For women to have more equality at work, we (men) need more equality at home; in this struggle for equality, fathers and feminists are on the same side (parenthetical mine).

That's not quite a direct quotation from GlennSacks.com, but it's close.  We've been saying the same thing for years and at long last this article chimes in (The Guardian, 11/8/09).  Now, its writer Richard Reeves seems to think that the only things standing between British fathers and their children are unequal parental leave laws.  Needless to say, important as those laws are, they're just the start.

Read his article and you'd never guess that feminist organizations are dead set against fathers' rights and fight tooth and nail against them.  This very minute, feminist organizations in Australia are set to turn back the clock on shared parenting laws there and Canadian feminists are lobbying to prevent the Canadian Parliament from passing a shared parenting bill of their own.  Reeves doesn't mention the fact.

He refers to legal barriers to paternal involvement with children this way:

But the current structure of maternity and paternity leave means that it still makes sense for the father to keep working. Pretty soon, as a result of the massive differential in the legal treatment of mothers and fathers, dad becomes the breadwinner – but not necessarily by choice.

Sadly, he seems unaware of the many ways in which the legal system separates fathers from children - the radically anti-father custody awards, the failure to enforce visitation, adoption without notice to the father, move-aways, paternity fraud, etc.

And he makes no mention of how fathers are routinely depicted in popular culture - again abetted by feminist organizations - as dangerous to children and incompetent at the simplest parental tasks.

So Reeves' article leaves a lot to be desired.  But its heart is in the right place.  Maybe I'm like the prisoner who's so used to a diet of bread and water that oatmeal seems like a luxury, but Reeves' simple admission that what benefits fathers in the nursery benefits mothers in the workplace seems like a godsend. 

That simple, obvious concept strikes at the heart of the feminist plaint and reveals much.  For when feminists oppose equally shared parenting or indeed any initiative that would increase paternal rights, they show their hand.  They show the world that gender equality is not part of their agenda because if it were, they'd understand that the more time dads spend with kids, the freer mothers are to work, earn, save and advance at work. 

But beyond simple intellectual inconsistency, feminist opposition to fathers' rights forces thinking people to ask "if not that, what is their goal?"  To which I can only respond that they seem to seek the replacement of the fathers with government-subsidized childcare. 

The history of radical feminism includes a broad and deep antipathy for the family.  For decades they were quite frank about the matter.  Now that 40% of births in the United States are to single mothers, and domestic violence legislation and the restraining orders that go along with it have become such an important part of family life, radical feminists have toned down the rhetoric.  But their agenda is still in place and the type of deep connection between fathers and their children in which Richard Reeves so obviously believes is not on it.

There's a deep rift among feminists when it comes to the politics of the family.  There are those who seek the greatest possible alienation of children from their fathers and there are those who seek the opposite.  The rise of the fathers' rights movement will force those people to make a choice between greater father-child involvement and less. 

Reeves believes in the former.  I think most people do.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 11th, 2009 at 2:39 pm and is filed under Family Law, Feminism/NOW, Fatherhood, Fathers' Rights/Noncustodial parents' rights, Children's Rights, Family Court Reform Movement. You can trackback from your own site.