On this Father’s Day, I thought it necessary to tell the
story of fatherhood from a perspective that is very often overlooked. It
is the story of divorced fathers and it is ignored because Americans generally
assume that men play a disinterested, accessory role in running a home
and in the rearing of children. In fact, this essay was inspired because
the very same accusation was made by Ms. Coralie Chun Matayoshi, head of
the Hawaii State Bar Association, in the May 29, 2002 issue of the MidWeek
Newspaper. The interesting juxtaposition of Father’s Day, a call for an
audit of Family Court and the appearance of Ms. Matayoshi on the cover
of MidWeek lead to putting the following thoughts and observations on paper.
The article "Raising the Bar" in Midweek starts out by
inferring that there is a new social problem that needs to be corrected
in the American family. Namely, that fathers need to be more proactive
in helping around the house and with the kids. Now that women are in the
workplace and feminists need new fodder, it is high time to once again
manipulate society at the family level.
As I read, I was not at all surprised to learn that Ms.
Matayoshi was educated at Berkeley and her husband is the director of Social
Science at UH. The picture of her family was a typical one of smiling faces
and holding hands, but the picture being drawn of this woman’s educational
background and intellectual environment was an unorthodox one of liberal
social engineering and experimentation.
Ever so subtly, the reader was lead down the well worn
path of gender inequality in the workplace. I’m sorry, but I’m getting
a little nauseated over the constant whining from feminists who claim that
women do not get a fair shake. Ironically, the latest gripe is brought
to you courtesy of the head of the HSBA and a woman. How good does it have
to get before we can acknowledge that the feminist ship has come in? Better
question is: What will happen to all those advocates who make a living
off of trumped-up victimization once the public notices the goods are being
unloaded onto the pier? Here’s an even better question posed by Warren
Farrell, a California psychologist, who at one time was a board member
of the New York National Organization of Women: "If women really earned
59 cents to the dollar for the same work as men, how could a business compete
with its competition by hiring men at any level?" Taking the figure thrown
out by Ms. Matayoshi of $.84 to the dollar, it looks as though women are
quickly gaining ground. Fortunately, given this ridiculous premise that
women are a better bargain with all else being equal, it’s reassuring to
know that men will soon be able to compete for jobs again; at least in
Hawaii.
Mr. Farrell goes on to explain in his book "Women Can’t
Hear What Men Don’t Say" that men do earn more, but for very valid reasons.
Men generally tend to work under unfavorable or dangerous working conditions
and at more technical professions. Statistically, they also work longer
hours and at odd times of the day or night. Men hold jobs in undesirable
places overseas, they commute longer distances and they relocate more often.
The article on Ms. Matayoshi goes on giving a biography
of her life. We now know her hardships in choosing her career over the
less desirable choice of motherhood while shuttling her son off to daycare
for 12 to 14 hours per day. Oh, the guilt of a liberal educated law professional.
What a shame for her. She somehow wants to intimate that the dilemma of
choosing motherhood over career should not be. Life should not burden her
or her colleagues with these decisions. The rest of us should accommodate
a parent’s desire to have both and at any cost to business, across all
industries. And although I am sympathetic to parents who have no choice
in the matter and must work, creating a new government program will most
certainly exacerbate the problem and create all new social ills that lawyers
will gleefully covet.
But where is the focus on her son, who was cared for by
people other than his own parents? Given the remote possibility that business
could carry the added burden of daycare for all or of distracted parents
in the workplace tending to children; what a damn shame for the kids. Having
a child compete with the demands of business for attention from a parent
is hardly an improvement over daycare. I’m not sure about Matayoshi, but
the typical liberal feminist educated at Berkeley doesn’t see anything
wrong with daycare, or feminism, or social engineering, or educating boys
to behave less masculine, or children with no male role model. But some
fathers do; particularly, some divorced fathers, which brings me to the
main subject of this essay.
Divorce is one of the tragedies of our modern day society,
and everyone in a family affected by it, is a casualty. Many fathers, true
to their nature, are often stoic when confronted with divorce and are therefore
the forgotten casualties. And society’s hyper focus on the rights of women
blurs any effort to expose the plight of divorced dads. What sets many
of these fathers apart from their feminist counterparts is not concern
so much over their own situations after divorce, but concern over the effects
on their children. A female dominated family in the extreme, is just as
dangerous as a male one. What divorced fathers fear is how the liberal
cultural shift in our society, in which feminism is entrenched, has contributed
to making them a divorce statistic, but more importantly, threatens to
do the same to their children.
