WHY I AGREED TO CO-PARENT WITH MY PSYCHOPATHIC EX!

I have to say that as a mother I didn’t trust my ex to care for my children properly. (Ok, Ok, OUR children!)  I had that instinct right from the beginning.  I think it came from the fact that my ex was a bit of a mixed bag; in many things my ex was quite competent, but in others he was grossly foolish, if not dangerous to the kids at times.  This might be all right in the conduct of a business, but in the care and upbringing of children, I felt his behavior totally unacceptable.  Given this situation, it must seem amazing to anyone that I agreed to co-parent with my ex once we divorced.

THE RELIGIOUS RIGHT'S WAR AGAINST WOMEN IN FAMILY COURT!

In recent decades, claiming that fathers are endangered, and claiming to defend family values as embodied in The Natural Family, the religious right have attacked and sought to reverse the civil rights gains of the feminist movement of the 1970s. These groups blame feminism for the rising divorce rate, the plethora of single family households, and many social ills such as crime, poverty, mental illness and homelessness.  In doing so, they deny the existence of racism and the role of economic injustice.  

The Conservative right have waged a crafty, well financed, and highly organized war against women throughout America using Family Court as a backdrop.  This war has been documented partially in the book "Backlash" by Susan Fahludi published in 1991.  

The primary method Conservative politicians and the Evangelical right have used to attack women is by creating a false narrative of father absence, claiming that it has led to many social ills which require remedial action on behalf of men.  This is a complete lie.

For an example of their ideology, just look at the May 11, 2010 Multi-Agency Memorandum of Agreement for the State of Connecticut.  In the preamble, this document lists a broad range of areas in which the authors claim that fatherlessness has caused the breakdown of American society.  Has any of this been proven? No. These claims are based upon a body flawed, misleading, if not outright fake research which was created by right wing think tanks.  This is the right wing's tried and true approach to manipulating the public dialogue with fake research.  For an example of how this was done in an attempt to deny homosexual couples the right to parent, see The Regulus Study, funded by and conducted by the religious right wing. 

While there may be a correllation between fatherlessness and social problems, this is far from showing evidence of cause and effect. What we do know is that the primary factor in outcomes for young people is financial stability, not fatherlessness.  Nonetheless, the State of Connecticut has used these detailed and unproven conclusions regarding father absence to justify treating fathers preferentially when providing services, despite Connecticut statutes that clearly prohibit gender discrimination. 

This is how easily such ideas have penetrated into the mainstream.  

Added to this, Conservatives have decried the demise of the patriarchal ideal of The Natural Family. In a 2016 article entitled, "The Family Courts Are Killing Our Children", right wing politician, Dr. Mario Jimenez, stated that the loss of The Natural Family is also responsible for the high rate of both homicide and suicide in American society.  What they really want to do is restrict divorce and trap women in abusive marriages.

So what is this "Natural Family" that he is referring to?  According to Allan Carlson and Paul Mero, authors of the book "The Natural Family" (2005), the term properly refers to "the natural arrangement of husband and wife, plus their offspring, as the most identifiable and important family unit for protection, nurture, and social stability." By natural arrangement, what they mean is the father is the head of the family and has sole authority. Within The Natural Family "the conjugal bond built on fidelity, mutual duty, and respect allow [their members] to fulfill their potential as human beings."  In short, "The Natural Family is the first and fundamental unit of human society."  Most of all, it is biblical and, according to right wing evangelicals, God has endorsed it, and therefore government should insist upon it for the welfare of all.

According to Christian theorist, Michael Brendan Dougherty, The Natural Family stands opposed to The Contractual Family, which Conservatives state has improperly replaced The Natural Family in modern society. Dougherty states that The Contractual Family occurs when marital and parental relationships are determined as a matter of choice, and not biology.  For instance, it can include same sex parents, grandparents with their grandchildren, extended family, as well as unrelated persons who consider themselves family.  Conservatives and the Evangelical right condemn The Contractual Family and consider The Natural Family essential to liberty, freedom, as well as mental, physical, and economic health of American citizens.  This is what they mean when they talk about family values.  

