Source Page on Men and Fathers
By Glenn Sacks

#1: “Two?thirds or more of all divorces involving couples with children are initiated by mothers, not fathers.”  

Source: Margaret F. Brinig and Douglas A. Allen, "'These Boots Are Made For Walking": Why Most Divorce Filers Are Women" American Law and Economics Review 2?1 (2000): 126?169. 

Source: John Tierney, "A New Look at the Realities of Divorce," New York Times, July 11, 2000. 

Source: Sanford Braver, Marnie Whitley, and Christine Ng, "Who Divorced Whom? Methodological and Theoretical Issues," Journal of Divorce and Remarriage 20, 1993, p. 1. 

Source: Cathy Young, "The Sadness of the American Father," The American Spectator,  June 2000.  See http://fact.on.ca/news/news0006/as000601.htm.

#2: “A randomized study of 46,000 divorce cases published in the American Law and Economics Review found that in only 6% of cases women claimed to be divorcing cruel or abusive husbands, and that adultery was cited by women as a cause of divorce only slightly more than by men.  Surveys of divorced couples show that the reasons for their divorces are generally a lack of closeness or of "not feeling loved and appreciated."

Source: Margaret F. Brinig and Douglas A. Allen, “These Boots Are Made For Walking": Why Most Divorce Filers Are Women" American Law and Economics Review 2-1 (2000): 126-169.

Source: John Tierney, "A New Look at the Realities of Divorce," New York Times, July 11, 2000.

Source: Beuhler, "Whose Decision Was It?" Journal of Marriage and the Family, Vol. 48, pp 587 - 595, 1987.

Source: Cathy Young, "The Sadness of the American Father," The American Spectator, June 2000.  See http://fact.on.ca/news/news0006/as000601.htm.

#3: “Studies show that the overwhelming majority of steadily employed divorced fathers pay their child support. While there are a few well?heeled divorced dads who stiff their children, most non?paying dads are either poor, unemployed, disabled, or incarcerated. According to a US Government Accounting Office report, two?thirds of those fathers who do not pay their child support fail to do so because they are financially unable to do so.”  

Source: Judi Bartfield and Daniel R. Meyer: "Are There Really Deadbeat Dads? The Relationship Between Ability to Pay, Enforcement, and Compliance in Nonmarital Child Support Cases," Social Service Review 68, 1994, pp. 219?235.  

Source: "Deadbeat Dad Image A Myth, Study Finds,"  New York Times,  May 5, 1999.  See: http://sharedparent.freeyellow.com/ddiamsf.pdf.  Look for "Divorced moms reported." 

Source: Cathy Young, Ceasefire!: Why Women and Men Must Join Forces to Achieve True Equality, The Free Press, 1999, pp. 206?207. 

Source: Kathleen Parker, "Deadbeat dads more myth than reality," The Orlando Sentinel, Jan 24 1999. See: http://www.dadi.org/kpdbeat2.htm. Look for "Census Bureau."

#4: “There are almost as many unfaithful wives as there are unfaithful husbands. Research generally estimates that for every five unfaithful husbands, there are four unfaithful wives.” 

Source: Maggie Scarf, “Intimate Partners: An examination of the underlying architecture of love relationships—the influence of the past, the causes of infidelity, and the systems that couples create,” The Atlantic Monthly, November 1986. The article can be viewed here.  Look for “Emotional Triangles: Infidelity.” 

Source: John Przybys, “Unfaithfully Yours: Men, women have differing ideas about fidelity,” Las Vegas Review?Journal, March 29, 1998. The article can be found here. Look for “Paul Wulkan.”

Source: Jennifer P. Schneider, Richard R. Irons, and M. Deborah Corley, “Disclosure of Extramarital Sexual Activities by Sexually Exploitative Professionals and Other Persons with Addictive or Compulsive Sexual Disorders,” Journal of Sex Education and Therapy 24:277?287, 1999. The article can be found here. Search in the text for the word “infidelity.”

