MRA Robert Franklin writes:
New Teen Violence Report is 468 Pages Long–but the Word ‘Father’ Is Nowhere to be Found
[…] The report is 468 pages long, and as far as I can tell, the word “father” is nowhere to be found in it.
Wow, that is pretty surprising. Especially since it took me under a minute to find this in the report:
Absent Fathers
The vast majority of single parents in Canada are women, and there has been much speculation about the propensity of youth from lone-parent homes led by women to be involved in violence. Although the research and literature points to a strong correlation between violence involving youth and teenage parents, the findings are equivocal on the correlation between violence involving youth and the absence of a father generally.
Despite the lack of solid evidence, an increased presence of fathers, and particularly Black fathers, is often cited as a force….
While it is logical to work to have fathers be responsible parents, we cannot conclude that their absence from the home is, on its own, a source of the immediate risk factors for violence involving youth.
Apparently “as far as I can tell” doesn’t include a simple text search. Or skimming the headers.
UPDATE: Not long after I posted this, Robert’s post disappeared.
UPDATE 2 (Nov. 28): The post has reappeared, updated and corrected. For the record, I actually have no objection to people editing and revising their posts, as long as significant changes are noted (as they are in this case).
Perhaps Robert might also disappear?!?
well, that’s fatherS, not fatheR. ;)
Speaking of fact-checking, I wish it were required for newspaper editorials as well as articles. The obvious criticism to make of this op-ed is that it is inconsistent: the author claims he isn’t a sore loser, and then spends the rest of his column criticizing Obama; he decries liberals’ irrational attacks on Bush and ignores that they were predated by conservatives’ irrational attacks on Clinton (did a liberal editorial page ever declare that Bush had been offing people, as the WSJ did with Clinton?). But I was equally annoyed by the factual problems.
Of course we will face challenges ahead, but if only 52 percent of us work on solving those problems then we won’t accomplish much.
If this is supposed to refer to the percentage of the vote won by Obama, it’s statistically poor; he won 52.8% of the vote, which I was taught normally is rounded to 53%, not 52%.
And I wonder how Rahm Emmanuel would react if the current White House staff stole the “o’s” from the computer keyboards the way his team stole the “w’s” from ours in 2000.
Rahm Emanuel — evidently they didn’t check spelling either — left the White House in 1998 to work in the private sector, so describing the 2000 White House staff as “his team” is inaccurate. And of course, the underlying “scandal” of vandalism was debunked by the GAO and even Bush and Cheney themselves.
Ampersand, I am an MRA. I am a real life activist.
I know all the work that is happening on the ground because I live within it. You would be surprised how many left wing men are also a part of it too. And especially humanists.
Personally my stand is as a mother and friend of the youth. I have been a mother since a teenager and now I raise teenage boys.
Both my sons have been accused of false rape. The first was horrific and as always you learn through the first child. I was very fortunate to have a WOC stand very strongly for him who worked with the police and youth.
But… and this is the sad part. Once you have been accused of rape you can never receive innocence no matter that you have your case thrown out or found not guilty. The system only allows the words, “Not enough evidence to convict”.
He can never work as a doctor nor a policeman nor with children. He has been confined to certain choices since he was 14 years of age.
My 2nd son was accused when we moved into a new area. A father knocked on my door asking to speak to my teen son. As a single mother I was afraid this grown man would take advantage of the situation and stated that my husband was working out of town and that as the mother I would like to know what he wanted with my child.
He then proceeded to question my son in front of me of his daughter. The words from my mouth were, “Please son, tell me you did not have sex with this girl”.
“I didn’t mum. She knocked on my window while I was in bed. She told me she had run away from home and that she needed somewhere to stay. And she told me she was 16”.
I remembered that night. I heard a noise outside and asked my son what he was doing outside on the porch when he should have been in bed on a school night.
The father could see the panic I felt and said, “I had to come and sort this out with you because she has 3 older brothers and they will not be asking questions first”. Then he admitted his daughter had done this before.
The girl was not happy for her father to tell her off and felt she needed revenge and proceeded to put my son’s photo on youth websites calling him a rapist. We let it ride and just continue to make good goals for his life ahead.
But it could have turned very bad. As a parent I did not have the chance to sell up and move soon after I had bought a house. My areas is not a low area but a middle class area.
Now I stand to say, “We have to work something out”.
Much of what I get from our rape crisis commission is things like, “Men get women drunk”. I can see the problem.
Women are not being allowed to grow up. People are forgetting that women don’t need men to buy them drinks any more. They can get themselves drunk. We have money and power now.
