The Health of
Fatherhood
by
Gordon E. Finley, Ph.D.
As we look
forward to the quantity and quality of our lives in the 21st
century we face an unprecedented challenge. As a nation, it is critical
for all men, women, and children to cease denying the silent epidemic of
the demise of fathers from the lives of our children and acknowledge the
consequences for both children and fathers. Here are the horns of the
dilemma we are facing.
On the one hand, we have a vast empirical research literature showing that
both children and fathers benefit on almost all conceivable outcome
indices when they are involved in each others lives as the children are
growing up and being guided by their fathers into adulthood and beyond.
On the other hand, we have the following widely accepted contemporary
demographics: one third of children are born to women who are not married
at the time of delivery (and presumably do not have a father involved in
the child’s life on a continual basis); 50% of first marriages end in
divorce and another 17% end in permanent separation yielding an effective
two thirds marital dissolution rate for first marriages; the divorce rate
for second and subsequent marriages is about 10% higher; and the
cookie-cutter formula used by most states grants physical custody to
mothers about 85% of the time with the father being awarded infrequent
visitation along with child support and alimony obligations.
Along with these demographics, we also have a vast empirical research
literature showing that the outcomes for both the children and fathers of
divorce along with never-married fathers unquestionably are negative as
compared to the children and fathers of intact marriages. The negative
outcomes for fathers of divorce specifically include deep depression,
alcohol abuse, substance abuse, joblessness, and a sharp rise in suicide
rates.
Focusing more narrowly on Men’s Health Week beginning June 12 and ending
on Fathers Day June 18, 2006, we are left with the question: What can be
done to improve the lives of children and fathers in 2006? While there
likely are as many proffered solutions as there are authors, I wish to
focus on three.
First, by any public health standard, the one third non-married birth rate
represents an epidemic worthy of intervention. As a point of comparison,
the rate was 4% in the 1950’s. What this comparison illustrates is that
the non-married birth rate is a social behavior which is subject to change
by changing social conditions and political activism -- such as the sexual
revolution, the women’s movement, and welfare incentives all of which
began in the 1960’s. By the same token, the rate can be reduced by
changing social attitudes and financial incentives.
Second, a minimum of two out of three divorces are initiated by wives. In
my view, this is because mothers get all of the marbles in divorce.
Specifically, and with some state to state variability, mothers not only
get the children (about 85% of the time) but they also get half of the
marital assets (sometimes mostly the father’s assets) plus the father’s
income to support her and the children often in the former marital home
along with the tax benefits associated with the children. By contrast,
the father gets to pay for and furnish an apartment and, if lucky, is
awarded alternate weekends with his children, perhaps an evening in
between, and perhaps half a summer and other holidays. Critically, when
the children are with the father he must feed, shelter, clothe, and
entertain them with whatever he has left over after he continues to pay
child-support and alimony to his ex-wife.
Clearly, all the current legislative incentives to divorce belong to the
mother and none to the father. The solution to increasing father-child
relationships post-divorce -- and as a critical fringe benefit to reduce
the divorce rate as the incentives to divorce disappear -- is to change
existing state family law on three fronts: (a) Establish a presumption of
equal shared parenting; and (b) establish equal financial responsibility
for both mothers and fathers along with legally mandated financial
accountability for both; and (c) change the child support models from
income sharing models to child cost sharing models.
Third, the greatest threat to intact families in America today is the
Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) and particularly the unfettered granting
of groundless ex-parte restraining orders against fathers which removes
the father from his home, his children, and requires him to immediately
begin making child support payments or face debtor’s prison. VAWA is –
for women – an exquisitely and intricately well-crafted man eliminating
machine the full scope of which is beyond this brief piece but the details
of which may be found in a series of Special Reports and Op-Eds at (
