DADI.org

by Cathy Young

Detroit News April 7, 1999

   The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has started a public service ad campaign directed at fathers who don’t live with their children, with the slogan, “They’re your kids. Be their dad.” Commendably, the campaign stresses that children need a father’s love as well as his money. But is it the right answer to fatherlessness?

   Like much of today’s rhetoric, the initiative assumes absent fathers are missing by choice. As HHS Secretary Donna Shalala put it, “While many noncustodial fathers eagerly support their children, too many choose not to be a part of their child’s life financially or emotionally.”

   But to start with, most divorced fathers did not choose the divorce. Two-thirds of divorces involving children are initiated by mothers, usually not because of the husband’s desertion or abuse but because of general discontent with the marriage.

   Nor do most divorced fathers choose to be noncustodial parents. In a Stanford University study in the late 1980s, 70 percent said they wanted sole or at least joint physical custody. While most dads do not seek custody, it’s not always for lack of interest. Many feel they have no chance of prevailing, or wish to spare themselves and the children a custody battle. In his 1998 book Divorced Dads: Shattering the Myths, Arizona State University psychologist Sanford Braver reports that just one in six divorced fathers (compared with two-thirds of mothers) get the custodial arrangements they wanted.

   What’s more, relatively few noncustodial fathers abandon their children. The majority see them regularly and rarely default on child support if they are steadily employed. (On average, noncustodial parents claim to pay 90 percent of the amount owed, and custodial parents claim to receive 70 percent.) More than half of “deadbeat parents,” according to a recent Wisconsin study, earn less than $6,000 a year.

   Fathers who do disengage from their children are often driven away. They feel they are denied any real say in their children’s upbringing and that their ex-spouses disrupt their relationship with the children. In her study of divorced fathers, Virginia Polytechnic Institute professor Joyce Arditti found that nearly 20 percent said the mother’s interference with visitation was a serious problem. Indeed, mothers confirm this: 25 to 40 percent admit at least sometimes denying visits to the father to punish him for something.

   “Driven-away dads,” as Braver calls them, are much more likely to default on their financial obligations — and not always because they refuse to pay as a form of protest. The fights over visitation may leave them so traumatized as to impair their earning ability, or cause them to run up huge legal bills and “support their attorneys instead of their children,” in the words of one activist. Some make the agonizing decision to give up.

   Our society deplores father absence, but does little to protect father presence. In many states, it’s all but impossible for a father to even get joint legal custody — which gives him equal say in decisions about such areas as his children’s education and medical care — unless the mother agrees. He can rarely stop his child from being relocated thousands of miles away.

   Even custodial mothers who violate court orders by denying the father access to the children rarely suffer legal consequences, despite recently passed laws against visitation interference.

   Neither liberals nor conservatives have shown much interest in the problems of disenfranchised fathers. Liberals — and feminists in particular — tend to see fathers’ demands as a threat to women’s rights. Most conservatives cling to the stereotype of divorced fathers as irresponsible males who walk out to sow their wild oats.

   Maybe the Department of Health and Human Services should launch a new ad campaign directed at the courts and some custodial mothers, with the slogan, “They’re his kids. Let him be their dad.”

Cathy Young is co-founder and vice-president of the Women’s Freedom Network. Her column is published on Wednesday. Write letters to The Detroit News, Editorial Page, 615 W. Lafayette, Detroit, Mich. 48226.

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