Fatherhood, Parenting, Society

Entitled Kids

by  •  • 0 Comments

 
An excerpt from this article: http://addins.kwwl.com/blogs/anchormom/2015/04/the-entitlement-generation

 At my last job, there was a young woman who was interning with our station. She showed up to work one day wearing extremely short shorts and a halter top. To work. Our news director at the time said, “You have two options…you can run home and get changed and come back…or you can just go home.” Her response came quickly and loudly: “WHO THE F@#K ARE YOU TO TALK TO ME LIKE THAT? YOU CAN’T TELL ME TO GO HOME!!”

Ahh…and there it is. The entitlement coming out. The “I have never been told no because I want to be your friend…let me give you a trophy because you signed up to play soccer even though you never come to practice, only games…I’m not going to give you a grade on this test because I don’t want you to think you’re a failure, even though you don’t study…you’re going to sit in time-out and then we will discuss why you called your mom the B-word…I can post anything I want on social media because I have freedom of speech…I won’t be held accountable at school because my parents will come and yell at the teacher for me.”

I will say it until I am blue in the face: I am thankful I was raised the way I was raised in the era I was raised in.

We used the terms ma’am and sir…we said please and thank you…we wouldn’t dare look at our parents cross-eyed…if we didn’t study, we failed…if we didn’t go to practice, we didn’t play in the game…if we didn’t win, we didn’t get a trophy…if we talked back to our parents, we got the back of my mom’s hand to our mouths…if we used a bad word, we got soap in our mouths…if we acted up in school, our parents were called to the principal’s office and we served detention…if we didn’t like our dinner, then we didn’t eat…if we were late for curfew, we were grounded…if we lied, we had our toys taken away…if we misbehaved in the neighborhood, our neighbors would discipline us…if we didn’t get hired for a job, then we weren’t who they wanted.

We weren’t handled with kid gloves. Our parents let us fall so we learned how to get back up.  We were told the word “NO” and told it often. It wasn’t about our parents being “our friends.” It was tough love. Why? Because they knew how tough the world is.

I’m over the “entitlement era.”

Read the entire piece HERE

Fatherhood

#Fatherhood – What’s It Like Being A Dad?

by  •  • 0 Comments

What’s it like being a dad?

Teaching your teenager to drive, giving your kid’s pet fish a funeral, explaining the birds and the bees, playing catch—-fatherhood isn’t something that happens all at once. It’s a day in day out choice to show up for your kids. So…how much time you got?

Music: Celeste (Instrumental) by Les Enfants. License by The Music Bed.

 

Society

Female Masculinity

by  •  • 0 Comments

I’d love to sit down and have a discussion with the woman who designed this poster and put this up on a wall. I saw this poster on a corner in Brooklyn the other day and I am confused as to what the message is supposed to be.

What is this person trying to say?

Is she saying that her masculinity is somehow a threat to mine? That makes absolutely no sense to me. That is as silly as me saying that my femininity is not a threat to hers.

First of all, the overwhelming majority of masculine, heterosexual men are not attraced to masculine women. It is an automatic repellant. Why would we want a partner who is as masculine or more masculine that us? I hate to disspoint her, but we aren’t interested in women like this.

Second, in what way is her attempts to being like me, a threat? Men like me are not threatened by women like her in any way. Am I to feel threatened that she will seduce my girlfriend and take her away from me? Am I to feel threatened that she will take my job, my money or my cell phone? I’m not sure what I’m to be threatened by.

Third, is this person a man dressed up to look like a more masculine woman or is it a woman who is trying to mask her femininity? It’s confusing and it truly is a nonsensical message in my opinion.

I have a feeling that this is that the same artist who is part of a campaign to tell men that we should not ask them to smile. The artist is on a campaign making demands. She seems to want to instruct us men on what to do and what not to do.

This “don’t ask me to smile” or “don’t talk to me as I walk down the street” gang seems like they are demanding that us men don’t talk to her at all, don’t approach her in any way anywhere, don’t ask her how she is doing at any time, don’t be offended if she walks by with a angry scowl on her face and looks pissed of at the world. Don’t be offended by her, don’t offend her, don’t get close, don’t breathe near her, don’t even look up when she is approaching. Bow your head and keep back 500 feet!

Looka here young lady. Men like myself are not at all threatened by you. We are not even interested in talking to you if you are going to make ridiculous demands that no one will ever follow. We don’t want to deal with you under any circumstances.

This all might change once you want to have a dialogue about certain topics that you feel strongly about. Until then, it seems as if you will be angry and alone…and the rest of the world will go on without you.

Don’t worry. Men like me will live a beautiful life without all of the non-smiling masculine women. We can go through life being surrounded by positive people who are interested in being around members of the opposite sex. Those people who appreciate the beauty of being feminine. We will also go on with life surrounded by those women who appreciate the men who are masculine.

