.0
months for adults 18 to 64; 4.7 months for children under 18; and 7.0
months
for the elderly (65 and older).



The Office of Management and Budget determines the official poverty index
for families based on such factors as family size, family income, number
of
children under 18 years old, and the consumer price index. Chronic poverty
refers to a situation in which families stay below the poverty cutoff
every
month during the 1991 to 1992 period.



* WASHINGTON -- In 1970, 12 percent of kids under 18 lived under a
single-parent family; in 1995, 36 percent of kids live this way. Children
are most likely to live with a never-married parent (35 percent) as with a
divorced, single-parent (37 percent).



DURING THE PAST DECADE, MORE AND MORE CHILDREN ARE LIVING UNDER A
SINGLE-PARENT HOUSEHOLD



Percent:



40

38................................................ ..?

36..........................................X...X

34...................................X...X

32

30.......................X...X...X

28...................X

26...........X...X

24...X...X

22

20

.....'83 '84 '85 '86 '87 '88 '89 '90 '91 '92 '93 '94 '95



Two Census Bureau reports -- published each year -- keep up with the
trend: - HOUSEHOLD AND FAMILY CHARTERISTICS: MARCH (P20-477), THREE OUT OF
TEN MOTHERS ON AFDC BEGAN CHILDBEARING BEFORE AGE 18



WASHINGTON -- Approximately 29 percent of the 3.8 million mothers 50 to 44
years old who receive Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) had
their first child before they turned 18, according to Census
Bureau -STATISTICAL_BRIEF-.



Never-married mothers were 48 percent of the mothers in the 15 to 44 year
age group on AFDC. The 1.8 million never-married mothers supported 4.2
million children, or an average of 2.4 children per mother.

Entitled "Mothers Who Receive AFDC Payments -- Fertility and Socioeconomic
Charateristics," the BRIEF focuses on mothers in the childbearing years.



Covered are mother's age, race and ethnicity, education, and poverty
status.
It also focuses on foreign-born mothers receiving AFDC.



AFDC mothers tended to have more children than those who did not receive
AFDC payments. The AFDC mothers average 2.6 children each compared with
2.1
children born to mothers not receiving AFDC. Altogether, 9.7 million
children were dependent on mothers receiving AFDC.



Recently completed study by CATO (?) Institute reveals that in 9 States,
money received by welfare recipients EXCEEDS the starting salary for a
TEACHER!...and in all 50 States, exceeds the minimum wage.



---------------------------------------------------------------------



Suicide Rate



* Women attempt suicide four times as often as men, but men succeed three
times as often as women. Men out number women 25 to one in the prison
system. Two thirds of all grade repeaters are boys, women out live men by
eight years (largely due to issues involving life style), 80% of the
deaths
of boys between the ages of 15 and 24 are caused by accidents, suicide and
homicide (in that order) -



Note: These statistics are not the current year, but these facts have
remained very consistent for a long period of time. [MEN'S RESOURCES
HOT-LINE - NCFM]



* The suicide rate amoung men is five (5) times higher than for women, yet
there are no "men's studies" programs to understand why.



* Faludi didn't bother to mention that the male suicide rate had been
higher
all along. The "suicide gap" between men and women only got worse.
Roughly,
over the last generation, men's suicide rate in the U.S. went from about
15
per 100,000 each year to about 19, while women's rate went down from about
7
to 5.2 or so. The observation that women's suicide rate peaked in 1960 was
interesting, since this was the time of the so-called "problem that had no
name."



---------------------------------------------------------------------



Taxation



* Men constitute 58% of the workforce, earn an average of 42% more than
women, and earn 66.2% of the nation's total income, while women earn
33.8%.
The graduated income tax places the majority of in the highest tax bracket
and the majority of women are in the

lower tax bracket, leaving men paying up to 90% of all federal income
taxes.

---------------------------------------------------------------------



Wealth



* Women hold 65% of the country's wealth today. [Fortune Magazine]



---------------------------------------------------------------------



Welfare



* The percent of those receiving one or another form of welfare who are
males range from 5-15%, while famales receive 85-95%, making welfare a
$360
Billion transfer of wealth from men to women.



* Women have a 7 year longer life expectancy than men, yet women's studies
and women's health programs get 100% of the gender-related health program
spending.



* In a study by the Cato Institute, to match the value of welfare
benefits,
a mother with two children would have to earn as much as $36,400 in Hawaii
or as little as $11,500 in Mississippi. In New York, Massachusetts,
Connecticut, the District of Columbia, Hawaii, Alaska, and Rhode Island,
welfare pays more than a $12.00 an hour job--or more than two- and-a-half
times the minimum wage. In 40 states welfare pays more than an $8.00 an
hour job. In 17 states the welfare package is more generous than a $10.00
an
hour job. Welfare benefits are especially generous in large urban cities.
Welfare offers the pre-tax income equivalent of a $14.75 an hour job in
New
York City, $12.45 in Philadelphia, $11.35 in Baltimore, and $10.90 in
Detroit. In 9 states, welfare pays more than the average first year salary
for a teacher. In 29 states, welfare pays more than the average starting
salary for a secretary. In 47 states welfare pays more than a janitor.
Indeed,

in the 6 most generous states, benefits exceed the entry level salary for
a
computer programmer. $$$ are pre-tax equivalent of welfare benefits for
single mother over the age of 21 with 2 children, aged 4 and 1.



Hawaii $36,400 $17.50 per hour

Alaska $32,200 $15.48

Mass. $30,500 $14.66

Conn. $29,600 $14.23

DC $29,100 $13.99

NY $27,300 $13.13

NJ $26,500 $12.74

RI $26,100 $12.55

CA $24,100 $11.59

Virginia $23,100 $11.11

Penn. $19,700 $9.47 (#22 on the
list)

Illinois $19,400 $9.33

Texas $15,200 $7.31 (#44 on the list)

Mississippi $11,500 $5.53 (#51, last)

This report did not include certain education benefits, job training
benfits, child care costs, etc.



The Institute just listed the normal living expenses for a single parent
and
2 children:



AFDC cash benefits (Alaska was #1, followed by Hawaii and NY)

Food stamp benefits (Hawaii was #1, followed by Alabama and Arkansas)

Medicaid benefits (Louisana was #1, followed by OK and Indiana)

Housing benefits (DC was #1, followed by Mass & Hawaii)

Utilities benefits (Texas was # 1, followed by Vermont & Minn)

WIC benefits (Hawaii was #1, followed by Alaska & CT)



The study does not define the total single-parent-welfare cost to each
state. The study's authors -- Michael Tanner, Cato's director of health
and
welfare studies; Stephen Moore, Cato's director of fiscal policy studies;
and David Hartman, CEO of Hartland Bank in

Austin, Texas--conclude that if Congress or state governments are serious
about reducing welfare dependency and rewarding work, the most promising
reform is to cut benefit levels substantially.



