Divorced Dads: Shattering the Myths

Review: Divorced Dads: Shattering the Myths

Link to Book: Divorced Dads: Shattering the Myths


I haven't seen this on search, but maybe I missed it.

From the review:

Quote:

Braver, who has conducted an eight-year study of parents after divorce, knocks down the stereotypes one by one. To begin with, most divorced fathers don't "walk out." At least two-thirds of the time, the mother is not only the one who files for divorce but the one who wants out of the marriage. And it's usually not, as many assume, because the father beats her, drinks or cheats; most commonly, mothers cite such reasons as "growing apart" or "not feeling loved or appreciated." Nor is it true that, once divorced, fathers are likely to desert their children emotionally and financially. Most fathers who are steadily employed consistently pay child support (their record is especially impressive if one looks not only at mothers' reports, on which most statistics are based, but at fathers' own reports) and work to stay in their children's lives. So-called "runaway dads" are often "driven-away dads": they vanish because their ex-wives keep them away. Finally, there's the mother of all divorce myths: that men benefit economically from divorce, while women and children are impoverished. The famous factoid from Lenore Weitzman's 1985 book The Divorce Revolution - women's standard of living drops 73 percent in the year after divorce, that of men goes up 42 percent - was exposed as erroneous two years ago. But her critics' alternative calculations still showed a drop for women and a rise for men. All those researchers, Braver shows, made one big mistake: they didn't factor in the tax code, which favors the single custodial parent. They also omitted such things as the father's spending on children during visitation. After these adjustments, the economic effects of divorce are similar for both sexes; mothers may even have a slight advantage. Weitzman and other feminist scholars have claimed that divorce settlements are tilted in favor of fathers because men are favored by a male-dominated system and are more aggressive negotiators. Yet on average, mothers are more satisfied with divorce settlements than fathers. Ten percent of mothers in Braver's sample thought the system was slanted in favor of fathers, while 75 percent of fathers thought it was slanted in favor of mothers - and more than a quarter of mothers agreed!

I found this while searching for support for single dads, which I am about to be again. My first marriage ended in divorce in the early 1990's, and my current marriage will be finalized in a couple of months. I was lucky enough to get custody of my two sons from my first marriage (they were 3 and 1 at the time). I did receive child support from their mother, and I finished college before my oldest turned 8.

Now I find myself, unfortunately and not of my desire, going through another divorce after a 13 year marriage. We agreed to allow our daughter to choose where she wanted to stay, and to my great surprise, she chose me so she could stay near friends and continue to go to school here.

I had to fight stereotyping as a single dad then, and I was wondering if the same stereotypes are out there today? Most people then assumed I "had them for the weekend/holiday" rather than thinking I was the guardian/custodial parent.

It also points out that most women, not the case in my first divorce but it is in this one, just want out. So, where divorced men have been derogatorily called "sperm donors", a lot of women should, imo, have been classified as "egg donors".

I believe that in most cases men are as capable, if not more capable, than women to raise the kids.

I was wondering what others thought about this issue.

Put the internet to work for you.

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