In an attempt to restore The Natural Family, to restore fathers to their positions as heads of households, and to restore the patriarchy to its status of privilege, Conservatives have pushed an agenda to support fathers within Family Court so that they have greater access to their children, frequently replacing and eliminating Mothers.  Sure, go ahead and assert your civil rights if you wish, Conservatives appear to be saying.  Fight back against domestic violence, and leave marriages with abusers, but if you do so, you will risk the possibility that you will lose all access to your children and end up penniless and homeless.  This phenomenon was carefully documented and exposed in Phylis Chesler's book, "Mothers on Trial:  The Battle For Children and Custody" (1986) and the situation has only continued on to get worse.

It would be foolish to underestimate the extent of the misogyny behind the Christian right's movement to restore The Natural Family. Essentially, the religious right wants an end to birth control, and an increase in large families with accompanying homeschooling. They look back fondly on pre-industrial society and look forward to restoring a kind of agrarian idyll centered around large families.  In the words of one writer, The Natural Family flourishes best in "the small home economy which should act as the vital center of daily economy." The very idea of The Natural Family is closely allied with the quiverful movement to which the Duggar Family belong, which is famous for being in TLC's reality show "Nineteen and Counting." If these religious conservatives had their way, women would end up being walking baby factories just like Michelle Duggar.  

Central to the success of this vision of family life is the idea that women should stop earning a living outside the home and go back to being housewives, leaving their men to support the family.  The movement opposes equal pay for equal work, and they oppose the market wage, i.e. a wage determined by the market, and support giving men a living wage, i.e. sufficient salary which a man can use to support a wife, and one presumes his very large brood of children.  One such article entitled, "The Death of Our Family Wage Culture" by Dusty Gates quotes both Pope Pius and Pope John Paul II as stating that pushing mothers to leave their household duties in order to engage in work outside the home is a form of abuse.  

Who are the enemies of this brave new, or rather old, view of the world, or this reenvisioning of the patriarchy for the modern world?  The Gay Rights Movement, The Pro-Choice Movement, Advocates for Contraception, Advocates for Sex Education, Children's Rights Advocates, Industrialism, No-fault divorce,  Sexual Liberation, Secularists, Intellectuals and Scholars, i.e. anyone with brains, Liberals, and most particularly relevant in connection to this blog, Feminists. 

If you think the Conservatives and the Religious Right who are pursuing this movement are a small, powerless minority, who couldn't possibly seize the reins of power and impose this sexist vision on American Society, don't kid yourselves.  Who is it that is behind the millions and millions of dollars that goes into The Fatherhood Iniatiative which is present in every state of the Union right now? Who is it that is behind all the millions and millions of dollars that goes into the Marriage and Responsible Parenthood programs? What about the billions that goes into these faith based initiatives?

In fact, in her four part series on homophobia in Russia, Amanda Blue Keating of "Right Wing Watch" reports that in 2013, through the World Congress of Families, these Christian Evangelical right groups developed a major political network throughout Russia and were directly involved, along with France, in passing anti LGBT legislation that, among other things, criminalized advocacy for LGBT equality. Apparently, the Christian right views Russia as the last bastion of defense in preserving the rights of the family

All of this is the brain child of the religious right, and all of the money and effort involved is poured into programs whose fundamental intention is to destroy Women's Liberation which they consider inimical to Christianity and Western Civilization.  How are they going to destroy Women's Liberation? By seizing control of children and making it clear that if women don't learn their place, they will never see them again.  

Still, the plot goes deeper.  According to Amanda Blue, when the Russian, Konstantin Malofeev spoke at the 2012 World Congress of Families, he held out Russia as the model for the world saying, "Now Christian Russia can help liberate the West from the new liberal anti-Christian, totalitarianism of political correctness, gender ideology, mass-media censorship and neo-Marxist dogma."  Is it surprising, then, that they showed up in the 2016 elections to put Donald Trump in power to promote just that agenda! 