* Report to the Chairman, Committee on the Budget, U.S. Senate BUDGET
ISSUES - GDP ANALYSIS BROADENS BUDGET DEBATE GAO/AIMD-94-41



As our analysis of the data shows, the United States in 1970 and 1989
ranked
last among the nine countries in gross fixed capital formation as a share
of
GDP. Health care consumption presents a sharp contrast to the findings
about
gross fixed capital formation: health care consumption in the United
States
has grown dramatically as a percentage of GDP



The United States ranked second among seven nations\3 in both 1970 and
1987
in resources devoted to education although the differences between the
various countries is generally small.



Economic Allocations Across Countries (1990 or most recent year for which
data are available, percent of GDP)



Transportation

Non-resident

Resident

Communication

Health

Defense

Ed. Consumption

Other

Country Year ential dential cations tion tion

------- ------ ----- ----- ----------- ----- ------ ---- ------ -

---

Australia 1990 17 5 10 8 2 5 54 0

Canada 1987 14 7 11 8 2 6 50 1

France 1988 15 5 11 8 3 5 51 1

Germany 1989 15 5 9 8 2 4 50 6

Italy 1990 15 5 8 7 2 5 57 1

Japan 1990 26 6 6 6 1 3 50 1

Sweden 1989 16 5 10 8 2 5 53 1

U.K. 1990 16 3 11 6 4 4 58 -2

U.S. 1989 12 4 11 11 6 6 50 -1



---------------------------------------------------------------------



The Battered Statistic Syndrome

by Armin A. Brott [appeared in the Washington Post, July 1994]



By now, everyone knows about the murder of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald
Goldman. But there's a third victim of these tragic killings:



The truth about the prevalence of domestic violence and female
victimization, a truth that is daily being maimed almost beyond
recognition
by the irresponsible use of statistics.



Consider, for example, the wildly varying statements being issued on all
sides regarding the number of women who are supposedly beaten by men in
the
United States. The National Coalition Against Domestic Violence, for
example, estimates that more than half of married women (over 27 million)
will experience violence during their marriage, and that over one third
(over 18 million) are battered repeatedly every year. Shocked by these
statistics--both of which are frequently quoted in the media--I called the
NCADV and asked where they came from. Rita Smith, the group's coordinator,
told me these figures were only ""estimates.'' From where? ""Based on what
we hear out there.'' Out where? Battered women's shelters and other
advocacy
groups.



Common sense should tell you that asking women at a shelter whether
they've
been hit would be like asking patrons at McDonald's whether they ever eat
fast food. It would be irresponsible and intellectually dishonest to apply
those answers to the country as a whole. But when there's a sensational
story to run, common sense and intellectual honesty are rarely taken into
consideration.



Even those who have a public responsibility to be accurate on these issues
sometimes falter. According to Donna Shalala, Secretary of Health and
Human
Services, for example, 4 million women are battered each year by their
male
partners. But where did Shalala get her figure? From a 1993 Harris poll
commissioned by the Commonwealth Fund. Two percent of the 2,500 women
interviewed said they had been ""kicked, bit, hit with a fist or some
other
object.'' Apply that to the approximately 55 million women married or
living
with a man and you get a total of 1.1 million. So where did the other 2.9
million come from? They were women who said they had been ""pushed,
grabbed,
shoved, or slapped.'' That's a form of abuse, to be sure, but is it what
most people would call battering?



By far the worst distortion of the numbers of battered women comes from
Miami talk show host Pat Stevens, who appeared on a segment of CNN's
Crossfire show called ""OJ on the Air'' in June. Stevens estimated that
when
adjusted for underreporting, the true number of battered women is 60
million. No one bothered to tell Stevens-or Crossfire's millions of
viewers--that 60 million is more than 100% of all the women in this entire
country who are currently in relationships with a man. Instead, Stevens'
""estimate'' and the other ""facts'' on battered women all serve to fuel
the
claims that there's an ""epidemic of domestic violence'' and a ""war
against
women.''



How many battered women are there? ""Because many feminist activists and
researchers have so great a stake in exaggerating the problem and so
little
compunction about doing so, objective information on battery is very hard
to
come by,'' writes Christina Hoff Sommers, author of Who Stole Feminism:
How
Women Have Betrayed Women (Simon & Schuster, 1994). But Murray A. Straus,
head of the Family Research Laboratory at the University of New Hampshire,
and Richard A. Gelles, a sociologist at the University of Rhode Island,
who
have been tracking spousal abuse for over 20 years, have come up with what
are widely believed to be the most accurate estimates available--the
National Family Violence Survey (NFVS).



Their Survey, sponsored by the National Institute of Mental Health, found
that 84% of American families are not violent. In the 16% of families that
do experience violence, the vast majority of that violence takes the form
of
slapping, shoving, and grabbing. Only 3-4% of all families (a total of
about
1.8 million) engage in ""severe'' violence: kicking, punching, or using a
weapon.





Moreover, a recent study published in the Archives of Internal Medicine
found that 44% of ""severe violence'' to wives did not cause any injury,
and
31% caused only a slight bruise. Still, Straus and Gelles estimate that
about 188,000 women are injured severely enough to require medical
attention. That's a horrifying number of victims, but it's a far cry from
4
million, or 18 million, or 60 million.



Another commonly accepted ""truth'' about domestic violence is that 95% of
the time, women are the victims and men the perpetrators.



Nothing could be further from the truth. The Family Violence Survey--as
well
as numerous other studies have found that men are just as likely to be the
victims of domestic violence as women. But aren't these women just
defending
themselves against their more violent partners? Straus and Gelles found
that
among couples reporting violence, the man struck the first blow in 27% of
cases; the woman in 24%. The rest of the time, the violence was mutual,
with
both partners brawling. The results were the same even when the most
severe
episodes of violence were analyzed. They were also the same when only the
woman's version of the events was considered.



Even more interesting are Straus' findings, released earlier this month,
that men's violence against women--even as reported by women--has dropped
43% between 1985 and 1992. Over this same period, in contrast, assaults by
women against men increased by about 28%. Straus concludes that ""part of
the reason may be that there has been no effort to condemn assault by
wives
parallel to the effort to condemn assaults by husbands.''



