MESSAGE
| DATE | 2009-07-21 |
| FROM | Ruben Safir
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| SUBJECT | Subject: [NYLXS - HANGOUT] Worthless Dads
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Fathers & Families on CBS/HuffPost: âDo Men Become Better or Worse
Fathers After Divorce?â July 20th, 2009 by Glenn Sacks, MA, Executive
Director
Author Jill Brooke helped craft a CBS Early Show segment and wrote
an article on the issue of fathering after divorce. Two Fathers &
Families supporters and I are quoted in the article. I helped Brooke
with some research and briefly appeared in the CBS segment.
Brookeâs article is Do Men Become Better or Worse Fathers After
Divorce? (Huffington Post, 7/17/09).
Brookeâs thesis is, as professor Don Gordon explains, âWhen a father
is away from the stress of a failed marriage, he can be more relaxed
and more reflective and as a result enjoy being more fully involved
with his children.â
She quotes CNBC anchor Dennis Kneale, who says divorce has made
him âvastly closer â to his 9-year-old daughter Jing-Jing:
In many families, mom is the center of everything and the
husband is the supporting player. But with divorce, I have had
more one on one time with her in ways I never did before.
This can certainly be true, and some father-child relationships do
improve after divorce. As a general rule, however, divorce is often
what drives fathers and kids apart.
Brooke writes:
Technology has also helped prevent or reduce what is called
parental alienation where in the past the residential parent
may - consciously or unconsciously - block contact either out
of her resentment towards the father or because she has remarried
and is protecting the stepfather relationship.
A study by J. Annette Vanini and Edward Nichols found that 77
percent of noncustodial fathers faced some form of visitation
interference.
But now fathers can give their kids pre-paid cell phones to
insure contact. Divorce contracts are also often written to
permit contact through email accounts.
Ted Rubin, a Huntington Long Island divorced dad to two girls,
admits to using Facebook to keep in contact with his kids.
âSometimes when we speak on the phone I can tell if Mom is
standing there and then later my daughter will contact me on
Facebook,â he said. âA lot of Dads complain that moms could
stand in the way of communication but now itâs almost impossible
because kids are so tech savvy.â
In fact, Rubin, who has a contentious divorce with his ex-wife,
says that email helps divorced parents diminish âthe nastiness
is our dialoguesâ which the kids would overhear on the phone.
Now he can email what time heâs picking up the kids and delivering
them without any verbal warfareâ¦
[R]esearch shows that the kids do like it when both parents
are present.
âThey have fewer behavior and emotional problems, higher
self-esteem and better school performance than children in sole
custody arrangements,â said Glenn Sacks, the National Executive
Director of Fathers & Families. âWhen researchers have examined
children of divorce, and studied and queried adult children of
divorce, theyâve found that most prefer joint custody and shared
parenting.â
For example, in one Arizona State University study of college
students who experienced their parentsâ divorces while they
were children, over two-thirds believe that living equal times
with each parent is the best arrangement. A Harvard University
study also confirmed that children in joint custody settings
fared much better than kids living in sole custody households.
While many men acknowledge progress, some still complain that
the system treats fathers as second-class citizens when asking
for more time with their children.
As Gary Nicholson, the president of the American Association
of Marital Attorneys, explains, part of the problem is that
various state laws tie child support payments to the amount of
time a father is with their child. Payments can be adjusted if
the father spends as much as 100 nights with his child so many
mothers resist giving 50-50 splits and are angered by the
request.
Said Nicholson, âAre there folks who look at this economically
and think if I have equal time I wonât have to pay as much
child support? Yes. But the majority of dads want to be involved
in their kidâs lives. They feel they should be equal partners.â
Brook begins the piece by writing:
If divorce is in the future of duplicitous two-timers Gov. Mark
Sanford to reality TVâs Jon Gosselin, these men will have to
navigate co-parenting. However, a growing trend shows that many
men become better parents post-divorce, to the surprise of
ex-wives who find it difficult to grasp that a man who wasnât
a good husband can indeed be a good father.
One, comparing the average divorced dad to these two is like
comparing the average married woman to the conniving, spoiled,
manipulative women of Desperate Housewivesâitâs hardly an accurate
generalization. (I would also add that Gosselinâs wife Kate supposedly
was cheating on him with her bodyguardâsome back up that story
while others say Gosselin began these rumors. Iâd delve into it in
greater detail but my interest in the subject wouldnât warrant it.)
