Obama to launch National Patriarchy Initiative
So, what’s new with the Super Feminist in the White House? Ah, yes: he’s announcing the creation of the President’s Fatherhood and Mentoring Initiative. It sounds nice, doesn’t it? I mean, what could be wrong with that?
Plenty.
The father’s rights movement in this country is ground zero for anti-feminism. The radiation levels are off the charts. And if you think that Obama’s initiative has nothing to do with those clowns, think again:
Obama’s special interest in fatherhood has been a boon for groups that support fathers and have been working for years without much attention. “His leadership and using the bully pulpit has been important,” said Roland Warren, president of the National Fatherhood Initiative, which was founded in 1994 and recently contracted with the federal government to produce public service announcements promoting fatherhood.
The National Fatherhood Initiative was founded by Wade Horn, a right-wing Republican who pushes “abstinence education.” The organization’s website is an ode to patriarchy, insisting that daddies are magic whose presence in the home makes everything better. A blue-tinged photo of a sad little girl is accompanied by a caption declaring that “Children in father-absent homes are five times more likely to be poor.” Gosh, could that be because women are underpaid and undersupported? Could the wage gap have something do with that? Could there possibly be some connection to the fact that men monopolize our society’s resources?
In the world of the National Fatherhood Initiative, these questions are never asked. A single woman can’t make enough money? Of course not — you need to marry a male breadwinner! The father of your children is an abusive creep? Don’t get divorced; you need his money! He beats you senseless? Oh, you really better not get divorced. Also, it’s your fault. Keep him home and happy, since happily married daddies don’t ever beat their wives and kids! Divorced already and the creep won’t pay child support? Well of course not, you stupid woman — you’ve undermined his manly authority!
You think I’m exaggerating; you think these fatherhood types just want to cultivate nice, nurturing daddies, à la Sweden. But they don’t. In the real world of courts and custody and child support and welfare, the fathers rights activists are all about restoring patriarchal authority. They have shown themselves time and time again to be enemies of women and feminism. It’s patriarchy with a soft-focus feel-good propaganda coating.
I urge you to delve into the extensive Liz Library, an online compendium of research maintained by attorney Liz Kates, an expert in family law and the father’s rights movement. One article I’ve had bookmarked for years is this response to Wade Horn’s “The Importance of Being Father.” It’s a long piece, but I want you to at least read this first bit, so you can see how a feminist deconstructs propaganda:
HORN: “Despite conventional wisdom, which has held — and in many quarters still does — that children do not pay a price when fathers are absent from their lives, research data depict a much different reality. Violent criminals are overwhelmingly males who grew up without fathers, including 60 percent of America’s rapists, 72 percent of adolescent murderers and 70 percent of long term prison inmates. Children living in a father-absent home are also more likely to be suspended or expelled from school, or to drop out; require treatment for an emotional or behavioral problem; commit suicide as adolescents; and be victims of child abuse or neglect.”
LIZ: Let’s stop right here. Research on widowed homes, and research which has been done on divorced mother-headed homes which are financially comfortable and unstressed indicates that there is virtually no difference in child rearing outcomes between these children and children raised in intact homes with a mother and father present.
Moreover, the research does not indicate that these percentages of violent criminals, et al. grew up through their entire childhoods (as implied) sans a father in the household, but rather, that they grew up in homes in which that father was absent for some period of their childhood. So right in the first paragraph, you perpetuate two blatant misrepresentations. Your argument, Wade, also misleads in another way: the overwhelming MOST of single mother households do NOT exhibit these childrearing problems.
If children tend to pay any price at all when the father is absent, that price is largely in their standard of living. It’s financial. But growing up poor in and of itself also does not necessitate a bad child rearing outcome. The actual causes of negative child rearing problems correlating with the disparate and nonhomogeneous classification of “fatherless homes” (or “single mother households”) are disguised and distorted by statistics which lump into that category, not only demographic groups which do NOT exhibit these bad child-rearing outcomes, but also all those homes which are “fatherless” precisely because of the very same factors which down the road affected the children. These factors include: adultery, wife and child abuse; addictions to alcohol, sex, and drugs, other personality dysfunctions; conflict, and plain old abandonment, financial irresponsibility and failure to support (emotionally or financially.) The other primary and telling difference between “fatherless homes” which do and do not have problems is the relative financial stability, educational level, and comfort of the mother.
