Why Fatherhood Is Just As Important As Motherhood

You have to be disgustedly in awe of the competitive dichotomy we practice in this country. To most Americans, life is a zero-sum game.

If minorities are making gains, it is at the expense of white Americans.

If women are making gains, it is at the expense of men.

If a person becomes a self-made millionaire, he got into the 1% at the expense of the 99%

It is mind-bogglingly ridiculous, this fallacious thinking, but then dichotomous thinking is ridiculously fallacious.

I can easily deconstruct the fallacy of the zero-sum game mentality in the examples cited above, but there is one example where the zero-sum game is not fallacious.

When the legal system favors mothers over fathers.

I love TED Talks because invariably I either learn something new or gain a perspective on a subject that I had not previously considered. The TED Talk below featuring a woman divorce attorney who specializes in representing men in child custody cases highlights a problem that few people are taking about…

How men are systematically disfavored in child custody disputes.

I will not rehash what is said in the above video, except to say the following…

Fathers play an equally critical role in the development of children, from birth through adulthood, and the law makes it too easy for women to engage in chicanery and subterfuge in order to undermine the parental rights and responsibilities of men.

Two central points I gleaned from the TED Talk are these…

Firstly, while men can and often are held financially responsible for the children they father, even to the point of using draconian methods to ensure compliance and sometimes without the benefit of equitable visitation of their children, women can legally not list a father on the birth certificate, list a man who is not the biological father on the birth certificate, and even have a man’s child without informing the potential father. This allows women to cut a man out of a child’s life with impunity.

Lastly, there is a loser in this zero-sum game between fathers and mothers…

The children.

The negative statistics on fatherless children is staggering and is having a markedly deleterious effect on American society.

I close this blog post with one thought that I hope my readers will consider…

Whether you grew up with your father in your life or whether you did not, imagine your life without him and then imagine your life with him and tell me if you would be the same person without him.

-The Rational Ram