So where did the claim that 95% of domestic violence is initiated by men
come from? From the U.S. Department of Justice, which collects data on the
number of reports of domestic violence. But as women's rights groups
rightfully claim, reports are not always an accurate measure of the
severity
of the problem. Certainly, some female victims of domestic violence fail
to
call the police, fearing retaliation by their abusers. But other Justice
Department studies have shown that men, too, are reluctant to ask for
help,
reporting all kinds of violent victimization 32% less frequently than
women.



Confessing to being beaten up by another man, however, is a piece of cake
compared to admitting being victimized by a woman. After all, men are
socialized to ""take it like a man.'' As a result, men tend to report only
the most extreme abuse. ""They wouldn't dream of reporting the kind of
minor
abuse--such as slapping or kicking--that women routinely report,'' says
Suzanne Steinmetz, director of the Family Research Institute at Indiana
University/Purdue.



Another example of how data on female victimization is distorted, is the
claim that ""domestic violence is the most common cause of injury to
women.'' The source for this claim is a 1991 study of extremely poor,
inner-city African-American women in Philadelphia--which doesn't even find
that domestic violence was the leading cause of injury.



""And even if it did,'' says Dr. Jeane Ann Grisso, one of the lead
researchers of the study, ""I'd never apply that conclusion to the total
population of American women.'' Nevertheless, Grisso's study has been
widely cited as proof that there's an epidemic of violence against women.



Some advocates have taken Grisso's study one-step further, claiming that
as
many as 50% of women's hospital emergency-room admissions are the result
of
ongoing abuse. At the source of this so called fact are several studies
done
in the 1970's by Evan Stark and Anne Flitcraft, co-directors of the
Domestic
Violence Training Project at the University of Connecticut. They compiled
their data by going through old medical records in urban hospitals and
estimating how many women were battered by using what they called an
""index
of suspicion.''



Christina Hoff Sommers has analyzed Stark and Flitcraft's methods and
writes: ""if a woman was assaulted but the records do not say who hit her,
Stark and Flitcraft classify this as a case of "probable' domestic abuse;
if
she has injuries to her face and torso that are inadequately explained,
they
classify it as "suggestive of abuse.'''



Apparently no one considered the possibility that someone other than a
husband or boyfriend might have been responsible for the woman's injuries.



Compare Stark and Flitcraft's results to those reached in a 1992 survey of
397 emergency rooms in California. Nurses were asked to estimate the
number
of patients per month who have been diagnosed with injuries caused by
domestic violence. Estimates ranged from two per month for small hospitals
to eight per month for large ones. The California study concluded that the
number of perceived domestic violence victims was so low because many
health
professionals are poorly trained in recognizing domestic violence. That
may
be correct, but it's doubtful that it would account for the enormous
difference between a handful of domestic violence cases a month and the
claim that such cases account for 50% of all women's emergency room
admissions.



There's no question that many women who have been severely battered are
afraid to leave their batterers--either because they are economically
dependent, or because they fear further abuse. In one of their ""fact
sheets,'' the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence tells us that
women who leave their batterers ""increase by 75% their chances of getting
killed.'' When I asked her to explain that figure, the NCADV's Rita Smith
admitted that that statistic isn't true at all, and that the Coalition has
no concrete evidence of the effect--if any--leaving a violent partner will
have on a woman. I then asked Ms. Smith whether it bothered her that her
organization was responsible for spreading an imaginary statistic. ""Not
really,'' she said. ""We think the chance of getting killed goes up and
we're just trying to make a point here.''



In a very small number of tragic cases, abusive men do kill their
partners.
But women aren't the only ones killed in domestic disputes. A Justice
Department study released earlier this month showed that 41 percent of
spousal murder victims were male. Battered women's advocates claim that
those women who kill their husbands do so only out of self-defense. But in
an extensive study of women imprisoned for murder, Coramae Richey Mann, a
researcher at the Department of Criminal Justice, Indiana
University/Bloomington found that only 59% claimed self-defense and that
30%
had previously been arrested for violent crimes.



As for the perception that women who murder their husbands are treated
harshly by the justice system, Dr. Mann found that few female domestic
homicide offenders receive prison sentences, and that those who do rarely
serve more than four or five years. These findings were confirmed by a
recent Los Angeles Times article. The article, which quoted Justice
Department sources, reported that women who kill their husbands were
acquitted in 12.9% of the cases, while husbands who kill their wives were
acquitted only 1.4% of the time. In addition, women convicted of killing
their husbands receive an average sentence of only six years, while male
spousal killers got 17 years.



Why are these statistics being battered? ""The higher your figures for
abuse, the more likely you'll reap rewards, regardless of your
methodology,'' says Dr. Sommers. Those who create and disseminate inflated
statistics are often invited to testify before Congress, they're written
about in the New York Times, and some even get to be interviewed on Oprah.



Not everyone who manipulates data does so for personal gain. Some are
simply
trying to get people to sit up and pay attention to the plight of battered
women--a truly important goal. But to do so, they've created a false
epidemic. If advocates confined themselves to the truth--that 3-4% of
women
are battered each year--domestic violence might still be regarded as the
unfortunate behavior of a few crazy men. But if enough people are led to
believe that 19 or 50 or 100 percent of women are ""brutalized,'' the only
logical conclusion can be that all men are dangerous and all women need to
be protected.



Is it OK to lie shamelessly if your cause is a noble one? Is half a
solution
better than no solution at all? On the one hand, lying about the extent of
the problem of domestic violence has had some very positive effects,
opening
the public's eyes as well as their wallets.



Battered women are now the hottest story in town and Congress is about to
pass the $1.8 billion Violence Against Women Act which, among other
things,
will fund toll-free hotlines, battered women's shelters, and education and
training programs. It's certainly possible that none of this would be
happening if advocacy groups stuck strictly to facts.



On the other hand, even supposedly harmless ""puffing'' can have been some
extremely negative consequences. Inaccurate discussions about domestic
violence, for example, can quickly turn into smear campaigns in which
almost
every man who hasn't exhibited his natural vicious and misogynist
tendencies
yet, is expected to do so at any moment. Members of Congress, seeing a
golden opportunity to appease a large block of voters, have chosen a quick
solution rather than attempting to correct their constituents'
misapprehensions. The Violence Against Women Act, for example, doesn't
devote a nickel to the same kind of special protection for men, even
though
males make up 75% of all murder victims and 61% of the victims of all
violent crime.



