Fatherhood

A real man does what?

by  •  • 3 Comments

20131019-113811.jpg

Um. no…A real man won’t not allow himself to get sucked into a system that takes advantage of his gender. A real man will not allow a woman to just up and leave with the children he helped create. Remember, the kids you created with that woman are yours too. A real man will fight until the death to rid himself of the shackles of a government racket designed to render him useless.

I refuse to pay child support and so should any man that desires a 50/50 stake in raising their children.

When both parents work and make a similar amount of money, and neither are at home raising the children, why is the burden on the father to pay child support? Yes, he may not live with the mother anymore, but why is there no mechanism for taking into account what expenses are actually spent on the children, and split the expenses accordingly? Is there any way for custodial mothers to be held accountable for violating court orders when fathers desire to see their children and are denied access? This is usually the case when custodial mothers do not receive their money on time, if ever. Why aren’t custodial parents held accountable for the way they DO spend child support?

I already know all the answers but I want whoever is reading this to start thinking about the concept of child support and what it really means. Does it means actually supporting children or supporting mothers?

Fatherhood

Women: STOP GETTING DRUNK!

by  •  • 0 Comments

20131022-083818.jpg
Young women are getting a distorted message that their right to match men drink for drink is a feminist issue.

A well-known feminist dissident Camille Paglia one wrote:

For a decade feminists have drilled their disciples to say “Rape is a crime of violence but not sex.” This sugarcoated Shirley Temple nonsense has exposed young women to disaster misled by feminism, they do not expect rape from the nice boys from good homes who sit next to them in class…..
These girls say, “well, I should be able to get drunk at a fraternity party and go upstairs to a guys room without anything happening.” And I say, “oh, really? And when you drive your car to New York City, do you leave your keys on the hood?” My point is that if your car is stolen after you do something like that, yes, the police should pursue the thief and should be punished. But at the same time, the police – and I – have the right to say, “you stupid idiot, what the hell were you thinking?”

Another outspoken feminist Wendy McElroy wrote:

The fact that women are vulnerable to attack means we cannot have it all. We cannot walk at night across and unlit campus or down the back alley, without incurring real danger. These are things that every woman should be able to do, but “shoulds” belong in a utopian world. They belong in a world where you drop your wallet in the crowd and have it returned, complete with credit cards and cash. The world in which unlocked Porsches are parked in the inner-city. And children can be left unattended in the Park. This is not the reality that confronts and confines of us.

Here in an excerpt from an important new article on Slate. Read the entire article HERE

In one awful high-profile case after another—the U.S. Naval Academy; Steubenville, Ohio; now the allegations in Maryville, Mo.—we read about a young woman, sometimes only a girl, who goes to a party and ends up being raped. As soon as the school year begins, so do reports of female students sexually assaulted by their male classmates. A common denominator in these cases is alcohol, often copious amounts, enough to render the young woman incapacitated. But a misplaced fear of blaming the victim has made it somehow unacceptable to warn inexperienced young women that when they get wasted, they are putting themselves in potential peril.

Fatherhood

The Myth Of The Deadbeat Dad

by  •  • 1 Comment

20131022-090217.jpg
From the wild Irish slums of the 19th-century Eastern seaboard, to the riot-torn suburbs of Los Angeles, there is one unmistakable lesson in American history: a community that allows large numbers of young men to grow up in broken families, dominated by women, never acquiring any stable relationship to male authority, never acquiring any set of rational expectations about the future–that community asks for and gets chaos. Crime, violence, unrest, disorder. . .are not only to be expected, they are very near to inevitable. And they are richly deserved.
The Moynihan Report -The Negro Family: The Case for National Action (1965)

Dr. Umar Johnson write this piece on the blog A Voice For Men. He has been a big advocate for men and boys for quite some time. I have followed him in a few documentaries and on YouTube.

In this piece, he knocks it out the park! He summarizes everything I’ve been saying on my blog and is very clear in his message.

He is a no-nonsense-get-to-the-point type of man. I dig that. He also is unwilling to back down from controversy because he is as convinced as I am that we need to get our communities rebalanced.

This idea of “I don’t need a man” is dangerous and harmful to everyone that lives among other human beings.

Some mothers might not think they need a man, but their children sure need their father.

Dr. Johnson breaks down why there are so many single mother families and how we got to where we are in our society. I have posted on numerous occasions as to the dangers of choosing single motherhood, raising kids on your own and how it affects society in general.

We call men who supposedly abandon their children deadbeats, but don’t examine WHY they are no longer in the home?

