Bean quotes from this Jack Straton essay about child custody, and I can’t resist reproducing the same quote here:
In the process, I am going to talk today about the effects of male power and control over children, not about parental power and control. I know that it is popular these days to de-gender family conflict, to talk about “spouse abuse” and “family violence” rather than “wife beating” and “rape.” I know that we want a society in which men nurture children to the same extent that women do.
I know that fathers and mothers should both be capable parents. But if you ask “What about the kids?” I want to give you a serious answer. I cannot seriously entertain the myth that our society really is gender neutral, so to consider “What about the kids?” while pretending such neutrality is to engage in denial and cognitive dissonance. I cannot hope to arrive at an answer that will positively affect reality if my underlying assumptions are based on fantasy.
So I am going to talk today about the effects of male power and control over children, not about parental power and control. As I cite examples, some of you may hear your internal voice saying, “But women do that, too.” As this happens I would ask you to be aware that such voices are often the voice of guilt that try to distract us from what we really know about men’s violence so that we need not take responsibility for this violence.
It is true, for example, that some women do batter men. But the number of severe cases of this type is so low when compared with the virtual war of men’s violence against women, that they cannot be seen above the statistical noise. This voice that says “But women do that, too” has as its purpose, not compassion for battered men or lesbians, but a distraction from the noble goal of ending battering of women.
So as you hear this voice today, become consciously aware of it. Let it into your conscious mind for a moment, and then let it drift on. It is just a tape recording that you can always come back to in an hour or two if there is a need. If you find that you just can’t contain this voice, that others must hear this tape recording, please do not hesitate to raise a hand or even to shout it out. We will pause to give it some space.
Straton’s essay argues that abusers should not ever be given child custody (as Lorenzo says in Bean’s comments, “it is infuriating that the link between wife-battering and child abuse by abusive men should have to be argued for and empirically demonstrated at all”).
Straton, drawing on Martha Fineman’s arguments, also argues that custody should be determined not by a hard-to-define “best interests of the child” standard, but instead by a “primary caretaker” standard. The idea is that in child custody cases in which one parent clearly was the child’s primary caretaker (measured by such things as who made doctor appointments for the kid, who took the kid clothes-shopping, who drove the kid to soccer practice, etc), that parent should have a presumption of custody.
This makes a lot of sense to me. First of all, because in many cases “who made sure Junior got dressed every morning and attended parent-teacher conferences” is much less nebulous than “best interests,” a primary caretaker standard will encourage clarity and discourage drawn-out child custody lawsuits – and also discourage parents from threatening a child custody case as a ploy to lower child support payments.
More importantly, it puts the emphasis on creating gender equality where it should be – on what happens before the divorce. I agree with men’s rights activists that ideally, fathers and mothers should be taking equal care of the kids; but they seem to concentrate nearly all their concern for equality on the teeny, tiny percentage of families in which a judge decides custody. If we want equality of child-rearing post-divorce, the way to get it is to try and bring about equality of child-rearing in families in general.
I agree that wife-beating is a vastly larger problem than husband-beating, but I do suspect that, compared to some other “important” crimes such as carjacking or kidnapping by strangers, husband-beating is a significant problem. Probably much more significant.
Dave, you’ve just provided another example of a distraction. Nobody’s talking about carjacking or kidnapping.
I like the idea of a “primary caregiver” standard myself. “Best interests” can be interpreted too many different ways by too many different judges. “Best interests” could be interpreted as “who has more money?”, not in the sense of one parent being unable to supply adequate resources while the other one can, but in the sense of one parent being significantly wealthier….wealth trumping the actual work of child raising.
I’d hate to think that even though I’ve been the only parent involved with my daughter, that I was the one there through all the significant medical issues and surgery, the one who read her books, gave her baths, enrolled her in preschool, took her to various therapies, got her involved in sports and art, the one who provided all the physical and emotional needs by myself……I’d hate to think that all her meth-addicted, convicted felon biodad would have to do is show up in court spiffed up with inherited money (his father is in his eighties), and trump all that in front of some anti-single mother judge who thinks money is everything.