Women, too, are being hurt by the lies. Having fought so hard to be taken
seriously and treated as equals, women are again finding themselves
portrayed as weak and helpless--exactly the stereotypes that have been
traditionally used to justify discriminating against them. As the author
and
feminist critic Katherine Dunn writes in the current issue of The New
Republic, ""The denial of female aggression is a destructive myth. It robs
an entire gender of a significant spectrum of power, leaving women less
than
equal with men and effectively keeping them "in their place' and under
control.''



Worst of all, the inflation of domestic violence statistics produces a
kind
of ratchet effect. The same people who complain that no one listens if
they
don't exaggerate only find it that much more difficult to get people's
attention the next time around--which in turn seems to justify another
round
of exaggeration. Eventually, the public either stops listening altogether,
or finds the statistics too absurd to believe. And when we're trying to
alleviate the tragedy of domestic violence, the last thing you want anyone
to do is laugh.





---------------------------------------------------------------------



Mark Charalambous, Coalition for the Preservation of Fatherhood



Child support is an award of money that one adult pays another. It is
ostensibly paid from Non-Custodial Parents (NCP) to Custodial Parents
(CPs).
Because of the FACT that men are not allowed by the State to become CPs
(estimates range from 95-99% of custodial battles arrive at maternal
physical custody; in Massachusetts, I'm *still* waiting to hear of a case
where at the trial level a father is awarded sole physical custody in a
contested case. Guess what! I heard of one Wednesday night! The context
was
that it made Lawyers Weekly because it was reversed on appeal! There were
abuse allegations on both sides (of course), and the appeals court ruled
that "battered women's syndrome' was not taken into account to explain the
abuse that the mother allegedly perpetrated on the father. So. To the best
of my knowledge, the rate is still: mothers 100%, fathers 0%. Also, bear
in
mind that when a father does win custody -- it's cause for national
headlines! (Remember the Michigan case last year? )



So we have an environment where only one class of people, women, can be
CPs
(child support recipients), and the other class, men, can only be NCPs
(child support payors). Hence, I state that ALL laws, policies, and what-
have-you, including all state guideline child support IS ILLEGITIMATE AND
INVALID prima facie. We are talking about a thoroughly discriminatory
environment against men.



I do not recognize this system of transfer of money as being anything that
resembles something that the words "child support" *should* represent. So
what exactly is it? In a time when it is politically incorrect for women
to
acknowledge any dependence on men, this euphemism was conjured up. We know
what it is. It passes the duck test real well. It is POLITICALLY CORRECT
ALIMONY, state-mandated at levels that make the worst alimony story of
decades past pale in comparison.



$9,000 a month for "child support" (recent Vermont case)? Who's kidding
who?



I would ask you to consider the sex discrimination inherent in the
practice
of providing welfare payments to out of work mothers, and prosecuting out
of
work fathers for non-payment. I would also ask you to consider the logic
of
reducing the ability of NCFs to get or keep work, as a method which will
increase child support payments. As shown above, two-thirds of the
nonpayers
of ordered child support can't pay.



Laws such as those currently enforced in Maine, which strip professional
and
driving licenses from fathers who fall behind in child support payments,
will help to insure that they never will be able to pay.



In contrast to the Maine policy, is one being used in parts of New York
state, called Parents Fair Share. In the Parents Fair Share program, NCFs
are provided with job training and given preference in state employment
office job placement programs. The collection rate among fathers who have
been helped in this program is near 90 percent.



The collection rate reported in one Associated Press (Houston Post, July
3,
1994) article for Maine is $11.5 million out of $138.5 million, or less
than
9 percent. The program of NCF assistance, Parents Fair Share, is ten times
as effective in producing child support payments as the punishment program
of Maine.



---------------------------------------------------------------------



COPS - Coalition of Parental Support



Fathers' Absence*



* 85% of all children that exhibit behavioral disorders come from
fatherless
homes.



* 90% of all homeless and runaway children are from fatherless homes.



* 71% of all high school dropouts come from fatherless homes.



* 75% of all adolescent patients in chemical abuse centers come from
fatherless homes.



* 63% of youth suicides are from fatherless homes.



* 80% of rapists motivated with displaced anger come from fatherless
homes.



* 70% of juveniles in state-operated institutions come from fatherless
homes.



* 85% of all youths sitting in prisons grew up in a fatherless home.



* California has the nation's highest juvenile incarceration rate and the
nation's highest juvenile unemployment rate.



* Juveniles have become the driving force behind the national increase in
violent crime; the epidemic of youth violence and gangs is related to the
breakdown of the two-parent family.



* 71% of teenage pregnancies are to children of single parents. Daughters
of
single parents are 2.1 times more likely to have children during their
teenage years than are daughters from intact families. Daughters of single
parents are 53% more likely to marry as teenagers, 164% more likely to
have
a premarital birth, and 92% more likely to dissolve their own marriages.
All
these intergenerational consequences of single motherhood increase the
likelihood of chronic welfare dependency.



* In 1983, a study found that 60% of perpetrators of child abuse were
women
with sole custody. Shared parenting can significantly reduce the stress
associated with sole custody, and reduce the isolation of children in
abusive situations by allowing both parents' to monitor the children's
health and welfare and to protect them.



* 18 million children live in single-parent homes. Nearly 75% of American
children living in single-parent families will experience poverty before
they turn 11. Only 20% in two-parent families will experience poverty.



* The feminization of poverty is linked to the feminization of custody, as
well as linked to lower earnings for women. Greater opportunity for
education and jobs through shared parenting can help break the cycle.



* Kidnapping: family abductions were 163,200 compared to non-family
abductions of 200-300, attributed to the parents' disenchantment with the
legal system.



---------------------------------------------------------------------



DOMESTIC VIOLENCE: Some Things Have Always Been Equal



by John A. Rossler



The serious examination of violence in the family began in the mid '70s
with
studies by Straus, Gelles and Steinmetz that challenged many of our
preconceived notions of violent men. Also challenged was the stereotype,
the
anathema of feminists, of the "little women," docile and passive compared
to
her husband. Whereas these original researchers suspected violence was a
major problem in American families, consistent with our violent society,
surprising was its high incidence: at least one act of violence occurred
in
16% of families in the last year and 28% since the beginning of the
marriages ("Societal

Change and Change in Family Violence from 1975 to 1985 As Revealed by Two
National Studies," Straus and Gelles, Journal of Marriage and the Family,
8/86.)



