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.Fathers around the world are uniting for their human and civil right to parent their children, in what is sometimes called the fathers rights movement.
Equal parenting advocates like John Murtari of akidsright.org and Bev Morris, founder of the National Association of Noncustodial Moms (nancm.com) are quick to point out that mothers are also victim to bad government policy, just in smaller numbers.
Statistics show that approximately 80% of children nationwide who are not living with both of their parents are in the sole custody of their mothers. Bill Sharp, an Illinois father who lost equal custody when the mother of his children refused to cooperate with court orders, overheard his family court judge saying, "The father should not be upset because this is how it ends up in 90 per cent of the cases."
Equal parenting and fatherhood advocates say there are obstacles that don't allow them to parent their children in a full and meaningful way, if at all.
One issue is child support. Carol Rhodes describes in her book Friend of the Court, Enemy of the Family how child custody decisions are based on which parent would owe the most child support, making the state more money through Title IV. Others point to the Bradley Amendment, which keeps judges from releasing noncustodial parents from child support arrears, even if the original order was found to be unjust. There may be hope, after one man spent over a year in jail for owing child support for a child who is not his.
Other issues are domestic violence and parental alienation. Myths about domestic violence are affecting public policy, claim some advocates. They say restraining orders are dished out like welcome greetings at Walmart, during ex parte hearings with no notice to the other parent. These orders give filing parents immediate sole custody of the children, and control over the home and other assets. Studies now show that false allegations of domestic violence are in the 50-70% range. Other studies show that domestic violence by men and women is about equal, and that one-third of the significant injuries are sustained by men
In their own words:
For more info:
- Northern California dad travels to DC to confront President Obama
- Family Rights 101: Is the Parental Justice March in DC July 26?
- Equal parenting 101: What's the best way to divorce with children?
- Family Rights 101: Where can I learn more and hear victim stories?
- Equal custody advocates offer help to unmarried and divorcing parents
- International Links from Daddy's Pride
- International Links from Dads on the Air
- Parental alienation information and support
- SUPPORT? System Down Documentary
- Victims of family law and civil rights violations
- Videos about family law and civil rights violations
creative commons photo by chimothy27
Comments
Thank you so much for this thoughtful and informative article. I appreciate your even-handed stand.
George Copeland
National RNC Examiner
www.copelandweb.com
There are horror stories out there about Good Fathers who have exhausted their finances to gain their constitutional rights to equal parenting with their children, these horrors have led to frustration, proverty and suicide, when will this sickness end in America. The courts sides with the mother in 99% of the cases...an underlying goldmine in child support money paid by these fathers is met equally by US federal funding from our own government to the city/county/state pocketbooks, so why shouldn't our corrupt family court judges award more unfit mothers their children and see how hard it is to do something about these mothers until a child's life is abused or even taken.....How do you protect children from a mother who suffers from Bipolar and refuses to take medication or seek help for it....so these children suffer unmentionable mental, physical and lifetime abuse due to the corruptions in our family courts....WHERE IS JUSTICE???? IS IT SOMETHING THAT OUR FATHERS NO LONGER GET???
I welcome the words of Teri Stoddard. I just wish Obama and especially Joe Biden read the Examiner!
Biden is the architect of VAWA, the origin of the Family Court's acts to deny fathers their constitutional rights to their children.
Welcome to the Examiners, Teri! Wish I'd known you were here earlier!
Thanks but no thanks. As the data shows, mostly men kill other men, women and their children.
See www.FamilyLawCourts.com/kids.html
Not that California judges mind. See www.ElkinsTaskForce.org
So, by your line-of-reasoning, does that mean that men who have not killed others should be denied their rights as fathers?
As the data shows, most women are mentally unstable, and mothers sexually-molest their children more than fathers.
Bonnie, violent men have nothing to do with these daddies who have lost their children with no cause. What you have done, by relating the two, is common among anti-father "protective mother" groups.
It is time to push legislation in all states that equal parenting right derives from the equal rights provision of the Constitution, that deprivation of parenthood with cause is cruel and unusual punishment, and that imprisonment for failure to pay child support (just or unjust) violate basic Constitutional rights.
I have deleted some comments of a false and personal nature. Although I encourage the spirit of debate and don’t expect all readers to agree with me, I will delete all false comments about me.
Why is there a fr movement ? Same reason there are b movements. When u r full of it-have to have a place to go - -
Lupa, I'd word that this way:
Why is there a fr movement ? Same reason there are b movements. When u r fed up with it-have to have a place to go - -
Hello Teri,
I commend you for using your talent of writing articles to help children have the opportunity to be loved by both parents. It is a child's wish to be loved by both of his/her parent's regardless of what the parent's think of each other. It may take some time and a lot of effort for parents to have equal justice within the courts, but all parents can begin today by having a greater involvement within their own children's lives. With the cuts to education, it is now more important for dads to set aside our macho images and step up to help out in our children's education. There is nothing wrong with us dads spending time, even if it is " parenting time" volunteering in our children's classroom.
