Few family law cases are as heartbreaking as those involving Parental Alienation, where one parent has turned his or her children against the other parent, destroying the loving bonds the children and the target parent once enjoyed. Many of my readers have experienced it in various forms and to varying degrees.

Feminist groups, including the National Organization for Women, contend that Parental Alienation is a myth and a ruse used by abusive fathers to win control of their children in custody cases. To pick one example of many, Helen Grieco, until recently the Executive Director of California NOW, calls Parental Alienation Syndrome a "scam."

(I have never denied that there are fathers who have alienated their own children through their abuse or personality defects, and who attempt to shift the blame to their children’s mothers by falsely claiming PAS. Yet parental alienation is a common, well-documented phenomenon. For example, a longitudinal study published by the American Bar Association in 2003 followed 700 "high conflict" divorce cases over a 12 year period and found that elements of PAS were present in the vast majority of the cases studied.)

Feminist attorney Barry Goldstein, Esq. of New York has been one of the leading advocates for this position, and was the primary attorney in the highly-publicized Genia Shockome case in New York. Shockome, lost custody of her two children, now ages 13 and 11, to her ex-husband, Tim Shockome after a contentious custody battle in which Genia accused Tim of abuse. The Shockome case was widely reported, including this sympathetic article in Newsweek magazine, and Shockome was a popular feminist cause celebre a few years ago.

Goldstein (pictured in a suit & tie alongside Shockome) has worked with or been a member of many if not most of the organizations seeking to discredit Parental Alienation and the fatherhood movement.  He has practiced law in New York for almost three decades, has authored a book on custody cases involving allegations of domestic violence, and is scheduled to speak at the annual The Battered Mothers Custody Conference next week.

And last week Barry Goldstein, Esq. had his head handed to him.

The New York Appellate Division for the Second Judicial Department imposed a staggering five-year suspension of Goldstein for his conduct in the Shockome case. The Court called numerous statements Goldstein made concerning the Shockome case "dishonest, false, or misleading." The Court also criticized Goldstein for misuse of funds in another case he handled.

Regarding the Shockome case, the Court criticized what it called the "pervasive nature of [Goldstein's] deceptive conduct"--conduct which it said included "false accusations" about the case and "noncompliance with multiple court orders." The Court wrote:

On behalf of his client [Genia Shockome], he prepared and filed with this Court a petition for writ of habeas corpus and a petition in a proceeding pursuant to CPLR article 78. These materials contained sworn statements which were dishonest, false, or misleading.

To learn more, see Georgetown Law Center Ethics Counsel Michael S. Frisch's write-up here. To read the Court's decision itself, click here.

Goldstein's fall is a tremendous embarrassment to many of our opponents in the battle to achieve shared parenting, reform family law, and protect children's right to a relationship with both parents after divorce. These include: the New York state chapter of the National Organization for Women; Justice for Children; The Battered Mothers Custody Conference; Stop Family Violence; The Leadership Council; and others.

Of far less significance but still worth noting, the Court's ruling further vindicates my position on the Shockome case--a position for which I was publicly crucified by our feminist opponents. This vindication is nice but not necessary--while Genia's publicly-stated version of the case seemed superficially compelling, anybody taking a good look at the court records in the case as I did would come to similar conclusions.

One of Goldstein's statements that the New York Court cited in disciplining him is his public contention that in the Shockome case "Without an evidentiary hearing or any written explanation, Judge Amodeo took the children from the mother who has raised them and sent them to the abuser." This is false--Judge Amodeo actually bent over backwards to be fair to Shockome, who lost her children to her ex-husband only after repeatedly violating court orders. Moreover, there was no evidence that the ex-husband was an "abuser," and the Court specifically repudiated this accusation.

I discussed the details of the Shockome case at length in my co-authored Shockome Syndrome. As I've noted on several occasions, the major feminist cause celebre custody cases of the past few years have been scams--Genia Shockome, Sadia Loeliger, Bridget Marks, and others.

The latest is the feminist cause celebre custody case Holly Collins parental abduction case. The mother's version of events in this case is also problematic but I won't conclude anything about the case without knowing more about it.

My findings on Shockome can be found here.

I've often discussed the issue of the rights of lesbian “social mothers”–women who agreed to employ a sperm donor so that they could have children with their lesbian partners, who are the biological mothers.

I do believe that children fare best when they have both a mom and a dad, and that fathers offer much to children that mothers don’t provide. However, this is not possible in lesbian couples.

When two lesbians agree to have a child together, and when the child has bonded with both his or her biological mother and his or her social mother, I believe that the relationship between the child and the social mother should be protected. I also believe that the biological mother has a responsibility to her children and to her former partner to hold up her end of the deal with the partner with whom she created the child, and that courts should hold her to her commitment.