While I was pursing this project, I wrote down the names of the organizations that make up this Conservative, Religious movement, and I will list them below. The majority of them are members of the World Congress of Families. It is by no means a complete list, but it gives you a sense of how extensive it is.

Alliance Defense Fund

Americans United For Life

Alliance Defending Freedom

American Family Association

Americans For Truth About Homosexuality

American United For Life

Bradley Foundation

Catholic family and Human Rights Institute

Concerned Women For America

Focus on the Family

Family Research Council

International Organization For the Family

National Organization For Marriage

The Heritage Foundation

The Howard Center For Family Religion, and Society

The Rockland Institute

The Ruth Institute

The Sutherland Institute

The Witherspoon Institute

United Families International

World Congress of Families

THE CREATION OF THE MYTH OF BLACK FATHERLESSNESS!

DAVID MANDEL, SO-CALLED SAFE AND TOGETHER PROGRAMS, AND FATHERHOOD FUNDING!

By Doreen Ludwig,

Author of "Motherless America: Confronting Welfare's Fatherhood Custody Program"

website:  www.maccabuse.org

DAVID MANDEL


Domestic Violence Experts Do NOT Protect Parents From Legal Abuse – Is This Purposeful?

Researching the special interests and funding that built the current administrative structure of family court, I reviewed Dave Mandel’s “Safe Engagement of Fathers When Domestic Violence is Present:  Building a model response to domestic violence within the Responsible Fatherhood Programming.”

TESTIMONY OPPOSING SB #1049 FROM THE CT COALITION AGAINST DOMESTIC VIOLENCE

Testimony Opposing

SB 1049, AAC Registration Fees for Counsel and Guardians ad Litem for Minor Children and Other Requirements for Certain Family Relations Matters

Finance, Revenue & Bonding Committee April 17, 2017

Text Originally Located at the following link:

https://www.cga.ct.gov/2017/FINdata/Tmy/2017SB-01049-R000417-Andrews,%20Liza,%20Director%20of%20Policy%20&%20Communications-CCADV-TMY.PDF  

Good afternoon Senator Fonfara, Senator Frantz, Representative Rojas and members of the committee. CT Coalition Against Domestic Violence (CCADV) is the state’s leading voice for victims of domestic violence and those who serve them. Our members provide essential services to nearly 40,000 victims of domestic violence each year. Services provided include 24-hour crisis response, emergency shelter, safety planning, counseling, agency/staff training, support groups and court advocacy.

We oppose SB 1049

HAPPY FATHER'S DAY!

DORI B. HIGHTOWER TALKS ABOUT ROLE OF FATHER'S POST DIVORCE IN CT LAW TRIBUNE!

"If I had one wish as a divorce lawyer, it would be this: to always be able to foster and protect the vital relationships between fathers and their children.

Recently, I spoke with a young woman exploring the pain she carries because her relationship with her father never regained its strength and closeness after her parents' divorce. She drew an analogy about the distance she felt from her father, comparing it to the feelings of Murphy in the movie "Interstellar." Murphy's father, Cooper, had missed her life while he was in outer space. She lived in pain believing her father had abandoned her. Likewise, divorce and separation between unmarried couples can be an agonizing and contentious ordeal, leaving separating spouses and their children emotionally bruised or estranged, often for life. The transition to post-marriage parenting can be particularly challenging and difficult for fathers..."

Read more:

http://www.ctlawtribune.com/id=1202727288452/Fathers-of-Divorce-Parenting-101-Realized#ixzz3bNvYX8wh

DR. FARRAH SHOWS AN EXAMPLE OF GOOD CO-PARENTING, SURPRISES SON WITH VISIT FROM DAD ON HIS BIRTHDAY!