More surprising was the virtual equality of offenses by wives to husbands.
Wives committed 48.5% of all violent occurrences, and 54.8% of all
violence
termed "severe." In her 197778 Victimology article, "The Battered Husband
Syndrome," (p.501) Steinmetz (U. of Delaware) reveals "The data from the
nationally representative sample (Straus et al., 1977)... found wives
slightly higher in almost all categories (of violence) except pushing and
shoving."



"Gathered data plus insights gained from in-depth interviews, suggest that
women are as likely to select physical violence to resolve marital
conflicts
as are men." (Ibid., p. 505)















---------------------------------------------------------------------



WOMEN ARE RESPONSIBLE, TOO



James Sniechowski, Ph.D. & Per Judith Shervn, Ph.D.





Forty-one percent of spousal murders are committed by wives.



The 1985 National Family Violence Survey, funded by the National Institute
of Mental Health and supported by many other surveys, revealed that women
and men were physically abusing one another in roughly equal numbers.
Wives
reported they were more often the aggressors. Using weapons to make up for
physical disadvantage, they were not just fighting back.



While 1.8 women annually suffered one or more assaults from a husband or
boyfriend, 2 million men are assaulted by a wife or girlfriend, according
to
the 1986 study. The study also found that 54% of all violence termed
"severe" was by women.



The Journal for the National Association of Social Workers found in 1986
that among teen-agers who date, girls were violent more frequently than
boys.



Mothers abuse their children at a rate approaching twice that of fathers
according to state child protective service agencies surveyed by the
Children's Rights Coalition.



Because men have been taught to "take it like a man" and are ridiculed
when
they reveal they have been battered by a woman, women are nine times more
likely to report their abusers to authorities.



The women's movement claims it's goal to be equal rights for women. If
that
is so, then women must share responsibility for their behavior and their
contribution to domestic violence. Otherwise we remain in a distortion
that
overshadows the truth. Only the truth will show us the way out of the
epidemic of violence that is destroying our families and our nation.



In defending their point of view they are often disingenuous. They will
rely
on a domestic-violence researcher, like Murray Straus, who, in a widely
used
1986 study, reported that, "a man's assault on a woman is far more likely
to
cause serious injury."



However, they do not reveal that it was Straus who also found, in that
same
study, that "women are about as violent within the family as men," and
furthermore that "violence by wives has not been an object of public
concern. It has not been defined as a problem."



Rather than face the dilemma squarely, feminists classify references to
battered males as backlash, relegating the issue to the status of an
aggravating diversion and describe the men as "whiners." With that, the
real
injury done to men becomes irrelevant.

---------------------------------------------------------------------



California Governor Wilson's Focus On Fathers Summit

Burbank, California June 13, 1995





Wade Horn, National Fatherhood Initiative





Our three decade [old] experiment with fatherlessness has failed.

23 million children will be sleeping in fatherless homes tonight.

The divorce rate tripled between 1960 and 1980.

40 out of 100 families divorce now compared to 16 out of 100 in 1960.

Illegitimacy has followed a geometric progression from 10.7% in 1970 to
33%
today.

40% of children in fatherless homes have not seen their fathers for more
than 1 year.

58% have never been in their fathers homes.

75% of single parent "familes" live in poverty versus 20% of 2-parent
families.



Single-parent [read: mother-headed] households produce:



60% of the rapists

72% of the murderers

70% of long-term imprisoned



And I quote: "This is not an attack on mother-headed households.



Fathers just do things differently and this can't be replaced with AFDC,
Welfare, etc." Divorce has severe consequences on children. We must change
the way we look at it. We are running out of time because soon majority of
children will be raised in single-parent "families".



---------------------------------------------------------------------



WE MUST STOP PUNISHING MEN. A woman on welfare who marries a man on
minimum
wage takes a 30% income reduction. WE MUST ENFORCE PSYCHOLOGICAL SUPPORT.
The issue is father contact, not money.



[Standing Ovation]



---------------------------------------------------------------------



Sherman Block, Sheriff, Los Angeles County



Children of single-parent households commit most of crimes.

Does not know "why" fathers leave their homes. (Hasn't heard of the HHS
"man
out of the house rule"??)

Must minimize this national disgrace.



Sheriff's office involved in community programs by default because there
is
no other agency which can. But he must divert funds from other programs to
handle this. [i.e., there is less money for "prevention"??]





Tony Chipelow, Casey Foundation





Mother-headed households grew from 6% in 1950 to 24% today.



19 million children are fatherless.



Average income of 2-parent families is $43,000, versus $17,500 for female-
headed "families"



Young males today are far more likely not to get married, of all races,
with
less than half of blacks and 78% of Latinos Single-mother "families" are
5x
more likely to be poor, 10x more likely to be extremely poor, 2x more
likely
to go to jail, and 3x more likely to have children as teenagers.



A national priority should be made of 4 points:



1) Education reform.

2) Stop treating fathers as "marginal players".

3) Welfare reform.

4) Develop jobs for the 5 million who are not in the workforce.





Patrick Fagan, Heritage Foundation



Our socio-economic problems stem from fatherlessness, not from poverty.



Poverty stems from fatherlessness.



The ill-effects of fatherlessness go across the socio-economic strata,
including poor health, high infant mortality, poor cognitive development,
behind their peers, lower impulse control (more sex and violence).



When the agreement between the father & mother is weakened the social
contract is weakened, leading to increased litigation.



Crime increases across the socio-economic strata.



Present GNP much lower than it would have been with strong 2-parent
families.

This risk to the future of our nation is much greater than the risk from
the
USSR could have ever been.



[STANDING OVATION!!!!]



Material needs and wants are not the problem - lack of interpersonal
contact
with fathers is the problem.



BOOK OF VIRTUES made Bill Bennett and his publisher a millionaire because
of
the timing of his "loyalty, honesty" presentation.



To reverse the problem might require us to raise our own children PLUS
ANOTHER CHILD.



Government must free up the family, schools, the economy, and churches to
allow them to solve the problem - government cannot solve it alone.



Government has no competence in raising children!!! Allow education to
play
a larger role coupled with parental involvement. The goal is stable
marriages.







Reginald Brass, Founder, My Child Says Daddy



Described his organization's Triangle Theory - mother, father, children.



His emotional account of his dealings with the courts got a standing
ovation
which helped to encourage Governor Wilson to promise a review of the
judicial system and a "judges' college".