Dr. Johnson states:

You’ve heard the rumors, for they are everywhere, and although unproven, they still resonate as “facts” throughout much of American society. The untruth that Black men don’t want to care for their children has become a staple in American folklore. Even sadder is the fact that these rumors are not only postulated by the numerically dominant white majority of this country, but are actually created, maintained and reinforced by the Black community itself.

Even President Obama, who rarely makes mention of the unique and unparalleled conditions facing Black men in this country, couldn’t help but join in on the carnage of the Black man’s image by telling Black church audiences during his first bid for the white house that “Black men need to take care of their children.” Obviously, trying to woo Black female voters, the Senator turned President is also guilty of reinforcing the image of the Black man as a “dead beat dad.”

The question put forth to you today is whether or not this unsubstantiated rumor is true? The answer is a resounding “No!” Not only do Black men love their children, and want to be with their children, many go to great lengths trying to secure their “state guaranteed right” to participate in the lives of their offspring, only to be met with constant betrayal at the hands of the all-too-racially & gender-biased family court systems that make up these United States.

Dr. Johnson goes on to break down the reasons where this mentality comes from:

Behind closed therapy doors, I have had scores of Black mothers, benefiting from years of hindsight and maturation, admit, although all too late, that “yes, I kept my children from their father and I was wrong.” Although any admission of honesty must be granted its blessing, unfortunately, the years of damage created by this cycle of ignorance and emotional neglect cannot go unmentioned. So many Black children are literally being destroyed by their custodial parents, and way before the mis-education machine, and psychiatric exploitation cartel, has a chance to get their hands on them.

What are some of the unjustifiable reasons mothers keep their children away from their fathers?

1) Out of Sight/Out of Mind: The pain of relationship rejection causes many Black women to prevent the man access to his children in order not to repeatedly have to face the very person who rejected them.

2) Jealousy For What They Never Had: Yes, I have had mothers admit that not having a loving father in their lives can create a subconscious envy for their daughters leading them to disrupt the father-daughter relationship that they never had themselves.

3) A Woman’s Scorn: Revenge is often at the center of disrupted paternal emotional bonds. So many Black women lack the mature understanding that they and their children are not one and the same person anymore. Many women continue, for years after birth, to hold a pathological belief they what’s good for them is automatically best for their children; In other words, “If I don’t need him in my life, then he/she doesn’t need him in their lives.”

4) Child Support: Obviously if a man can find a job he should provide for his children. However, with so many Black men being undereducated and incriminated with felonies, it is quite difficult for many of them to find work. What children need most is the loving affection of their fathers. Although it costs to raise children, it doesn’t help to keep a father from his child for financial concerns alone. Unfortunately, in many municipalities the court systems have effectively separated custody issues from support matters which now gives mothers the right to collect the father’s finances and at the same time continue to keep his children at bay.

5) Keeping the New Man Around: Although I find younger mothers much more guilty of this than older ones, it is also growing in prevalence amongst older mothers as well. So many Black women suffer from the emotional dependency of always having to have a man around to validate their womanhood (a condition often created by their own fatherlessness) that some will go to great lengths to guarantee “the new guy” a place in the sun by keeping the biological father on the outskirts and then trying to force the paramour upon the child as the replacement dad.

Getting revenge against their ex-lovers, at the children’s expense, is a frequent theme in many family therapy sessions that often leads to broken relationships later in life after adult children learn that their mothers were the true reasons behind the absence of their fathers from their lives. Many mothers are able to effectively disguise their oppressive tactics against Black men under a false mask of innocence, projecting victimization by the father when in fact they are the victimizers; playing the helpless victim in public who is raising children without the benefit of the father, but is a merciless oppressor in private, deliberately keeping the father from his children.

Read the entire piece HERE

Relationships

Black Women Ain’t WHAT?

by  •  • 0 Comments

I am the first one to say that ALL black women ain’t sh*t…or even that any other type of women fall into this category.

While I don’t agree with sweeping generalizations and the way she presented her thoughts, a lot of what she ways is right on the mark. Pay attention:

Fatherhood

Ozymandias – Breaking Bad

by  •  • 0 Comments

20131011-113609.jpg

Spoiler Alert:

I will be revealing a major portion of Breaking Bad’s final season. If you have not seen it or plan on seeing it, stop reading here and click on other links. For those who have seen the show, I have a little commentary on the episode called “Ozymandias.”

In one of the final scenes of this episode, Walt realizes that he was cornered and his capture was imminent. Walt’s wife and son turn on him after a terrifying knife fight. With the knife in hand, he stands up and yells, “What the hell is wrong with you…we’re a family!! At this point in the series, Walt realizes that everything he had been working on is lost. Walt picks up their 18 month of toddler Holly out of her crib in a fit of rage, walks out the front door, puts her on his lap in the front seat of his truck and drives off recklessly.