These cases are now becoming routine. When the relationship goes sour, the lesbian biological mom does to her ex exactly what heterosexual mothers so often do to their ex-husbands--drive her out of her child’s life. To learn more, see my column Protect Gay & Lesbian Custody Rights in Divorce (Huffington Post (9/9/08).

This case is different, however, pitting a lesbian mother and her female partner against a noncustodial father. With a couple of quibbles, I side with the lesbian couple against the dad.

From Lesbian mother files appeal: Ruling keeps her partner from staying with her, children (Jackson Sun, 12/24/08):

A lesbian mother is fighting for her partner to once again be allowed to stay with her and her children overnight after the Gibson County Chancery Court restricted her from doing so, according to a news release from the American Civil Liberties Union.

ACLU of Tennessee filed a brief Tuesday with the Court of Appeals in Jackson for Angel Chandler, formerly of Gibson County and who now lives in North Carolina. The brief states the court erroneously ordered the restriction, that it's unconstitutional and that it should be reversed.

"I feel the judge's decision was unfair," Chandler said in a phone interview Tuesday. "It has caused a great hardship on my family."

The release said the court issued the restriction May 15 barring Chandler's partner of nine years from her home on nights her two children are with her.

The court imposed the restriction after Chandler and her ex-husband, Joseph Barker, appeared in court to modify their parenting plan. Chandler and Barker divorced more than 10 years ago and share custody of their 13-year-old daughter and 15-year-old son.

Chandler has been with her partner since 1999, and Barker remarried about five years ago, the release said. Chandler's partner, who also moved to North Carolina, is not named in the release.

The judge ordered Chandler's partner not to stay with the children overnight even though a court-ordered psychological evaluation of all the parties noted the partner was a positive influence on the children, the release said.

The judge said he was required to issue the order under state law, according to the release.

The brief said the restriction unconstitutionally interferes with Chandler's ability to raise her children as she sees fit, and that it places an impossible burden on gay and lesbian parents. The brief also said unlike straight couples, who have the option of marrying, lesbians and gay men are barred from marrying in the state and would never be able to live with their partners under these restrictions.

I side with the mother--the fact that her new partner is a woman and it is a lesbian relationship should not, in and of itself, have bearing on the case. Dad apparently does not have any specific evidence that the woman would be harmful to his children, and the court-appointed psychological evaluation didn't hint at any problems.

Now my quibble. The mother apparently moved the child from Western Tennessee (Jackson) to North Carolina. We're not told where in North Carolina, but the move would have been a minimum of 325 miles and perhaps as long as 650 miles.

We're not told the reason for the move, and perhaps it was a necessity. However, mothers often move the kids out of fathers' lives out of spite or indifference to the fathers' relationships with their children. If that's the case, the father has a legitimate grievance--not over his ex's choice of a woman partner, but over her decision to move the children.

Read the full article here.

I've long criticized the Single Motherhood by Choice movement for ignoring the importance of fathers and the two-parent family. To learn more about the problems with the Single Motherhood by Choice movement, see my co-authored column Are Single Mothers the 'New American Family?' (World Net Daily, 9/28/06) and my debate on Fox's nationally-syndicated Morning Show with Mike and Juliet here.

Now we apparently have a trend towards Single Fatherhood by Choice--single men using surrogates to have children and build a family. From CNN's Single men turning to surrogates (12/23/08):

Jeff Walker says from as far back as he can remember, he always wanted to be a father.

"It was always something I knew, from the time I was a child." Just like his 3-year-old daughter, Elizabeth, who says she wants to be a mommy someday, Jeff says, "I knew I wanted to be a daddy."

Walker, a Manhattan music executive, says he and his partner had talked about adopting a baby years ago. But after three emotionally draining, failed attempts at adoption, they decided to turn to surrogacy. They contacted Circle Surrogacy, a Boston agency that specializes in gay clients. Their child was conceived with a donor egg, and then the embryo implanted in the surrogate, or carrier.

After Elizabeth was born, Walker and his partner separated. He then made a critical decision -- to become a dad again, single, and by choice.

"I realized my family, my two-dad family was going to look different than I thought it was going to look," he said. Without a partner, he would face even steeper challenges raising Elizabeth and a sibling alone. Walker says he gave the decision a lot of thought.

"That was the only part that was really controversial, because I do think there are a lot of challenges that single parents face, but at the same time I felt I was capable of handling those challenges," he said.

His second daughter, Alexandra, was born two years ago to the same surrogate, implanted with an egg from a different donor.