Post by Dr. Farrah Gray.

THE WAR ON MEN, PARTICULARLY MEN OF COLOR!

This blog is dedicated to the memory of Josue Maldonado.

If you travel anywhere in the State of Connecticut, you are likely to find a considerable number of empty manufacturing plants.  Recently, I was driving my daughter to her CREC School and passed a few in Hartford where construction workers were boarding up the windows of an empty factory. 

I know many of these old facilities have been turned into retail outlets, restaurants and office buildings, or they have been changed into low income housing.  But many stand empty, their windows shattered.  They are tattered and hollow brick shells, giants of a former age when America actually created products, and had sufficient blue collar jobs to employ thousands and thousands of people in dignified work that allowed them to live a decent lifestyle.


Now, many of the kinds of people who would have worked in factories such as these are now in prison, victims of a policy of mass incarceration which has been carried out by the American government in the last thirty years. 

So what happen to all these factories and the jobs associated with them? 

All of that is gone now.  These factories began to be dismantled in the 1980s with the onset of President Ronald Reagan's economic policies which led to the rich getting rich and the poor getting poorer.  Furthermore, in subsequent decades the manufacturing corporations that once did business here in New England have all been replaced by deindustrialization, globalization, and outsourcing.  Many of these manufacturing plants were located nearby African-American and Hispanic communities where the men provided a cheap and plentiful source of labor. 

What happened to all these folks when the factories shut down? 

I'll tell you what happened to them.  Essentially, these workers became unemployed and their communities have struggled with poverty since then.   Many of them are in jail, victims not only of poverty and unemployment, but also of the erosion of civil rights which has taken place as the consequence of the War on Drugs declared by President Ronald Reagan in the 1980s. 


Since then it has become easier to incarcerate African-American and Hispanic men as a consequence of Get tough on Crime laws which have eroded the protections of the fourth amendment.  Further, stop and frisk policies have led to thousands and thousands of African-American and Hispanic men being stopped at random on the streets of cities and checked for contraband, and court rulings have made racial profiling increasingly acceptable. 


In addition, mandatory minimum sentencing, such as three strikes you are out laws have given prosecutors increasing power to bully and intimidate defendants, many of whom could be innocent, to agree to plead guilty to crimes in order to obtain lower jail sentences.  This means that 97% of Federal cases generally end with a plea bargain while 94% of State cases also end with a plea bargain.  As one person put it, court room trials, the stuff of television dramas, almost never take place.

Could it  be that more African-American and Hispanic people are dealing and taking drugs than white people?  Is that why more men of color are getting arrested?

In fact no.  It turns out that people from all classes and ethnic groups are equally involved in both selling and using drugs.  White people tend to sell to white people, African-Americans to African-Americans, and Hispanics to Hispanics.  College students tend to sell to other College students.  However, the ways in which the laws have been crafted have led to more men of color ending up arrested than white people.  For example, when it comes to cocaine, sentencing is based upon weight. Cocaine in its crystal form, which is largely sold in inner cities, weighs more than the powdered form sold in the suburbs.  If you add to that the fact that so many inner city defendants can't afford to hire an attorney, then African-American and Hispanic defendants become particularly vulnerable to incarceration. 

Who are the people who have been increasingly arrested and put in jail as a result of the changing economic circumstances?

In 2009, approximately 92% of prisoners in American prisons were male.

34.9% of the prison population was black in 2009

20.4% of the prison population was Hispanic in 2009

In 2013, by age 18, 30% of black males, 26% of Hispanic males, and 22% of white males have been arrested. 

By age 23, 49% of black males, 44% of Hispanic males, and 38% of white males have been arrested. 


In some ways, we could even, actually, call this a war on men.

 

For the better part, this situation has affected men of color most severely, but when you think of it poor white men are coming up not far behind.  The problem is, if you are a working class male, with the loss of manufacturing and the shrinking unions, where are you going to get work?  Many simply end up at Walmart, McDonalds, Burger King or other minimum wage jobs that barely support a family, but with our high unemployment rates, they'd be lucky even to get that!