Family courts are all we have, and they are negative, degrading, and must
be
educated. [Ovation]



It would be easier for him to go to the social services department and
adopt
a child than to see his own children. [standing ovation]





Timothy Johnson, 13, Big Brother Program



Had a big brother for 3 years that he waited 2 years for. Provided male
role model and someone to talk to about things he could not talk to his
mother about [like about everything a teenager thinks about?]











Anne Mitchell, Attorney, single mother, founder FREE



Governor Wilson is on the cutting edge.



In her numerous dealings with divorce cases fathers are considered
dispensable by single mothers.



Fathers do believe they have nothing to contribute under the current
setup.



Enforcing child support costs $millions [she didn't say how much is
collected versus how much it costs, but David Garrod shows how it costs
more
to collect than is collected]



Even in cases where both parents agree to joint custody, 33% are awarded
to
the custody of the mother anyway, and even in cases where both parents
agree
to father custody, 13% are awarded to the custody of the mother.



[Have a little hidden agenda, these judges???]



When fathers are so restrained from their own children they "go away".



"We must bring the dads back" got an ovation.



"We must educate the family law judges" [Sure, and we must send dogs to
training to make sure they don't bite cats]





Wolfgang Hirczy, Senior Policy Advisor, FREE



Governor has placed the issue of how the paternal role is affected by
government policy on the national agenda.



Government policy undermines the paternal role.



Few fathers have adequate access to their own children because it is
restricted by current government policy.



But it is not just government's fault. Support and advocacy organizations
AND FEMINISM think it is OK to throw the father out like dirty diapers and
tying his hands behind his back, so they can pick his pockets, and they
are
the ones demanding this action from government.



[STANDING OVATION]



The legislature must assure that children's access to their fathers is
guaranteed.



[STANDING OVATION]



And they must establish paternity at the hospital when the father is most
likely to be present, to assure his involvement in the child's life.





Officer Frank Dipaol, LA Police Department



Personally started a community service alternative to jail time for
teenagers. Almost all of the 600 kids who went through his program came
from
homes with no fathers. 10% of them were "turned around". [i.e., for 90%
of
them it was too late for a father image]



"Oscar was one of those kids but he is now wearing a Police Explorer's
uniform rather than baggy pants."







Eloise Anderson, Director, Dept. Social Services



More important than money is parental involvement. Welfare cannot replace
the father's role.



Fatherlessness as described by the other presenters (and she knows the
statistics and rattled them off faster than could be recorded) is the root
of our social pathology.



If parents decide on divorce we must mitigate the conflict.



Marriage is for children, not for parents.



The relationship of fathers to their daughters is also very important.



[Ovation]



2 out of every 5 children live without their biological fathers.



"What happens in a childs life when he or she wakes up without a father?"



AFDC moms are usually mated to their peers, not to rocket scientists, and
thus don't have the opportunity to pay the child support ordered from
them.



Gov. Wilson implemented "wedfare" which allowed welfare to married couples
so that both parents would be available to a child's life.









David Blankenhorn, National Fatherhood Initiative



40% of the children in the nation will be sleeping in fatherless homes
tonight.



We must honor the special role of our religious custodians, like the
"Promise Keepers".





PROPOSAL



An eccentric, symbolic legislative gesture would be to pass a law
prohibiting men from selling their sperm to sperm banks. This produces
children who will never, never know fathers. Their fatherlessness is
absolute.



This social movement requires guys who are prepared to commit to:



"Maximize the possibility that every child has a father".



No-fault divorce started in California - it should end here. Must get rid
of
the term "no-fault".



The non-filing spouse should be shown more power and respect than the
filing
spouse.



California was the first state to hold a conference on fatherhood, and it
shifted the debate dramatically. This is far bigger than both political
parties and it can be fixed. This Summit assisted in formally recognizing
fatherlessness as a problem.



University of California studies on motherhood have outnumbered those on
fatherhood by 5x suggesting alarming ambivalence about the importance of
fathers.







Jim Cook, Joint Custody Association



Biological parents obviously come first, but 3 decades ago 80% of the
children had grandparents close by, but now only 4% do.







Ken Canfield, Pres. National Center for Fatherhood



"There is a deep father wound on the face of the California landscape. We
must grieve first and then appreciate fathers."



We have a foe - it is fatherlessness - and we need tools to fight it:



1) Promote responsible fatherhood in the media.

2) Resources for training and education.



3) Prepare tomorrow's fathers before they are fathers.



How to return teen fathers to their children since there are 1 million
teen
pregnancies and 500,000 teen childbirths per year, 85% of which are
unplanned.



The current stance on teen fathers is punitive, shows no support for them,
labels them as deadbeat dads.



Teen fathers desire relationships with their children but they receive no
moral support from government.







Hogan Hillings



Must promote father presence.



Fatherlessness is a problem which feeds itself - a fatherless child grows
up
without a male role model and then has difficulty being a father to his
own
children.







Governor Pete Wilson, California



Detroit Board of Education could not create an all male academy because it
was sued by NOW and the ACLU for being DISCRIMINATORY TO WOMEN.



"Judge missed the point that the long term benefits would also help
women."

[PS - Are these decisions judges are capable of making?]



Asked "what percent of fathers would be available if they had a chance"
and
got a whole room full of blank stares. [100%??]



His concern about fatherlessness is not a passing fancy which will go
away.
Human costs are larger than the dollar costs, but the dollar costs are
enormous. In budget meetings he is struck by the enormous size of the
welfare and prison budgets.



Statutory rape should be prosecuted more vigorously to reduce teen
pregnancy.



The conference certainly will raise the public consciousness about the
problems of fatherlessness. A concensus was reached in five areas:



1) teen pregnancy must be stigmatized through education, media.



2) families must be strengthened because families are the best environment
for children.



3) policies must be developed to encourage and permit parenting by
fathers.



4) strengthen laws holding parents responsible for children's actions.



5) must develop male role models for the children of mother-headed
households. The Governor promised a review of the judicial system and a
"judges' college" to make sure the judicial system does not remain a part
of
the problem.







---------------------------------------------------------------------



FATHERING, CHILDHOOD DEVELOPMENT & US PUBLIC POLICY



by Kingsley G. Morse Jr. Copyright 1995





Introduction """"""""""""



An avalanche of data is showing that fathering is crucial to normal
childhood development. Unfortunately, children are being deprived by
certain
public policies and when fathers work outside the home.



Advances in telecommuting and new laws that protect the crucial
father-child
relationship may help.







