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Here's a really interesting study showing that proximity to women appears to
shape male views on policy. I recently wrote about a study showing the influence of female judges on their male
counterparts in gender discrimination cases. Courtesy of FiveThirtyEight,
here's a bunch of fascinating studies showing that fathers
of daughters tend to support more liberal programs, ranging from... (To read the rest of this post, visit our new website DoubleX.com!)
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Awhile back I wrote that Meghan McCain had learned to negotiate the difficult terrain of being a political daughter by oversharing on surface-level stuff, and keeping quiet on the truly personal. Looks like she hasn't quite stuck to that-on Hannity and Colmes, she revealed a bit more about the grudges she holds as a political daughter. She's mad about the Atlantic cover controversy, saying"I have a problem when it gets dirty and you're doctoring photos." Most striking is what she said about her support for Kerry and Gore, framing it as more of a vote against Bush, who ran a nasty smear campaign against her dad in the South Carolina primaries, than for the Democrats:
MCCAIN: I can be behind my father all day every day.
COLMES: Sure.
MCCAIN: . until the end of time. I just couldn't get behind President Bush. I just couldn't. It's personal.
COLMES: Yes. You couldn't get behind President Bush?
MCCAIN: It's personal. I was 19 at the time.
HANNITY: And it's a primary 2000.
(CROSSTALK)
COLMES: Hold on, let's.
MCCAIN: It had to do with my little sister, and like, you know, you were just saying that the wounds of a political child run really deep. And there are things that I don't know if I'll ever completely get over.
COLMES: Was it because of what happened in 2000 during the campaign?
MCCAIN: Yes.
COLMES: That you two -- what about your dad now? Is he -- looks like he may have.
MCCAIN: No. He's a great forgiver, move on-er. No. Yes.
Her decision to stump for her dad was obviously one made out of love and personal, rather than party, loyalty. And now she's got to stand there and justify her dad's politically expedient apostasy by saying he's a "mover on-er," and she's got to somehow justify to herself that even though she's been deeply hurt by negative campaigning, it's ok that the McCain campaign isn't exactly taking the high road these days. When I wrote about her earlier, I was impressed with the amount of agency I saw her taking-exploiting the publicity system lest it exploit you first isn't exactly a feminist battle cry, but at least it's not passive. Now, all I can think when I read this is "Poor Meghan, she's trapped." But am I getting played like a flute? Now's probably not a bad time to be reminding people that the McCains have been on the receiving end of smears, and Meghan, at her own admission, didn't go in to this thing a political naïf. This wasn't her first interview, and it wasn't the first time she's talked about the way the 2000 election affected her. Should I put back on my armor of cynicism?
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Well, Meghan, I didn't mean to bludgeon you about Clark What's-His-Name. Meanwhile, I'm still mucking around trying to find out who gets custody more often. I've got queries out to some researchers and will post here when I get answers. Until then, here's a commentary published by Sandra Kobrin in Women's eNews last year. She has the same impression that I have: that in the 1950s and 1960s, women almost automatically got custody, but now—when custody is contested—the pendulum has swung the other way. She mentions studies that show that, especially if the mothers were battered, fathers get custody and quotes researchers who believe that's true not just when mothers were battered. She says, for instance, that a 2004 Williamsburg, Va., American Judges Association study shows that battered women lose contested custody cases 70 percent of the time. I will look for the study. Her point is that most state legislation requires judges to favor joint custody arrangements; when that's not possible, judges are instructed to favor the parent who is most "friendly" to joint custody. That obviously puts a battered woman in a bad spot: If she seems desperate to keep her kids away from a batterer or abuser, she's going to be perceived as pretty durn unfriendly to joint custody.
I don't know how this holds up beyond domestic violence situations. More stats when I find them.
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Meghan, I guess I just can't let this bone go. I do understand sympathy for fathers who feel shut out of relationships with their children—and actually, for anyone (man or woman) who ends up in family court, waiting for a judge to decide the fate of the family based on who knows what prejudices. It's a horrible and nailbiting experience. But Clark Rockefeller? He didn't just kidnap his daughter from the social worker; first he hit the social worker with his SUV!! And now the Boston Globe reports that the reason he didn't get custody of any sort was that he refused to document his identity. For the same reason, he never obtained a real marriage license; he lied to his wife (and presumably whoever performed the wedding) about getting one. He was a liar living under a series of fake identities; he's telling police he "doesn't remember" where he was born or to whom! Sorry, whether or not he's also a murderer, this dude doesn't deserve joint custody.
But I do agree with you that women shouldn't be entitled to the presumption of primary parental status merely because they are female. I know fathers who are more maternal than the child's mother. I know co-mothers who should get primary or equal parenting status with the biomoms. Some women think that women are by nature better parents. I'm not essentialist enough to sign up for that belief. (By the way, the parenting research hasn't been able to find any constant difference by sex that holds across cultures. "Mothers" differ from other mothers as much as they do from "fathers." The research is fascinating.)
A note: I profoundly admire some folks I know who share custody by letting the children stay in the house while the parents move in and out, in turn. (These are real people, honest.) Now that's putting the children first.
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Meghan,
Dahlia has noted the painful fact that there is simply no good way for divorced families to accommodate two working parents (a product of a changed economy more than of feminism, I would argue, but that's for another day). So let me take issue with blaming feminism for Clark Rockefeller's kidnapping his daughter—or rather, for treating men 's claims to fatherhood unfairly after a divorce.