Many of these workers have been affected by depression and despair as they have been unable to obtain jobs and build lives for themselves and their families.  They have gotten involved in drugs, have ended up being arrested for non-violent, victimless crimes and jailed.  Then instead of being treated with compassion and understanding and given job training and mental health counseling so they can return to their communities and live productive lives, they have faced a punitive and punishment oriented criminal justice system that essentially destroys their lives, their hopes, and any dreams they have for the future.

What has happened as members of the African-American and Hispanic communities have become increasingly subject to arrest and imprisonment?

In her book, "The New Jim Crow:  Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness" author Michelle Alexander discusses how the advances in civil rights which took place in the sixties and seventies were subsequently undermined by the mass incarceration, particularly of African-American and Hispanic men starting in the 1980s. 

The last thirty years have been particularly striking in regard to the rapid increase in prison populations and the construction of both privately run and public jails.  Thus, while in early 1980 there were 300,000 prison inmates throughout the entire United States, currently we have approximately 2,266,800. 


The bottom line is that the United States has the highest documented rate of incarceration in the world--indeed, in all of history!  Since the 1980s, the prison population has quadrupled, mostly as a consequence of nonviolent, victimless crimes such as drug possession.  At least 60% percent of these prisoners are African-American or Hispanic. 


As an aside, for us here in Connecticut, one of the interesting aspects of these statistics is that Connecticut arrests and incarcerates proportionally more Hispanic men than any other State in the Union.  So if you are male and Hispanic and live in Connecticut you are seriously at risk of ending up in jail sooner or later because the odds are stacked against you. 


Not only is there a problem with the number of prisoners that have been incarcerated, there is the problem of lengthy sentences which have arisen as a consequence of mandatory sentencing guidelines.

So what are the numbers?  How serious is the problem we are talking about here?

The numbers we are talking about are quite striking because, not only do you have the folks that are currently in jail, you also have considerable numbers of individuals that remain under the supervision of the criminal justice system once they get out of jail.  Thus, according to the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statics, in 2011 the breakdown was as follows:

2,266,800 adults in prison

4,814,200 adults on probation or on parole

6,977,700 adults in total in or supervised by the criminal justice system

70,792 kids in juvenile detention.

Again, it is worth noting that the U.S. incarcerates more youth than any other country in the world as well.  As a vulnerable population with few civil rights, the conditions for young people is jail are dire--overcrowding and violence is rampant in juvenile detention facilities. This has gotten to the point where in 2014, the United Nation Human Rights Watch cited the United States for its mistreatment of juvenile inmates.

For those of us interested in family court and DCF issues, it is also worth noting the direct link between child protective services and the prison system.  For example, in California, 70% of prisoners spent time in the foster care system. 

So what happens when hundreds of thousands, indeed, millions of African-American and Hispanic men are taken from their communities? 

Human Rights Watch believes the extraordinary rate of incarceration in the United States wreaks havoc on individuals, families and communities, and saps the strength of the nation as a whole.  What you are talking about is a situation where the State removes marriageable African-American and Hispanic single men from their communities just at the time when they are most likely to meet their wives, settle down, have families and begin a future.  Others who are already married and have families then leave their wives and children leaving these households fatherless with all the associated consequences to that situation.  Growing families have no means of economic support and then end up in poverty and living off financial support from the government.

Then what happens once these prison inmates are discharged back into the community?

Pretty much these African-American and Hispanic men become members of a permanent underclass subject to the same kinds of discrimination they endured back at the height of Jim Crow.  In other words, you have the reinstitution of segregation and discrimination. 

These men become pretty much permanently unemployable since whenever they fill out a job application they have to check off the box indicating they have been convicted of a felony for the rest of their lives, whether the offense took place six months ago, or sixty years ago. 


