🚀 go-pugleaf

"Sandi" <murr...@mnsinc.com> wrote:

>My point was that most men do not like it when women succeed (in any form).
> They don't like it when they (men) have to work for a women.  A lot of men
>feel that women have taken jobs from them. When in fact it is far from the
>truth.

What's your basis for this, besides wild speculation?

>> 
>> 1) the rate of fatherlessness quadrupled, the divorce rate more than
>> doubled, and the
>> illegitimacy rate quadrupled 
> 
>You blame this on women? Where is the father's responsibility?  It does
>take two ya know.

    The above statement is somewhat misleading, and does not seem to
be born out by the research, which Kenneth S. has summarized before in
alt.child support.  What it amounts to is that approximately 75
percent of divorces are initiated by wives -- and by "initiated" is
meant more than just filing the divorce papers.

      It may be useful to summarize the information again. Here are
the sources we know of:

(1) Wolfgang Hirczy, in an April 5, 1996, posting in the Family Law
list, summarized the data as indicating that in two thirds of cases
wives dump husbands.  The main source he cites is a 1993 study by
Braver, Whitely and Ng, which asked 378 families "Which one of you was
the first to want out of the marriage, you or your ex?"

(2) A 1991 book, "Divided Families," by Furstenberg and Cherlin, which
says that "four out of five marriages ended unilaterally, usually at
the wife's insistence."

(3) According to Kimbrell, "The Masculine Mystique," (1995) mothers
initiate divorce actions at "over twice the rate of men."  (Comment:
For some reason, the only specific figure in the relevant footnote is
to Texas statistics indicating that 75 percent, not 66 percent, of
divorces are initiated by mothers.)

(4) Susan Faludi, in "Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American
Women" (1991) says: "From the start, men are less anxious to untie the
knot than women: in national surveys, less than a third of divorced
men say they were the spouse who wanted the divorce, while women
report they were the ones actively seeking divorce 55 to 66 percent of
the time."  Faludi cites a Gallup poll survey in support of this.

(5) Wallerstein and Kelly said in "Surviving the Breakup" (1980) that
"unlike the decision to marry, the decision to divorce rarely occurs
by mutual consent in families with children.  Customarily, one partner
wants to get out of the marriage with a great deal more passion than
the other.  Many times, only one partner wants to get out at all.  For
instance, in our study women took the final step to terminate the
marriage in three-fourths of the cases, while nearly half the husbands
strongly opposed their decision."  The follow-up book, "Second
Chances" (1989), by Wallerstein and Blakeslee, talks about the serious
problems divorce creates for men, and comments that "it is no
coincidence that every man who sought a divorce in this study had
another woman waiting in the wings."

(6) On the anecdotal level, Anne P. Mitchell, a California attorney
and the director of the Fathers Rights and Equality Exchange (FREE),
said in a March 29, 1995, posting: "First, in both my experience as a
family law attorney, and as the director of FREE, I can say
categorically that yes, women DO file for divorce far more frequently
than men.  It is also true, particularly given the advent of `no
fault' divorce, that the reason they give is often `I'm just not
happy' or `I need to find myself and grow.'  I can also honestly say
that in eight years of being in the field, I can count on ONE HAND the
number of men who have initiated divorce for a reason such as `I just
need to find myself' or `I am not happy.'"  (Comment: Lest I be
accused of distorting her views, I should say that Ms. Mitchell went
on to say that she opposed the idea that the predominance of
mother-initiated divorce was a reason for a presumption of paternal
custody.)

(7) There seems little doubt that wives file divorce papers in the
great majority of cases.  I see little point in assembling detailed
data about this, since the simple issue of who files the papers seems
to have little relevance to who is the dumper and who the dumpee.
However, Anne Mitchell on June 12, 1996, filed information about this,
dating from a 1986 study by the National Center for Health Statistics
which she said was the most recent source.  This study showed that
women file for divorce nearly twice as often as do men, when comparing
individual, versus joint, requests for dissolution of marriage.  NCHS
Statistician Barbara Foley Wilson commented that "women traditionally
have predominated in filing divorce petitions," adding that various
studies of divorcing partners "have showed that the woman is more
often dissatisfied with the marriage than the man."

     When I have referred to some of these figures before, some have
said that the figures mean nothing, sometimes referring to cases where
wives filed for divorce after their husbands had left.  However, as
indicated in (7) above, that is not what this is about.

     Another reply has been that, if wives are seeking divorces, then
they must have reasons for doing so.  But the implication of THAT
reply is that, whatever the evidence, wives are always entitled to
innocent victim status.  In addition, if husbands were typically the
spouses seeking divorces, would anyone try to argue that they must
have had a reason for doing so (i.e. that they were justified in
breaking up their families)?

     There is room for dispute about what the exact percentage is.
What cannot be disputed, I think, is that the typical picture of
husbands ditching their wives is clearly wrong.  This has implications
for all kinds of things.  For example, it raises the question of
whether the approximately 10 percent glass ceiling on paternal
custody, plus high levels of child support, are not an incentive for
mother-initiated divorces.

     There's a comment in a book by Jack Kammer, "Good Will Toward
Men" (1994), that seems very relevant to me: "When I was a little boy
and I heard that my parents' friends were getting divorced, I had the
very clear impression that divorce was always the man's fault.  That
made me feel bad about men.  Only later did I realize that the reason
I thought that divorce was always the man's fault was because it was
only the women who were talking about it."

  It seems to me that it's about time that men spoke up on the subject
of the circumstances of divorce.