What is ideal in a family is to have a balance between
masculine and feminine energies. On a larger societal scale, the best way
to reach equilibrium between these energies is through a free and open
society and free markets. But little in the feminist lexicon defines freedom
as something that men should possess and worse, there is little in the
liberal lexicon that defines freedom for anyone. And it isn’t the feminist
thought that currently dominates public discourse that concerns this father
as it is a government dominated society whose individuals are told what
behaviors, attitudes, education, ideas, and expenditures are government
approved and politically correct. The fact that the feminist agenda is
well established in public policy, education, the courts and the complicit
media, only illustrates how our government can stagnate society and render
it dysfunctional. Our children are paying the price.
An example of how feminism has run afoul of common sense
has been outlined by Christina Hoff Sommers in the June 2000 issue of The
American Enterprise periodical. Her article is entitled "Victims of Androgyny;
How Feminist Schooling Harms Boys". In it she explains that boys and men
are characteristically less apt to discuss personal feelings and relationships
and that there is strong evidence that their dispositions are neurologically
physical in nature. This observation nevertheless, has not stymied feminists
from categorizing typical male tendencies as pathological or from influencing
school curriculum on a national scale. Contrary to proven methods that
work for boys, such as competitive, disciplined, structured, male oriented
and all-male classroom instruction, the women’s movement in academia would
like to assimilate boys into the new age of feminine perspective, role
playing, personal relationships and nurturing. All the kinds of interaction
that girls excel at, but that boys just don’t get.
Taken one step further and not necessarily a social phenomenon
that is directly attributed to feminism, Thomas W. Hazlett, an economist
at the University of California at Davis, speaks volumes in a short essay
about permissiveness applied to government run schools and the tragic results
at Columbine. In Reason Magazine’s July 1999 issue, in his brilliant article,
"Hostage Rescue; Another reason to liberate the schools," Mr. Hazlett spells
out the dangers of allowing government to dominate education and distort
the principles of freedom. In essence, he explains that when government
monopolizes education it must be all things to all children. It must be
as homogenized and all-inclusive so as not to offend the sensibilities
of the students or their parents to the point where they don’t realize
that public education is not freedom at all. In the process, family, religious,
traditional and diverse values get watered down or replaced with newly
accepted values that are judged benign and non-offensive to all. But usually
none of the new values reign as supreme as does the absence of any principles
at all. This policy protects the schools from lawsuits by the ACLU or angry
parents and allows students to develop their own codes of ethics, no matter
how perverse or violent they may be. Government schools have become
encapsulated environments and breeding grounds for diversity without responsibility
or accountability.
In other words, compulsory education defines freedom within
the boundaries of its own moral vacuum, disallows the parents the choice
of where their education dollars are spent or a real choice of schools,
unleashes children within its walls for 6 hours per day, releases their
care into the hands of sometimes disinterested union teachers and administrators,
intentionally removes any moral or ethical guidance (particularly frustrating
for boys) and then is surprised when students like Klebold and Harris emerge
from the halls with weaponry under their coats and vicious anger in their
hearts.
Here is the point, and one that critics will find contradictory
until they think it through. Freedom is for adults who are supposed to
be responsible and accountable. It is not for children. Government gets
its authority from the consent of the governed. Outside of the basic protections
of life, liberty and property, government should not be deciding how responsible
and accountable parents rear their children. The argument raised by public
educators and family court officials is that they must decide, since parents
have failed in their duties. The question is, who has failed and are they
a minority in numbers? The flip side of that coin reveals that many parents'
efforts to raise and educate their children on their own, without government
subsidy have been frustrated by the intrusion of government programs, education
taxes, state and federal regulation and family court orders. No question,
bad parents are out there, but are they the vast majority of society and
why do government institutions always gear their actions to accommodate
the lowest common denominator? Shouldn’t good parents be at least, acknowledged
and not treated as criminals in court or as children themselves when deciding
how much tuition to spend and where to send their kids to school?