Why should the “best interests of the child” standard and the “primary caretaker” standard be considered as an either/or proposition? I like the “primary caretaker” standard not because I give a rat’s ass about equity between divorcing adults, but becuase living with the primary caretaker is – usually – in the best interests of the child.
So we could say that in making decisions about children in divorce cases, we go with the best interests of the child. As to the specific issue of custody, we can say that presume – or presume heavily – that granting custody to the primary caretaker is in the best interests of the child. We can then begin defining what circumstances custody to the primary caretaker is not in the best interests of the child. Monay should not be on that list – a non-custodial parent with significantly more money can just be ordered to pay more to the custodial parent, in both child support and a caretaker’s wage, to compensate the custodial parent for doing the job of the non-custodial parent, which should be separate from alimony. (No, by the way, it is not fair to the non-custodial parent to make him pay the custodial parent to do a job he offered to do himself. But see above about what I do not give a rat’s ass about.)
What could overturn the presumption in favor of the primary caretaker? Well, child abuse for one. There may be cases where the caretaker has been abusive to the children but the noncaretaking parent has not been abusive to anyone. That, I think would overcome such a presumption and favor granting custody to the non-caretaking parent. (As to the case where the caretaking parent has been abusing the child, but the non-caretaker has been abusiing the caretaker, I would fankly have no clue.)
I generally agree with Decnavda’s comment.
I think the primary caretaker standard might have some bizarre unintended consequence — women might do more gatekeeping, be less encouraging of their husbands to be involved parents if they felt their custody in the event of a divorce was at risk.
I am objecting to dismissing husband-beating as “statistical noise” for the same reason I would object to dismissing carjacking or kidnapping as statistical noise. Just because they are comparatively rare doesn’t mean they should be dismissed entirely. Perhaps wife-beating and husband-beating are separate issues with separate causes. But husband-beating is certainly more than “statistical noise.” It is a real problem for real people.
I agree that a “primary caregiver” standard would make a lot of these contested custody power plays go away. I for one support it, and I know plenty of other people in the field who do. However, the “primary caregiver” concept is not popular in this political climate. There is far too much focus on slogans like “children need frequent and continuing contact with both parents,” “equal parenting,” and fathers’ rights.
I don’t have data in front of me to back this up, but it’s my sense that there are more differences between male domestic violence against women and the reverse than just the frequency. Male spousal battery ends in homicide with shocking frequency, and turns into crippling or disfiguring injuries in many instances. While I have heard anecdotes of female domestic violence against men ending in death or disability, I think those are probably outliers. I would be very surprised if, on the whole, male domestic violence against women were not much more severe than the reverse.
dave, nobody is dismissing the idea of violence against husbands. The “statistical noise” comment is about bringing up such violence purely to derail a discussion of domestic violence against women.
I like the idea of the primary-caregiver standard as a subset of the child’s best interests. After all, if the parents were OK with one person being primary caregiver before the marriage, why the sudden need for exact 50/50 parenting after?
(I am, for the record, *not* my children’s primary caregiver, so I have no self-interest in such a standard being adopted.)
mythago:
dave, nobody is dismissing the idea of violence against husbands. The “statistical noise”? comment is about bringing up such violence purely to derail a discussion of domestic violence against women.
I’m not quite sure that is what Straton is saying. He also seems to assume that any time someone brings up violence against husbands, it is for the purpose of dismissing domestic violence against women. But that is a massive assumption. Maybe people bring up violence against men because it is more prevalent than Straton realizes. His “statistical noise” comment is not just saying that “domestic violence against men is often brought up to derail discussions of violence against women.” He is dismissing violence against husbands as a relevant factor in custody because it is supposedly so rare:
“For today’s discussion, I will point out that since men are nearly always the batterers in domestic violence and women are nearly always the primary caretakers for the children, adoption of the primary caretaker criterion for custody would enormously relieve both the courts and advocates for battered women of much of their work around custody decisions.” [emphasis mine]
Yet his claim later in the article that “men are nearly always the batterers in domestic violence” is simply a blatant distortion. Here are some quotes from a DoJ study:
“Women experience significantly more partner violence than men do: 25 percent of surveyed women, compared with 8 percent of surveyed men, said they were raped and/or physically assaulted by a current or former spouse, cohabiting partner, or date in their lifetime;”
“According to survey estimates, approximately 1.5 million women and 834,700 men are raped and/or physically assaulted by an intimate partner annually in the United States.”