A brief history of custody law: Until 1851, men were childrens' presumptive guardians and custodians. In that year, a lone American judge first broke with precedent to articulate a new custody standard—"the best interest of the child"—which he used to justify giving custody of the child to a mother. It signalled the beginning of the end of a world in which children were family laborers—either a source of income who could be contracted out to other families, or part of the family's earnings unit. With that first mother-custody decision came a series of outraged diatribes about the imminent downfall of civilization if fathers were no longer in charge of the family. But the judge was articulating a new standard of child custody that fit the Victorian era's new ideology of woman-as-nurturer, as caregiver, as naturally domestic and giving and good. It also drew on a new vision of children as malleable angels in need of love, rather than as wild beasties in need of discipline. (I've got a chapter on this shift from father- to mother-custody in my book What Is Marriage For?)
For the next century, the radical idea that women not only could have custody of the children but should presumptively have custody gradually took over. I've waited a day to post on this as I try to find the stats, but my impression has been that feminism stopped that trend. With the idea of gender parity in child-rearing has come the idea that men should and could have custody as well. Family lawyers and observers of family law have told me that the trend has gone the other way, and that when men sue for custody they have an equal chance at getting it. The stats are hard to find, since they're state by state, and even court by court, rather than nationwide; if I can find a source I will post it here.
But the deeper problem here is one I discovered in reporting on custody battles about a decade ago: Emotionally healthy parents who are putting the children first do not end up fighting over custody in court. When there's a custody battle, it's often because the family dynamics were already ugly and messy and volatile. The family is then disposed according to an individual judge's view of what children need. It's a wildly dysfunctional and distressing system, and I have no idea how it could be done better.
Meanwhile, Meghan, do you seriously feel any sympathy for a man who attacked a social worker with his SUV and kidnapped his daughter, and who appears to be a con man who lied about his identity?? I realize that news reports can be unreliable—flash! Jon-Benet's parents are NOT guilty!—but unless Rockefeller had evidence that the mother is physically abusive to the child (and I haven't heard any claims that she was), how can he possibly justify such behavior? That sure wasn't in the best interest of the child.
EJ
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Meghan, the Clark Rockefeller story really is deeply weird, and getting weirder by the day. Now we hear allegations that he’s tied to some murder in California. Jump back Lifetime. You can’t make this stuff up. You’re also right that there is something disturbing about the lingering preference for mothers in disputed custody cases, and also right that there is a bubbling, hissing fathers’ rights movement that contends fathers routinely get screwed in custody cases. But it seems to me that the other thing at work here—far more unfair than general sexism in the family court system—is the patent absurdity of family court oversight when one parent needs to move out of town. Suddenly, everything that is already nuts about family court gets exponentially worse, as judges are forced to make decisions that have the noncustodial parent relegated to a handful of visits a year and small kids consigned to a lifetime of trans-Atlantic flights. These “move” cases are invariably lose-lose-lose propositions for everyone, especially the kids, but they are also a byproduct of second-wave feminism. Because now moms need to work. And dads need to work. And after the divorce, the odds are decent that someone will therefore have to relocate to someplace far away in order to do that. Suddenly the noncustodial parent—having done nothing wrong whatsoever—goes from seeing the kids every other weekend to seeing them for a week at Christmas. Even the worst child abusers don't suffer that fate. I’d be bitter, too.
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Has anyone been following the amazing story of Clark Rockefeller, the divorced father who kidnapped his daughter last week when she was visiting from England with her mother? There are many incredible elements to the story, including the fact that Rockefeller may not be who he said he was; the FBI has said he doesn't have a Social Security number. But what I found most striking are the quotes from friends of Rockefeller's saying how much he loved his daughter and how much he missed her after his divorce. Weirdly enough, I know someone who knew Rockefeller; this person had talked to me not long ago about how heartbroken Rockefeller was to have been separated from his daughter by divorce. (Rockefeller's wife, who works for McKinsey, had moved to England, making it hard for him to see their daughter.) While I certainly don't approve of kidnapping in any form, and there may have been good reasons for the wife to want to keep her daughter away from her father, I confess the whole saga has got me feeling a lot of empathy for all the divorced fathers out there who find themselves suddenly distanced from their children with very little power to change the fact. Fascinatingly, the comments sections on the Rockefeller story on news sites are full of post from divorced fathers who sympathize with Rockefeller. When you think seriously about it, the way custody laws are set up is inescapably unfair. As it stands, there's a hypocrisy at the heart of the second-wave feminist movement: It demands that men be equal partners in child-raising, but when push comes to shove and a marriage dissolves it also implicitly claims that women are the true parents and men are not. While the letter of the law gives men certain rights, divorce lawyers are often shameless about using the threat of claiming there was child abuse to get fathers to back off from fighting for more custody rights. Over the past few months, by total chance, I've talked to a couple of newly divorced fathers, including old college friends, who have suddenly seen their children swept away from them. They were dedicated fathers; they now pay child support, and yet their right to see their children is severely circumscribed. I know there's no perfect solution; but couldn't we come up with one that's better than this? If women really want equality in child-rearing, don't we have to acknowledge that this extends even to divorce?
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