Fathers are Crucial to Normal Childhood Development



"""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""" "



Quite a few statistics have been gathered on fatherlessness and abnormal
childhood development. So many are summarized in this paper that the
reader
may want to take a deep breath before proceeding. The author and others
believe the implications for our society are profound.



The U.S. Census department has said that nearly one in four[1] children
are
born out of wedlock in the general population. Sadly, fatherless children
are responsible for a disproportionately high percentage of juvenile
delinquency. For example, considering that only 25% of children raised
without fathers, then why are 63% of youth suicides from fatherless homes?
(Source: U.S. D.H.H.S., Bureau of the Census)



Probably because these children were deprived of adequate fathering. Here
are more disturbing statistics. Keep in mind that only 25% of children in
the general population comes from fatherless homes.



* 85% of all children that exhibit behavioral disorders come from
fatherless
homes (Source: Center for Disease Control)



* 80% of rapists motivated with displaced anger come from fatherless homes
(Source: Criminal Justice & Behavior, Vol 14, p. 403-26, 1978.)



* 71% of all high school dropouts come from fatherless homes (Source:
National Principals Association Report on the State of High Schools.)



* 75% of all adolescent patients in chemical abuse centers come from
fatherless homes (Source: Rainbows for all God`s Children.)



* 70% of juveniles in state-operated institutions come from fatherless
homes
(Source: U.S. Dept. of Justice, Special Report, Sept 1988)



* 85% of all youths sitting in prisons grew up in a fatherless home
(Source:
Fulton Co. Georgia jail populations, Texas Dept. of Corrections 1992)



If the reader still doubts that fathering is vital to normal childhood
development, perhaps the following expert opinions will be more
convincing.



"Daughters in single mother homes have more negative attitudes toward men
in
general and their fathers in particular." (pg. 146 , 2, lines 5 - 8)
Interparental Conflict, Relationship with the Noncustodial Father, and
Adolescent Post-Divorced Adjustment - Gene Brody and Rex Forehand,
University of Georgia, Journal of Applied Psychology, Vol. 11, No. 2,
April - June 1990



"Children recover more rapidly from the emotional trauma of parents'
separation when they maintain close ties with their fathers." (pg. 013,
Col.
2, 2, lines 13 - 24 continued on pg. 1014, Col. 1, 1, lines 1) Family Ties
after Divorce: The Relationship Between Visiting and Paying Support -
Judith
A. Seltzer, Nora Shaeffer, Hong-wen Charing, University of Wisconsin,
Journal of Marriage & the Family, Vol. 51, No. 4, November 1989.



"Adolescents who reported closer relationships with their non-custodial
fathers were assessed as displaying fewer internalizing problems." (pg.
139,
1, lines 8 - 10) Interparental Conflict, Relationship with the
Noncustodial
Father, and Adolescent Post-

Divorced Adjustment - Gene Brody and Rex Forehand, University of Georgia,
Journal of Applied Psychology, Vol. 11, No. 2, April - June 1990





"Fathers have much to offer their adolescent children in many areas,
including their career development, moral development, and sex role
identification." (pg. 284, col. 2, 5, lines 6 - 10) Increasing Our
Understanding of Fathers Who Have Infrequent Contact With Their Children -
James R. Dudley, Professor, University North Carolina, under a grant from
Temple University, Family Relations, Vol. 40, No. 3, July 1991



"Frequent contact with the father is associated with positive adjustment
of
the children." (pg. 441, col. 2, 1, lines 18 - 20) The Effect of the Post
Divorce Relationship on Paternal Involvement: A Longitudinal Analysis -
Constance R. Ahrons, Ph.D., and Richard B. Miller, Ph.D., American Journal
of Orthopsychiatry, Vol. 63, No. 3, July 1993



"Finally, girls whose parents divorce may grow up without the day to day
experience of interacting with a man who is attentive, caring and loving.
The continuous sense of being valued and loved as a female seems an
especially key element in the development of the conviction that one is
indeed femininely lovable. Without this regular source of nourishment, a
girl's sense of being valued as a female does not seem to thrive."
(Long-Term Effects of Divorce on Children: A Developmental Vulnerability
Model Neil Kalter, Ph.D., University of Michigan, American Journal of
Orthopsychiatry, 57(4), October, 1987)



"The impact of parental divorce and subsequent father absence in the wake
of
this event has long been thought to affect children quite negatively. For
instance, parental divorce and father loss has been associated with
difficulties in school adjustment (e.g. Felner, Ginter, Boike, & Cowen),
Social Adjustment (e.g. Fry & Grover) and personal adjustment (e.g. Covell
&
Turnbull)..."



"The results of the present study suggest that father loss through divorce
is associated with diminished self-concepts in children...at least for
this
sample of children from the midwestern United States." (Children's Self
Concepts: Are They Affected by Parental Divorce and Remarriage Thomas S.
Parish, Journal of Social Behavior and Personality, 1987, V 2, #4,
559-562)



Think of all the children who could benefit from more fathering! And
beyond
the children, think of all the tax dollars we could save if we needed
fewer
prisons, chemical abuse centers and other state- operated institutions!







Causes and Cures for Fatherless Children



""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""



Fatherlessness and abnormal childhood development are natural consequences
of fathers working outside of the home and certain public policies.



When their fathers leave home to go to work, children are at greater risk
of
abnormal development. Before the industrial revolution, most children had
fathers who worked at home, on the farm. But the percentage of children
who've had this luxury plummeted with the obsolescence of our farm based
economy. Between 1820 and 1988, the percentage of people in farm
occupations
dropped from 72% to just 3% [2].



Interestingly, recent technological advances may reverse this trend, if
only
slightly. Technological breakthroughs and plummeting telecommunication
costs
for phones, faxes and the internet are permitting some fathers to work at
home and spend more time fathering their kids. Working at home means
children can be fathered during the lunch hour and when their father would
otherwise be commuting to and from work. Beyond the technological
advances,
trade organizations like the Home Office Association of America and the
Small Office Home Office America are lobbying for tax deductibility for
health costs and home office expenses, among other things. These bills are
the "Home Office Deduction Act of 1995" and the "Self Employed Health
Fairness Act of 1995". If passed, these will make it more economical for
families to have fathers work at home, thus promoting more fathering and
normal childhood development. Along with tax legislation for home offices,
some county planners are zoning traditionally residential areas to permit
home offices, cottage industries, and therefore more fathering and normal
childhood development.