Victor Stark, Certified Social Worker
www.OneFathersLove.com
Past Male Involvement Representative (MIR) for Head Start
Past SETA Policy Council member for the Community Advocating Male Involvement Program (C.A.M.P.)
Not all men have a "macho" image.
Why the heck would Obama and Biden read something as silly as the Examinier? They'd be better off reading the Enquirer.
It is simply amazing that you can state that restraining orders are handed out like candy. What do you say to Jessica Gonzalez then? To inform the readers who Jessica is, please search for her. You will discover that her city police department REFUSED to get her children back when presented with a restraining order which had clear terms regarding visitation set out for the abusive father. This father then killed those children.
We coudl even discuss Bruce Pardo - the Santa killer. Or the professor in GA who killed his stbx wife and her friends while the chidlren were sitting in his vehicle. He then drove the chidlren to a neighbor's house, drove to an excluded woody spot, dug a hole, buried himself and killed himself in his own grave.
These are just a few of the many examples of fathers who felt they had the right to joint custody. We could discuss Darren Mack who stabbed his exwife while their daughter was downstairs. There are many of these dads that are not discussed
An exception does NOT make a rule. Everything you've said, I could quote an equal number of women who did equally horrible things to their children and ex-husbands.
And, the fact is, ROs are handed out like Halloween Candy. I know because, after I CALLED THE LITTLETON, COLORADO POLICE DEPT on my ex-wife for DV, the court gave her a PO against me.
Try explaining the logic of that one, Mz Petunia Pigg!
Also what do you say to those children who have been sexually abused, those children who have witnessed the mother being abused - sometimes quite severely - by the father? Do their desires to not see dad count? Are they being alienated? Or is it normal for a child to want to experiment and this should all be blamed on the child? Or in the case of the abused mother, it was partly her fault because she yelled or maybe got upset because dad was not contributing? Or maybe she got fed up with the abuse and fought back, thus making her violent also?
What is the answer Teri? Are all children who do not want to see or spend time with the father being alienated?
We all wait with baited breath.
Articles such as this give me hope that things may change before my 9-year-old son's wife someday sues him for divorce and pushes him to the fringes of his children's lives.
Finally!! Someone is shining some light to the unbelievable human rights abuses that fathers suffer today.
The legal system is so biased against men, it has become morally grotesque.
Thank you Teri for being a voice for fathers, children and families; a voice against greed, abuse and sexism.
I fully support a Fathers Rights
Thanks Teri for the article. Anyone can pick and choose both specific mothers and fathers who have committed atrocities to their children. It is sad to think that some people believe that this makes up the majority of parents. Most parents care deeeply for their children and want maximum involvement in the rearing of their children, something that is protected by the constitution...the right to educcation and rear your own children. Sadly, family courts have alienated one parent from their child via custodial-noncustodial relationships and "visitation" agreements. Before a divorce or separation, both parents had equal rights to their children. It is sad that the court has the "will" to take away one parents rights. In this era, that happens to be the father. Until a person is falsely accused of DV and been separated from their child, that understand will not understand.
I greatly enjoyed this article. I am, however, having trouble finding information about fathers who are denied the right to be a father at birth. Putative fathers who WANT to be fathers, and are asking for the responsibility. I know it is not the "norm", but it really does happen.
Does anyone have links or information they are willing to share? That would be of great help to our family. WV is very hard to find information on.
Thank You!
Agreed! Thanks so much for a tremendous article, and even as such, it's only the tip of the iceberg.
Nevermind that mothers along and in conjunction with their NEW partners/spouses are responsible for the overwhelming majority of cases of neglect, malnourishment, injury, and death to children.
In world that has SO MANY people like those in this very thread who live their lives believing that men are always perpetrators and women are always victims - their minds won't be changed. They will toss out individual cases like they have here and pretend that represents the entirety of a gender.
It's a shame. It's ignorant. It's narrow-minded. It's fallacious.
Mister-M
The Psycho Ex-Wife
www.thepsychoexwife.com
Keturah, I wrote about my son's journey in this article: associatedcontent.com/article/46611/is_he_the_loser_or_is_he_dad.html and about another unmarried dad, Bill Sharp in this article: associatedcontent.com/article/46613/its_not_your_mothers_fathers_movement.html
Some of the stories I've heard are tragic. Men being forbid from seeing their children, just because the mothers married someone else before the births. And while trying to deal with the grief, they are then ordered to pay child support, for instance.
Thank you for shining the light on this aspect of family rights. It's one I'm passionate about from my own experience.