If parents are once again allowed their God given right
to guide the fates of their progeny instead of the government, then we
may not have to endure the agony of a Columbine again. The editor in chief
of the American Enterprise Magazine in his opening comments that appeared
in the same issue with Christina Hoff Sommers’ work made this observation,
"It seems obvious, for instance, that the way to convert male tendencies
toward aggression into something positive is through traditionally male
channels and male languages. But that will require they [boys] be exposed
to more authentic masculinity, not less. The bulk of our problems with
male violence today grow out of having too little masculine authority at
the base of society, not too much. The most dangerous males in America
are presently those raised in our inner-city matriarchies. All those rap
anthems about raping and torturing women come out of a world wholly devoid
of male control". Notice that he stated, "....at the base of society."
He didn’t mean big government. He meant fathers.
Government is not a good source for teaching ethics, morality
or social behavior. Its economy of scale is too large to accommodate individual
human characteristics. Parents, in most respects, are a good source. Admittedly,
some parents will have very different standards than others. And some parents
will fail miserably, but the vast majority will demonstrate diversity appropriate
to their individuality within the context of American common law which
holds life, liberty and property in esteem.
The reality is that parents do attempt to exercise individual
choice in spite of government control, because the management of the physical
needs of children alone is a logistics nightmare. If they weren’t already
doing it now on a grand scale, our society would be unrecognizable as a
civilization. There is no way that government will ever be able to effectively
micromanage the complications of parenting for the multitude of generations
to come. Our system of government should step out of the way, at least
when adults are willing and able to do the job.
Again, the question is, who has failed? The public schools
have and data is out there. Family courts have too, but the data is not
as readily available and the results of court action are not always measurable
in human terms, but are certainly catastrophic. The story on Ms. Coralie
Chun Matayoshi in Midweek is intended to give the reader a warm feeling
about the Hawaii State Bar Association, its lawyers and the courts. The
focus seems to divert attention from the reality of the common man’s or
woman’s legal problems and cover up the court’s tendency toward gender
bias. Feminism, right or wrong, has been extremely successful from an influential
standpoint and acrimony between the sexes is good for lawyers regardless
of who is pulling the political strings.
Here’s a father’s story, my story of the workings of Family
Court:
After making a legal, emotional and financial commitment
to the institution of monogamy and to raising two children, my wife of
10 years decided marriage with me was unacceptable. Things happen, people
change; I can understand that. Here’s the clincher, though. In our "no
fault" State of Hawaii, my initial marriage contract obligated me to honor
commitments implied or specified to my spouse regardless of her breach
of the marriage contract. Theoretically, this applies for a woman in the
same situation. However, most people would observe that courts usually
act upon the assets of a man in order to be "equitable" to the woman. Given
that physical custody is usually awarded to the woman with no regard for
her ability to support them, a man is committing his financial and emotional
future to a woman at the time of marriage irrespective of her intent or
commitment. The court would argue that the subsequent and garnished child
support payments that a man makes are for the children. If that is so,
then why is the formulation for child support devoid of a limit on how
much is reasonable for the necessities of a child? One would assume that
at some point the spouse making support payments would have some control
over discretionary income that is channeled to a child. And why is there
no accountability required of the recipient of child support?
Much of what transpires in divorce proceedings revolves
around the children’s security. In my case, I decided early in the process
not to change my children’s lives too dramatically. The extended family
that they grew up with and the house that had been their home was with
my spouse. I did not fight for physical custody and my attorney, as so
many will do, did not warn me of the consequences of my decision. In hindsight,
most lawyers will claim that I was poorly represented and that they would
have advised me not to cooperate. What a crock! Attorneys are notorious
for keeping their clients in the dark. Like a doctors that think patients
are too stupid to understand their own conditions, attorneys will use the
same excuse to remain silent. What lawyers don’t want to tell their clients
is that custody is potentially the most hotly contested issue in family
court and one that exposes the court, its agencies and its officers to
the most liability. Judges hate making decisions, particularly on custody
and attorneys will do whatever they can to appease and keep such cases
from going to trial. If a client capitulates on custody, all the better
and I would guess there isn’t a divorce attorney in this state who will
put up much of an argument. The final arrangement for my kids and me is
a visitation schedule that is standard court issue. Once established, which
is usually at the first hearing, it won’t change without more legal maneuvering,
expense and a compelling reason for the change. By the time I discovered
all the potential fallout from giving up physical custody, it was too late.
I was stuck and so were my kids.