Even if more fathers do eventually work closer to their kids, we as a
society will still need to relearn to appreciate fathers' contribution to
normal childhood development. Toward this goal, president Clinton released
a
memorandum in June called "Supporting The Role Of Fathers In Families"[3].



Several public policies have been criticized by father's rights lobbyists
as
harming the crucial father-child relationship.



A public policy which probably exacerbates fatherlessness and abnormal
child
hood development is the use of so called "no-fault" divorce laws.



They've made divorcing easy and typically result in the children having
less
time with their father. Marvin Mitchelson, a famous lawyer who specializes
in man and woman relations has been quoted as saying "The [present] easy
grounds [for divorce] and no- fault system of divorce [in some states]
mean
that anyone can go to court and get a divorce with very little effort."[4]
The divorce rate rose steadily from 2.5 per 1,000 population in 1966 to a
peak of 5.3 in both 1979 and 1981.[5] Some states still don't have no-
fault
laws, and those that do might consider repealing them for the childrens'
sake.



Another public policy which promotes fatherlessness and abnormal childhood
development is awarding sole physical custody of children after divorce to
one parent instead of joint physical custody. My understanding is that
several states have tried to make joint custody the default, and some
states, like Washington, even permit joint custody over one parent's
objection. Joint physical custody helps children get the fathering they
need
to develop normally.

Most states don't enforce visitation agreements, which permits bitter
ex-spouses to deny children visits with their fathers. Encouragingly
Arizona, Colorado and Illinois have passed laws which enforce visitation.



Another public policy which promotes fatherlessness and abnormal childhood
development is the immunity enjoyed by bitter divorcing spouses who file
contrived restraining orders to separate children from their fathers. For
example, a Massachusetts "209A" restraining order prohibits children from
having reasonable visitation and adequate fathering, and this is routinely
justified by unproven allegations. California has recently passed a law,
SB
558, which will hopefully allow more fathering in that state. It makes
false
convictions of child abuse a justification for change of custody.



Another misguided public policy is the practice of putting children in
day-care when divorced fathers are willing to care for them. Some states,
like Virginia and California, have introduced legislation dubbed "Mrs.
Doubtfire" bills that would permit children to be cared for by their
fathers
instead of sending them to a day care facility.



Welfare and child support from paternity suits are two more policies which
subsidize illegitimacy and fatherlessness. Preliminary data shows that two
thirds of fathers didn't intend to cause conception where the mothers were
unwed[6]. This high percentage would explain why many fathers are absent.
The rate of illegitimate births is soaring, and is now about one in
four[1].
Remedial welfare legislation is often proposed in Congress, and the
National
Center for Men is pressing for a federal suit to give men who would
otherwise be absent fathers the right to decline fatherhood and child
support. By making welfare and child support from paternity suits harder
to
get, there would be less economic incentive to have children who won't
have
adequate fathering.





Conclusion """"""""""



Studies are showing how crucial fathering is for normal childhood
development. Fathers who work at home and new laws protecting the
father-child relationship may help.





References """"""""""



[1] The U.S. Census Bureau, "Fertility of American Women: June 1992". (San
Jose Mercury News 7/14/93)



[2] The World Almanac 1991, Pharos Books, 200 Park Avenue, New York, NY
10166 (page 128)



[3] Memorandum For The Heads Of Executive Departments and Agencies, U.S.
President Bill Clinton, June 16, 1995, "Supporting The Role Of Fathers In
Families"



[4] The Jacoby and Meyers Practical Guide to Everyday Law, 1985, Simon and
Schuster, Inc., New York, NY



[5] National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS), Advance Report of Final
Divorce Statistics, 1989 and 1990, Monthly Vital Statistics Report, Vol.
43,
No. 9, Supp. For Release April 18, 1995



[6] DRAFT COPY of Unintended Births: Women's Attitudes vis-a-vis their
Male
Partners' Attitudes: 1982-1990, Joyce C. Abma and Linda J. Piccinino,
NCHS,
6525 Belcrest Road, Hyattsville, MD 20782, (301) 436-8731




you have penis envy ... ay

Man please join my site and help get the fight going!
http://childsupportunfair.com
Join up, put those facts in place... and for the guy in canada, need to
go to disneyland at least there you can enjoy fantacy land...

MAN Some people are just so ignorant...

How am I being ignorant.. I have used the Laws that exsist in to work
in my Favour... Some people would call that Smart.. but if you call it
Ignorant.. you obivously no idea what the word means.

I totally understand that there alot of people who are just neck deep
in ****, and are having more piled on them by their Ex... And again let
me try this again, I Empathize with them. And I do agree there needs
to be changes made in the Calculation of Support Payments.. and there
needs to be Single Bar for this.

To me the people who put themselves in this position are Ignorant.
For not finding out the laws, or understanding how to work them prior
to commiting an act.

And I've been to Disney Land a few times.. had a geat time... Thanks
for the Sugestion... I may book another trip.

SpiderHam77

so i was right , i win

LOL Yes I guess you are right %... just depends on who you are
calling Ignorant.

SpiderHam77

% wrote:

"SpiderHam77" wrote in message
ups.com...

Well then move to a larger Town where there is public Transit... Move
closer to your Place of work... Walk to Work.. Ride a Bike... Roller
Blade... The point being that you have the option of reducing your
costs... and not spending it unless you choose to live where you are..
and work where you do...

SpiderHam77



i live in the heart of the north rockie mountains ,
you roller blade up the hills around here and i'll be right behind you
i'm already as close to work as i can be if i move it will cost even more
houses aren't all the cheap to buy and there are no places in larger towns
that i can apply my trade , i'm a placer miner

Well then you've committed the sin of being poor. Poor people deserve
to be thrown in jail and raped. End. Of. Story.

- Ron ^*^

SpiderHam77 wrote:

How am I being ignorant.. I have used the Laws that exsist in to work
in my Favour... Some people would call that Smart.. but if you call it
Ignorant.. you obivously no idea what the word means.

Your use of the "..." in most of your posts is an earmark of a female
poster.

I think Spiderham is a woman.

- Ron ^*^

Phil #3 wrote:

"SpiderHam77" wrote in message
ups.com...

Fist off I'm 100% man. I have Sole Custody of my Child. I took the
steps needed to ensure that if things ever broke down in my Marriage
with my Wife I would in fact be in the position to offer better.. more
stable care for my Child.


Perhaps it is just the feminism in your posts that threw me.

I, too, suspect that Spidey is a woman. It's the choice of language and
patterns in her posts. The "..." at the end of so many sentences, for
example, is a dead giveaway.

- Ron ^*^