Fathers Rights myths

Fathers Rights myths blown apart… So there!  Thank Goddess that there are people out there that don’t fall for their b.s….
 
Our family mythsStaffSunday, March 26, 2006
Families have never been perfect, says Stephanie Coontz, author and director of research at the Council on Contemporary Families in Chicago.
Yet many of us still perpetuate the myths, says Coontz, one of several family scholars scheduled to speak at a free public conference Thursday and Friday at Emory University.
In a different place, in a different time --- we believe --- we were closer, kinder, more organized and self-sufficient. Truth, however, tends to be air-brushed with time.
And Coontz --- who cites seven key family myths --- hopes that parents will re-evaluate what they see in their own homes against a more accurate portrait of life through the ages.
1. Families used to be harmonious and stable until modern individualism undermined their solidarity.
For most of history, families looked stable from the outside because the husband and father controlled all the property and could enforce his will through physical violence. Even after wife and child abuse became illegal, most states had "Head and Master Laws" until the 1970s [emphasis added], giving husbands the final say over many family decisions.
2. Parents today don't sacrifice for their kids or spend the kind of time with them that parents did in the past.
Families didn't use to save up to send their kids to school. They pulled their children out of school to work for the family. Most mothers and fathers today --- even in two-earner families --- spend more time with their kids and invest more in their education than ever before.
3. Couples don't work at their relationship the way they used to.
For thousands of years, marriage wasn't about love but about raising capital, sealing business deals or military alliances, expanding the family labor force, and reinforcing male authority [emphasis added]. It was only 200 years ago that we invented the radical idea of marrying for love. Today a marriage that works can be fairer, more intimate and more loving than most couples of the past ever dared to dream.
4. The male-breadwinner family was the traditional model.
Until the 20th century, most wives not only brought home half the bacon but also raised the pig, helped butcher it and took it to market. It wasn't until the 1920s that a bare majority of kids grew up in a home where the wife wasn't working beside her husband in a farm or business and the kids were at school instead of working on farms or in factories. That family faded during the Depression and World War II, made a comeback in the '50s, but was a minority again by the end of the 1970s.
5. People are much more tolerant of nonmarital sex.
Premarital sex is much more accepted than in the past, but disapproval of coerced sex and underage sex is much higher than it used to be. Until the 1880s, the age of consent for girls was 10, 11 or 12 in most states --- 7 in Delaware. Marital rape was not considered a crime until the 1980s [emphasis added]. And the percentage of people who believe it is OK to be sexually unfaithful in a marriage has fallen over the past 40 years.
6. Divorce rates began to rise only after the 1950s.
Conservative myth: Divorce rates started rising because of the cultural revolution of the 1960s.
Liberal myth: Divorce rates were a result of the economic stress on families that began during the 1980s.
Rising divorce rates were an instant side effect of the growing emphasis on married love. As soon as people began to marry for love, they began to demand the right to leave a marriage that felt loveless [emphasis added].
7. Traditional families always "stood on their own two feet" and never needed help from the government.
In the 1950s, 40 percent of young men starting families were eligible for veterans' benefits. Thousands of working-class men got an education or training for middle-class jobs and were able to buy homes because of those benefits. Plus, the government paid 90 percent of the costs of massive highway projects that opened up suburbia to home buyers and provided blue-collar workers with jobs that paid a family wage. Today's families receive far less government support, even though job security and real wages are falling.
Source: Stephanie Coontz, professor of history and family studies at Evergreen State College and director of research at the Council on Contemporary Families
Single Fathers