Because of my decision, I was put on the fast track to
fiscal scrutiny and obligation at the hands of a very unsavory bureaucracy
known as the Child Support Enforcement Agency. The argument is often made
that there is recourse with the agency, but it’s just not true. Ask anyone,
man, woman or attorney, who has had to make adjustments to child support
due to changes in income. Attorneys advise clients to go back to court
if they want adjustments made in any semblance of promptness. It is an
unfeeling, uncaring institution that views anyone making support payments
as a potential deadbeat and recipients as automatic victims. Does that
sound too extreme? I’ll paraphrase the last three sentences, two paragraphs
back, again. The spouse making support payments has no control over a portion
of discretionary income and the spouse receiving payments is not required
to account for how the money is used. In the eyes of the system, one is
a villain and deserves dominion over his children and income by the scorned
and deprived spouse. The other is a victim and is beyond reproach. The
Court likes to keep it simple.
The enforcement and administration of child support is
even worse than what we have time for here, but suffice it to say that
the policy handed-down by the Court, on its face value, is discriminatory
and yet the execution of policy by its agency is indiscriminate, capricious,
fiscally mismanaged and unyielding.
I discovered late in the family law game that unseen contractual
commitments are far-reaching beyond anything expected form a single person
or a spouse who is lucky enough to beat the odds of divorce. The problem
lies in the area of divorce law that obligates a parent to provide tuition,
expenses and child support to the custodial parent of a dependent child
who is over 18 if that child attends an institution of higher education.
No one would deny that these funds to young, adult children are important,
but why have the once, parental decisions related to college bound kids
become state mandates for divorced parents that can ultimately land a delinquent
paying parent in jail? In my case, the system cornered me into paying for
private school tuition as well. Unfortunately, the judge made no complimentary
order to the public school system to return my tax money in order to make
the first requirement fiscally possible.
Oh, and as Ms. Matayoshi mentioned in Midweek, my thanks
to all those hard working attorneys who unselfishly devote their time to
legal aid. However, I do not qualify since my gross income (much of which
I do not see due to the onerous nature of child support policy created
by the likes of these well intentioned attorneys) is too high. Legal aid
does most working people little good until the attorney fees, ancillary
professional fees, and the results of outright malfeasance on the part
of the courts, its agencies and its officers have driven clients into poverty
and bankruptcy.
Sadly, the real nature of system is to enrich the legal
profession, as well as social workers, the guardian ad litem program, the
psychiatric profession, and of course the all-powerful and dysfunctional
bureaucracy that "manages" the welfare of the people.
The added benefit for the court in impoverishing as many
productive people as possible is to suppress the independent members of
society who are a threat to the institution's existence. Dependence breeds
complacency and independence breeds competition and demands choice. An
institution evolves into an oppressive bureaucracy for very important reasons,
the foremost reason being to survive while the institution perpetuates
its own deliquency and oligopoly. Any focus drawn upon its failures is
met with vengeance in the form of court action. Threaten someone with financial
ruin, jail time and/or permanent separation from their children and they
will give up blowing the whistle on the system.
The suppression of competition is more than just threats
in court. It is a societal conditioning that is administered by the width
and breadth of government. Its specific application for Family Court works
something like this:
Force everyone to work for the legal court system (taxes);
require them to use only State and Bar approved attorneys (monopolistic
legal fees); tie them up in a legal morass created by cronies in the legislature
(bad and unconstitutional law); lump everyone into groups of victims and
perpetrators (fertile ground for litigation); exaggerate the statistics
of a law violation whether real or contrived (influence for public funding
in order to expand the institution's power); enforce the law arbitrarily
in court based on loyalties and not on the merits of a case (collusion);
court order any number of services of social workers, psychologists, psychiatrists,
anger management classes, and guardian ad litem agents (hemorrhaging fees);
remove children from their homes and separate them from loving parents
through the use of Child Protective Services (unbearable emotional distress,
forced child support or worse, foster care fees); target anyone who calls
attention to the violations of due process (retribution); and go on inspiring
fluff articles in local media to spin public opinion for those who have
yet been snagged by the system. Not an honorable profession. But it is
one that we give the dubious prefix of "honorable" when referring to the
members of the profession who should distinguish themselves with the highest
standards of honor, the judges.
The institutions of Family Court are set up to protect
individuals and their welfare from family members who threaten their security.
The problem is that the institutions in Hawaii have become self-serving
and calloused to individual cases whereby responsible and conscientious
family members are treated as criminals based upon a stereotyped bias.
It is a bias rooted in a paint-by-numbers mentality that makes life easier
for court workers. The people who are supposed to be served are way down
the list on priorities since they, the clients, are forced to pay into
the system irrespective of the level of performance. There are virtually
no alternatives to the State approved legal services. And that is because
licensing outlaws the offering of any form of legal advice by anyone other
than an approved and licensed attorney, no matter how innocent the intent.