Walker, 45, is one of a growing number of single men -- both gay and straight -- who are opting to become fathers alone, with the help of gestational surrogacy.

Surrogacy experts say because the practice is not regulated, many surrogacy arrangements are handled privately by individuals. Precise figures are hard to come by, but experts say there's no doubt the United States is experiencing a surrogacy baby boom.

Celebrities like Ricky Martin and Clay Aiken announced this year they had had babies with the help of surrogates and the Society for Assisted Reproductive Technology, representing scores of reproductive clinics, reports that the number of gestational surrogate births in the country quadrupled between 1996 and 2006...

Walker and other men are willing to pay well over $100,000 to have a baby through surrogacy -- the final cost depending on the number of IVF treatments necessary and how much is paid by insurance...

Steven Harris, a New York malpractice and personal-injury attorney, says he gave up trying to get married when he realized his primary motive was to start a family.

Harris, 54, says he knew he made the right decision after 21-month old Ben was born.

"I thought getting married was the only way to go, because I did want a family. But having Ben, I feel complete now," Harris says.

I think the article misses the main reason why men (or straight men, anyway) want to have children through a surrogate--so they can be assured that they won't lose the child upon divorce or separation.

A woman can have a child and know that unless the situation is exceptional or she behaves outrageously, she'll always be a regular part of her child's life.

For men, being a father is a roll of the dice--if mom decides she doesn't want you around anymore, it can be hard to preserve your relationship with your child. The article doesn't mention this, in part because some of the 'Single Fathers by Choice' are gay men, and in part because fathers losing their kids isn't something the mainstream media likes to talk about.

My overall opinion? I can absolutely understand why a man would want to have a child through a surrogate, thus ensuring that he'll always be able to be a father to his child. Still, I can't condemn Single Motherhood by Choice and turn around and applaud Single Fatherhood by Choice.

I believe that mothers are just as important for children as fathers, and that it's wrong to have a child as a single dad and deny the child a mother. What's needed is not a Single Fatherhood by Choice movement but instead a powerful Shared Parenting movement to ensure that both parents' right to their children is protected after a divorce or separation.

The CNN article cites Ricky Martin as an example. I discussed Martin in my blog post Sorry Ricky Martin, but Women Shouldn't Create Single Parent Households--and You Shouldn't Either

I always thought that economic hardship increased the divorce rate. Apparently I was wrong.

"The reason that the economy has such an enormous impact on divorce is that most people in the middle-income brackets are getting by on whatever income they have. They're just getting by," said Bonnie Booden, a family law and divorce attorney in Phoenix.

A major factor in the divorce downturn, Booden said, is that divorced couples have to establish two separate households with current funds -- a prohibitive factor when you're looking at divorce in tough economic times.

The reason I found this story surprising is I constantly hear that money is the biggest cause of marital strife. If money issues cause strife but having less money does not cause divorce, arguments about finances are probably about control. Some people would prefer having autonomous control of less money than having to decide the majority of their spending and budgeting jointly, at least with the person they are married to.

Maybe financial disagreements illuminate incompatibilities a couple may have. Maybe confronting money issues brings too much banality to an institution people thought would be constantly magical and lift them out of the boring things that were part of their lives before marriage. Understandably, these and other reasons to end a marriage are less convincing to spouses when their livelihoods become tenuous.

It makes sense that people would stay with their marriages for financial reasons when times are difficult. After all, marriage has historically emphasized pooling family resources to increase wealth. One hopes that some of these would-be divorced couples are able to work through their difficulties after deciding to stay together, that they are not just miserably riding out an economic storm lashed to a person they will never get along with.

[Previously Hari Narayan Singh Khalsa wrote posts on this website for The Feminist Dissident. Hari is now a co-blogger on www.GlennSacks.com]

My 8 year-old son Tyler and I are real Colorado Rockies fans -- we paid to see games well before witnessing the miraculous baseball played during the 2007 run to the World Series. Tyler and I discuss the players each morning over the Sports section. We pick our favorites, we track their stats, we ignore their salary negotiations, and we root root root for the Rockies whether they succeed or fail.

One warm summer Saturday I took Tyler to a game. We went early because this was “Picture Day,” where you can go onto the field to have your photo taken with the players. Tyler was so excited he dressed in his full-blown Rockies uniform, complete with cleats and glove. For all I knew, he had on his protective cup too.

There were a lot of people there and we were packed in tight. The players came out and began circulating, submitting to fan delirium and posing for photos. We missed several of them because we couldn’t get up to the field edge.