Scott Coltrane
In both single-father and two-parent families, American men are taking more responsibility for the daily aspects of parenting and housework, but they still have a long way to go.
In the majority of two-parent families, fathers and mothers still perform different tasks (mothers cook, clean, wash, shop, and do child care; fathers take out the trash, mow the lawn, and sometimes play with the kids). In single father households, in contrast, men's family work looks a lot like women's. Parenting requires on-the-job training, and a growing number of single fathers are proving that they can do the job. The challenge ahead is for fathers in two-parent families to follow their lead.
ON THE NUMBERS:From 1990 to 2000, the increase in the number of single mothers was more than double the increase in the number of single fathers. The percentage increase for single moms (about 20%) sounds less than the 62% for single dads, but 6 of 7 single parents are still mothers. We have seen an increase in single fatherhood because fathers are more likely to be awarded custody by the courts and because it is culturally more acceptable for men to do the job [emphasis added]. The increase seems large because there were so few children living with single fathers in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s (1.5, 1.3, and 1.1 % of all children respectively) . It was not until the 1980s that the proportion of children living with single fathers surpassed the levels common in the earlier part of the twentieth century (2.5-2.8% from 1890-1940s; 3.1% in 1990, 2.6% in 1996. from CPS and SIPP data on internet). The 1998 CPS data shows an even bigger jump (to 4.4%, with a total of 2.1 million single fathers).
How the pro-marriage movement harms children and families: It is naive to believe our society could legally privilege married couples without simultaneously treating unmarried people like second-class citizens. For instance, denying health insurance to domestic partners will force one parent in an unmarried partner farnily to buy expensive individual insurance (resulting in fewer financial resource available for child-related expenses) or go uninsured (increasing the risk that the child will experience the serious illness or death of a parent). Given the growing millions of children and adults living in families that are not defined by marriage, it is essential for policies to recognize the existence of these families in treat them fairly.
Mixed Messages on Marriage -- by Frank FurstenbergFifty years ago, the overwhelming majority of Americansbelieved that anyone who wasn't married by their early 20swas an immature neurotic who would never achieve asuccessful adult existence. Today, according to a pollsponsored by the Network on Adult Transitions funded by theMacArthur Foundation, half of all Americans believe that onecan become a mature, responsible adult withoutmarrying. Many people have ceased to believe that marriageis even essential for its age-old purpose of havingchildren. More than a third of first births in America nowoccur out of wedlock.   Belief in the necessity of marriage has declined for allage groups and in every region of the country. Theonly groups that have substantially increased their supportfor the institution of marriage over the past three decadesare gays and lesbians.   Ironically, however, federal policy is now focused on tryingto promote marriage for individuals hesitant to wedwhile moving to permanently deny marriage to gays andlesbians so eager to take their vows that they travelhalfway across the country and stand in line for days. TheBush Administration has committed $1.5 billion to promotemarriage for low-income heterosexuals, and who-knows-howmuch in the effort to pass a constitutional amendmentbarring gay couples from marriage.[...]
For heterosexuals, the President's marriage program islargely about persuading low-income people that they wouldbe better off if they got married. But most low-incomepeople already agree that marriage is a desirablestate. They hesitate to marry for practical reasons, becausethey and/or their partners may not be able to support afamily. They believe -- and social science backs them up --that a stable marriage requires stable employment withdecent wages for both partners. Yet there is nothing in theadministration's proposal to help young people cope with thestresses of working minimum-wage jobs with no benefits, orprovide them with the educational opportunities that are thekey to a secure future in modern America.[...]
 Forty percent of American marriages, demographersestimate, will end in divorce. And research shows that ratesof marital conflict and divorce are even higher than thisamong couples under economic stress. Even if theAdministration is successful in achieving its goal ofgetting more people to marry, their accomplishment mighthave a perverse effect: driving up the divorce rate. Manyfamily scholars predict this outcome unless couples get morehelp from a government that has become stingier and stingierwith its support for fledgling families.
[...]
  Paradoxically, conservatives may win the battle overexcluding gays from marriage while losing the war becausemore young people may simply find marriage less relevant tothem. If marriage is no longer "cool," then all the hotrhetoric issued by politicians who give lip service to theideal of marriage but do nothing to help people actuallyconstruct stable relationships, will have been for naught.   Media Contact: Frank Furstenberg, fff@sas.upenn.edu