#5: “Domestic violence research overwhelmingly shows that women are just as likely as men to initiate and engage in domestic violence, and that only a small percentage of women's domestic violence is committed in self?defense.  Studies show that women often compensate for their smaller size by their significantly greater use of weapons and the element of surprise.”  

Source: Richard J. Gelles, Ph.D., “The Missing Persons of Domestic Violence: Male Victims,” The Women’s Quarterly, Fall, 1999. See Gelles.

Source: References Examining Assaults by Women on Their Spouses or Male Partners: An Annotated Bibliography by Martin S. Fiebert, Department of Psychology, California State University, Long Beach. See http://www.csulb.edu/~mfiebert/assault.htm.  

Source: Patricia Pearson, When She Was Bad: Violent Women & the Myth of Innocence, Penguin Books, 1998, pp. 119?123. 

Source: David Fontes, “Violent Touch: Breaking Through the Stereotype,” David L. Fontes, Psy.D., CEAP See http://www.safe4all.org/essays/vtbreak.pdf.

Source: Cathy Young, Ceasefire!: Why Women and Men Must Join Forces to Achieve True Equality, The Free Press, 1999, pp. 91?96.

#6: “Official Department of Justice statistics show that men commit 70% of all murder of intimates. However, when other factors are accounted for, including unsolved murders, poisonings mistakenly classified as heart attacks, and contract killings classified as "multiple offender killings," women have been shown to be at least as likely as men to murder their current or former spouses or intimates.”

Source: Dershowitz, Alan M. 1994. The Abuse Excuse: And Other Cop?outs, Sob Stories and Evasions of Responsibility. Boston: Little Brown, pp. 311?313. See the pages "Wives Also Kill Husbands??Quite Often" at http://www.uiowa.edu/~030116/158/articles/dershowitz3.htm.

Source:  1994?95 U.S. Department of Justice Bureau of Justice Statistics Publications Catalog, publication #. NCJ 43498, “Murder in Families.”

Source: Warren Farrell, Women Can't Hear What Men Don't Say, Penguin Putnam Inc, 1999, pp 150?151.

Source: This is also explained in detail in my column "Let's not 'Learn' the Same Lessons From Blake That We Learned From OJ" which can be found at http://www.glennsacks.com/lets_not_learn.htm.

#7: Most child abuse and parental murder of children is committed by mothers, not  fathers. 

Source: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Administration on Children, Youth, and Families, Child Maltreatment 1997: Reports from the States to the National Child Abuse and Neglect Data System (Washington DC, :GPO, 1999). See: http://www.acf.dhhs.gov/programs/cb/publications/ncands97/s7.htm. Child abuse perpetrators are 62.3% female.  Child fatality perpetrators are 62.8% female. The mother/father ratio is actually greater than this, because many of the male abusers counted are not the biological fathers but instead step?fathers, boyfriends, etc. 

Source on murders of children by single parents: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, National Center on Child Abuse and Neglect, Third National Incidence Study Of Child Abuse and Neglect: Final Report Appendices (Washington D.C., U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, National Center on Child Abuse and Neglect, 1997, pp. A?63?A?64.  The estimated total is 264 parental murders of children committed by single custodial mothers and 11 by single custodial fathers.  There are roughly five times as many single custodial mothers as single custodial fathers. 

Source: Warren Farrell, Father and Child Reunion: How to Bring the Dads We Need to the Children We Love, Penguin Putnam Inc, 2001, pp 75-77.

#8: Access and Visitation Denial

Three-quarters of divorced fathers surveyed maintain that their ex-spouses have substantially interfered with their visitation rights.

Source: Joyce A. Arditti, "Factors Related to Custody, Visitation, and Child Support for Divorced Fathers: An Exploratory Analysis," Journal of Divorce and Remarriage 17, 1992, pp. 34, 39.

A study of children of divorce found that 42% of children who lived solely with their mother reported that their mother tried to prevent them from seeing their fathers after the divorce. However, only 16% of children who lived solely with their father reported similar obstruction.

Source: Glynnis Walker, Solomon's Children: Exploding the Myths of Divorce (New York: Arbor House, 1986), p. 83

Source: Cathy Young, Ceasefire!: Why Women and Men Must Join Forces to Achieve True Equality, The Free Press, 1999, p. 209.

