Sanford L. Braver with Diane O'Connell, Divorced Dads: Shattering the
Myths (New York: Jeremy P. Tarcher/Putnam, 1998). ISBN 0-87477-862-X.
$24.95.
In just the last two years a series of groundbreaking books has come
off the presses which taken together herald a new public awareness of
the most massive civil rights abuse of our time. First was Jeffery
Leving's Fathers' Rights (Basic Books, 1997), a legal manual and polemic
that confronted the stark gender bias in family courts. Next was Robert
Seidenberg's The Father's Emergency Guide to Divorce-Custody Battle (JES
Books, 1997), an even more militant expos�and manifesto that, not
stopping with simple gender discrimination, charged family courts with
operating a profit-making racket in children. Adrienne Burgess'
Fatherhood Reclaimed (Vermilion, 1997) and Cynthia Daniels' Lost
Fathers: The Politics of Fatherlessness in America (St Martin's, 1998)
made the subject academically respectable, especially on the political
left.
Now comes Sanford Braver's Divorced Dads, in its demystification and
mass appeal perhaps the most explosive of all. The virtues of this book
need hardly be emphasized to readers of this journal. One by one, Braver
demolishes the myths that have been used to justify judicial child
stealing, forced divorce, coerced child support, and mass summary
incarcerations: the "deadbeat dad," the "no show dad," the child
molesting father, the violent husband, the alleged bias against women in
family courts, and above all, the father who dumps his wife and abandons
his children - each is exposed for the fabrication it is.
It is difficult to overestimate the importance of this book. These
myths are among the most pernicious and destructive of our time. They
have been used to justify the greatest denial of basic civil rights
since segregation: the arbitrary and groundless stealing of children
from their fathers. They are behind the most massive and most
institutionalized witch hunt in American history, one actively
perpetrated by some of the highest officeholders in the land, including
the President, the Attorney-General, and leading members of Congress
from both parties: the pursuit of private citizens who have been
convicted of nothing under the label of "deadbeat dads." And they have
contributed to the most destructive social trend of our time: the
enormous growth of fatherless homes and the increase in fatherless
children - a problem which has in turn been directly linked to virtually
every major social problem of our age, including violent crime, drug and
alcohol abuse, teen pregnancy, and truancy. In three major areas of
public policy therefore -- civil rights, civil liberties, and social
policy - the appearance of this book is a major event.
Especially noteworthy is Braver's direct challenge to such advocates
of "responsible fatherhood" as David Popenoe and David Blankenhorn.
These writers, while sounding the alarm on father absence, insist
against all evidence that the only kind of father absence is what
fathers "choose." Braver devotes an entire chapter and then some to
showing that it is overwhelmingly wives who initiate divorce (though
unfortunately with no breakdown of the even larger proportion who are
mothers) and courts that routinely throw fathers out of their families
without any grounds whatever.
Perhaps the most eloquent testimony to the ease by which involuntary
separation from his children can strike any father at any time is
provided by a father whose wife "had an affair with some guy from her
office." "She left me for him and the two of them now live with my kid,
and there was nothing I could do to stop it. My lawyer laughed when I
said, 'But she's the one who did wrong!'" His testimony could come from
any one of millions of fathers: I want to tell all the smug dads out
there: This could happen to you. You have no rights - none that will be
enforced, anyway. Your kid who you love so much can be ripped away from
you, and nothing you did in the past can protect that. People think that
if you're basically a good dad, it can't happen to you. But I am proof
that it can.
It can and it does, now in epidemic proportions. The unfathomable
reality is that, with the exception of convicted criminals, no group in
our society has fewer rights than fathers. Not just divorced fathers,
not never-married fathers: fathers.
One significant reservation has less to do with the power and
importance of this book's findings than with some conclusions that might
be drawn from Braver's disproportionately weak prescriptions for reform.
The dust jacket states that "millions of well-intentioned parents,
judges, lawyers, educators, and other caregivers have been repeatedly
and tragically misled" by the myths of the evil father. But here one
does have to wonder who precisely has been doing the misleading. It does
not require a cynic to believe that these groups, however
"well-intentioned," are precisely the ones who are profiting handsomely
from the current system. This is not to suggest that these myths were
originally and intentionally created for this purpose; clearly they have
a number of sources, as Braver recounts. But they now protect an
enormous machine whose operatives have a very concrete financial and
political interest in perpetuating them. The "matrimonial lawyer" whose
"fondest hope is...to force myself and others like me out of business"
may be sincere, but the prediction of a "professional custody evaluator"
that "almost all" of his business would be lost by a presumption of
joint custody leaves little doubt as to which side the bread of family
law practitioners is buttered on.
Against this huge power bloc, Braver's proposed reforms are little
more than a series of socially engineered gadgets: mediation, premarital
and pre-divorce counseling, "education" of parents and judges, and of
course "joint custody." The assumption seems to be that by simply
spreading and inculcating the truth that Braver has discovered, justice
will prevail and the players in the system will see the light and agree
to these sensible changes that are obviously for the good of children.
Yet with the perhaps partial exception of the last, there is little
indication that any of these, even if implemented, would make more than
a marginal impact so long as the gross imbalance of power against
fathers continues. Mediation, to take one example, is now widely touted
as an alternative to litigation. But as Robert Seidenberg observes
sensibly: "With the playing field slanted overwhelmingly in favor of the
mother," mediation is probably "a waste of time and money."
