The Kalamazoo Gazette, August 27, 2007, published a letter to the editor from Darrick Scott-Farnsworth. Darrick Scott-Farnsworth is the Executive Director of A Child's Right, an organization that supports the concept of equal custody and equal parenting.
I have personally met Mr. Farnsworth and value his opinions. He poses an interesting argument, and his argument is certainly well-supported by the facts regarding Michigan's, and this Nation's, various policies over the family. Most of the policies regarding family in America are focused on failing welfare services and creative schemes for states to acquire more federal funding.
Michigan fails children, fails parents, and essentially cannibalizes its' population for the survival of various bureaucracies.
The funding mechanisms behind state programs largely contribute to longterm negative consequences, like single-parent households and multiple-generations of welfare participants living off the tax rolls, instead of positive outcomes and participant productivity contributing to the tax rolls. We need to reshape this Nation's welfare policies to become entirely gender neutral and eliminate the rolls associated with the sexes. Making rolls equal will certainly be a step in the right direction that will force self-accountability and productivity on both sides of the "great divide."
Custody changes could help women
Some feminists and politicians complain about there being a pay gap between men and women, but fight tooth and nail against actually promoting any legislation that would truly do anything about it. It has been common knowledge for years that women, on average, do not make the same amount as men doing the same type of work because women tend to take more time off to raise children.
It is also common knowledge that children are denied equal time with both of their fit parents when it comes to custody disputes, with the majority of cases and custody time being awarded to mothers.
This denying of parenting time to fathers exacerbates the continuing pay gap between sexes because fathers are being coerced into maintaining full-time employment to make ends meet and pay bloated child support.
Furthermore, the government has fostered the overall belief that it is more important for men to work and earn then it is for women.
We must get the laws changed to recognize parents are equal and that children need both of their parents to develop and thrive. We must raise the importance of the father in the home by having a presumption of equal child custody law.
Darrick Scott-Farnsworth