In another study, 40% of divorced mothers admitted that they had interfered with their ex-husband's access or visitation, and that their motives were punitive in nature and not due to safety considerations.

Source: p. 449, col. II, lines 3-6, (citing Fulton) "Frequency of visitation by Divorced Fathers; Differences in Reports by Fathers and Mothers," Sanford Braver et al, American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 1991.

Source: J.A. Fulton, "Parental Reports of Children’s Post-Divorce Adjustment,” Journal of Social Issues 35, 1979, pp. 126-139.

Source: Cathy Young, Ceasefire!: Why Women and Men Must Join Forces to Achieve True Equality, The Free Press, 1999, p. 209.

The government spends $340 on enforcing child support for every $1 it spends on enforcing visitation rights.

Source: Warren Farrell, Father and Child Reunion: How to Bring the Dads We Need to the Children We Love, Penguin Putnam Inc, 2001, pp 103-104.

Prosecutions of fathers who violate child support mandates are common, whereas prosecutions of mothers who violate visitation orders are rare.

Source: Neil Chethik, “Law Backs the Right to Parental Visits,” Detroit Free Press, May 28, 1995, p.2J.

Source: Cathy Young, Ceasefire!: Why Women and Men Must Join Forces to Achieve True Equality, The Free Press, 1999, page 209.


 

#9: Forensic consultant Dean Tong, author of Elusive Innocence, believes that in the context of a custody battle, between 60% and 80% of domestic violence accusations are false. 

This is based on my interviews with him.  To contact him, go to his website at http://abuse?excuse.com/.

#10: The vast majority of accusations of child sexual abuse made during custody battles are false, unfounded or unsubstantiated.

Source: Douglas J. Besharov and Lisa A. Laumann, "Child Abuse Reporting,” Social Science and Modern Society, Vol. 33, May/June, 1996, p. 42.

Source: Blush, Gordon & Ross, Karol, 1986, The SAID Syndrome. Sterling Heights, MI: Family and Conciliation Courts Review.

#11: Nationwide divorced fathers are ten times as likely to commit suicide as divorced mothers, and more than twice as likely to commit suicide as married fathers.

Source for divorced fathers vs. married fathers: Augustine J. Kposowa, Ph.D., "Marital Status and Suicide in the National Longitudinal Mortality Study," Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health, March, 2000, Volume 54, No. 4, pages 254?261 See http://wizard.ucr.edu/~akposowa/Status.pdf. Search for "divorced men."

Source for "10 times as likely" is Warren Farrell, Father and Child Reunion: How to Bring the Dads We Need to the Children We Love, Penguin Putnam Inc, 2001, pg. 174 & 279.

#12: The largest factor in predicting whether a child will graduate high school, attend college, become involved in crime or drugs, or get pregnant before age 18 is the presence (or absence) of a father in the child’s life.  Studies show that this remains true even after adjustments for household income.

Source: The largest predictor of juvenile crime is the presence of a father is from, among others,  “Douglas A. Smith and G. Roger Jajoura, “Social Structure and Criminal Victimization,” Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, Vol. 25, Number 1, February 1988, pages 27-52.  In this studies children of poor and wealthy families had equal juvenile crime rates if there was a father in the home.

Source: The largest predictor of drug use is from, among others, Robert H. Coombs and John Landsverk, “Parenting Styles and Substance Abuse During Childhood and Adolescence,” Journal of Marriage and Family, Vol. 50, May 1988, p. 479, Table 4.  The study considered various factors, including race, social class, gender, etc.,  and father presence was five times more important than any other factor.

Source: The teenage pregnancy statistic is from, among others, Frank F Furstenberg, Jr. and Kathleen Mullan Harris, “When and Why Fathers Matter: Impact of Father Involvement on the Children of Adolescent Mothers.”

Source: Father presence and education is discussed in Warren Farrell, Father and Child Reunion: How to Bring the Dads We Need to the Children We Love, Penguin Putnam Inc, 2001, pp 31-34.  The presence of a father in a child’s life has more impact on a child’s educational achievement, beginning, in early elementary school, than race, social class, gender, etc.

