Fathers' Rights Movement Essay ⋆ Essays on Controversial Topics ⋆ EssayEmpire

The fathers’ rights movement is an international movement, though concentrated in Western countries, that seeks to protect the legal rights of biological fathers. This primarily involves advocating for custodial rights for divorced fathers on the part of local, state, and national organizations, such as the American Coalition for Fathers and Children.

During the 1990s there was an increase in the number of single-father families; by 2002 they accounted for one in five single-parent families in the United States. However, the movement predates the recent increase in the number of father-led families. Born in the 1970s in the United Kingdom and in the United States, it was mainly a reaction to the rise in divorce rates, coupled with the increased economic independence of women through employment in the labor market and the women’s rights movement. In the United States, many states moved to no-fault divorces in the 1960s, which also led to a rise in the number of divorces and hence the number of single fathers.

Historically, fathers were responsible for both the physical and financial fitness of their children, but this changed in the 20th century due to a social and cultural shift that saw mothers as better caregivers. As a result, in recent decades, physical custody of children has almost always been awarded to women. Those in the fathers’ rights movement consider the legal system now unfairly biased in the direction of mothers, and they advocate for joint physical custody of children, arguing that it is in the best interest of the child to have a healthy relationship with both biological parents.

Frustration exists among many organizers and those active in the movement that the trend toward joint legal custody has been slow to take hold, even though certain types of fathers are more likely to receive either sole custody or shared physical custody of their children. This group includes high-income families, families in which the parents owned a home together, and families with older children who are boys.

As father-only families remain a small proportion of all families, the fathers’ rights movement has also begun to move in a new direction, that is, emphasizing that the father is important in all families and that married fathers also need support and representation in their attempts to balance work and a meaningful home life. This involves promoting awareness about the importance of family time and pushing for paternity leave policies. In general, the increase in mothers who work outside of the home and a cultural shift that resulted in the decline in patriarchal attitudes about and within families combined to allow the fathers’ rights movement to gain a foothold to advocate for all kinds of fathers in the legal arena and beyond.

Bibliography:

American Coalition for Fathers and Children. (http://www.acfc.org/).
Garasky, Steven and Daniel R. Meyer. 1996. “Reconsidering the Increase in Father-Only Families.” Demography 33:385-93.

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