“Women are significantly more likely than men to be injured during an assault: 32 percent of the women and 16 percent of the men who were raped since age 18 were injured during their most recent rape; 39 percent of the women and 25 percent of the men who were physically assaulted since age 18 were injured during their most recent physical assault.”
While this study obviously shows that violence against women is a bigger issue, it hardly shows that men are “nearly always” the batterers. I agree that an abuser should not get custody of a child. Yet that should be true regardless of the sex of the abuser. The amount of female abusers and male victims is NOT so low that it can just be dismissed as “statistical noise.”
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Indeed, it would be interesting to see how many of those cases happened in same-sex relationships.
Sarah, the link Aegis provided is informative. The document says:
“Violence against women is primarily male violence.
The survey also found that most violence
perpetrated against adults is perpetrated by
males: 93 percent of the women and 86 percent of
the men who were raped and/or physically assaulted
since the age of 18 were assaulted by a male.”
It also backs up my speculation that assaults on women are more severe and more frequently require medical attention than those on men.
Aegis:
Keep in mind, however, that the comparison you provides here considers all violence the same. A minor shove is counted the same as someone being raped or beaten up.
The comparison you provide makes it sound as if men are assaulted by intimate partners half as often as women. But if you look at the tables on page seven of the .pdf version of the report you linked to, you’ll see that it’s generally true that the more severe the assualt is, the smaller a proportion of the victims are male.
For instance, 8.1% of women and 4.4% of men have ever had something thrown at them by an intimate partner – about a 2 to 1 ratio. In contrast, 6.1% of women and 0.5% of men have ever been choked by or experienced an attempted drowing by an intimate partner – a 12 to 1 ratio.
I’m not saying that being shoved or having something thrown at you is meaningless or acceptable. But, you know – I was hit by a girlfriend once. Her hitting me wasn’t right or acceptable behavior, but it also didn’t leave me in fear. In contrast, there are women who need the help of a shelter who have been seriously beat up by their boyfriends or husbands again and again, and who live with that threat always hanging over them. My experience is not legitimately comparible to theirs; I was hit once, I wasn’t “battered.”
What’s most telling, I think, is what happens when you look at the only two items asked about that inherently have an outcome built in. (That someone was shoved doesn’t tell us anything about context; there is such a thing as a friendly shove, or as mutual combat.) 7.7% of women versus 0.3% of men have ever been raped by an intimate partner – a 16 to 1 ratio. 8.5% of women and 0.6% of men have ever been “beat up” by a intimate partner – a 13 to 1 ratio.
And that’s not even taking into account how many of the abused men were in same-sex relationships; if we did, the “women do it too” suggestion would have even less support. (One thing the same study found is that a gay man’s most likely intimate abuser is another man, but a lesbian’s most likely intimate abuser is a boyfriend or husband. That is, among those women with same-sex intimate partners who had been abused in their lifetime, the majority of them had been abused by a past male partner, not a past or current female partner.)
So, frankly, I think battered husbands about as rare as Straton suggests, even taking into account the study you link to (a study that Straton is, I feel safe in saying, very familiar with). (I discuss the statistical issues in a lot more detail in this post.)
* * *
I don’t think that’s what he’s saying. “Any time” would include, for instance, people bringing up battered husbands in a discussion of intimate violence against men. I don’t think Straton would object to that at all. Male victims are rare, but they do matter, and it’s appropriate to discuss them in the right context.
However, Straton is talking about the tendency for people to say “but women do it too” whenever the issue of women battered by men is discussed. In that context – and considering that this is a pattern that feminists have observed again and again – it does seem that the function of these comments is diversion. (And even if not every single individual who brings it up intends it as a diversion, the effect is nonetheless diversion.)
One of the fascinating things about divorce and custody discussions is that they always seem to devlove into the side-issue of domestic violence. Violence is used as a “trump card” to dismiss almost any argument that doesn’t automatically favor the wife or mother and ultimately side-tracks every conversation.
