The presentation you made of that study was a little bit disingenuous, don’t you think so?

There are 14 items analyzed in the study, but you conveniently chose the one (”Personal/Emotional adjustment”) which showed that kids who lived with mom fared significantly better than those who did not. [...]

“General life satisfaction” is the one you should have chosen, and this item shows only meaningless differences between the groups.

Rafael:

I think it would have been disingenuous if I hadn’t followed my mention of the “personal/emotional adjustment” statistic with this paragraph:

This is a little atypical - generally, the kids who had neither parent move do best, but none of the others are significantly below par - except, by some measures, those kids who are living with their dads.

So you’re saying it was dishonest of me to mention an atypical statistic, when I in fact acknowledged in the very next paragraph that the statistic was atypical, and described what the typical findings actually were.

You can see that your argument is utter nonsense, can’t you?

You know what I do think is disingenuous? Your third post, in which you present a lot of raw statistics, unadjusted for dozens of other possibly-relevant factors, as if unadjusted stats prove anything at all. Furthermore, none of those statistics have anything to do with the moveaway issue which was the subject of this post. (If a child is living with a divorced mother who is thinking of moving out-of-state, then that child is already “fatherless” as your statistics use the term, regardless of if the mother moves or not).

[U. S. D.H.H.S. Bureau of the Census]

90% of all homeless and runaway children are from fatherless homes.
85% of all children that exhibit behavioral disorders come from fatherless homes.
[Center for Disease Control]

80% of rapist motivated with displaced anger come from fatherless homes.
[Criminal Justice and Behavior, Vol. 14 p. 403-26]

71% of all high school dropouts come from fatherless homes.
[National Principals Association Report on the State of High Schools]

70% of juveniles in state operated institutions come from fatherless homes
[U.S. Dept. of Justice, Special Report, Sept., 1988]

85% of all youths sitting in prisons grew up in a fatherless home.
[Fulton County Georgia Jail Populations and Texas Dept. of Corrections, 1992]

Nearly 2 of every 5 children in America do not live with their fathers.
[US News and World Report, February 27, 1995, p.39]

There are:

11,268,000 total custodial mothers
2,907,000 total custodial fathers
[Current Populations Reports, US Bureau of the Census, Series P-20, No. 458, 1991]

What does this mean? Children from fatherless homes are:

4.6 times more likely to commit suicide,

6.6 times to become teenaged mothers,
24.3 times more likely to run away,
15.3 times more likely to have behavioral disorders,
6.3 times more likely to be in a state-operated institutions,
10.8 times more likely to commit rape,
6.6 times more likely to drop out of school,
15.3 times more likely to end up in prison while a teenager.
(The calculation of the relative risks shown in the preceding list is based on 27% of children being in the care of single mothers.)

and compared to children who are in the care of two biological, married parents, children who are in the care of single mothers are:

33 times more likely to be seriously abused (so that they will require medical attention), and
73 times more likely to be killed.

["Marriage: The Safest Place for Women and Children", by Patrick F. Fagan and Kirk A. Johnson, Ph.D. Backgrounder #1535.]

I know I’m a little bit late, but I think I should write this. The presentation you made of that study was a little bit disingenuous, don’t you think so?

There are 14 items analyzed in the study, but you conveniently chose the one (”Personal/Emotional adjustment”) which showed that kids who lived with mom fared significantly better than those who did not. This item is not the one who measures quality of life in general, it is correlated with the quality of interpersonal adjustment, got it? Perhaps being around a maternal figure in the early years really is essential when it comes to the quality of later relationships.

“General life satisfaction” is the one you should have chosen, and this item shows only meaningless differences between the groups.

I agree with you that the study is not conclusive, and the percentage of children who remained or moved with dad is too low (12%), which could explain most of the differences between kids who remained with dad and those who did not.

As a social worker, I do agree that the methodology is flawed. It is more pop science than legitimate.

the largest change from the control group (neither parent moves) is merely 15%, which coupled with the fact that there is one case where the child scores higher in one move case than in the control would strongly indicate that the differences are merely random statistical chance rather than indicative of any causal relationship.

And that’s without even looking at the methodology.

In the meanwhile we have an inconclusive study that will likely be used for political purposes. How is this different than business as usual. (yes I’ve been feeling really cynical lately. I attribute that to the fact that Bush raised $3.5 million today. grr)

What I’ve noticed from various comments on the blogs that have reported on this study is that the protests arise when mom wants to move with the kids. Dads are just as likely to move after divorce as mom (Braver’s study indicated as much), but dads who move with the kids or (especially) away from the kids and mom aren’t greeted with the same sense of outrage as moms who move with the kids. Fathers’ rights advocates keep talking about how much kids need their dad’s presence and influence in their lives. You’ve seen those squishy “fatherlessness” statistics. So, wouldn’t it stand to reason that they would be just as vocal about non-custodial dads willingly moving away from their own children as they are about moms who move?

Of course, there’s nary a peep about that.

I noticed that Parke created his own differentiation between the usual grassroots father’s rights groups we know with what he called “Good Fatherhood” movement. Parke placed David Blankenhorn and the National Fatherhood Initiative in his “Good Fatherhood” category. He never placed himself in a category but he believes his “Good Fatherhood” category was the only one that in his opinion that offered the most for fathers. It’s easy to see where he was going. The “Good Fatherhood” groups sought to participate in and benefit from welfare reform public policy like the creation of the fatherhood projects and male involvement initiatives. There is a lot of federal money in those programs.

Parke and Brott are favorites of the fathers’ rights movement. Brott and Stuart Miller (of the American Fathers Coalition and the American Coalition for Fathers and Children — both are essentially
one group) co-wrote “Dead Broke Dads” for Playboy in 1996. It’s a fathers’
rights complaint about having to pay child support — published in a skin
magazine.

Would that such tripe could be confined strictly to the pages of porn mags. It’d be that much easier to ignore.

I would refer people to Warren Farrell’s book “Father and Child Reunion” as an objective masculist view of the research and problem. Wallerstein’s longitudinal studies are still de riguer the last I heard. Fatherhood fares darn well in those studies especially taking into consideration the diminished investment of the now majority non traditional mother.

There’s one good outcome of the past thirty years of feminism and that is father’s started taking back their children and became heavily involved in the nurturing professions. It was women’s involvement in the latter a hundred years ago that served as the rationale for mother’s custody.

Us men thank you feminists Amy.

Tom Smith
The American Union of Men (AUM)

Watch http://www.geocities.com/feministaman/ carefully ’cause more lies will be challenged.

When faced with facts, the weak will tremble — and dedicate web pages to the objects of their fear.

Excellent information, Trish. Keep those mentally promulgated anti-woman fist shakers shivering in their little knit booties, now, won’t you?

“Feministaman” sounds like a cheesy Troma film character. Whoever-it-is also is too chicken to provide a real name.

I find it telling that the first thing a fathers’ rights advocate brags about here is his (unsuccessful) drive to eliminate child support. Now that’s a child-centered approach — petition to do away with one means of supporting children. It makes it so clear to me that fathers’ rights advocates are not concerned about what children need.