Tell Jennifer Roback Morse Your Story About What Dads Do
May 28th, 2007 by Glenn Sacks, MA for Fathers & Families
From Jennifer Roback Morse, Ph.D:
"Fathers do not get the credit they deserve in the raising of children. The courts downplay them, the feminists dismiss them, and they media diss them. Even the social scientists who know from their data that dads matter, often can't quite put their finger on why. The kinds of things social science can measure, such as time spent doing different activities and parenting styles, don't necessarily capture what dads do.
"Between now and Father's Day, I plan to publish stories that illustrate the many, sometimes intangible, contributions of fathers to child development."
Jennifer has asked me to ask my readers for stories about "What Dads Do." If you're interested in submitting stories to Jennifer, click here.
"));
19 queries. 0.309 seconds.
May 28th, 2007 at 7:03 pm
That is a horrendous question, Glenn. For all her doubtless good intentions, the most that Dr. Morse, Ph.D., can do is accumulate a bunch of heart-warming anecdotes of the same variety that get trotted out for mother's day (*). As a disenfranchised father, if you were to ask me what I do for my son, I could only spit out a few, resentment-laden comments about fighting with everything I've got not to be totally removed from his life, and pretty much failing thanks to the poisonously prejudiced world I have discovered courtesy of my ex. If you asked me what my father does for me, I'd be talking until you had to shut me up so you could go home. The same goes for my mother. That is how it should be. We don't need reassurance that mothers and fathers are good for something. What we need is recognition that in the overwhelming majority of cases the opposite is a kind of insanity, that the picture that one parent or the other is good for nothing is a distortion we have been given by the minority of people who have something short-sightedly selfish to gain from that outrage.
A social scientist whose numbers show fathers are necessary to children but who can't put his or her finger on why, is an idiot.
We should not be forced to dig for reasons as to why fatherhood is good, we should be shoving those who say otherwise into a corner and demanding that they show cause or be damned.
All power to Dr. Morse, PhD., in her feel-good efforts. What I want to see is someone in a position to make a difference standing up and saying "we've made a horrible mistake". That would be a worthwhile Father's day gift.
May 29th, 2007 at 1:31 am
"A social scientist whose numbers show fathers are necessary to children but who can't put his or her finger on why, is an idiot."
Probably a fatherless idiot as well.
It amazes me that we need 'scientists' to affirm for us what our own experience has already proved beyond doubt.
I couldn't do justice to the value to me of my own father.
A legal system that casually deprives children of their fathers in such numbers is one not wary of its purpose, nor even of its own interests.
May 29th, 2007 at 11:33 am
How can the good intentions of one person be so horrible turned around? Dr. Morse is trying to HELP! Every little bit that is done to help will chip away at the over all problem. The stories that today's adults tell about their own fathers and how important they were to our development will help the future generations. It is these stories that will wear down the system, that will begin to change things. Once the stories are in print, many people will read them and will understand, if the stories never make it into print people will never realize the struggle.
Twisting the words and actions of others way out of context is something the women's libbers do, do you really want to lower yourself?
May 29th, 2007 at 1:31 pm
JeanB, I am not twisting her good intentions around. I am trying to point out that we should not expect them to achieve anything. Would you expect a selection of feel-good stories for mother's day to do anything for women's rights? What she is doing is at the far weak end of fathers' rights activism, at the end that makes people comfortable and apathetic as opposed to making them sit up and pay attention. Sorry, but I need the latter.
Dr. Morse has a Ph.D., right? That suggests that she has some authority to make a real difference by getting on the right committees, by doing real research (research is the opposite of the collection of anecdotes), by adding her support to the father's rights movement through real contributions rather than looking for cute ways to advertise her blog.
She'd make a bigger impact by collecting horror stories.
Come to think of it, this looks to me like she is probably yet another wannabe TV shrink making a bid for the limelight with greater interest in her popularity than the cause she espouses. (Look, folks, she's giving away copies of her leaflet to people who send in stories. Y'all line up nicely now!) Yeah, whatever, insofar as she makes fathers look good, then good for her, yay, yay, and all that.
If she really is pro fathers' rights, then my criticisms won't affect her, she will be recognizing my point and nodding her head in agreement, not running away to lick her supposed wounds because I hurt her feelings.
May 29th, 2007 at 6:20 pm
There are social scientists who state that the statistics on fatherlessness are really statistics on poverty. Some of these social scientists claim that parents don't matter, but genetics and peer influences are the real cause of negative outcomes in children.
They're wrong.
Good fathers are authoritative without being coercive and they're not overprotective. Fathers teach and they do fun things.
Good mothers are identical in these characteristics.
One gender is not superior to the other and individual variations in parenting style depend more on the person and his or her mood than on their gender.
We must have a rebuttable presumption for shared parenting.
France, Italy, Australia....
May 29th, 2007 at 6:44 pm
All will be forgiven if she writes each of her federal legislators an eloquent and persuasive letter to dump the Women’s Rights Amendment for it’s blatant male-bashing agenda. We’ll apologize by writing the same letters to our federal legislators, won’t we?
If the legislators just gotta fix something, change “All men are created equal” to “All people are created equal.” Doesn’t that get the job done?
DanH