Later, Walt feels ashamed after the kidnapping when the toddler asked for her mother while he was changing her in a bathroom. Walt calls back to the house. During the conversation, Skyler says, “You took my child.” Walt responds with, “Because you need to learn!” Skyer shouts, “You bring her back!” The last we see of Holly is the toddler in a car seat at a fire station. At this point, we know the child will be safe.

If you saw the scene, how did it make you feel when you saw Walter kidnap Holly? Were you shocked? Were you enraged? I’m positive that the mothers who watched this scene felt strongly about what they saw.

The feelings of despair we saw in Skyler as she was crying helplessly on her knees as the truck turned the corner is similar to the range of emotions many men feel after a visit to family court. Fathers usually have a profound feeling of loss after so much is taken from them due to outdated laws that govern domestic relations. One day we could be in charge of our surroundings and family, the next, the state has power over the father and all of his assets…and children. It is quite fitting that the title of the episode is called Ozymandia because it is a poem about loss. The mighty king has literally fallen, and so has everything he accomplished.

The knife scene is one of the most intense one I can remember in the entire five seasons. I don’t want to get too deep into the plot of the show and its deeper meaning. Other people write about this show on a daily basis much better than I ever will, but I do feel a few things from this episode really stood out.

When Skyler tells Walt he took HER child, I wondered how amnesia took hold of her brain cells. She suddenly forgot the little fact that Walt helped with the creation of this little human being. Many women seem to feel that a child is theirs when things fall apart in a relationship. The father of their children suddenly vanishes from the entire creation process, especially when they plead their case in court for custody.

The other thing that plucked a nerve was the fact that Holly was used as a pawn. This time however, it was the father who took the child. I thought it was an interesting twist on the tale of the mother “taking” the kids away from the father. What are people really thinking when they use children a pawns?

Here is a little fact that many people probably don’t know. A spouse can take their child anywhere at any time for any reason. I found out the hard way during my divorce. I came home from work one evening to our apartment with no future ex and no children after an intense fight. No, it wasn’t nearly as intense as the one I described above. My ex-wife took our children to her mother’s house in Philadelphia from our home in New York City. There was very little I could do except go retrieve them, or file for a writ of habeas corpus. I chose to wait until our court date two weeks later. But, the range of emotions I felt after I realized my wife took our children away from our home, and the helplessness I felt, was similar to what I saw on Skyler’s face on Breaking Bad.

My ex did not fare too well after the supreme court judge in our case realized what she had done. The judge was visibly angry and put the hammer down on her lawyer. She used our kids as pawns in a futile attempt to manipulate the outcome, but I saw the long term goal and won the chess match. Our kids are better off because of it because I am a major part of their life.

Did you notice how I used the word OUR children in the preceding paragraphs? I had to remind my ex of this fact during the entire time we were in court. They were never her children, and never will be. This is one of the reasons we have joint custody and I pay her nothing in child support and alimony. I reminder her every day that these are our children and we will share them. It seems that many parents get extremely possessive during custody battles and lose all sense of reality.

I know from several stories I have heard over the years of mothers taking children away from fathers. As we all know, our family court system is still biased in favor of mothers. It seems that we still have an uphill battle when it comes to custody issues but fortunately, the tide is turning.

Watching a father doing the kidnapping and hostage taking of a child was pretty remarkable, especially on a show as popular as Breaking Bad. I hope more people felt Skylar’s pain as they watched this show. Perspective taking requires humans to exit their self centeredness and egocentricity to see the real world from another’s vantage point. What I liked about the fight scene was that I know it caused many mothers to gasp once they saw Walt run out the door. In the heat of a battle, our emotions tend to get the best of us. It is clearly not wise to make major decisions in this mindset.

The decision Walt made in that moment had potential long term consequences. Fortunately, he realized his mistake as soon as Holly asked for her mother. Most people never see the mistake they make until it is too late. The long lasting effects of rash decisions in family court rear its ugly head every day. The evidence is the epidemic of widespread fatherless homes in our country.

It’s true that when it comes to custody and divorce, some people are clearly pathologically narcissistic. At times, there is little one can do but to hope an adversary comes to their senses or a judge on a higher level than family court sees the truth. Some people are just not compassionate and there is little that can be done to change their mind. But the truth is this; fathers love their families just as much as mothers do. We do not want to be manipulated and have our children used as pawns.

Breaking Bad is arguably one of the greatest TV shows ever made. There are many details that are discussed about this phenomenal show on a daily basis. Writing a scene where a father kidnaps his own child to use her as a pawn was one detail many followers might have overlooked, especially since the exact opposite that occurs every single day.