I am left but in the old school 70’s left wing.
Cannot we find a way to get along? A way to put men’s needs as worthwhile.
I know that feminism will fall when it becomes gender policies. But progress isn’t about keeping jobs nor having to hate another group for power. It is about saying, “We have fixed this as far as we can. Now we need to go to the next level”.
Women are not being allowed to grow up. People are forgetting that women don’t need men to buy them drinks any more. They can get themselves drunk. We have money and power now.
Er, does this mean that men no longer buy women drinks? Has it been legislated that bars no longer can serve a beverage to a woman when a man has paid for it?
I feel a great deal of sympathy for people who are falsely accused of rape, but I don’t quite understand what we can do to prevent the false accusations. In the meantime, the real accusations aren’t often effective in getting a conviction. A few men will get women that little extra bit of “drunk.” And those few men will be allowed to keep doing it, because once you have a drink with a man, your testimony about consent to sex no longer is reliable, and a jury will have reasonable doubt about whether your accusation is false.
Julie, that’s totally off-topic, and you’ve already been warned about this kind of inappropriate behavior. Please cut it out.
OK, Mandolin. I can do this. I know I can. (smile)
That little off-topic rant ignored, “disappearing” a post is way outside the bounds of general blog etiquitte. If you make a factual mistake — and all of us have — you correct it, either in the post itself or in a follow-up. “Disappearing” a post is generally considered strong evidence of intellectual fraud — hiding evidence of one’s imperfection, rather than admitting it.
Jeff Fecke Writes “’disappearing’ a post is way outside the bounds of general blog etiquette… “Disappearing” a post is generally considered strong evidence of intellectual fraud — hiding evidence of one’s imperfection, rather than admitting it.”
Leave it to Jeff to put the worst possible interpretation on an action by a men’s and fathers’ advocate.
Actually, what happened is this—Robert Franklin wrote the post but evidently made a mistake. (I say “evidently” because I didn’t check his post before it was posted and haven’t checked since.) Robert is a reasonable guy and despite the factual error his overall point—that the study gave short shrift to fathers—still seems correct, at least from the quotes provided by Jerry, one of my readers.
When Jerry pointed the error out to me, I took down the post—which had only been up a brief time—and sent Robert a note telling him about the issue and suggesting he check/edit his post. He’s out of town, but replied that he will do so when he returns. When he does so, I will put the post back up, along with an explanation of the mistake.
This seems to me to be a perfectly reasonable way to handle it, particularly since the post had only been up 10 or 15 minutes. (I suppose, in retrospect, another way to handle it might have been to leave a note in the post’s place to explain the situation.)
Fecke’s attitude towards men’s activists exactly mirrors that of Sean Hannity to Hillary Clinton: start with the assumption that Hillary sucks, and then everything she does afterwards—no matter how innocent or defensible—is just another example of why Hillary sucks.
Julie, I’m going to play the Devil’s Advocate here.
You say both your sons were accused of rape, and despite there not being enough evidence to convict either, their lives are ruined.
The first thought that came to mind when I was reading your post was, Why are your sons getting accused of rape in the first place? If you look at the U.S. DOJ crime statistics, you’ll see that false accusations of rape are only 2% of the total (a percentage comparable to most other crimes).
What is the chance that both your sons would fall into that unlucky 2% category? Maybe you should look past your motherly instincts for a second and consider that maybe at least one, if not both, of your sons is a rapist.
It’s a harsh, cruel world, but even more so if you refuse to consider a thought simply because it displeases you.
I’m letting Yohan’s post through, even though I disagree with it on two grounds. First of all, it’s continuing a thread fo discussion that a moderator has already deemed off-topic.
Second of all, it illustrates why bringing up personal narratives as evidence about general social trends, as julie did, is a bad idea. (In fact, it’s only because it’s so useful as an illustration of this, that I’m letting it through). If you bring up personal narratives in a policy debate, the most obvious way for people to rebut you is to question your personal narratives.
I don’t think Yohan’s point is valid. 2% is not so low that it’s impossible that two brothers could ever both be unlucky — there are, after all, millions of people in the country, so even extremely unlikely events happen every now and then.
Furthermore, it doesn’t have to be just bad luck; it’s conceivable that women who make false accusations have other personality traits in common, and it’s common for people from the same family to find similar traits attractive.
Or maybe Yohan is right.
But it makes “Alas” a very unpleasant place if issues this personal — “are juile’s sons really rapists?” — become our topics of conversation. So, obviously, Yohan shouldn’t have debated this point. But julie, you also shouldn’t have brought it up in the first place. By bringing it up to make a political point, you put the rest of us in an position where, in order to rebut you, we’d have to debate the question of if we can assume your sons are innocent of rape just because you said so.