I finally maneuvered us to the edge and we waited for our chance. And here came Garrett Atkins, the good-hitting third baseman with better than normal defensive skills. He had an underdog thing going on with us, due to the big shadow cast by star outfielder Matt Holiday, so he was therefore Tyler’s favorite player, and mine too. And here he was in the flesh, coming our way.

Atkins got to us, all 6’3” of him, bigger than life. Fans pushed from behind and all sides. Everyone was trying to grab Atkins' attention and despite my efforts, he became occupied a few yards off. We tried to squeeze through and it just wasn’t working. I thought we’d lost our chance. I turned to Tyler to console him. I put my hand on his shoulder and suddenly there was Garrett, kneeling next to Tyler at eye level.

“What’s your name?” Garrett asked him.

My son stuttered something unintelligible so I helped. Garrett picked him up, held him at eye level and said, “That’s a great uniform, Tyler. Listen, will you do me a favor? Will you let me have a picture with you? I’ve been trying to find the best Rockies fan here today and I think it’s probably you. I want to thank you for coming to see us play.”

Tyler nodded, his eyes as round as plates. I quickly snapped a couple of photos, and Tyler remembered to smile. As he put Tyler down he said, “Did you bring your mitt, Tyler? That’s good, I’ll try to hit a ball to you. Will you watch for it? Thanks for the picture, Tyler.”

It was over in an instant, but I got to shake Garrett’s hand, and through eye contact I showered him in fatherly gratitude for his act of grace.

Tyler remembers every inning and every out of that game. He remembers the score and the pitch count. He remembers that Atkins went 2 for 5 with one homerun and he turned a double play and made a diving stab that saved a run, maybe two. Tyler remembers what I was wearing and what the guy sitting in front of us was wearing. He told his mother and sister the Atkins story 15 times that night.

Once in a while you encounter a celebrity who affirms why you spend money to see him, why you invest emotions in supporting his efforts. It is a surprise when it happens, given the apparently common temperament of professional athletes and their distance from those who idolize them. But here was a kid, almost young enough to be my son, worth millions, getting wedding proposals and naked pictures in the mail every day -- this kid didn’t have to say a word to us.

It’s worthy of mention when a guy such as he punctures the membrane between his life and ours and makes a human connection. Even if he never gets to be a big star, even if he fades next season, my son will treasure Garrett his entire life. And so will I. Thanks, big guy.

[Note: Ken Furie, a Colorado business executive, has joined the blogging team at www.glennsacks.com. All of Ken's posts are available here. Ken can be reached by email here and his blog is here.]

In my recent blog post Beyonce's 'If I were a boy' I reprinted a letter from Lisa, a reader, who wrote "Glenn, have you heard Beyonce's 'If I were a boy'? Perhaps it's a small thing, but I don't like my son hearing these lyrics.  I feel bad for boys over this sort of thing."

While I agree with Lisa about Beyonce's negative stereotyping of males in the song, LorMarie, a reader, also makes a good point from the other aside. LorMarie writes:

Male rap artists can rap about degrading "urban" women and violence against "urban" men, but let an "urban" woman write a silly little song about boys and she's a man-hating feminist. I didn't know that Beyonce was worse than Lil Wayne or 50 cent. Double standards anyone?

She's correct about rap lyrics, and they are the one place in our culture where genuine misogyny is tolerated.

I did a radio show on this a few years ago in support of Essence magazine's "Take Back the Music" campaign, from which the picture above is drawn. Essence had many prominent figures condemning misogynistic rap lyrics and calling for change. It seemed like a good thing, but their web page on it is gone and I haven't heard much more about it.

Does anybody know if the campaign took hold? Moreover, does anybody know if rap lyrics have improved, even a little?

Earlier this year Gina Elise recently sent me an email promoting her "Pin Ups for Vets." According to Gina, she came up with the idea to recreate a nostalgic pin-up calendar that would serve three purposes:

1. The calendars would be sold to raise funds for our hospitalized Veterans.

2. The calendars would be delivered as gifts to our ill and injured Veterans with messages of appreciation from the donors.

3. The calendars would be sent to our deployed troops to help boost morale and to let them know that Americans back home are thinking of them.

After I mentioned it on the blog, Gina wrote:

I just wanted to thank you for doing a mention of my fundraising project a few weeks back.  I have returned from my trip to visit the Wounded Warriors at Walter Reed and Bethesda Naval Hospital.  Many of your readers purchased calendars to be donated, so I took those with me to distribute at these hospitals.

I wanted to let you know that I had such a great visit and can't tell you how much the Wounded Warriors appreciated the visit and the donated calendars!

