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.