The problem with the “primary caretaker” test is that is disproportionately favors mothers. For a number of reasons completely unrelated to sexism, mothers are more likely to be the primary caretaker of small children. Some could even argue it is the one area where women specifically carve out control and dominion. To then create a legal doctrine which specifically rewards that control and dominion is as sexist and unfair as saying the person the person with the most money gets the kids.
The dirty little secret that any lawyer who does family law will admit with a little prodding is that the custody laws already favor the mother. You don’t need to further tip that unbalance.
I guess Straton’s point in dismissing husband-beating is to gain access to the more rhetorically loaded term “wife beating.” I don’t have a problem with him using that term, but I wish he wouldn’t so readily dismiss husband-beating.
It’s like saying that most murders are crimes of passion, so let’s dismiss other murders entirely.
I’m fine with him pointing out that wife-beating is typically more severe and obviously much more prevalent than husband-beating, but why dismiss it entirely?
Res Ipsa, you say that the “primary caretaker” role is disproportionately held by women _for_reasons_unrelated_to_sexism_. I strongly disagree. Sexism, broadly including rigid gander roles, pushes fathers out of active parenting, into jobs that make it difficult. It keeps employers from taking fathers’ parenting responsibilities seriously. It puts social pressure on women to take responsibility for not less than 50% of parenting, and it allows men to take for granted that 50% is the absolute upper limit of their parenting obligation. What parenting would look like in a non-patriarchal industrialized society I can only guess, because I have not seen it.
The mere act of giving birth and breast feeding tips the “primary caretaking” balance in favor of the mother. As long as the mother is breastfeeding, she is going to control the child care. It’s not sexism that creates that.
My experience is that mothers recognize they have power in child rearing and use that power to maintain control. Maybe it is, as your say, because we live in a patrarchial society where they are unable to control other facets of their lives, but mothers generally control parenthood, either overtly or covertly. That’s women are disproportionately responsible for child abuse and infanticide.
Before you dismiss as a “father’s rights nut” I am not suggesting that this is some plot to oppress men or fathers, but merely the natural reality of the parenting relationship. It has little to do with patriarchy, in my opinion, but is much more complicated. Creating a “primary caretaker” test could have the complete opposite result Ampersand profferred. Instead of broadening parenting, it would be even more of a reason for mothers to continue to control the parenting, knowing they dramatically would improve their already significant advantage in a child custody case.
Res Ipsa-
I agree that giving birth and breastfeeding are non sexist reasons why women often are the primary caretaker.
I also agree that mothers often use the power of child rearing for control purposes.
I also believe that women are the primary caretakers for sexists reasons. Sexist against women – forcing them to be the primary caretakers, but also sexist against men, discouraging them from taking a major role in one of the great joys of life. Raising children is very different from housekeeping. If I could I would have a robot do all my housekeeping. But if I could, I would stay with my children 24/7.
As a man, I agree that the “primary caretaker” standard would be horribly unfair to men. And I do not give a rat’s ass.
When you decide to bring a person into this world without their consent, you owe them everything. What is good for you and fair to you is secondary to what is good for them and fair to them. And being with their primary attachment for most of the time – the person they first learned to love and who knows them best and who taught them they were worthy of being loved – is usually, presumptively, in the best interests of your child, even if you are not that person.
Unfair to you? Yes. That is something you should have thought of before you put your penis in your child’s mother. I have no sympathy at all.
As Elizabeth stated:
“I think the primary caretaker standard might have some bizarre unintended consequence ““ women might do more gatekeeping, be less encouraging of their husbands to be involved parents if they felt their custody in the event of a divorce was at risk. ”
On the other hand, a very controlling hubby might see this as a way to get the upper hand, especially if he has a problem with steady employment. Insofar as custody advise is being increasingly deceminated and “rationalized,” making sure you score big on visible school drop offs and doctor visits, even if you don’t do much cuddling or reading, could become a palpable threat against any wife wanting to throw you out. Something along the lines of “don’t tell me to get a job or clean up around here, because you can’t throw me out. I’ll get custody of Junior.” I’ve heard of this happening. In fact, a variation of it happened to me–and it worked.