It is true that a disproportionate number of violent criminals have been shown to have hailed from homes where the biological father was indeed absent at some point, but this ignores that he also was present at some point, and during those periods preceding his abandonment of the family, or the family’s flight from him, often left the legacy of his criminality, addiction, abuse, and/or character flaws, as well as his genes. There is a generational dysfunction that is usually ignored by these studies. The absent dad of that violent criminal might have been merely alcoholic, rather than a criminal himself, but he was unlikely to have been an absent Ward Cleaver.
Logic. It’s a beautiful thing.
20 Responses to “Obama to launch National Patriarchy Initiative”
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gxm says:
OMFG. What is president asshat going to do next?
June 21st, 2010 at 1:55 pm EST -
Val says:
Plugging Liz’s Library as an excellent resource, but also have to point out that I Myself am featured there, as Case One:
http://www.thelizlibrary.org/l.....uator.html
I’ll quote straight from the summary: “Interestingly, in Case One, the earlier case, the allegations were not of child sexual abuse by the father, but of neglect, inter alia, the child’s being sexually molested by a third party while in the father’s care. In Case Five, there was substantial evidence of harassment, stalking, and domestic terrorism by the Father. In all cases, however, the pattern held. But like an inverse correlation, Father One received a recommendation for increased or joint custody (notwithstanding living 60 miles away from a school-age child), rather than the sole custody recommended by the evaluator for the Fathers who were accused of more serious abuse! In this case, the custody evaluator also recommended what would seem to be a parenting coordinator or co-parenting therapist, Mark R. Otis, Ph.D., i.e. more referral make-work. It would appear, comparing the way the evaluator wrote up his comments about the men in the cases, that he just doesn’t like women or mothers’ parenting, and prefers how men “are”.”
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madaha says:
I find this absolutely chilling. As someone who used to WISH my mother would leave my father so we could all relax and develop into our own people, I find it completely incomprehensible that anyone could not understand that a father is not always a welcome addition to a household.
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Ugsome says:
Totally not a surprise coming from the Misogynist-in-Chief.
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flyswatter says:
What initiative did he do mother’s day? Did he set up a President’s Motherhood and Mentoring Initiative?
What did he do exactly for mother’s day?
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catarina says:
How about a *National Pay Your Fucking Child Support Or Go To Jail You Deadbeat Dads* initiative instead? Pay up, shitheads.
That would solve a few problems mentioned above.
Non-payment of child support was decriminalized in my state (MA) in the 80′s. Thanks, Governor Dukakis.
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Toonces says:
What catarina said. My father paid the mid-80′s level of child support ($200/month) he was ordered to every once in a while, if he felt like it. My mom just didn’t have the energy while working to support two kids with “some college” to take on the system and get him to pay or get the rate raised or get his visitation taken away (even him just staying away completely would have been much better for me). Not that I think that if she did save for a lawyer to take all that on, there would have been a positive outcome.
I’m not supposed to say I was relieved when he died.
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catarina says:
one of the bullshit excuses was that child support cases were *clogging up the court system.*
screw you, women and children-you’re just cloggers!
men are off the hook. single mothers struggle. kids suffer. but at least the courts are unclogged. right?
oh the worship of the mighty penis. will it never end?
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votermom says:
Didn’t I read somewhere that BO’s half-brother wrote a memoir that describes their father as abusive?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/worl.....ther-abuse
I realize BO probably has major abandonment issues (what kid with parents like that wouldn’t), but he probably would not have liked it if his father had stuck around.
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Unree says:
There’s race as well as gender going on with Obama’s move. Black male politicians who want the white male vote habitually go out of their way to denounce the “strong” single mother, who is coded black.
Race aside, I am fascinated by the notion in American culture that only a woman can be a bad parent. Men are not held responsible for their misbehaviors and lapses in child-rearing. If you’re a dude, you’ll get almost infinite appreciation and praise for whatever you do as a parent. Your children will give you breaks they never give their mother, and your claims that you mean well will always be accepted by somebody.
Here’s a fragrant specimen from the New York Times ca. 2004. An alcoholic father who had done zero work in rearing his children got written up for having sent them letters while they were little:
“After college, good jobs were lost, regained and lost again to alcohol and gambling. Two marriages failed and four children were left. Condon drifted — call it abandonment or escape. He called it, in his letters, ‘errant selfishness.’
But through those letters, he never lost complete contact as a father.”
Nice passive voice there, too. Jobs were lost. Children were left.
The children are quoted speaking affectionately of this dead fellow. What are the chances that a woman who did no work and spent her kids’ childhood decades unemployed and drunk would be celebrated as a great mother?