I highly suggest taking all of that negativity and stay indoors. No one really wants to be around such bd energy. Life is too short for contstant anger and rage.

Good luck on your issues and your man-hating campaign. I wish you well. Just stay away from us heterosexual men and women who cherish the differences between the sexes.

 

Child Support

Forgiving $38,750 in Child Support, for My Kids’ Sake

by  •  • 0 Comments

  

Should everyone support his or her children? Yes. Is court-ordered “child support” supporting your children? NO one knows. 

Can someone tell me the what law requires court-ordered child support to be spent on the child? I didn’t think so. 

The amount of “child support” ordered by family court has no relationship to the real cost of supporting a child. States use formulas that have no correlation to the actual costs associated with raising kids.

Using the term “child support” is a useful euphemism to cover up a massive extortion scheme that harms fathers and their children, families and freedom. 

I could go deeper into my thoughts but I’ve already done that here: http://www.socraddockmethod.com/why-i-refuse-to-pay-child-support/

Check out this piece from the New York Times. Here is an excerpt: http://mobile.nytimes.com/blogs/parenting/2015/04/19/forgiving-38750-in-child-support-for-my-kids-sake/?smprod=nytcoreiphone&smid=nytcore-iphone-share&_r=0&referrer=

Earlier this year, I spent three hours sitting on a hard, wooden bench in the Queens County Family Court, waiting for a judge to approve my petition to forgive $38,750 in child support arrears from my ex-husband. 

The judge said, “Well this is a rare one,” then asked me several times if I was aware of what I was doing and if I had received legal counsel. When I told my single mom friends, they looked at me as if I had committed an act of treason. “Child support is all we have!” one friend exclaimed. 

Is it?

This was not a decision for divorce lawyers or court clerks. Or the unofficial single moms club, for that matter. This was about redefining what child support really is, for our family — and it’s a redefinition that other families should consider.

We have too often reduced nonresidential fathers to being weighed and judged by a financial transaction. If you don’t pay, you’re a “dead beat.” End of one story, beginning of a new one, one that can mean suspended drivers’ licenses and professional licenses, seized bank deposits and tax refunds, and the very real risk of jail time. The family of Walter Scott, who was fatally shot in the back following a traffic stop, speculates that a similar narrative led him to flee the police, fearing another lost job and another jail stint. It can also mean some mothers blocking access to children (called “pay per view”) and children becoming pawns in a game that puts their development and psychological well-being on the line.

For many, many reasons, I was determined to ensure that our family story did not include any version of that too-common series of events. Studies prove that school-age children of involved fathers have better academic success, higher grade point averages and go on to have higher levels of economic and educational achievement. We focus on money, when “child support” also means emotional support, academic support and the supportive power of a male influence in a child’s life. Negating that value is dangerous to our children. Regardless of what I think of him, my children love their father and doing my part to keep that feeling alive is priceless to me. 

As mothers we would never want our value to be trivialized to a dollar amount. But fathers are often reduced to being an accessory parent — nice to have around, but not essential as long as a good mother stands in. In the seven years since my divorce, my ex-husband (or “wasband” as I like to call him) has always given our children his time, whether he had money or not. He currently makes payments to me directly when he is able. 

But his arrears have accumulated during years when he was unemployed or underemployed and either paid less than the monthly payment ($600) granted when we divorced, or nothing at all. So when our children were young, after our separation and early in our divorce, I negotiated new currencies such as additional time when I needed child care, meal preparation, haircuts and even helping with home repairs, instead of acting as if a cash payment was all he had to offer our children. The look on their faces when he came to pick them up was more than worth it. 

But last June, my daughter graduated from middle school. She wanted nothing more than for her father, who has moved back to his native England, to attend her graduation. (Our children spend 6 weeks there with him every summer.) He could not travel to the United States to attend, he and his new wife said, because of his child support arrears and subsequent arrest warrants.

My daughter was beyond disappointed that he wasn’t there. I would have paid the $38,000 myself if I could to remove that look from her face. What I could do was to be sure it didn’t happen again, and take the words “arrest warrant” out of the language my children associate with their father. I don’t want the father of my children to be criminalized or to live in fear of prison. I don’t want the letters from Child Support Enforcement coming to my home nor the pamphlets marketing legal services to help me get my owed child support. This is dangerous subliminal messaging for my daughter and my son.

So I sat on the bench.


My children have (almost) always wanted to see their father. Whether he paid or not did not really matter to them. Yes, it mattered to me, especially during those difficult years after divorce when money was tight. But I have scraped to get by, and I view him as having been unable to pay, not unwilling. But our broken system lumps both kinds of fathers together in the same prison-bound barrel.


Read the rest HERE: http://mobile.nytimes.com/blogs/parenting/2015/04/19/forgiving-38750-in-child-support-for-my-kids-sake/?smprod=nytcore-iphone&smid=nytcore-iphone-share&_r=0&referrer=