How Have We Failed As Fathers?

Fred Boyles
Columnist

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We live in a culture where the only opinion that matters about fathering comes from mothers and other women.

We see it in many places, notably the family court system.

The legal system has been co-opted by women’s fear of the crazy man who kills his wife and children. The judges are afraid of sending a husband home who has been accused of being physically or sexually abusive. All it takes is one crazy to validate a women’s fears and feelings. Being on a men’s teams for 30 years I’ve seen multiple instances of a husband caught in the system – how they have to prove they are innocent of the accusations. There is an assumption that no matter what a wife says or does, there is no excuse for a husband to attack or defend himself.

I have confronted a wife who accused me of doing things that I did not do. Her answer was, “I have the right to feel.” Her feeling of fear or insecurity generated thoughts about me as the perpetrator causing her negative feelings about herself. Once she had these negative feelings and thoughts, they grew to validate her false accusations as a preemptive attack to stop me from something men are capable of doing. She had a right to feel and with the feeling, she had the right to verbally abuse and physically attack me. When I confronted her on why she tried to kick me in the balls she said again, “I have the right to feel.” And when I said, “I have the right to protect myself.” She said, “You need a smaller wife.” It was my fault that she was big enough to entertain the idea that she could successfully beat me up.

Women can call the police when a father disciplines a child with any physical contact, or does anything she considers bad fathering. I’ve known men whose grabbing a boy was judged as overly violent by his mother. As a consequence, the police were called and a complaint was filed. Before going in front of a judge the father had to hire a lawyer, take anger management and fathering classes. His guns were removed from his house. He could not be in the same room with the boy without the mother or a therapist present. The accusation of physical or sexual abuse has the father immediately thrown into having to prove that he is innocent of the accusations.

Another case was a father who was out at a bar with his friends.

His wife left her newborn baby at home and went to the bar looking for him for not being home. She confronted him at the bar and he asked about the location of their daughter. His wife answered, “At home.” He walked the two blocks home, and when his wife came in she found him rocking his daughter. She lost it and punched him in the head and mouth.

She called the police. When she punched his mouth she cut her knuckle. There is a standard police policy. When there is blood, someone goes to jail. It cost him $15,000, and four years later he was awarded full custody of his daughter. This was all due to his wife’s inability to control her feelings. Ultimately he worked his way through the court system that slowly allowed him more and more custody due to his wife’s drug run-in with the law. If it was not for her drug habit he would never, or rarely, have seen his daughter. He spent $30,000 and hundreds of hours in classes to prove he was a fit father. Most fathers disappear from their children’s lives after two years when faced with these hurdles.

Another story how the system “works.” A father was having his son clean leaves off the roof. The father told the son to not step on the seams of the roof. It would cause leaks. The son deliberately stomped on the seams to get even with his dad for making him clean the roof when he wanted to play his video games. The boy quit and came down from the roof. The father grabbed the rake and hit his son on the butt. The son called his mother the x wife. She in turn called the police.

The police interviewed both the son and father. They took notes and reported their findings to the mother who insisted that her son be removed from his father. The mother took her 14-year-old boy to the hospital claiming multiple instances of physical abuse. The hospital noted the one mark on the boy’s butt and reported this to another set of police. The next day the police showed up and wrote him a ticket to appear in court. He shows up and the preliminary report shows one instance of hitting the boy. The district attorney said this was bullshit, but they better run it by a judge just to make sure. So starts legal fees, guns removed from his house, anger management and fathering classes.

There is no way other than these classes to prove a father is a good father. In the meantime, the son lives with his mother. She convinces her son this is just the beginnings of beatings for the son’s bad behavior of stealing and lying. A week later the father picks up his son and asks for the son’s password on his computer. The son jumps out of the car yelling he’s going to hit me. The mother brainwashed the boy to see the world through her eyes.

This boy learned to game the system by accusing his father of going to hit him. The son chooses to live with his mother for the want of living without accountability.

And so it goes.

 

What are the ultimate consequences?

How about this? We have young men killing other young people. Could it be because these boys have grown up without reality checks that a father brings when he inspects and criticizes? All of these killers blame others for their feelings of not being worthy. These boys all had the right to feel, believing whatever thoughts or actions were generated from those feelings were not their fault or responsibility. One of the father’s job is to teach responsibility. A father’s love is conditional. He inspects and criticizes, and sometimes that criticism can look like being hit or spanked.

Nowadays that is illegal and this generation of boys is lost.

Is it the boys’ fault? Or do we, as fathers, take on some of this responsibility? For it is true, we are failing as fathers.

And how are we failing as fathers?

1. 1. We allow for a culture where the only opinion about fathering comes from the mothers.
      As I noted in the stories above, the legal system trusts the women and their views of men. I know stories where men are not allowed to be in the same room with their boy without the mother present. Boys learn to game the system by accusing fathers of hitting them, because the father has inspected and criticized him. If the boy gets his feeling’s hurt in this process, any mother can turn the father into the police for being verbally abusive.
   2. We have the ability to read peoples intentions / context, but this skill is invalidated.
      Example: When you ask your spouse if she is upset she says,”I am fine.” Your gut tells you she is lying and yet we are so conditioned to ignore what we know is the truth we bypass it. If you insist on further inspection, you’re called a “bully.”
   3. We have have been beaten by the female paradigm to love our children “unconditionally.”When a child has broken the laws of the land, even using violence, such behavior previously had him removed from the gene pool immediately. Today we put blame everywhere but on the young boy. After all, we should agree to love that child unconditionally from the time he was a baby. Right? Wrong.
   4. When asked “WHY” we are doing or saying something we automatically answer as a justification of our actions.One of the tools mothers have used for years is to innocently ask you why you’re doing something that you want to do, setting herself up as the judge of the reasonableness of your activity. Yet, they don’t understand a man’s need, for example, to compete and practice tennis or golf.

What can we concluded from the above?

We men have been brained-washed to attempt to answer the innocently asked “Why?”

We have allowed all of this to take place, under our noses, and we have done little to stop it.

Step up men.

Fill your own cup.

Don’t ask any ego strokes from your wife.

Learn your terms and master them.

And stand up for what you can offer your children, your relationship, and this world.