The Court and its officers are always complaining that their case loads
are too heavy and that they do not have enough time and resources, but
they would never entertain giving up their stranglehold on the client
base to unlicensed competition. And they won’t ever convince me that the
reason is to assure that clients get the best legal service, not after
what I’ve seen.
The bottom line is that what happened to me is common
for many fathers of divorce. They end up struggling against a system that
runs them down a track of financial hardship and separation from their
children. The numbers tell a sad story of the households with children
and no father. How many of those dads were driven away from there kids
by a draconian system influenced by radical feminism and bureaucratic sloth?
If the conclusions are true that fathers are necessary to the upbringing
of well adjusted children, why won’t the government get out of the way
of responsible parents? Hawaii’s divorce policy is still modeled after
an outdated core belief known as "the tender years doctrine" that wrongly
assumes that only mothers are essential to the early development of children.
The courts, like the schools, are not accountable to the people who use
their service and the government has ensured patronage by forced subscription.
It is time for change in the upside down world of government control which
gives children unwarranted false freedoms in the schools and treats adults
with disdain and tyranny.
Granted, the past is riddled with injustices to women.
It also is a history of abuse and neglect to children. As for men, they
have been assigned the label of perpetrators, but realistically both sexes
have members who have character flaws. Men are abused as well, but culturally
they are expected not to complain or seek restitution. People will always
have challenges and conflict in their lives. They can choose to manage
themselves or seek government intrusion. If they seek the latter, which
is necessary at times to protect that which has been narrowly defined (for
the specific intent to limit government power) by the Constitution, it
is important to be wary to what degree that power is extended. If it goes
too far, then the cure is worse than the disease. Micro-management of daily
situations is not a good place for the government, its courts or attorneys
to be meddling. There are alternatives, but this is something that most
attorneys and politicians would care not to address, because prudence in
the area of governmental power and law negatively affects their bottom
line. When they succeed with such programs and mandates as, sexual harassment
and discrimination law in the workplace, government subsidized daycare,
equity pay guidelines, subsidized abortions for minors without parental
knowledge, affirmative action quotas, indiscriminate temporary restraining
orders and court policy that statistically targets men and on and on, then
incrementally all of us will lose our liberty. Attorneys and politicians
will become an elitist class unto themselves even more than they are now.
And the responsible men in our society who are accountable for their actions
will be vilified along with men who are not living up to the expectations
of fathers and husbands. Whole new legal cottage industries will blossom
out of creative, but oppressive ideas that up to now have been thoughtlessly
tossed around in legislatures without any regard for unintended consequences.
So what is the solution? Many of the matters involving
human activity in America at one time were dealt with by individuals, families,
churches, and private organizations and not by government edict. The right
to free association allowed individuals an immediate resolution to conflict.
Free market solutions will loosen the grip of problems that riddle the
schools and hold children hostage. A whole range of schools will offer
a broad range of services to the large spectrum of children if the parents
are allowed to choose how their education dollars are spent. There is no
good reason why schools should remain government monopolies. Even the argument
of ensuring affordability for all children is easily refuted by adding
up the resources that are currently generated voluntarily for education.
And to some extent, competitive forces can be infused
into the court system which now complains of too many customers. Licensing
requirements can be eliminated and replaced with competing legal associations
that ensure the professionalism of their attorneys. Courts, family service
agencies, social workers, professional family counselors can compete and
be directly awarded with business based upon their attentiveness to clients’
cases and attorney’s recommendations. If they don’t perform, they go out
of business. No more guaranteed revenue to the court or salaries to the
judges and court workers. And no more incestuous relationships between
the courts, the police, family service agencies, the attorneys, the state,
the legislature and HSBA. Keep them separate and accountable to the people
they serve instead of to each other. Make them prove their worth everyday
by tying their success or failure to some measurement and ultimately to
their pay checks.
Maybe if Ms. Matayoshi spent more time cleaning up her
own house down at the Hawaii State Bar Association instead of telling us
about our deficiencies, life would be better. Unless, instilling professionalism
and competition into her housecleaning is too demeaning for a feminist?
I’m a dad and I have thought long and hard about my kids.
My concern for them will never be matched by a government worker or anyone
in the legal profession. I wish they would stop telling me how to be a
father.
