Fathers' Rights Groups

The chapter topic in our textbook says Men’s Movements in the United States. One of the movements for men that I thought was most interesting was the Fathers’ Rights Groups. This is a group that deals with trying to get divorced fathers the right to have custody of their kids. In a court a judge usually grants the mother sole custody of the children, but who says that fathers are not just as caring or loving of their kids as the mothers are.

People have a stereo-type that mothers are the gentle loving care givers that children need to be exposed to. The fathers are who people see as the ones who work and do not pay enough attention to the kids. A good example would be the movie Kramer vs. Kramer a married couple gets divorced; the woman tries to take care of herself and leaves her son for her ex-husband to take care of. The father has to take care of his son and he grows a new kind of love for him. The ex-wife decides that she wants her son back, but the father does not want to give his son up so they go to court and the mother wins custody because it appears to the court that the mother is more nurturing than the father. Also, the court was ignoring the fact that the father had been taking care of his son like a responsible single parent. It was not fair that his ex-wife got custody of his son just because she would appear to be more caring than the father.

The movie may be fiction but the story of its situation is true for many fathers in reality. Why is it so hard to see that men can be nurturing fathers as much as mother can be for their children?  Just because a man is seen as the one who goes to work and seems to void all care and compassion when it comes to children. People shouldn’t judge how a father is supposed to act because many fathers would do anything for their child because they love them unconditionally.  

Wood, J.T. (2011). Gendered Lives: Communication, Gender, and Culture. Boston: Wadsworth.