Two, the line âex-wives who find it difficult to grasp that a man
who wasnât a good husband can indeed be a good fatherâ and some of
the lines in the CBS segment imply that when women decide to divorce
their husbands, that means that they werenât good husbands. While
sometimes that is the case, it is at least as common for women to
divorce their husbands because theyâre too damn critical of them.
In my Chicago Tribune column Men Blamed for Marriage Decline but
Womenâs Relationship Wounds Often Self-Inflicted (1/21/07) I wrote:
To what, then, do we attribute womenâs discontent with marriage
and relationships, and the fact that they initiate the vast
majority of divorces? A new Womanâs Day magazine poll found
that 56% of married women would not or might not marry their
husbands if they could choose againâwhy?
Nobody would dispute that, in selecting a mate, women are more
discerning than men. This is an evolutionary necessityâa woman
must carefully evaluate who is likely to remain loyal to her
and protect and provide for her and her children. If a man and
a woman go on a blind date and donât hit it off, the man will
shrug and say âit went OK.â The woman will give five reasons
why heâs not right for her.
A womanâs discerning, critical nature doesnât disappear on her
wedding day. Most marital problems and marriage counseling
sessions revolve around why the wife is unhappy with her husband,
even though they could just as easily be about why the husband
is unhappy with the wife. In this common pre-divorce scenario
there are only two possibilities-either sheâs a great wife and
heâs a lousy husband, or sheâs far more critical of him than
he is of her. Usually itâs the latterâ¦
Yes, there are some men who make poor mates, but not nearly
enough to account for the divorce epidemic and the decline of
marriage. While itâs easy and popular to blame men, many of
the wounds women bear from failed relationships and loneliness
are self-inflicted.
A biblical saying is also applicable:
Why do you observe the splinter in your brotherâs eye and never
notice the great log in your own? (Luke 6:41)
Brooke writes:
Take the example of Peter Giles. When Peter Gilesâ three
daughters were toddlers, work consumed him at the expense of
family life. The New York businessman would justify the absences
as doing the right thing for his family since he was providing
the financial womb while his wife was taking care of their
other needs.
What finally made him a better father? Getting a divorce.
âThe divorce was such a shock and forced me to take stock of
who I was and what success should look like,â said Giles, whose
ex-wife Nancy Claus sought a divorce in 2001. âI came to realize
that I had been providing for my children but needed to be more
to them. â
Like the majority of divorcing men today, Giles sought joint
legal custody, which courts are more willing to grant since a
federal study shows that men paid child support 90 percent of
the time in comparison to less than 45 percent when the mother
had sole custody.
When his daughters visited, Giles morphed into a multi-tasker
taking on chores previously done by his wife including cooking,
buying cosmetics and remembering to buy eggs and bacon at the
market.
âI wish he would have been as involved and helpful when we were
married,â said Claus. âBut he has definitely become a much
better Dad after our divorce.â
This seems rather unfair and condescendingâGiles was sacrificing
for his family when he worked long hours, and his ability to earn
a good income was doubtless a substantial part of why his ex-wife
decided to marry him to begin with. Like many men, his divorce came
to him as a surprise. In donât know what else happened between
them, but it seems his ex-wife may have decided to break up the
family because she was unhappy with decisions that she herself
played a large role in crafting.
His ex says, âI wish he would have been as involved and helpful
when we were married.â This may be true, but I would add that Iâm
sure she found his good income very âhelpfulâ too.
The article doesnât say what the Gilesâ custody arrangement is now,
and the article refers to his daughters âvisiting.â If they do have
real joint custodyânot the piece of paper which says âjoint custodyâ
but allows dad only a few days a month with his children, but real
joint custody, meaning substantially equal parenting timeâthen
Gilesâ ex-wife is to be commended.
Thereâs a lot of pressure in society to deny the harm caused by
divorce and fatherlessness. The reason is that most divorces are
initiated by women, and most of these are not due to serious
infractions like adultery and abuse. Some divorced fathers have
brought their problems on themselves, but many others were perfectly
good husband and fathers. Brooke doesnât say this and probably
doesnât believe it, but, de-stigmatizing divorce and depicting
divorce as OK (or better) for kids is often a way to greenlight
women to make these damaging choices.
Fathers & Families supporters David Gestl and Eric Ryerson are also
quoted in the story. To read Brookeâs full piece, click here. To
comment on it, click here and scroll down. Bookmark This Post:
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