If by some chance, a former prison inmate is able to get a job they are often required to pay fines and fees associated with their crime, often including the costs of the proceedings that placed them in jail, in addition to back child support.  In fact, their wages can be garnished up to 100%!

In terms of housing, former convicts are prohibited from staying in public housing, so their own families could be kicked out of their homes if they tried to give them shelter.  Landlords are legally allowed to refuse housing to former prison inmates.  Former prison inmates are not entitled to food stamps, so they might not even be able to eat once they are discharged from prison. 

So what we have here is once a prisoner gets out of jail he will have no job, no housing, no food, and no money!  To top it off, ex-prisoners can be denied the right to vote and the right to serve on a jury.

Naturally, the recidivism rate is extremely high under these circumstances, often as a result of something minor such as breaking a condition of their parole.

Has massive incarceration and the reinstitution of Jim Crow in another disguise been the result of a deliberate policy on the part of the United States government?

Our government has consciously pursued the policies of deindustrialization, the destruction of unions, outsourcing, and globalization.  NAFTA, which has resulted in major job losses  for working class in this country,  was the brainchild of the Bush administration and signed into law by Bill Clinton. 


I certainly think it is interesting that we have replaced a manufacturing based economy with a prison based economy and all the associated industries that come along with them. 


For example, there is the massive expenditure of fatherhood funding through the Department of Health and Human Services to compensate for the damage that has been done to men in the African-American and Hispanic communities.  And, again, I have tracked how those funds have then been used to disenfranchise women through custody switching schemes.

Author Michelle Alexander states that the "Get Tough on Crime" rhetoric that emerged in the 1980s, the "War on Drugs", was part of the Nixon Administration's "Southern strategy" to reach out to racist voters and couch their racist views in a language that would be acceptable to the general public as a whole.  Many poor white people in the South saw the voter drives, the freedom rides, and the sit-ins at segregated restaurants as a form of lawlessness.  When they heard President Nixon say he would get tough on crime, they understood that as it was intended to be understood, as Nixon saying he would put African-American and Hispanic people back in their places.  And that is exactly what he did as we can see from the mass incarceration of men of color since the advent of his administration.

So how does this affect family court?  And how does this mean that family court is not just a white problem?

Our political leaders did not just incarcerate massive numbers of African-American and Hispanic men, indeed millions of these men, without any assistance.  They did this with the support and collusion of the Judicial systems of States all across this country, which means that there has been a breakdown of the law, a destruction and weakening of our constitutional rights in every courtroom. 


If you are denying men their due process and human rights in the criminal courtrooms of this State, there is no doubt that you are also denying people the very same rights in family courtrooms as well.  In fact, many of the judges that we see in family court are also cycling through the criminal courts at one time or another. 


African-American and Hispanic citizens may be seeing one face of justice in one courthouse, and White citizens may be seeing another face in another courtroom, but all of them have no doubt been infiltrated by the underlying corruption that inevitably results when you are incarcerating people at unprecedented rates never before seen in human history. 


Further, while you have 60% of these inmates people of color, and 40% white, that 40% is not inconsiderable.  Ultimately, the manner in which our justice system operates sooner or later affects everyone, and we all need to be committed to holding it accountable for acting fairly and equitably.

THIS LOST GENERATION OF MOTHERS AND THE RISE OF FATHERHOOD!

A recent article in Connecticut Magazine "The Changing Face of Fatherhood" by Ray Bendici talks about the fact that more fathers than ever before are playing a role in their children's lives. 

In Connecticut, they are doing this with the support of the John S. Martinez Initiative which is, according to Bendici, "a statewide effort to support and promote the positive interaction of fathers with their children."  What the Initiative does is provide fathers with support in their roles as fathers while at the same time assisting them with custody matters, job searches, and other skills. 

While this article describes what is happening at  the Madonna Place, there are similar organizations like this dotted all over the State which assist father's in obtaining access to their children. 