It’s a conversational dynamic that I’d prefer people work to avoid. So, Yohan: don’t debate whether or not julie’s children are rapists. And julie: please don’t bring up the subject of your son’s lives in the first place. Let’s just not go there.
Yohan sez:
“If you look at the U.S. DOJ crime statistics, you’ll see that false accusations of rape are only 2% of the total (a percentage comparable to most other crimes).”
————————-
Yohan, help me out and give me a reference to anywhere the US DOJ says that.
Anywhere, on-line or off.
Man, talk about factually inaccurate posts.
That’s the Susan Brownmiller number, not the US DOJ number.
Two points.
First, VR is right; 2% is not a number from any official government agency, that I know of.
Second of all, this is all off topic on this thread. If folks would like an on-topic place for discussing false rape accusations, please use this thread instead.
Ok, I can answer Yohan.. Firstly, my sons did not even have sex with these girls. So it was never a question of sex.
Sometimes our young women teens do and say silly things because of hormones. Male teenagers do the same.
But this is no excuse to send a young man to prison for 8 years or mark him for life. That is what I am saying.
What you need to understand is what the 2% that feminists talk about. I have not heard that low a number. 5% is what I hear.
Anyhow, the 5% is calculated on what goes through the system. The feminists also consider that the police put the number of false rape complaints around 65% – 80%. But the feminists do not calculate that because they are expecting the system to pick it up before it gets INTO the system.
There is no side following the damage done between the initial cry of rape to the final outcome. This is where the work is needed. This is where the statistics fall down. We are needing balance now. We need to find a way forward as 2 genders. (BTW, I am aware there are 11 genders) My initial comment is about 2 of those genders.
When we get a chance to discuss white ribbon I will go into more detail of the reasons it is bad to ask men to hold other men accountable. Because as you can see from my comment 3 brothers were more than happy to deal to my son over a cry of rape only.
Anyhow, here is my facts.
http://tinyurl.com/5wgvxn
Sorry about my last comment being in this thread. I only just noticed Amersand asking for it to be posted in another. It was mean of Yohan to question my sons and I do feel I should be allowed to reply.
Julie, did you read my comment #11?
I don’t think Yohan was any more at fault for questioning your s0ns, then you were to bring them up in the first place. You shouldn’t have brought it up, because your sons aren’t really a good topic for bloggish debate. But since you did bring them up, it seems a little wrong for you to blame Yohan for replying to you.
The solution is for you to not bring up subjects that aren’t appropriate to debate and discuss here, such as “my sons who have been falsely accused of rape.”
Ampersand, thanx for referring to comment 11.
Yes, that is important information for me to consider. KEEP TO THE TOPIC. And yes, that is much better for others to speak back to me and discuss things with me.
I also want to add to Yohan that the 5% or whatever number. It averages up to 10% sometimes is taken from the rape statistics that get counselling long term.
What feminists are saying is that those who follow through as high risk are 90% truthful.
The rest as I say are untouched territory.
Hi Barry, I hope you’ll let my moderate comment through your moderation filter, because I am the person who seems to have first caught this error in Robert Franklin’s post. Before you it seems. I wrote to Glenn and Robert about this, but unlike you and Fecke, I think they did the right thing, not disappearing a post, but taking it down for revision.
Or are you proud of every single post you’ve posted, and every single action you’ve taken with your blog, and can proudly say there is no mistakes by you in any of them? Any of them?
Jeff Fecke, if you disapprove of “disappearing a post”, just how do you feel about Amanda’s racist and sexist airport rant?
And Barry, while fact checking is a perfectly appropriate and commendable behavior, do you fact check Jeff Fecke’s posts? Because in the past (at Shakesville) he has been very guilty of making gross generalizations regarding Glenn Sacks unsupported by the posts he was referring to. You can find that out by googling for Jeff Fecke at Glenn’s site.
In the meantime, instead of turning this into a gotcha post, you may have considered discussing the meat of the post itself.
While it is logical to work to have fathers be responsible parents, we cannot conclude that their absence from the home is, on its own, a source of the immediate risk factors for violence involving youth.
Why not address their conclusion, and the data and evidence behind that conclusion?
Which is more imporant do you think, some intra-blog Feminists vs. MRA fight, or actually considering the children and the question: is it reasonable, logical, and in the evidence that absent fathers are not a risk factor for violence amongst youths?