Likewise, the book's main prescription, joint custody, does have some
potential to keep fathers involved with their children and may have a
significant deterrent effect on divorce. Yet in practice any father with
only joint "legal" custody (which seems to be what Braver is mostly
recommending) will tell you it is hardly worth the paper it is written
on. As one father is quoted in this book: "Joint legal custody only
means my ex-wife has to consult me before doing whatever the hell she
wants with my child!"
What all Braver's prescriptions (including joint custody) have in
common is that they would preserve the power of the courts and police to
separate children from a parent who has done nothing wrong. So long as
this wedge is allowed in, the essentially unlimited power of the courts
to run a family by fiat will continue. Mandated mediation, counseling,
and parental "education" may sound sensible and benign as alternatives
to litigation (though the last has something of an Orwellian tone), but
they are really alternative forms of patronage to be dispensed by judges
to favored court hangers-on. Mediators, counselors, and therapists are
all players in the enormous patronage pyramid at whose apex sits the
judge. (Seidenberg describes it as a circus of which the judge is
"ringmaster.")
The hard truth that must be confronted is that this is not just a
sociological or a psychological or a legal problem: it is above all a
political problem, which is to say it is a problem of power. No number
of social scientific studies can substitute for that grim reality, and
denying it may create harmful illusions. When we start calling for
measures of social engineering such as "counseling" and "education" (not
to mention "anger management") to remedy what are at bottom issues of
power, however touchy-feely it sounds, we are engaged in a very
dangerous form of self-deception. After all, the prospect of
re-education centers and psychiatric prisons as a solution to political
problems is by no means far-fetched in connection with fathers, as this
year's Fathers' Day ordeal of Christopher Robin illustrates.
The significant point about power is not only that it corrupts but
also, as Martin Luther King repeatedly proclaimed, that it never yields
willingly. Fathers need to remember that their battle will not be won by
"studies," however scientific or favorable to their plight. It will only
be won by organizing, agitating, and speaking out against an injustice.
At only one point does Braver broach what may be the only truly
effective remedy - as well as the only morally and constitutionally
defensible position that respects both family integrity and the Bill of
Rights: to deny custody to a parent who deserts the family and takes the
children without grounds. Braver does not push this, for understandable
reasons (and he deserves credit for even mentioning it). Yet it is
hardly extreme. As indicated by the parents he quotes, it is what most
people seem to assume to be the current law.
The only counter-argument he can come up with is that this might
result in "miserable mothers" caught in "unhappy and unfulfilling
marriages." Mustn't have that. Much more sensible apparently to destroy
the homes of innocent children, throw their fathers in jail, and create
a police state to enforce it all.
The power equation not only relates to the court system and the
entire custody machine but thus extends to the marital relationship
itself, as Braver amply demonstrates. "The first assertive thing I think
I ever did in my life was to take the initiative to leave him," Braver
quotes one mother. "What a sense of power!"
This intoxication with power that the courts share with mothers is
even more extensively (and sympathetically) documented in a book
published last year by Ashton Applewhite, whose title says it all:
Cutting Loose: Why Women Who End Their Marriages Do So Well
(HarperCollins, 1987). Conversely, Braver's most eloquent chapter is on
the "disenfranchised dad" who has been "disempowered": the father who
feels he has no role, no authority, no say, no place in the lives of his
children, and so drops out altogether. The last words in the book
envision "a future in which fathers are empowered by the courts,
mothers, and society to remain positive forces in their children's
lives."
But fathers cannot and will not be "empowered" by others. By
definition, the only way to be empowered is to empower oneself. And this
means political action. If fathers sit back and wait for legal tinkering
to restore their proper place in the family they will wait forever,
because it is simply not possible. In the meantime they will continue to
lose the respect of everyone, including their own children.
Another truism of the civil rights movement was that no
"disenfranchised" group has ever been enfranchised by someone else; they
must do it for themselves. For it is in the very process of claiming
their just rights -- and if necessary doing so in the face of
overwhelming odds and by paying a high price -- that the disenfranchised
gain the respect of the world by demonstrating that they can shoulder
the responsibilities that go with them. (Feminism may be the exception
that proves the rule, the one group that never had to do this.)
No, we are not guilty of the sins that are imputed to us, and books
like this can help establish that fact. But what will establish it even
more effectively is standing up and speaking out against this injustice
and paying the price that entails. Being a responsible father after all
requires essentially the same qualities as being an effective political
activist. Both demand sacrifice, selflessness, courage, patience, and
perseverance. We will get back our children (and their respect) when we
are active participants in the political arena. They will never be ours
so long as we remain passive supplicants in secretive, bureaucratic
courts.
To say all this in no wise compromises the importance of this book,
and it would hardly be fair to expect Braver to say it. And not just
because as a psychologist he does not have the perspective of a
political activist; on the contrary, the realities of getting a book
like this published are such that political prudence may well dictate
certain silences.
But the rest of us must not remain silent or expect hand-outs from
the holders of power, however enlightened by social science. We must
speak truth to power by insisting that taking a child away from any
parent (even an imperfect one) who has done nothing legally actionable
is both morally repulsive and a violation of the child's and the
parent's constitutional rights. We must remember that the Bill or Rights
was written for a reason: to have a system of protections and remedies
against precisely the kind of rapacious abuse of power that is now
directed at fathers. We can sit back and hope for this massive machine
to see the light and voluntarily relinquish its stranglehold on our
families, or we can organize politically to demand our just rights and
those of our children. There is no other choice.
Stephen Baskerville teaches political science at Howard University.
This review appears in print in the coming issue of Fathers & Families.
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