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parental rights for biological fathers

12:36 / 22.02.02

Ive noticed, here in the states, that it seems single moms have near unlimited rights as parents, while the fathers rights are not only secondary but often are ignored altogether (unless, of course, we are talking about people who have the resources for access to good legal representation, which is another matter entirely). men are expected to pay child support regardless of the role they play in the childs life, and the women seem to be almost always handed custody without burden of proof of ability, while a man has to prove the woman is wholly unfit in order to receive custody

please know that these are only my observations and experiences – Im not really too terribly familiar with the laws in place. and I realize that there are exceptions to this, and that a lot of these rules are in place to keep men from impregnating women and running off free of responsibility - but what about the good, responsible fathers?

11:43 / 25.02.02

I don't know about the US but here in the UK there are problems with rights for fathers. For instance, if the mother unreasonably refuses access then the father can be left with little redress since courts are reluctant to take the child from her.

A symptom of gender stereotypes being enforced?

17:01 / 25.02.02

I was walking down a busy central city street, and an Angry Father's Group was shouting about the way fathers are treated in the Famly Court so far as custody of children is concerned.
And, that's fair. We see to have this view that women are naturally designed to parent, as it's all part of God's Great Plan, or something. The rest of the Plan is breaking down. Women don't have to just limit themselves to cooking, cleaning, nursing, teaching and nuture-based jobs like that, and men don't have to be the grunt coated providers.
And, sometimes the gender will not dictate the best parent. Easy. If we take the step of letting same-sex couples adopt children, then we are assuming that gay men can raise kids. Not because they are more feminine, but because it's not a gender thing.
But, some men are pretty poopy parents. But, a family court judge should know what to look out for.

20:09 / 26.02.02

look, i'm all for breaking down gender stereotypes, but too often the "father's rights" crowd are really not interested in reforming the basic patriarchal structures that helped CREATE, ironically, the situation where women are assumed to be the more "natural" parent. This arose during the nineteenth century in the US: very slowly, over the course of that century, women's rights groups helped to make this claim of women's natural abilities in the face of the fact that up til that time under common law, fathers had complete and total rights to the custody of children.

Courts, however, are not always the best place to decide who will be the better parent: in the US (not in the UK--and I know this for a fact) one's rights to be a parent are often determined by one's willingness AND ability to support the child financially. In a context where women still make only $.70 to the dollar that a man makes and where women often lose more income after a divorce than men do ... the scales may automatically tip to the male. And if we add into the mix that, being wealthier, the men will probably also be able to afford better lawyers, and you see the problem.

I have known decent men who have been denied custody even when their spouse was an inadequate parent or even a problematic parent. But simply altering this one issue without addressing the deeper roots of the problem could make matters worse...