As always, thank you for bringing common sense to the propaganda-ridden argument that fathers are always abusive and mothers always protective of their children.
I'm not surprised at NOW's backing of the PBS special report "Breaking the Silence". Take a look back over the decades at where women's rights groups like NOW have taken us:
1) they advocated careers in place of motherhood, telling women that being a mother was not fulfilling enough; they inferred spending your life in a stressful office environment or working on a construction site was;
2) they fought for abortion rights, telling women that they should have the right to terminate the child in their womb if it interferes with their goals; millions of women did; millions regret it;
3) they fought for no-fault divorce so women could get free of the "confines" of marriage to be able to live the life they were told they should want, including having multiple sexual partners without commitment; millions of women are sterile because of STD's as a result;
4) they fought to overcome what they considered "stereotypical" roles where the mother takes care of the children and the father has a career (remember the sensitivity training and role reversals in the seventies and eighties?); women's advocates argued that since women now had careers, the men in their lives needed to do household chores and that included child care;
5) they fought for women to be able to go into combat while leaving children at home, risking the lives of mothers (the same ones they now claim are so important to children).
Today, these same women's groups are promoting the notion that ONLY the mother is the proper care-taker of the children (and should always be the preferred custodial parent) and fathers are, by nature, abusive, inept and unable to care for children.
It puzzles me that women, who fought (and are still fighting) for the right to end pregnancies (the burden of having a child when it's inconvenient) and who want to leave the children they did have at home with a sitter or drop them off at daycare while they pursue careers, are now fighting so hard to get custody of those same children. Not joint custody, but sole custody. Even effectively eliminating the other parent when possible, a parent that could share in the care of the child and make it easier for women to pursue the careers they fought so hard to get. What's up?
Then, calling on my own feminist background, I thought about it a little deeper. I discovered an "aha".
What the women's groups now want is control over the next generation of voters. They want to be able to mold the minds of today's children before they are old enough to vote.
This is politics, pure and simple.
Women's groups have fought for decades to attain political control (have made careers out of it) and, yet, have not been able to get the votes needed to do so. I believe this is just another method of getting there. A different tactic.
And if that means falsely accusing the child's father of being a beast (something the child internalizes since they know they share their father's genetics) or driving out a parent that the child loves and who loves the child -- SO BE IT.
To hell with what's best for the children.
[Editor's note: the ending conclusion is, of course, what mainstream feminists are saying through their actions, *not* what the author or ifeminists believe.]
