A look at the fathers' rights movement in New Hampshire
As published on page one of the June 29, 2011 edition of The Keene Sentinel, and online.
Personal stories told with passion are the mark of fathers who decry the role the legal system has played in their families' lives.
Fathers' rights activists make headlines from time to time. Their actions can be silly, as in the case of British activists who periodically dress as comic book superheroes and scale public buildings. Or, they can be tragic, as in Thomas J. Ball's recent public suicide outside the Cheshire County Court House in Keene.
But the questions these activists raise touch on fundamental social issues of family, justice and the roles that men and women play in the world.
Without a central, driving organization, the fathers' rights message is delivered by a number of groups. Some are local; others reach across the country and around the world.
Peter G. Hill, a spokesman for the Massachusetts Fatherhood Coalition, lays out his group's legislative agenda: shared custody laws, stricter requirements for issuing restraining orders, and reform to child support policies that can land cash-strapped fathers in jail.
Others also believe police and court decisions reflect a limited view of the role fathers play in children's lives.
"In my opinion they have some very important points and injustices that need to be addressed, just like the women's movement faced injustices that need to be addressed," says Murray A. Straus, professor of sociology at the University of New Hampshire and co-director of the university's Family Research Laboratory.
"It's in the nature of social movements that people go to extremes. In a way you can understand that -- you have to exaggerate, you have to ignore facts in order to move things along."
Examining men's issues
In 2002, New Hampshire established its Commission on the Status of Men, the only panel of its kind in the country.
The advisory group of five residents works to raise awareness on issues ranging from prostate cancer to gender stereotypes in education. It recently sponsored an essay contest with the theme "Why My Dad is Important to Me" in honor of Father's Day.
The state Commission on the Status of Women was recently eliminated, but the men's commission, which receives no public funding, still exists.
Michael J. Geanoulis Sr. is the commissioner others defer to on the topic of fathers' rights.
"I just don't understand the casual regard society holds for the father-child connection," says Geanoulis, a 75-year-old New Castle resident.
He has championed relationships between fathers and their children since the 1970s, but his interest in the topic stems from an even earlier experience. At the age of 7, he says, he moved across the country with his mother, leaving behind a father he adored.
"I don't think there's a single social pathology item that is left untouched when a child is separated from a father or mother," Geanoulis says. "The kids need both the father and the mother."
And, he says, fathers and mothers both need their kids.
Debating domestic violence policy
Perhaps the most controversial position taken by fathers' rights advocates is their call for reform or repeal of domestic violence and child protection procedures, which they say are biased against men.
Anti-domestic violence laws and policies vary across the country, but they regularly call for police officers and court officials to remove an accused abuser from a home before proceeding with an investigation.
"Just on the fact of her own statement, in most states, a woman can have a man ejected from the house. That's contrary to our whole legal tradition," says Straus, the UNH sociologist.
In New Hampshire, the state recommends that police departments encourage officers to make arrests whenever there is probable cause in allegations of domestic abuse. If an officer decides not to make an arrest, under state-recommended policies the officer must write a detailed explanation of the reasons for not arresting the accused abuser.
The laws and polices that exist today exist for a reason, supporters say, and there's good reason for the emphasis on protecting women from men.
Women and children are the most frequent victims of violent domestic crime, says Steven Varnum, chairman of the board of directors of the New Hampshire Coalition against Sexual and Domestic Violence.
"To the extent that fathers' rights people say 'it's not fair, and more of us are taken out of homes,' I'll agree with half of that. More than half of the people who are taken out are men, but it is fair, because men are more frequently violators of a safe home," Varnum says.
But, Straus argues, while the fact that women are more likely to get hurt is a good reason to advocate for their protection, it doesn't mean that men start all the fights.
His research suggests women start fights in the home as frequently as men do, and he thinks domestic violence treatment and prevention programs would be more effective if they addressed their message to women as well as men.
Programs that only talk to men "only attend to half the problem," he says. "They convince the guy he shouldn't hit, and he goes home and gets bopped."
In a 2007 survey by Varnum's organization, 24 percent of the men reported they had been physically assaulted by an intimate partner.
Varnum doesn't claim the legal system is perfect.
"The fathers' rights advocates and the domestic and sexual violence advocates, what they truly have in common is the desire to have all of these systems -- law enforcement, courts, health care -- do a better job at this stuff, and devote more time and resources where time and resources are needed," he says.
"The good dads stand to gain from a really thorough investigation from an investigator that really understands family dynamics."
Straus thinks that in time the Violence Against Women Act, the 1994 federal legislation that encouraged states to aggressively prosecute and work to prevent violent crime against women, will be reformulated as a "family violence act," but he doesn't think the change will come soon.
Looking toward the future with children
Scott R. Meyer, a professor of social work at Plymouth State University who also serves on the Commission on the Status of Men, has advice for aggrieved fathers:
Keep your eye on the prize -- your children.
Sometimes working within a flawed system can be a good way to achieve a personal goal, and even work toward changes to the system, he says.
"I'm of the belief that a lot more can be done by getting clear about desired outcomes, best methods, and amassing as many allies as one can -- so that one is not always standing alone and dealing with the problems they are encountering in the system," he says.
Sometimes the system issues orders that are distasteful to some people, such as court-mandated counseling. But it might be worth it to go along with the requirements for the sake of the reward at the end, Meyer says. "Most people will try to work it out. They want the system to go away, and within reason they will do what they have to do that make the system go away."
And even if the problems between two parents are never resolved, adult children eventually become old enough to decide for themselves which parents they want to spend time with, Manchester activist Robert A. Dickerson points out.
"With Thomas (Ball), I like to think that if he had waited a few years his kids would have been a little older and it would have all worked out," Dickerson says.
Dickerson, 52, says he went for years without contact with his two children and spent a year and a half in jail for unpaid child support. But recently he has started rebuilding his relationships with his two kids, now 22 and 19.
He still believes he was treated unfairly by his ex-wife and the courts, but he's no longer as angry as some of the younger fathers he meets, he says.
"I've accepted that there are some things I can't change," he says.
Among them: $78,000 in child support debt.
In New Hampshire, interest on unpaid child support is charged at a rate of 10 percent per year.
Dickerson is a member of the group Fathers for Justice, and he encourages other dads to get connected, and know they aren't alone.
Treatment with anti-anxiety medication has helped, he says, even though he initially resisted taking drugs.
He also rejects the idea of a gender war.
"Too many of these guys are bitter. They blame it on women," he says. "I don't blame it on women; I blame it on the system."
tagged with: fathers' rights, Thomas Ball
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