Subject: 48 Hours: Fathers Fight Back

From: [email-masked] (aaron.l.hoffmeyer)
Date: Thu, 14 Jan 1993 07:17:08 GMT

Some of you may have noticed that Bernard Goldberg is one of the
reporters on _48 Hours_.  He is also a divorced, non-custodial dad.
This is what he had to say in a editorial on fathers' rights almost
nine years ago.  He did the story on the father who was repeatedly
denied visitation and no one would do anything about it.  All of us who
have been denied visitation felt for that man as he stood outside his
ex's apartment and tried to keep from crying.

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All Dads Aren't Deadbeats
by Bernard Goldberg

[The following piece, although dated, is still indicative of the
current climate in the divorce custody world. When reading this
article, make note that it is eight years old. How much have things
changed?]

The calendar measures a certain kind of time and only imprecisely. For
one unhappy American minority, 1984 came a long time ago.

The minority is divorced fathers with children. And for them, the
American judicial system is an Orwellian nightmare intent on proving
that "Mother knows best" and that being a father doesn't necessarily
mean having children.

The system has made fathers visitors in the children's lives:  visitors
who can pick their sons and daughters up for a few hours every now and
then--so long as it doesn't interfere too much with Mom's new life. And
it has turned divorced fathers into bankers. Absentee bankers.

And now, another slap. Another piece of official abuse. A number of
politicians in Washington have suddenly discovered the doctrine called
"the best interest of the child" and they plan to implement it with a
federal law that would garnish the wages of divorced fathers who don't
pay their child support on time.

Most of us who do pay on time each and every month and who love our
children would applaud the legislation. No one I know defends deadbeat
fathers who don't care about their kids or even if they're fed and
clothed properly.

But what is so infuriating is that the Washington politicians who speak
so passionately about the child's best interest never seemed to care
about it before. What "best interest of the child" is served when
courts routinely allow mothers to pick up and move hundreds or even
thousands of miles away, leaving fathers desperate, trying to figure
out how to raise money and get time off from work to see their kids
more than once or twice a year?

Custody: What "best interest of the child" has been served by a system
that, until recently, virtually always gave custody of the children to
mothers? As Doris Freed, a lawyer and nationally recognized expert on
divorce law and custody, has said, "You would almost have to prove that
she was in bed with her lover and that the children had to serve them
beer in bed. It has been sex discrimination against men in the most
blatant way."

Nan Shapiro of the Organization for the Enforcement of Child Support
recently stated, "The reason that over 90 percent of children living in
single-parent homes are living with their mothers is that most fathers
do not want primary custody." That kind of thinking may make a lot of
divorced mothers feel righteous and comfortable but could it be that
many men see the system so stacked against them that they don't even
try? Could it be that many men can't afford the financial costs of a
legal battle for custody? Could it be that many men care too much for
their children to put them through a custody fight? Because many
divorced fathers see this as sex discrimination, one might also ask if
few women went to medical, law of business school over the years
because women did not want to become doctors, lawyers and businesswomen
or because an institutionally biased society thought "girls don't do
those things"?

`Best Interest': What is so irritating about the current debate is that
politicians who never said anything about how the system worked against
fathers and didn't look out for "the best interest of the child,"
either, are now so concerned. My guess is that it isn't the child's
best interest that is suddenly so important to them but their own best
interest. It is 1984, after all, and that means elections. And that
means "the women's vote," which in this day and age a politician
ignores at his or her own peril.

A lot of men, if the statistics we read are correct, do, in fact, welsh
on their kids. But a lot of divorced mothers welsh, too. A lot of them,
as the custodial parent, deny visitation rights, leave town for parts
unknown come Father's Day, subtle things like that.

It shouldn't be difficult to understand how an otherwise decent man
might be overcome by pain and frustration. The system might convince
him that he is, after all, a father without children and at some point
he might just give up. And stop paying.

If child support is a national problem deserving of a federal remedy,
then let's go all the way. Let's have the proposed federal
wage-garnishing law apply only in states with joint custody laws. Or
let's ask Congress to muster the courage to seriously consider one law
that would ensure both fair child- support payments and fair visitation
rights.

There is a "new father" out there and many judges and members of
Congress are barely aware of it. Modern society tells the "new father"
to be in the delivery room when the child is born, to diaper the child,
to feed the child, to care in every way for the child. Then, when
things go sour in the marriage, presto! The "new father" is expected to
instantly and dutifully become the "old father" he never was. Just pay
the bills. Mom will handle the rest. For too long women in our society
have been discriminated against for no other reason than because they
are women. Fair-minded people have to be against that kind of bigotry.
How, then, can fair-minded people ignore, condone or promote
discrimination against fathers--100 percent of whom are men--and make
believe it isn't sex discrimination? "1984" may be here. But it doesn't
have to be.

[A CBS News correspondent, Goldberg lives in New York, 1300 miles away
from his seven year-old son.]

SOURCE: Newsweek, February 6, 1984

Aaron L. Hoffmeyer
[email-masked] 

P.S.  I guess that son would be about 16 by now.