Barry,
Since you felt what was important here was not the report, but Robert’s post and Glenn’s response, I think it is relevant to post what I wrote to Glenn.
You’ll notice that unlike your response, my response discusses not just the erroneous post, but also touches on the report itself.
Your in hopes of a more honest blogosphere,
Jerry
“Robert, am I looking at the right report? I clicked on the link, downloaded “volume 1”, opened it in “foxit reader” (acrobat alternative) searched for “father” and found “13” instances. Not a whole lot perhaps, but there is a section entitled “Absent Fathers”.
Absent Fathers
The vast majority of single parents in Canada are women, and there has been much speculation about the propensity of youth from lone-parent homes led by women to be involved in violence. Although the research and literature points to a strong correlation between violence involving youth and teenage parents, the findings are equivocal on the correlation between violence involving youth and the absence of a father generally.
Despite the lack of solid evidence, an increased presence of fathers, and particularly Black fathers, is often cited as a force that would keep young Black men away from the arena of violence. Yet the experts and individuals we consulted in the course of this review, regardless of their faith, race or sex, expressed the belief that nurturing, encouragement in school, recognition, attention to mental health, respect, opportunity, good housing and sufficient positive reinforcement of race, faith and culture are the crucial factors in a youth’s life. Where a father is present, what is important to the outcome is the degree of responsibility the father assumes for child-rearing and his participation in imparting positive values.
It gets worse…
Significantly, however, Senator Obama’s platform concentrates on healthy families, whatever their structure: supports for first-time mothers, nurse-family partnerships focusing on prenatal care, counselling, nurturing children, school readiness through head-start programs, getting people into the workforce, improving the child-support system and reducing recidivism by ensuring that offenders get appropriate help to enter the job market on release.
We agree with that approach. While it is logical to work to have fathers be responsible parents, we cannot conclude that their absence from the home is, on its own, a source of the immediate risk factors for violence involving youth. Investment in under-served communities, families, education, housing and alleviating urban poverty addresses the factors that have often been overlooked in the discourse about Black fathers and parental responsibility.
Fathers, easily replaced.
“
Jerry:
I don’t object at all to people revising posts. (Did I ever say I did?) I think that revising the post (but noting the revision) was the right thing to do, and I’m glad they did that.
I agree that this post, which was a simple fact-checking of a fantastic claim, isn’t very substantive. I’ve done a lot of substantive posts over the years; I don’t feel the need to make each and every post deep.
I don’t think fathers — or mothers, for that matter — are necessary. All the peer-reviewed evidence from studies of children raised by lesbian or gay parents shows that their children do as well as any other children on all measurable outcomes.
(To more specifically address your question, not a single peer-reviewed study of children raised by lesbian parents has found that their children are unusually violence-prone. The comparison to lesbian households is important, I think, because a two-parent, stable lesbian household is fatherless without being a single-parent household, thus providing a better basis of comparison.)
So no, I didn’t find the report’s conclusion — that fatherlessness is not an independent risk factor for youth violence — unbelievable or illogical. I’d be open to looking at evidence indicating that the report’s conclusion was wrong. But I don’t see any evidence — let along good evidence, like peer-reviewed scientific studies — linked to or specifically cited in either your comments here, or in Robert’s post.
I agree with Amersand in comment 22.
We have grandparents raising grandchildren also. Aunts, uncles and even foster parents.
A healthy upbringing is best for children.
But in saying that …. I also agree fathers are important for children and so are mothers.
I think we need to spend time looking at fatherhood in a positive light. The study below is very good.
http://www.waitakere.govt.nz/WhaHap/itc/pdf/fatheringourcity.pdf
I’d say having only one parent (or adult) present with the child and financially contributing to their well-being amongst other things, can be detrimental to the child, compared to having two adults acting as parents. It contributes to more poverty if anything.
If the average wage is 25,000$ a year, it is little for a single household, and on top the needs of a child or children. I don’t think that alimony replaces the time spent with the child by a second adult, and probably not the money totally. And then there are single-parents by tragedy: murder, accidental death, suicide who don’t get the benefit of alimony, or the presence of the other adult (it is presumed by me that single-parents do not live with someone else c0-parenting their child).
I think some people would dismiss it as very leftist if the gender-neutral wording was used, suggesting that gay parents are just-as-good an alternative. I personally think gay parents are just as good myself, but I know others would consider the whole thing discredited simply because of that assumption.
The one who wrote the article, leftist or not, probably needed to contend with this.
Schala Writes,
I second that. (from experience) But then I think it is not so hard if you only have one child. Having 2 or more is challenging.