Recently Gina wrote:

I wanted to ask you for a favor.  I was wondering if you can post a little something on your blog about the NEW 2009 www.PinUpsForVets.com calendar that is now available.  Your readers were SO supportive last year and your post really helped to spread the word.

To order the calendar, click here.

Pictures of Gina at Walter Reed and Bethesda Naval Hospital can be seen here.

"They then dropped 20 Christmas wreaths into the Liffey, to remember fathers who had taken their own lives due to the pain of being separated from their children."

I guess it's not any better in the Emerald Isle than it is here.  Read this piece in the Irish Times about fathers marching through Dublin to raise awareness of fathers' rights and the pain fathers feel at being separated from their kids (Irish Times, 12/22/08). 

Think about it - a family law system so uncaring about fathers and children that it drives grown men to suicide.  Pardon me, make that another family law system...

Lisa, a reader, writes:

Glenn, have you heard Beyonce's "If I were a boy"? Perhaps it's a small thing, but I don't like my son hearing these lyrics.  I feel bad for boys over this sort of thing.

The video is here. The lyrics are below.

If I were a boy

If I were a Boy
even just for a day
I'd roll out of bed in the morning
and throw on what I wanted and go
drink beer with guys
and chase after girls
I'd kick it with who I wanted
and I'd never get confronted for it
cuz they'd stick up for me

If i were Boy
I think I could understand
how it feels to love a girl
I swear I'd be a better man
I'd listen to her
Cuz I know how it hurts
When you lose the one you wanted
Cuz he's taking you for granted
and everything you had got destroyed

If i were a boy
I would turn off my phone
tell everyone its broken
so they'd think that I was sleeping alone
I'd put my self first
and make the rules as I go
cuz I know that she'd be faithful
waiting for me to come home (to come home)

If I were Boy
I think I could understand
how it feels to love a girl
I swear I'd be a better man
I'd listen to her
Cuz I know how it hurts
When you lose the one you wanted
Cuz he's taking you for granted
And everything you had got destroyed

Its a little too late for you to come back
its just a mistake to think I'd forgive you like that
if you thought I would wait for you
you thought wrong

But your just a boy
you don't understand (yeah,you don't understand)
how it feels to love a girl
somedays you wish you were a better man
you don't listen to her
you don't care how it hurts
until you lose the one you wanted
cuz you've taken her for granted
and everything you had got destroyed

but you're just a boy..

In case we needed one, here's another study showing kids benefit from involved fathers (New Scientist, 12/08).  This one's a British study done on over 10,000 kids over 50 years.  The shocking discovery: Kids with actively involved fathers have higher IQs than those without.

This is not news, but toss this study on the stack along with all the others.  Some day the pile will be high enough that even family courts and state legislatures will notice it.

As the practice of family law now exists, women exert enormous control over men's access to their children from the moment of birth to the time they reach adulthood.  Marriage is the only realistic way a father has a prayer of keeping contact with his child.  As long as the marriage is intact, he and his child can be together.  But divorce is available to all at any time for any or no reason, and in that event, even the married dad can have access cut off completely by his ex.

Of course a married woman can kidnap a child, but at least that's illegal and those laws sometimes are enforced.

For the mother, denying access to a single father is a piece of cake.  Since out-of-wedlock childbearing has reached about 35% of all births in this country, that's a lot of dads who risk losing their children.  Specifically, there are about 4 million live births each year in this country, so that's about 1.4 million children born to single mothers.

Unlike a married mother, a single mother owes the father of her child nothing.  She doesn't even have to tell him about the child.  She can tell him it's not his; she can move away, get a restraining order against him or place the child for adoption without telling him.  About 15% of birth certificates in this country have the blank for 'Father' marked 'unknown' or simply left blank.

The best he can do is file a paternity suit (if he even knows the child exists) and, if the child hasn't been adopted, gain the right to visitation and pay support.  But of course visitation orders are barely worth the paper they're written on, so the reality is that single fathers' parental rights are tissue-thin.  Those are the rights, by the way, that the U.S. Supreme Court once called "far more precious than property rights." (Stanley v. Illinois, 405 U.S. 645 (1972))

So when it comes to single fathers, we do what we do nowhere else in American jurisprudence - place the rights of one free adult (the father) effectively in the hands of another person (the mother).  The closest comparison is to the parent-child relationship in which parents exercise many of the child's rights.  And that tells you a lot about the value we place on single fathers in this country.

The result:  More children without fathers and more fathers without rights.  It's bad for children, bad for fathers, bad for mothers and bad for society generally.  Placing fathers' rights in mothers' hands is bad for everyone, and unjust to boot.  The New Scientist study is just the latest to show what courts and legislatures desperately need to know.