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Cyn says:
Obama is Bush in faux progressive clothing. I work in a law firm. Deadbeat Dads work under the table, don’t pay child support unless they are violated by the system, attempt to get custody of children so they won’t have to pay then leave those children with their grandmother to raise.
I’ve see too much of what men will do to escape the almighty child support payments, which, in some cases, is under 50 lousy bucks a week. And, I’ve seen how it affects single Moms. This is egregious.
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Grace says:
I agree with Unree that there are racial besides gender issues to “take care of” by Obama. But I would also add the need to indirectly chastise and belliger the “Welfare Queens,” (as in the republican lingo)as a burden to the taxpayers. And the women who are poor and receive public assistance are disproportionally black and hispanic. So, Obama gets to kill several birds with one single stone, and all of it disguised under politically correct codes that are meant to hide the real agendas (read: being reelected and getting support from independents and some republicans).
I think that he calculates that no matter what he says or does, he will still get support from the majority of his black constituents, women and men alike (98 % like in the primaries and general election). The famous Obama’s bus sure must be smelling bad with all those decomposed bodies under it, but he always keeps making room for more.
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Ugsome says:
Unree,
A great illustration of disparate attitudes towards mothers and fathers is the reaction to Sandra Tsing Loh’s Atlantic article “Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off” about her affair and divorce. She makes some brutal observations, and the responses I’ve read have been absolutely blistering. She’s “narcissistic,” “selfish,” “irresponsible” and worse. Woe betide the woman that points out that Emperor Marriage has no clothes.
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Val says:
Good point, Ug – she was incredibly brave to publish that article, as she was absolutely crucified for it.
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Hattie says:
I knew Sandra Tsing Lo was toast as soon as I read that article.
I think all this Fatherhood crap is dreadful. No one ever had to tell my husband to do his duty by his family. In his book, that was what real men did: took care of their families.
But anyway what loser men think is that women are supposed to take of them and that kiddies are just a nuisance.
And what about the children “fathered” by sperm donors. What are they supposed to think? That they are abnormal or something? -
gidget commando says:
Ug,
Woe betide the woman that points out that Emperor Marriage has no clothes.
Let me join you in a hearty hallelujah from the choir. Maude forbid a woman actually speaks in less than glowing terms about the institution, unless she’s the WIJ (woman in jeopardy) of the Lifetime TV movie escaping the Evil Abuser (TM), but only if she looks damn cute for her rescuer cop while she’s at it.
I’d rather sit at Loh’s table than Obama’s any day.
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Ugsome says:
Loh’s article tells me that the Problem That Has No Name is alive and well and has metastasized, and I am grateful to her for slamming on the brakes and calling bullshit. Instead of sublimating her needs through church, chocolate, cats or Oprah, she tackled it head on. And boy did she make herself a lightning rod. Helluva brave woman.
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gxm says:
I’ve been against marriage since I was a teenager. I sincerely believe that it should be abolished. I even wrote a song about marriage once, it was called “Ice 9.”
Of course the irony is that as anti-marriage as I am, I’ve been married for freakin’ ever.
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angie says:
In the world of the National Fatherhood Initiative, these questions are never asked. A single woman can’t make enough money? Of course not — you need to marry a male breadwinner! The father of your children is an abusive creep? Don’t get divorced; you need his money! He beats you senseless? Oh, you really better not get divorced. Also, it’s your fault. Keep him home and happy, since happily married daddies don’t ever beat their wives and kids! Divorced already and the creep won’t pay child support? Well of course not, you stupid woman — you’ve undermined his manly authority!
They actually do believe this. I have even heard men tell the following “joke” to each other:
“What’s the first thing a battered wife does when she leaves the women’s shelter?’
“The dishes, if she knows whats good for her.”
And they laughed! Every single one of those asshats laughed!
There is one judge down in New Orleans whom I love — I was in his courtroom one day and the first case was a deadbeat dad 15 months behind on his measly child support who claimed he didn’t have any money to pay it. The judge asked him “Did you eat?”
The deadbeat dad said “What?”
The judge asked again “Have you eaten in the last 15 months?”
Deadbeat dad: “Yes.”
Judge: “Then you had money to pay the support.” The judge then sentenced him to jail until his support was caught up. Best day in court EVER.I wish there were more judges like him.
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Ciccina says:
I was moved to write an ode. An ode! Its called “I Told You So”:
O, Barack
Validator
of my dismal assumptions,Justifier
of my depressing predictions,Even as you exceed
my bleakest expectations,You give me a splitting headache.