Even in less dramatic situations, anyone who has ever gone through a bloody custody fight may feel that points are being wracked up for each additional child, in terms of who did what and who can document it. Just in case, you know.
And Res Ipsa states:
“My experience is that mothers recognize they have power in child rearing and use that power to maintain control. Maybe it is, as your say, because we live in a patrarchial society where they are unable to control other facets of their lives, but mothers generally control parenthood, either overtly or covertly. That’s women are disproportionately responsible for child abuse and infanticide.”
Your assumptions about child abuse and infanticide are as wrong as the arguments about dv being “equal opportunity.” Women only dominate the statistics when “neglect” is factored in with deliberate abuse. This is because women represent the vast majority of caregivers. Because most abuse/neglect is actually neglect, women APPEAR to exist in greater numbers. However, when abuse is isolated out, men actually dominate the statistics, especially for sexual abuse. This is especially true for non-parental caregivers.
From the Executive Summary of the Third National Incident Study of Child Abuse and Neglect (1996):
http://nccanch.acf.hhs.gov/pubs/statsinfo/nis3.cfm#perpetrator
Perpetrator’s Sex. Children were somewhat more likely to be maltreated by female perpetrators than by males: 65 percent of the maltreated children had been maltreated by a female, whereas 54 percent had been maltreated by a male. Of children who were maltreated by their birth parents, the majority (75%) were maltreated by their mothers and a sizable minority (46%) were maltreated by their fathers (some children were maltreated by both parents). In contrast, children who were maltreated by other parents or parent-substitutes, or by other persons, were more likely to have been maltreated by a male than by a female (80 to 85% were maltreated by males; 14 to 41% by females).
Abused children presented a different pattern in connection with the sex of their perpetrators than did the neglected children. Children were more often neglected by female perpetrators (87% by females versus 43% by males). This finding is congruent with the fact that mothers and mother-substitutes tend to be the primary caretakers and are the primary persons held accountable for any omissions and/or failings in caretaking. In contrast, children were more often abused by males (67% were abused by males versus 40% by females). The prevalence of male perpetrators was strongest in the category of sexual abuse, where 89 percent of the children were abused by a male compared to only 12 percent by a female.
Among all abused children, those abused by their birth parents were about equally likely to have been abused by mothers as by fathers (50% and 58%, respectively), but those abused by other parents, parent-substitutes, or other, nonparental perpetrators were much more likely to be abused by males (80 to 90% by males versus 14 to 15% by females). This general pattern held for emotional abuse, but was slightly different in the area of physical abuse. Children who had been physically abused by their birth parents were more likely to have suffered at the hands of their mothers than their fathers (60% versus 48%), while those who had been physically abused by other parents or parent- substitutes were much more likely to have been abused by their fathers or father-substitutes (90% by their fathers versus 19% by their mothers). For sexual abuse, the child’s relationship to the perpetrator made very little difference, since males clearly predominated as perpetrators, whatever their relationship to the child. Moreover, the severity of the injury or impairment that the child experienced as a result of maltreatment did not appear to bear any relationship to the sex of the perpetrator.
In terms of family characteristics, the same report says this:
Among children in single-parent households, those living with only their fathers were approximately one and two-thirds times more likely to be physically abused than those living with only their mothers.
I don’t want to sound like I defend ANYONE who maltreats a child. But if you go to the HHS site, it is clear that a lot of what is defined as neglect is basically code for being poor — unable to provide decent housing or adequate and nutritious food. Some of it just vague and scary — not getting the kids to the doctor in a timely manner (and this in a country without universal health insurance) or disregarding the advise of “experts.”
Silverside, what I don’t see is this: of children of single-parent households, what is the likelihood of neglect by sex of the parent? Since there are a lot more of single mothers than fathers, the more frequent citation of women for neglect may only be an artifact of their overrepresentation among single parents.
Plus, echoing what you said, neglect is often poverty plus some other problem. If single dads are better off financially than single moms, one would expect fewer neglect findings.
In sum, I think Res Ipsa has it all wrong. Mothers are not more of a danger to their children.
