Defiant Dads: Fathers' Rights Activists in America

1. A Coming Revolution in Fathers’ Rights?

A local fathers’ rights group, Superdads, is meeting in a business office in a relatively highly populated city in the West.1 It is around 8:00 p.m., and the office’s employees have long since left. Juan, a middle-aged man with a broad smile and intense eyes, is the charismatic leader of this group. A total of eight racially diverse people, including Juan, are gathered around a small conference table. One of the eight is a woman. It is a hot summer day, and group members have been describing their problems with the family court system for more than an hour.2 Finally a man who has been quiet up until this point breaks his silence. 1. All group names in the vignettes that introduce each chapter as well as the individual respondent names that appear in this book are pseudonyms, as explained in appendix A. 2. Throughout this book, I will frequently use the words “group members” and “fathers” interchangeably. Indeed, the majority of individuals participating in these groups are men. However, readers should also keep in mind that many women are actively involved in these groups as well (as in the meeting described here), and these women also have much to critique about contemporary family policy in the United States. My generic use of the term “fathers” should not be understood as a way to marginalize women’s voices or patterns of participation. 1 A Coming Revolution in Fathers’ Rights? 2 Defiant Dads Superdads Member 1: What are fathers’ rights groups doing to change the fucked up rules that favor women? Juan: The Violence Against Women Act clearly protects women. State by state, however, things are improving. There is one Internet support group that is very helpful. But in our state, it is primarily a select group of assemblymen and state senators that continually block legislation and hold up fathers’ rights in the Unites States. (Our organization’s) problem is that we have no money. Superdads Member 1: I know what we should do. We should get the unions involved. Juan: The problem is, we don’t have the money to influence voting. Superdads Member 1: We should be able to change this. Juan: The National Organization for Women is highly funded. Women have their shit together. Superdads Member 1: We don’t have equal rights. Juan: If you accept your life as a noncustodial parent, then you are in 2nd place. Face it, most men give up custody. Superdads Member 2: We go through this entire process in ignorance ....But the system isn’t fair. How is it that we are taking this? I am ready for action. Juan: We need to take action. Our state laws have not kept up with this trend of divorce. Petitions might help, but you have to make sure that people are registered voters. Superdads Member 2: This system stinks. Sometimes I want to drop out of my children’s lives. In scenes like this all across America, angry, dispossessed fathers are demanding rights. They argue that since the breakdown of their own families, they have been deprived of their most basic parental joys: the freedom to love and experience their children in the fullest ways possible . They call themselves fathers’ rights or children’s rights groups, and some of the most prominent ones in the United States include the Children ’s Rights Council, Dads Against Discrimination, the National Congress for Fathers and Children, and the Center for Children’s Justice.3 3. In contrast to the group names that are all pseudonyms in the introductory vignettes of each chapter, the names of the groups listed here, in a footnote in chapter 4, A Coming Revolution in Fathers’ Rights? 3 These groups bring together mostly men in small venues to speak their minds about the state of the American family and, more specifically, to articulate their objections to current child support and child custody policies. Indeed, their grievances are manifold. But they all start from the same place of frustration: the stories of what happened to them and their families. On the individual level, their personal histories are compelling. A father reports that he has not seen his two sons in ten years as his ex-wife continually moves the children from school district to school district in order to avoid detection. Another describes the boarding house room that he can...