In addition, there is an official interagency agreement in the State of Connecticut where a group of State agencies have signed onto a common understanding that they will promote the interests of fathers.  These agencies, as listed on the John S. Martinez Fatherhood Initiative are as follows:  the Departments of Children & Families, Correction, Education, Labor, Mental Health & Addiction Services, and Public Health; Judicial Branch Support Enforcement Services and Court Support Services Divisions; CT Commission on Children; CT Coalition Against Domestic Violence; and Legal Aid Services. 

It is not surprising then, that articles touting fatherhood, and describing state support for fatherhood have sprung up such as this one in the Connecticut Magazine.  The end result of this kind of social engineering promoting the interests of fathers is that, as Ray Bendici states "Connecticut fathers are more involved in their children's lives than ever before." 

They are so much more involved that, in fact, they are beginning to replace mothers as the primary caretakers of their children in record numbers. 

Thus, a July 3, 2013 article in Business Week entitled "Daddies Are the New Mommies" by Sheelah Kolhatkar reports on a Pew study indicating that "In 1960, about 14% of single parent households were headed by fathers, today almost one-quarter (24%) are." 

In other words, according to Gretchen Livingston, of the Pew Research Center, "Almost one fourth of single parents are single dads."  The Pew Study further indicates that there has been a nine-fold increase in households with single dads, "from fewer than 300,000 in 1960 to 2.6 million in 2011.   

According to Caroline Kitchener, author of "The Rise of the Single Dad" which appeared in the February 2014 Atlantic Monthly, what these numbers represent is "a rising divorce rate over the past half-century, along with the increasing frequency of parents never marrying at all; and the growing societal acceptance of father's as primary caregivers." 

For activists in the CT Judicial Branch, this also speaks to a growing trend in Family Court where good mothers who have long been the primary caretakers of their children have found themselves edged out of the lives of their children by their more powerful, socially and economically connected ex-husbands.  This is because such men have considerably greater financial resources and a tougher mental edge acquired through their familiarity with corporate political environments and with systems which make them extremely effective during contentious custody battles. 

Not only do these men end up as the primary caretakers of their children, or the custodial parent, they are often able, with the support of highly paid mental health professionals and complicit family relations personnel, to literally eliminate these mothers from the lives of their children, even though such mothers were, at one time, hands on, at home parents for years. 

Make no mistake--at the present time, the extremely father friendly environment of Family Court is a very dangerous place to be for women and their children. 

In fact, the Pew study points specifically to the U.S. Judicial System as the reason why, increasingly, fit mothers are losing custody to fathers, who, prior to the court action, played only a cursory role in the day to day parenting of their children. 

As Kitchener states, earlier in the 20th century, Family Courts would act according to what was then considered to be the best interest of the children, i.e. placing the children in the care of the mother who had long been raising them.  However, since the early 2000s at least 35 states have shifted to the presumption of joint custody.  The intention behind this legislation was to encourage both parents to become involved in the lives of their children on a 50/50 basis.  

However, instead of encouraging both parents to share their time with their children equally, what has happened as a result of joint custody laws is that there has been "a dramatic increase in the number of single fathers."  In other words, legislation that was intended to introduce parity between mothers and fathers in the care of children has simply led to circumstances where Family Court judges have handed over sole custody to fathers. 

Of course, this could only be expected where each of the States are receiving millions and millions of dollars from the Department of Health and Human Services to support men in their custody court cases, and where community services to further the interests of fathers such as the paradoxically named Madonna Place are located in practically every county throughout the country. 

Further, It is interesting to note that we do not have an equivalent Motherhood Rights' Initiative, and we do not have an interagency agreement to promote mother's interests, etc. in the State of Connecticut.  Instead, we are like American College campuses before title IX forced Phys Ed Departments to provide equal opportunity for female athletes. 

