Time for Affirmative Action legislation in child custody matters

UPDATED: October 10, 2011

It has been four months since I’ve been allowed to see my son. I am supposed to see him every other weekend if I am not away working but there is always some excuse. He’s sick. She’s sick. He has an exam. There is a family birthday for his uncle. He doesn’t feel like going away this weekend. Always something.

I’m out of money and out of options. The court spits on me. I am a wallet and nothing else. That is how society views me and all fathers.

“You want to know why Barbados has so many ill-disciplined, maladjusted young males?  That’s easy – society and the courts arranged for fathers to be viewed as disposable upon the whim of any woman who tires of the father of her children.

On any mother’s word, the man is out of the house alone and is reduced to providing monetary support while begging for an hour here and there with his children – if that 110 pounds of hate will let him see his children at all.”

Gender-based child custody quotas needed to correct anti-father bias in the courts.

Barbados courts (and UK and American courts too) overwhelmingly award custody of children to mothers – not because women are any better at raising children than men, but because of a deep-seated societal prejudice against fathers as reinforced by anti-male family laws. The birth mother might be an illiterate woman of low character who pawns the children off on relatives while she parties with different men every night and the father a hard-working man who cherishes his children: but the father will hardly ever be awarded primary custody.

This anti-father bias has led to a generation of young boys being raised solely by women, and, as any thinking person will agree, mothers alone cannot be teach boys how to be men.

Disposable fathers, lost young males

You want to know why Barbados has so many ill-disciplined, maladjusted young males?  That’s easy – society and the courts arranged for fathers to be viewed as disposable upon the whim of any woman who tires of the father of her children. On any mother’s word, the man is out of the house alone and is reduced to providing monetary support while begging for an hour here and there with his children – if that 110 pounds of hate will let him see his children at all.

David ‘Joey’ Harper wrote in his Barbados Advocate column back on June 19th…

“Within the last decade, we have been faced with an almost constant attack on the Barbadian male. Some of the attacks, I have to admit, are valid, but it begs the question what chain of events has caused the males to adopt the attitudes for which they are constantly being brought to task? What are the mitigating circumstances that have created the environment which causes men to be seen as non-productive, violent, women abusers, disinterested in the rearing of their children…?”

Are fathers “disinterested” or beaten down, emasculated slaves?

Are Barbadian males “disinterested in the rearing of their children…”, or, do they simply realise that the courts and society have made fathers unwelcome and unnecessary except as wallets? For all the platitudes about the necessity of fathers, society – namely the courts and women – don’t really believe that fathers are necessary. The courts in general believe that fathers are of little use beyond their DNA and monetary support; otherwise the courts would normally award custody of sons to the fathers.

Magistrate Barbara Cooke-Alleyne (above) said recently that she wants the Maintenance Act amended to allow men to claim child support from estranged spouses and to demand paternity tests.

A new Maintenance Act is a start but it’s nowhere near the kind of major change necessary to save our society from the awful result of thousands of women raising sons without fathers.

No amount of male school-teachers or male counselors can replace the fathers that the women and the courts have discarded.

Women and society have dis-empowered and emasculated fathers – removing all their rights – and society, women and men are now paying a heavy price.

Women complain that men do not want to commit to family. Who can blame men for not wanting to enter into slavery? Women complain that estranged fathers never see or support the children. Who can blame the fathers for not wanting to be under the control of an estranged woman who hates them and actively works to turn the children against the father?

Worst of all, thousands or tens of thousands of Bajan boys are being raised without the daily love, guidance and discipline of fathers. This is NOT the fault of the vast majority of fathers. Boys raised without fathers on a mass basis is something that has been engineered by the courts and by society.

Here’s a solution: Affirmative Action that mandates the custody of the children to the fathers in 50% of the cases.

Magistrate Cooke-Alleyne knows that the law is all one-sided and she wants to rectify that, but merely changing the Maintenance Act will not stop the wholesale prejudice by the courts that rips sons from their fathers as a normal event.

Fathers are being systematically discriminated against, persecuted and exploited as a class and as a gender by the courts and by society. This injustice must be rectified not only for the fathers and the sons, but for a society that is falling apart for want of fathers.

Affirmative action worked when blacks and women were not being hired or promoted in business and government service. It corrected the injustice and made society stronger and better. Affirmative action laws brought justice.

Affirmative action mandated by law will work in child custody. Empower the fathers and the men will embrace their children. Boys will once again become solid men under the guidance of their fathers. Fathers ensure that boys become men who contribute to society. If Barbados courts continue to overwhelmingly award child custody to mothers, we can look forward to more generations wild young males who have never been taught to be decent men.

Affirmative action refers to policies that take factors including “race, color, religion, sex or national origin” into consideration in order to benefit an underrepresented group, usually as a means to counter the effects of a history of discrimination. The focus of such policies ranges from employment and education to public contracting and health programs. “Affirmative action” is action taken to increase the representation of women and minorities in areas of employment, education, and business from which they have been historically excluded.

Affirmative action is an attempt to promote equal opportunity. It is often instituted in government and educational settings to ensure that minority groups within a society are included in all programs. The justification for affirmative action is to compensate for past discrimination, persecution or exploitation by the ruling class of a culture, or to address existing discrimination.

… from Wikipedia article Affirmative Action

Article by Robert, a man without his son.

Further Reading

Nation News: Revamp Child Maintenance Act