Finally, some women do not breastfeed at all. Others do only for a few months, and only a few continue after a year. That’s not a biological basis for unequal parenting for the other seventeen years.
mmmm……..man batter…
When you look at more of the data, poverty is NOT simply less income in the sense that dad was an attorney and mom was a legal secretary who was out of the labor force for a few years. Rather, it is the kind of poverty that is heavily tied to low educational levels, young age, and a dysfunctional family background (though the last has become something of a cliche, admittedly.) In that sense, if you took all the moms who were guilty of neglect, and transferred all those kids to their biological fathers, I don’t think you’d see a big improvement. They are all still part of the same socio-economic class for the most part.
In some instances, young fathers are particularly dangerous, especially with infants. According to the NY Department of Health, Shaken Baby Syndrome is a particular danger with young male caretakers, especially those with abusive personalities, poor impulse control, and few parenting skills:
Who Are The Perpetrators?
80% of perpetrators are males in their early twenties
Predominantly, the abuser is the baby’s father or the mother’s boyfriend
Female perpetrators tend to be the child’s caregiver, not the mother
http://www.health.state.ny.us/nysdoh/consumer/sbs/sbsfact.htm
Really makes you wonder about all those programs that encourage young teen fathers to take a more active role. Not without a lot of monitoring and education! Just not a good idea….
It’s interesting that when women are abusers, it’s because of poverty and being the primary caregiver, but when men are abusers, no one offered a rationale or excuse for the abuse and simply accepted that they were violent.
The data demonstrates that when birth parents abuse, it is more often the mother. While the data on non-bio parents skews towards men, it also means that the mother has likely invited the abuser into her home and hardly abrogates responsibility for abuse.
Res Ipsa, your contention that among birth parents mothers are more likely to abuse is not supproted by the data. Silverside’s figures are these:
“Among all abused children, those abused by their birth parents were about equally likely to have been abused by mothers as by fathers (50% and 58%, respectively)”
Do you have different data on this point?
This is all a big sidetrack anyway. You brought it up to buttress your argument that (drawing from consecutive comments):
“For a number of reasons completely unrelated to sexism, mothers are more likely to be the primary caretaker of small children. … That’s [sic] women are disproportionately responsible for child abuse and infanticide.”
Having failed to show that women abuse their birth children more than men, and having offered nothing subsequent to weaning in the way of biological basis for your claimed patriarchy-independent maternal dominance in parenting, do you now have anything else?
Here’s the data, from the HHS report referred to above.
“Of children who were maltreated by their birth parents, the majority (75%) were maltreated by their mothers and a sizable minority (46%) were maltreated by their fathers (some children were maltreated by both parents).”
“Among all abused children, those abused by their birth parents were about equally likely to have been abused by mothers as by fathers (50% and 58%, respectively), . . . Children who had been physically abused by their birth parents were more likely to have suffered at the hands of their mothers than their fathers (60% versus 48%)”
I am merely pointing out that while it’s always fun to blame the patriarchy, there is more involved when looking at the power dynamics of child caretaking and creating a legal standard that would perpetuate this power dynamic that disproportionately favors women would be bad law and bad policy.
Okay, Res Ipsa, but are you still maintaining that “[f]or a number of reasons completely unrelated to sexism, mothers are more likely to be the primary caretaker of small children,” or do you concede that sexism is at least related to most of the dynamics that cause mothers to be the primary caretakers of small children?
I would agree that a standard that encourages people to “game the system” at the expense of their children is bad — but there’s plenty to criticize about either “best interest” or “primary caretaker” in that respect. That’s an interesting debate. However, the idea that parenting responsibilities are divided, entirely or even in significant part, independently of a culture’s socially determined gender roles put a bee in my bonnet, and I want to knock that down.
Res Ispa-
Could you please respond to my point that it is wrong to be concerned with fairness between the adults when it is not in the best interests of the child or conflicts with being fair to the child?
The best of the interest of child standard is about the needs of the child, when used correctly. While the parents turn it into a drama about fairness and equity, the standard does focus on factors that the courts believe relate to the child’s best interest.