What is interesting about this situation is that single fathers do much better economically than single mothers do--only 24% live at or below the poverty line versus 43% of single mothers.  Further, according to Noah Berlatsky who also wrote an article on the subject in the July 2013 Atlantic Monthly, "Single father-headed households have a median income of $40,000--well above the $26,000 for single mother-headed households." 

Thus, even in their roles as single father's, men are able to wield considerable privilege economically. 

It is unclear what the outcome of this shift in parenting roles will have on the lives of children.  Intuitively, it makes sense that there are inherent difficulties involved when young children are yanked from the homes they have shared with their mothers for the majority of their lives.  These difficulties can only get worse when they are then placed in the care of fathers who are newly adjusting to their roles as primary caretakers, and often simply transfer them to the care of grandparents or nannies.  Then when you add to this the increasingly common situation where the mothers are barred from seeing those children ever again, it makes sense that these children would experience considerable psychological damage. 

We are all aware of the frequently cited studies which indicate that children suffer when fathers are excluded from the lives of their children.  However, no such similar studies have ever been done to determine whether excluding mothers from the lives of their children would lead to similar results. 

I assume nobody thought it was important to conduct such studies before going ahead and eliminating mothers because replacing them with fathers seemed like such an overwhelmingly good idea to the folks that implemented the policy, they didn't figure exploring the situation in advance made sense! 

Clearly, the best situation is when both parents share equally in the lives of their children when both parents are psychologically fit and time with each parent benefits the health and safety of the child.  But the adversarial, free for all environment of the present Family Court system does not seem to encourage these kinds of positive outcomes.  Clearly, there are no safeguards to prevent angry, controlling, and abusive ex husbands from using the children as pawns to destroy mothers through the divorce process.

In bulletins about Family Court, I have frequently seen Connecticut referred to as a "father-friendly State".  I have no way of determining whether that is true for sure, although I can state anecdotally that I receive inquiries on a regular basis from mothers who are struggling to maintain their parental rights in the face of false accusations of PAS and mental illnesses they never had before they set foot in Family Court.  

Many activists approaching the legislature this year talked about the vital importance of maintaining records of the kinds of cases that are appearing in family court and tracking the outcomes of these cases.  This is the only accurate way to know what is going on.  Until then, the numbers I have reported here tell me a very alarming story of the ongoing disenfranchisement of mothers throughout the United States and Connecticut which we cannot afford to ignore any further. 

CONNECTICUT MAGAZINE REPORTS ON THE CHANGING FACE OF FATHERHOOD IN CONNECTICUT!

Connecticut Magazine reports on fatherhood as follows:

"It’s late on a Monday afternoon at Madonna Place in downtown Norwich.

Men ranging in age from their early twenties up to mid-fifties trickle into the plain brick building, congregating in the kitchen. They greet each other with fist bumps and handshakes, load paper plates with pizza, sit down at the table and start talking about busting their asses at work, trying to negotiate child visitation with ex-wives and girlfriends, navigating legal issues, going fishing with their kids . . . and motorcycles—you know, guy stuff.

W ill Marquez, facilitator of the weekly “24/7 Dad” group that’s gathering here, exchanges pleasantries with each man as he enters. He asks a soft-spoken man named Travis, who has three daughters, about a new job he recently started. “Do they have enough work for you? Do you think you’ll be there a while?” inquires Marquez, a married father of three who has been running this group for about a year. Travis nods. “Good,” responds Marquez. “If it looks like they’re going to run out of work, call me. I know a place that will probably be hiring in September, making buoys for the Coast Guard.”  

Around 5 o’clock, the dozen or so men—who differ in cultural background, skin color and ethnicity but share a common desire to stay connected to their children—move down the hall into a conference room and take seats around the long oval table. For the next 90 minutes, they will engage in activities centered around becoming better dads."

For more information on this article, please click on the link below:

http://www.connecticutmag.com/Connecticut-Magazine/June-2014/The-Changing-Face-of-Fatherhood-in-Connecticut/