From what I saw, the turmoil and distress never had to happen. These are parents who successfully co-parent now, and have been doing so for quite some time. I believe they, as well as most parents in America would have from the very beginning if there had been stricter guidelines in the family court process.
Serial rapists and serial murderers are almost always men targeting women almost exclusively.
If you doubt what I am saying then tell me why women make up 1/2 the population, 3/4 of the work force, but make only 1/10th of our male counterparts, only own 1/100th of property and are more likely to be owned?
Why do we not have an equal voice in public deliberations and in the government? Why when these things happen virtually nothing is done about it?
Domestic abuse is often made into love gone wrong, the more "feminized" the victim's become, the less hesitant other men will intervene and the more human rights are violated and violence condoned.
Women's violations become the sneering wound of a "victim" pinned in by quotation marks. Victim's of sexual assault are especially not to be believed, they assume women lie.
Not enforcing equality in the law of the family is thus an official means of keeping women second-class citizens. Behind all law is someone's story - and someo
Behind all law is someone's story - and someone's blood. Women are violated in many ways men are not, or rarely not, but what happens to women escapes the human rights net. The more abuses there are the more they don't fit. Man's inhumanity to woman is ignored.
Violence against women is systematically tolerated by our government. It's time to ask the justice system, what are you doing? Women need a voice in the creating new gender specific law. To the women who work in the law, what is the meaning of your presence in a system that keeps women down and out? You're let into the system on the condition you abide by it's norms. If you do abide by it's norms, most womens lives will not change they'll continue in the cycle of dependence, poverty, forced labor, forced sexual access, and for many death. Women will be used and abused until they're used up. Women will be born, degraded and die.
You can not ignore law's ability to do nothing while looking like it is doing something.
American women protest domestic battery and romantic love as an excuse for killing them. The law cares more for men blushing then women bleeding. Law should reflect reality.
Humans own property, most women can't; more often they are property. Humans are equal because they can kill; women are socialized not to kill and are punished, not glorified, when they do. Humans consent to a regime or leave it; women have no voice to dissent, no place to go and no means of leaving.
The psychology of a battered woman: the only reality is the power of the abuser; keeping your head low keeps you alive.
No society systematically traffics men as men for sex, rapes men at will and with impunity, forces men to reproduce, batters men in homes, sometimes to death, on an everyday basis, pays men less than women or presents male sexuality in demeaning ways for entertainment and profit on a large scale.
Legal Watch Dog.... i think i love you. Men have no right when it comes to reproduction in my opinion. Ill do what i like with my own body thank you!
legalwatchdog, if you want to write about a different subject, why not start a blog? my article was about men (and some women) who have had their human and civil parental rights violated. women in countries where they aren't allowed to own property, have absolutely nothing to do with my article.
here in America there are more women getting college degrees than men.
here in America 1/3 of all serious domestic violence victims are men.
I am a father whos ex kidnapped my son and went accross the country to be with someone she met on the internet, she wiped out the bank account and robbed my father for thousands of dollars. The courts did nothing, now I have to pay for all the travel and 500 a month in child support. I am struggling to make ends meet, and she is driving around in Las Vegas with a BMW. The courts are biased and cruel.
Thank you Teri, Ive read some of your articles and I am glad to see someone that sees what is going on out there. Its things like inequality that really is ruining this country. The juvenile justice system does not care about the children, only a means to extract money (mostly) from men to give to women. The court I had the unlucky priveledge wont even stop the support payments while I have my son for the summer....obviously it has nothing to do with him and everything to do with her.
Mz Petunia Pigg, maybe we should talk about all the mothers who dump their kids in a dumpster, or the ones who drown and murder their children as well? I see you are all about demonizing men and fathers. I am a father, and a good one at that. The truth is on both sides there are jerks and people who have no business with children. How about the women who abduct the kids from the father then demand money from them?
"Legal Watch Dog.... i think i love you. Men have no right when it comes to reproduction in my opinion. Ill do what i like with my own body thank you!"
Umm, it takes two to make a child, so if you really feel that way, you should disolve the child and give the sperm back to its rightful owner then?
"Why do we not have an equal voice in public deliberations and in the government? Why when these things happen virtually nothing is done about it?"
You do, where have you been? There are so many laws on the books against rape and the such, men get the short end of the stick in almost any "domestic dispute" because of the "frailty" of the women who are just as abusive as any man.
"The psychology of a battered woman: the only reality is the power of the abuser; keeping your head low keeps you alive."
Alot of false allegations happen all the time because that is the only way the woman can "win" the argument and have the last word. It is used and abused to get their way in many instances I have personally witnessed, get off your high horse.
