Throughout the United States, more than one-third of children don’t live with their biological fathers, and about 17 million of those children don’t live with any father at all. Of those, roughly 40 percent haven’t seen their fathers in the last year. The over 500 Father’s Rights organizations are trying in a variety of ways to change these statistics because they believe that fathers are necessary to the intellectual, psychological and emotional well- being of all children.
Family values” groups encourage long lasting stable, marriages and tough divorce laws to increase the number of two- parent households. Some organizations focus on reasonable child support and visitation, as well as creative joint custody arrangements to combat fatherless ness after divorce. Still other sects within the movement encourage responsible fatherhood through counseling for “Deadbeat” or “Dead-broke” Dads, job training and placement to increase the likelihood of child support payments and educational seminars to teach men how to be emotionally supportive fathers.
The unique coalition of conservative pro-marriage groups, white middle-class divorces and low- income fathers is an unusual alliance. But regardless of philosophical and tactical differences, the essential mission is the same- to improve the relationship between our nation’s fathers and their children. A Brief History Throughout the 18th and 19th Centuries, wives and children were considered property of the husband. Divorce was very rare, but when it did occur, children would automatically become custody of the father.
Even if a father died, his wife was not assured custody of the children unless his will explicitly stated so. In the Early 1900’s, courts and state legislatures began to support maternal rights, viewing the mother as the more nurturing parent. The “tender years” doctrine, implemented in many states, encouraged courts to place young children with mothers because mothers were seen as essential to emotional development. The maternal preference continued to increase throughout the 1950’s and 60’s.
With the spread of no-fault divorce laws throughout the late 1970’s, and the increase of women’s participation in the work force, women were more able to obtain divorces from unhappy marriages. Maternal preference in custody battles gave women a huge advantage, and a vast majority of women obtained sole custody of children in the increasingly more prevalent divorce proceedings.
The 1980’s saw the emergence of a new and powerful father hood movement, focused on discrimination in divorce laws and unfair child support orders. 86, The National Convention for Men, an umbrella group for 36 organizations representing roughly 6,000 men, centered their attention of the issues of child support and custody rights. The men were outraged by the gender bias men suffer in courts, with 87 to 90 percent of divorce cases giving sole custody to the mother with our without visitation for the father . They emphasized that the feminist movement had changed parenting roles and equalized parental involvement, and demanded that custody laws be changed to reflect this.
The president of the NCM, Peter Cyr, urged the men to fight against isolation and alienation from their children. In 51 percent of sole- custody arrangements, the children saw their father less than once a year, according to the Commission on Child and Family Welfare. The NCM supported joint custody, which was a key issue of fledgling Father’s Rights movement and is still central plank of the father’s rights platform today. In the late 1980’s and early 1990’s, criticism of single mothers began to mount.
The number of two parent families dropped over 11 percent from 1970 to 1980 and continued to drop into the 90’s. Between 1969 and 1992, the percent of AFDC cases involving children born to unwed mothers grew by over 20 percentage points, with over 77% of “illegitimate” children becoming enmeshed in the welfare system before they were a year old. Pro- marriage father’s groups began to site empirical research which concluded that a lack of father influence can lead to a higher rate of juvenile delinquency, teen pregnancy and general neglect, according to the Children’s Rights Council.
Activists reasoned that the break down of the family was leading to societal disarray, and that social policy should create incentives for marriage and decrease incentives for divorce. Feminist groups defended single mothers; citing studies that proved that income was a greater indicator of juvenile delinquency than female- headed households. They also questioned the premise that fathers were an essential component of child development. They pointed to studies, such as the one recently released from Yeshiva University, which concludes “raising a healthy child hinges on the quality and reliability of the parents relationship with the child.
If the relationship is strong, it doesn’t matter whether the parenting is by the mother, the father, two moms, two dads… ” They were concerned that government incentives for marriage would increase the likelihood of negative involvement by abusive or substance- using fathers. Feminist groups also challenge the premise that joint custody will serve the best interests of the child, saying that children are often torn between two fighting and emotional parents after divorce.
The early Father’s Rights groups swelled with size and power until the early 1990’s, when harsh criticism of dead-beat dad’s was brought to public attention by President Clinton. The Child Support Recovery Act of 1992 allowed criminal prosecution of deadbeat parents, and created a Most Wanted Deadbeat Parents Website. States, such as Massachusetts and Illinois also began posting pictures and lists of parents behind in child support payments. The state of Washington began demanding that fathers acknowledge paternity before leaving the hospital. Since 1992, the popularity and success of this program has spread nation-wide.
Clinton’s welfare reform package, which was enacted in 1996, allows the Federal and state government to garnish wages directly from parents behind in payments. Since 1992, The Federal government has increased the amount of child support collected by 80%, and in 1999, Clinton vowed to increase spending for investigation and prosecution of dead-beat parents by $46 million. The attack on dead- beat Dads only fueled the fire of Father’s Rights groups. In 1994, the First National Summit on Fatherhood in Dallas indicated the power, prestige and potential of the Father’s Rights Movement.
This summit involved hundreds of community leaders, and attempted to build a national consensus on the need to quickly reduce the rate of father absence. Numerous famous speakers including Al Gore, George Gallup and James Earl Jones presented during the conference, showing their support for the snowballing movement, and encouraging creative strategies for reducing fatherless families. The National Fatherhood Initiative, a marriage-oriented group, was created as a result of the conference, headed by Wade Horn (see case study: National Fatherhood Initiative.
The National Fatherhood Initiative has been largely successful in its goals, partly because of the Family Values momentum created by the 1994 Republican Revolution in the House of Representatives. The Million-Man March of 1995 showed that the black community was ready and willing to embrace fatherhood as important and that black men were willing to take responsibility for their families. This was especially significant because it created a loose, but important inter-racial, mixed income coalition between liberals and conservatives.
By 1997, Father’s rights groups had convinced the House and the Senate to form bi-partisan congressional task forces on fatherhood and examine its role in Federal Policy. National newsmagazines such as TIME and Newsday have featured articles on this topic, and the Fatherhood lobby has gained immense credibility in Washington. Overall, the Father’s Rights movement has made significant strides in the last two decades, and their success continues because of their passion for their children and the mounting popularity of the cause.
