Today is fathers day and some interesting editorials have caught my eye that I'd like to share with my fellow AD members. According to the American Coalition for Fathers and Children, the state of California, when taking a child away from an unfit mother, and upon hearing that a "fit" father is willing and asking to take the child, the father gets the child only 8% of time, thus putting the foster care system above birth fathers. Tragically, the concerns of birth fathers have also been ignored by government bureaucrats, to the detriment of children. From the link above:



Research points out that fathers are important and are an important part of the equation when it comes to raising children.

Fathers Linked to Healthy Families editorial.

Yet, it appears that not everyone shares that view. NOW and other organizations have opposed "shared parenting" bills that would emphasize reuniting children with birth fathers when the father was fit enough to take on the responsibility. There is also a best-selling book titled: How to raise Boys without Men.


Questions for debate:

1.)Why shouldn't the emphasis be on birth fathers having custody rather than shipping kids off to the treacherous and scientifically documented unstable foster care system?

2.)Are our adoption, foster care, and social worker laws and attitudes anti-father?

3.)Are fathers important? Please provide evidence debunking the statistics quoted above. "I think" or "in my opinion" won't cut it here.

4.)To what extent are judges, social workers, counselors, and organizations like NOW responsible for what happened to Kaili Warrington-Sims and others like her when fathers are ignored by the bureaucracy?

1.)Why shouldn't the emphasis be on birth fathers having custody rather than shipping kids off to the treacherous and scientifically documented unstable foster care system?

You have worded this question based on assumption. True enough, the opinion piece you cited would lead us to believe this, too, based on selective statistics. A look at the actual report here's a summary indicates that in 88% percent of the cases, the agency has identified the father. Of those cases, only 28 percent father expressed an interest in child living with him.



I submit that there isn't enough information here to conclude one way or another whether there is or is not an emphasis on birth father custody over the foster care system. It is entirely plausible, reading the stats above, that only 8 percent are fit and/or desire for their children to live with them in the first place.

2.)Are our adoption, foster care, and social worker laws and attitudes anti-father?

I don't have enough information to make that call. I suspect not, however.

3.)Are fathers important? Please provide evidence debunking the statistics quoted above. "I think" or "in my opinion" won't cut it here.

Yes, they are extremely important. I think you've listed enough evidence to indicate that this is the case. Which is why it is so terribly sad that only 28 percent in this study expressed even an interest in their child living with them instead of foster care, Indeed, only 30 percent of the fathers sampled even paid a single visit to their children when they were in foster care and of those most were likely (again, only judging by the study) unfit to parent.

1.)Why shouldn't the emphasis be on birth fathers having custody rather than shipping kids off to the treacherous and scientifically documented unstable foster care system?

There should be an emphasis of either birth parent over some bureaucratic, parenting for money system the government sets up--that includes fathers. The foster care system, while well-intentioned, is full of some of the worst horror stories you will ever hear about. Most foster care parents are good, loving people, but the system can be gamed and has been by those that want money for caring for kids and couldn't give two cents about what type of care their charges are receiving. If there is a willing biological parent, they should be given the benefit of the doubt.

2.)Are our adoption, foster care, and social worker laws and attitudes anti-father?

I think they are. Statistics such as the ones you've provided bear that out. In 1965, the Johnson administration commissioned the "Moynihan Report" on the problems of underclass America. Here's a small part:



Feminists at the time took that as an insult: that women could not raise male children and give them the skills to cope with authority or to give them reasonable expectations of the future. Unfortunately, the intervening decades showed us how prescient Moynihan was.

Unfortunately, the Great Society programs not only ignored Moynihan's warning, they encouraged the very behaviors he warned against. They cut off benefits to welfare mothers if the father lived in the house. Kids living in fatherless homes more than tripled from 1960 to 1995 (5.1 million to 16.5 million).

There has been an active war against the concept of fatherhood by some feminists, including that by Dr. Louise Silverstein who published "Deconstructing the Essential Father" in the "American Psychologist" on Father's Day, 1999. The article is not permitted to be published on the internet by its publisher. Here are some excerpts, however: Selected portions of the Abstract

Google answers has a bevy of links on the effects of single father versus single mother homes.

"85% of prisoners, 78% of high school dropouts, 82% of teenage girls who become pregnant, the majority of drug and alcohol abusers -- all come from single-mother-headed households." The lack of a father hurts kids.

There is some hope, however.

In 1970, 90% of single parent families were single mother families. Today, that is down (slightly) to 80%. Over 2 million single father families are out there in the US.

3.)Are fathers important? Please provide evidence debunking the statistics quoted above. "I think" or "in my opinion" won't cut it here.

See my links above. Fathers are very important.

4.)To what extent are judges, social workers, counselors, and organizations like NOW responsible for what happened to Kaili Warrington-Sims and others like her when fathers are ignored by the bureaucracy?

I find it hard to talk about one case. Of course, in one case there may be a huge number of factors that do not factor into things on a general basis.

What I do find funny is when organization such as NOW intentionally skew things to make it appear that women are the victims of the bias of family court: Fathers Bear the Brunt of Gender Bias in Family Courts