For you women out there that think you have a right to choose who the father is, your wrong, you made the bed (literally) and if you had any honor, you would find a way to make sure the child has equal access to their father. Its not up to you to decide that for the child, when that child grows up and realizes what you have done, you may regret it, and you can never go back and change it...ever. The father has just as much right to the child as you do.
ME:
"Umm, it takes two to make a child, so if you really feel that way, you should disolve the child and give the sperm back to its rightful owner then? "
im sorry but your wrong. First, it takes a woman and sperm to make a child. the man does not have to be present. Second, all that the man has to invest in bringing a child into this world is his sperm, which im sure is no sweat of his back. The woman, however, must sacrifice her body for pretty much the 9 months it takes plus about a year after that, and your trying to tell me the man has just as much say over the child as the mother. You have got to be kidding me. Men are just sperm doners, and nothing more. SORRY!
ME:
Another thing, i didnt know my father growing up and neither did my brothers. He tried to have a relationship with us later, but he just turned out to be one big disappointment, just like we always knew he would be. Your situation is sad, i will give you that, but dont think that all women have F**** over men and children, because it is entirly the other way around.
@Teri
Fine piece, shedding light on a subject too long kept in the dark.
@LegalWatchDog
An amazingly short sighted diatribe, full of skewed realities that build walls and tear down bridges. But great for sound bites that trigger the ire of the uninformed.
Half of domestic violence is committed by women. The lions share of child abuse that results in physical injury and death to children is at the hands of women.
The only psychology you illuminate is the psychology of a battered public which has been pummeled with disinformation and demagoguery for forty years.
Nothing in that article diminishes or denies problems women face, but rather educates us that abuse, by individuals or the system, is not a boys or girls club, but a cultural tragedy that needs balance and thoughfulness to be addressed, not sexist rants by those who imagine that the ills of the world can be explained by simply pointing a finger at men.
thanks paul. love your videos. (avoiceformen.com) teri
To the woman who said men are just sperm donors and nothing more...I am absolutely amazed at the ignorance in that statement. I am a single mother. My daughters' father abandoned them when they were very young and has only recently made contact by email and phone (after 9 years of being out of the picture and on the run from child support enforcement). My son's father immediately accepted my daughters as his own, and although we are no longer together, to this day he still sees all 3 several times during the week and every other weekend. A father has just as much right to their child as the mother (as long as they aren't abusive, an alcoholic, or a user, in my opinion) and i believe that it is detrimental to the child's well being that the father and mother are equally involved in their upbringing. I applaud all fathers who are there for their children. For someone to say that a man plays only the role of sperm donor is downright disgusting, appalling and seriously disturbing. SORRY!!
Error *detrimental*
Replacement word *important*
@ Paul:
For the most part, the ills of the world can be explained by pointing the finger at men. Where have you been?
you can think opinions are disgusting and appalling, but maybe you should start looking into why you put men on such a pedestal. I mean i assume you have 3 or 4 kids, but yet you havent had a man stick with you seeing as both fathers left you.... Just somthing to think about.
My husband, who has a life-threatening medical condition, has been repeatedly harassed and jailed by his ex-wife and the Lake County Court in Illinois. He was arrested yesterday, with no hope of paying the $25,000 ransome and has had his medications withheld by the Kane County Jail. He has not been allowed visitation since 1996. His youngest child is 20 years old.
Legal Watch Dog says "Not enforcing equality in the law of the family is thus an official means of keeping women second-class citizens."
The father's rights movement working for is equal rights. You make the point eloquently, thank you. If you truly believe in equal rights you will join our movement. Of course, you don't really mean gender blind equal rights do you?
The Men's Movement comes down to this "Equal Protection Under the Law" and the entire framework of the US Constitution. This does not exist in today's family courts. Family Judges and family law legislators have removed themselves from woking within the US Constitution. Their laws, practices and
procedures are skewed in favor of mother. They believe themselves to be
special (above the law) in order to persecute fathers. Deny men of their children, strip them financially and deprive them of prosperity, in many cases criminalize them. In a system that does not work under the framework of the Constitution. No one wants violence against women in any shape way or form. However, fair practice and procedures must be in place for a just decision. Victimizing the innocent in a hearing that prejudice will not help anyone. What the mens movement is after is equality in the family and in the court room. No exceptions, no subjectivity and no nonsense. A sword that cuts both ways. Equal means equ
Thank heaven above for this article and for the discussion that it creates.
Children need both parents.
To every woman who reads this, please offer your support. Women speaking out will make a difference.
All of us can agree that moms are absolutely vital to children.
Unfortunately (and I speak from sad experience), we dads watch sadly and helplessly as our own children lose their precious fatherhood time. Children are growing us without Dads in their lives thanks to a family law system that has made being male the sure loss option.
This is not about who wins. This is about who loses: all the fatherless children of divorce.
Let's change it. It will even be better for the women involved, as they the children benefit so much.
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