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Our fatherhood crisis-Obama just doesn't grasp the real problem



 
 
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Old June 23rd 09, 05:07 AM posted to alt.child-support
Dusty
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Default Our fatherhood crisis-Obama just doesn't grasp the real problem

http://www.fathersandfamilies.org/?p=3837

New Column: Our fatherhood crisis-Obama just doesn't grasp the real problem
June 21st, 2009 by Glenn Sacks, MA, Executive Director


Robert Franklin & I co-authored the new column Our fatherhood crisis: Obama
just doesn't grasp the real problem (Washington Times, 6/21/09) on Obama's
fatherhood policies and public statements.

To write a Letter to the Editor of the Washington Times, regarding Our
fatherhood crisis: Obama just doesn't grasp the real problem (6/21/09),
click here.

To comment on the piece on the Washington Times website, click here.

The column is below.

Our fatherhood crisis: Obama just doesn't grasp the real problem
By Glenn Sacks, MA and Robert Franklin, Esq.

For the past three Father's Days President Barack Obama has criticized
father-absence and fathers. In his new Parade magazine article, Obama writes
"We need fathers to step up, to realize that their job does not end at
conception; that what makes you a man is not the ability to have a child but
the courage to raise one." Obama marked Father's Day 2008 in a similar
fashion, saying fathers have "abandoned their responsibilities, acting like
boys instead of men"-a view he voiced many times during the presidential
campaign.

Obama is correct that involved fathers-even divorced or separated ones with
little income-provide their children with substantial benefits. A recent
Boston College study of low-income minority families found that when
nonresident fathers are involved in their adolescent children's lives, the
incidence of substance abuse, violence, crime, and truancy decreases
markedly. The study's lead author, professor Rebekah Levine Coley, says the
study found involved nonresident fathers to be "an important protective
factor for adolescents."

Yet Obama makes a serious error by placing all blame for family breakdown on
men. It's doubtful that many dads say to themselves, "My child loves me and
needs me, my wife/girlfriend loves me and needs me-I'm outta here." Research
shows they usually don't.

Professors Kathryn Edin of Harvard and Timothy Nelson of the University of
Pennsylvania recently conducted a study of low-income, unmarried fathers and
found that most strive to be good parents, and are often thwarted by the
children's mothers' interference and gatekeeping.

Edin says that many of the men she and Nelson surveyed saw being fathers as
a noble calling, in part because they live in dangerous, crime-ridden areas.
Some men described their children as "saints" or as their "redeemers."

Edin and Nelson found that low-income dads provide what monetary support
they can but focus on the non-financial aspects of fatherhood. These include
educating their daughters about relationships with males and teaching their
sons how to defend themselves.

Edin's subsequent, soon-to-be-published research analyzes data from the
large-scale Fragile Families & Child Wellbeing study and reaches similar
conclusions. She found that when mothers move on to have new partners (and
new children with those partners), her actions are "strongly associated with
increases in the probability that the biological father will have no contact
with his child." Contrary to anti-father stereotypes, when fathers move on
to have subsequent romantic partners and children, they largely retain their
desire to be in their original children's lives. According to Edin:

"[T]he evidence points more strongly to the role of mothers 'swapping
daddies' than it does to the role of fathers 'swapping kids.'"

Edin also found that mothers' and fathers' subsequent partners often
interfere with father involvement. Dad may be kept away because his presence
makes mom's current boyfriend jealous. Dad's new partner may pressure him to
spend his time and resources on her and the child they have together, as
opposed to his child with his former partner.

Moreover, according to Edin, a mother's new partnership "may provide strong
motivation [for her] to put the new partner in the 'daddy' role." The
biological father is then less likely to be involved because the mother is
more likely to exclude him and/or because he may feel he's now redundant.

In broken families, when a mother does not want her children's father around
anymore, she can usually push him out. Family courts tilt heavily towards
mothers in awarding custody, and enforce fathers' visitation rights
indifferently. In most states, mothers are able to move their children
hundreds or thousands of miles away from their fathers, often permanently
destroying the fathers' bonds with their children.

Moreover, women are increasingly having children with no intention of ever
having a father in their kids' lives. Newly-released data from the National
Center for Health Statistics shows that now 40% of children born in the
United States are born out of wedlock, a 26% increase since just five years
ago.

Obama is correct that children need their fathers, and that there are too
many fathers who do not come through for their children. However, his narrow
"heroic single mom/deadbeat dad" viewpoint fails to acknowledge a crucial
truth-it is often mothers, not fathers, who are creating fatherlessness.

This column first appeared in the Washington Times (6/21/09).

Glenn Sacks is the Executive Director of Fathers & Families. His columns
have appeared in dozens of the largest newspapers in the United States.
Robert Franklin, Esq. serves on the organization's Board. Their website is
www.FathersandFamiles.org.

 




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