I would concede that because sexism pervades almost everything, it plays a role in women being the main child caretakers. I think, however, that it is overblown to say that patriarchy is to blame and it is important to consider the role that maternal power plays in a mother’s decision to be the primary caretaker.
I’ll take that as a “No.”
Is it necessary to say that women either want to raise their children because of A) sexism, or B) maternal power? It seems to me that history, biology, psychology, and anthropology all point to the same conclusion: That the vast majority of mamallian mothers feel an overwhelming bond and attachment to their offspring. Mental illness, drugs, or other similar phenomenon can disrupt this process, but it doesn’t change the fact that for the vast majority of mothers, gazing into the face of their newborn brings on a feeling of incredible bliss. And I for one don’t feel that moms have to apologize for that.
On the other hand, the bonding that women feel for their children can be used as an excuse to tie them to the little darlings 24/7, which can be frustrating, especially in an isolated suburban type context with no other adults around. When the fact that you have children is used to exclude you from other aspects of social life, that is sexism.
But when mothers are excluded from the public sphere, don’t be surprised if for some, mothering becomes a suffocating, power-drenched activity. However, for all the fathers rights agitation on this point, I think this was far more common in cultures like ancient Greece or 19c America (look at the letters that Civil War soldiers wrote their mothers. From our vantage point, the bond appears excessive, but was perfectly normal in that time period.) The kind of bonds that mothers and children had then would probably be uncomfortable to a lot of moms now, not to mention the culture at large.
Oh, it appears that in HHS lingo, “maltreatment” is the combination of neglect and abuse. So of course, mothers will have greater numbers.
And I’m not blaming “patriarchy” as such for the results. Look at hhs definitions of “neglect.”
Res also says: “While the data on non-bio parents skews towards men, it also means that the mother has likely invited the abuser into her home and hardly abrogates responsibility for abuse.”
Typical reasoning actually. Mothers are always held responsible for what other people do. However, you never see fathers held responsible for what mothers do. So when a father or other male abuses, it’s mom’s fault. And when mom abuses, it’s mom’s fault. Gotcha.
From my understanding women’s violence against intimate men has been declining. It used to be that men murdered their wives and women murdered their husbands with more equal frequency, but lately women have been murdering thier husbands much less, whereas men have continued to murder their wives almost as much. This decline in wives murdering their husbands is, of course, very good news, but it seems like seriously misplaced priorities to focus on something that’s not only a smaller problem, but a problem that is in decline, while ignoring something that’s both a bigger problem and a problem that hasn’t been declining as much.
Mothers are always held responsible for what other people do. However, you never see fathers held responsible for what mothers do.
I was really enjoying your excellent comment when this one hit me.
Mothers are (or should be) responsible for the predictably foreseeable consequences of their actions – same as every other functional adult. If a mother invites a friend into her home who turns out to be a moral monster, well, that isn’t always predictable. Not her fault. But if she invites a felon gangbanger drug-dealer with a price on his head into her home…well, shit happens. And a neglectful mother should take a rap for things she ought to have been able to prevent, exactly the same as a neglectful father. (That doesn’t relieve the actual committer of bad behavior of any responsibility – it’s additional bonus responsibility.)
But other than that, I really enjoyed your post.
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But if she invites a felon gangbanger drug-dealer with a price on his head into her home…well, shit happens. And a neglectful mother should take a rap for things she ought to have been able to prevent, exactly the same as a neglectful father. (That doesn’t relieve the actual committer of bad behavior of any responsibility – it’s additional bonus responsibility.)
Niiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiicccccce.
And another wonderful example of blaming the woman right there. Othering scumbag men means that men don’t have to address, once again, what they do to get women to trust them.
Funny. We could talk about the sly ways that men trick women into believing that they’re not gangbangers or whatever. No, what we’re doing is assuming that they’re obvious gangbangers, and that the woman casually let them in the house. And not only that, she ‘ought’ to be able to prevent stuff.
I’ve met some gangbangers who were excellent husbands and fathers, and still more stereotypically ‘nice’ guys who were child molesters or some other type f scumbag. So have lots of women. Look at Scott Peterson. Look at that guy who set his kid on fire because he didn’t get custody. And of course there’s Rusty Yates, who should have prevented those killings, but didn’t.