#13: Children are 88% more likely to be seriously injured from abuse or neglect by their mothers than by their fathers.

Source: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Administration on Children, Youth, and Families, Child Maltreatment 1997: Reports from the States to the National Child Abuse and Neglect Data System (Washington DC, :GPO, 1999).  It is discussed in Father and Child Reunion by Warren Farrell, page 76.

#14: “Prosecutions of fathers who violate child support mandates are common, whereas prosecutions of mothers who violate visitation orders are rare.”

Source: Neil Chethik, “Law Backs the Right to Parental Visits,” Detroit Free Press, May 28, 1995, p.2J. 

Source: Cathy Young, Ceasefire!: Why Women and Men Must Join Forces to Achieve True Equality, The Free Press, 1999, page 209.

#15: “Fathers have a much better record of paying court-ordered child support than mothers do.”

Source: John Siegmund, “Preliminary Analysis of the Database of the DC Office of Paternity and Child Support Enforcement” compiled for the Children's Rights Council, November 9, 1999.

#16: “The government spends $340 on enforcing child support for every $1 it spends on enforcing visitation rights.” 

Source: The actual numbers are $3.4 billion on child support enforcement and $10 million on visitation enforcement.  The $3.4 billion figure comes from “Child Support Enforcement is Working Better than We Think” by Elain Sorensen and Ariel Halpern, The Urban Institute, Series A, No 31-A, March 1999, page 4. 

The $10 million figure comes from The Department of Health and Human Services, “93.597 Grants to States for Access and Visitation Programs.” (http://www.cfda.gov/static/93597.asp)

Source: Warren Farrell, Father and Child Reunion: How to Bring the Dads We Need to the Children We Love, Penguin Putnam Inc, 2001, pp 182-183.

#17: Other fathers have suffered at the hands of "move?away moms" who permit or even use geography to drive fathers out of their children's lives.

Source: Maura Dolan, Legal Affairs Writer, "Justices Ease Relocation of Children in Divorce Cases,"  Los Angeles Times, April 16, 1996, p. 1.  Three out of every four custodial mothers move within four years of divorce, for various reasons.

#18: "Men win custody in only 10% of contested custody cases"
(Note: To avoid confusion: the sources below do not all indicate 10%--some indicate 15 or 20%, some indicate less than 5%.  As a whole, the average is around 10%.)  

Source: Eleanor E. Maccoby and Robert H. Mnookin, Dividing the Child (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1992), pp. 104-105, 149-150.

Source: Stephen J. Bahr, J.D. Howe, M. Morrill Mann, "Trends in Custody Awards: Has the Removal of Maternal Preference Made a Difference?", Family Law Quarterly, Vol, pp. 247-267, Summer 1994.

Source: Wendy Reiboldt and Sharon Seiling, "Factors Related to Men's Award of Custody," Family Advocate, Winter 1993, pp. 42-44. Published by the Family Law Section of the American Bar Association.

Source: William T. K. Dolan, Esq., Empirical Study of Child Custody in Divorce Decrees in Arlington County, Virginia: July 1, 1989--December 30, 1990, © 1991.

Source: Rich Blake, "Father Says System is Unfair to Men in Custody Battles," Alexander (VA) Gazette Packet, October 22, 1992 .

Source: Robert Seidenberg, The Father's Emergency Guide to Divorce-Custody Battle, JES Books, 1997, pp. 11-15, 60-61.

John P. McCahey, J.D., LL.M, et al., Child Custody and Visitation Law and Practice. Matthew Bender, New York. Volume 3, 1983, Section 13.01.

#19: The commonly cited factoid that “men win custody half of the time or more when they contest it” is a myth.

Source: "Do fathers have the edge in divorce?," ,  Detroit News, December 10, 1996. See: http://www.vix.com/menmag/youngdet.htm.

Source: Robert Seidenberg,  The Father's Emergency Guide to Divorce-Custody Battle, JES Books, 1997, pp. 11-15, 60-61.