When do we start holding men responsible for all the stuff they ‘should’ have been able to prevent?
Thanks, ginmar, for coming up with a coherent reply. It was beyond me.
But I’d like to say:
Shit happens? SHIT HAPPENS? Dude. Rapists are not a force of nature; rape is not an act of God. Getting raped is not like falling off a ladder or getting hit by a tornado. It involves the conscious decision on the part of another person–most usually a person who takes pains to appear normal–to hurt you.
Interesting. I say that we should treat neglectful mothers and neglectful fathers exactly the same, and your reaction is to ask when we’re going to start holding men accountable.
They should both be held accountable.
But your analogy portrayed a situation in which, according to you, the woman should be held responsible for protecting herself from the reprehensible conduct of a man. And it referenced a social disease–rape–that is in part supported by society’s tendency to blame the victim and either excuse the perpetrator or refuse to acknowledge the social place of the perpetrator.
It’s a myth that husband beating is comparatively rare. Woman-oriented crisis organizations, and in fact the DoJ itself, will often report things like “7% of violent crime against men is perpretrated by intimate partners, whereas 35% of violent crime against women is perpetrated by intimate partners.” it’s left to the reader to determine the relative importance of these figures without informing the reader that in total, men are 4 times as likely to be the victims of violent crime.
Not only are women almost as likely to be batterers, over the last 20 years, violence against men by women has been on the rise, in fact, to a greater extent than the decrease in violence against women. I’m not suggesting that intimate partner violence is a zero-sum game, but that funding for violence prevention programs that only respond to the needs of women may in fact be.
It’s a myth that women don’t beat their spouses, it’s a myth that women don’t beat their kids. It’s a fact that we ignore violence by women societally, because it’s “not real” violence.
Jakob, I think I’ve refuted your claim in some detail in this post, and also in less detail in my comment earlier this thread.
Two wrongs don’t make a right.
Male on female violence has been so widely accepted throughout history and around the world, yet can the same be truly said about female on male violence? How recently in the US was it generally recognized as acceptable for a man to beat his wife because he was king of his home and allowed to exercise whatever discipline he thought necessary? How about the issue of marital rape? When did that even become a conceivable concept that it is not acceptable for a husband to demand and force sex on his wife? (It was only in 1993 when marital rape was finally recognized as a crime in all 50 US states.) Even now, there are still many sub-groups within the US who believe that men have the right to do whatever they want within their own homes, not to mention many other cultures that currently accept that what the man does in his own home is his own business, even when it results in murdering wives and daughters.
This isn’t to say that female on male violence isn’t real, or that the male victims aren’t important, but as *society-wide* problems go sexism, rape, and violence is much more of a problem for women than for men. And to complain that the women and men who are dedicated to changing ages-old society-wide beliefs about male on female violence aren’t giving equal play time to female on male violence is… insulting. Women have had to fight for property rights, voting rights, right to work, right to education, equal pay (someday, I hope!), the right to not be abused. The list goes on. Can the same be said about men as a general class of people? (Let’s not get distracted with slavery and class issues.)
If someone is truly concerned about female on male violence, then work positively to change society’s attitude to remove the shame from it, set up shelters to help men, start their own female on male violence forums directed at addressing that problem. BUT DO NOT try to turn discussions about the prevalence of male on female violence into “women do it, too” arguments and statistics comparisons to try to prove equivalency between the two issues. They aren’t the same, and such arguments help neither women nor men. Men, especially white men in Western societies, do not face the same society-wide disadvantages that women struggle against on a daily basis. And I do believe that the issue of violence against women cannot be separated from women’s inequality in other areas. I also believe that as we as a society address male on female violence, we will also learn how to address other forms of violence.
In terms of child abuse, I have always heard that most physical abuse of children is by women, but most sexual abuse of children is by men.
I actually don’t like this kind of discussion though. Abuse is terrible. Any victim needs help.
The focus should be on making sure that husbands and children who are abused by women get the help they need, just as wives and children who are abused by men need help. We shouldn’t focus on what kind of abuse is more common so much as helping victims become survivors.