I've been a mommy for seven months now, and I think I'm pretty good at it. I got custody of my son, Cameron, on March 28, 1996, and I've just leapt the last hurdle of Minimally Proficient Momminess: I prepared food for a school buffet and people actually ate it!
I don't want to bid up the mommy virtues at the expense of fatherhood; quite the contrary. If the division of labor in a normal marriage is unfair to either gender, it would seem to be unfair to men, unfair by 15 years of longevity lost to the rigors of vigorous labor. Men work themselves quite literally into the grave for their families, and all they get in exchange is a rote damnation that they don't do enough of the mommywork besides.
But: it remains that there is no longer any division of labor in my home. I am Cameron's daddy, and I'm his mommy as well, at least in a minimally proficient sort of way. Cameron's mother doesn't even pay child support, which puts her in a rather large company of non-custodial moms. I'm the family bank, as always, the source and the sink of all things financial. But now I'm also the bath monitor and the tooth-brushing monitor and the launderer and the dish-washer and the cook of hot meals and the baker of special treats and solemn and ceremonial kisser of boo-boos.
There's nothing wrong with that, just the opposite. When Cameron's mother and I were married, I had always loved it when she was out of the house, because I actually like doing those jobs. The purpose of the division of labor in a two-parent family is not to provide for the maximum satisfaction of either parent, but to provide the maximum security for the children. Mommy does the mommystuff because she's good at it, and because biology and sociology conspire to make her less productive, generally, as a wage-earner than dad. Daddy risks life and limb and ego in the world of work because he's more productive than mom and because, genetically, he's an expendable resource.
Gentlemen, this is a sad and simple fact: As a producer of genes, you are massively redundant. One hundred women can produce five or six hundred babies with the assistance of only one (frazzled) man. The mother's role in the family is both biological and psychological, but the father's role is wholly psychological. His biological contribution is a brief spasm occurring months before his role as breadwinner becomes vitally necessary.
By noting this obvious fact, we can track down a couple of dangerously false corollaries. First, the notion embodied in both divorce law and the welfare system that fathers are irrelevant to child-rearing. By legislative fiat we have created a sort of virtual parthenogenesis, and the only role for men is as financial objects, producers of wealth to be transferred to women and children by child support or by taxation. We are seeing the consequences of this idiotic policy now, in girls raised without fathers who cannot control their sexuality, and in boys raised without fathers who cannot control their impulses. I have written about this elsewhere, but not nearly as much as I intend to.
The second false corollary is the idea that the measure of the worth of a father is in his performance of mommywork. The job of a father in a two-parent family is to produce wealth. Anything else he does is nice, but if he does other things, mommythings, instead of producing wealth, he is defaulting on his part of the bargain. The obvious rejoinder to this is, "But children need more than just money!" This is belied by the welfare/child support model of "fatherhood", but, more importantly, children derive an immense benefit from seeing their father suck it in and take it on the chin. Neither the time dad spends at work nor the time he spends at home, roughhousing with the children, looks much like mommywork, but that's because it isn't mommywork. It's daddywork, and children need both. Mom provides upkeep and tenderness. Dad provides income and toughness. Children need the contributions of both parents.
And this is what's tragic about the culture of divorce. Whatever benefits adults might derive from it, divorce is stone guaranteed to rob the children of half their parents--and neither half is expendable. I am extremely lucky to have my son--but my daughter was taken from me forever. And both of my children have lost half their parents, a loss for which I can strive to compensate, and for which my former wife can strive to compensate, but which can never be fully mended.
His Bratliness Cameron Swann with our friend Angela,
whose appearance was borrowed for Cinderella.
And he must have a lot of money because the entire pre-trial period is devised by overworked judges to break him financially in order to induce him to settle. Here's the deal, dad: you're going to pay child support; if there's a mortgage, you're going to pay that, but your spouse and children will be living in that home, so you'll be paying for an apartment besides; they'll be keeping all the furniture and household goods, so you'll have to re-outfit yourself from scratch; the community debts are yours, as are the taxes; if there's anything left over, you have to split it with your future ex in income sharing or spousal maintenance; you have to pay your lawyer, of course, and in some jurisdictions you have to pay her lawyer, as well; if there are any other miscellaneous charges that are actually partially assessed to her, they'll be split proportionate to your respective incomes, from each according to your ability, to each according to her needs, world without end, amen. And, as a special bonus, at the end of this nightmare, dad will be wiped out, in debt up to his eyeballs, and he still might lose. He'll get to pay child support and god knows what else for ten or fifteen years, while he ends up living in a trailer park.
Is it any wonder he settles out of court? It's the one chance he has not to lose everything, his children and his money.
The divorce culture penalizes men who fight, but it fairly consistently rewards women who fight. On the one hand, all that money transferred from dad to mom is free wealth, no corresponding effort required. To be sure, mom can't live as well as she did before, but she lives a damn sight better than dad does during the time before the trial. Moreover, Uncle Sugar and the Cosmic Nipple are always ready to rain down free money, free food, free health care, etc., all paid for by the taxes of strangers. After the divorce, things are going to get really tight for mom. When they were a two-parent family, dad contributed eighty percent or more of every dollar he brought home to mom and the kids; being a married father is the worst-paying job in the world. During the pendency of the divorce, dad might be contributing fifty percent, a hundred percent, or more, depending on the temporary orders. After the decree is final, dad will see his children fifteen percent of the time if he's lucky, and for this privilege he will pay twenty-five or thirty percent of his pre-tax income--and not one penny more. Child support takes a self-made schmoo who gladly worked himself into the grave for his children and turns him into a niggardly miser; never a day early, never a dollar extra. Take that, you harpy!
But none of this is obvious going in, and even women who have the foresight to see that the built-in, up-front financial incentives to divorcing won't last forever are secure in the knowledge that they will keep the children. Seventy-five percent of all divorces are filed by women, and from that statistic alone we can see that women anticipate more downstream benefits from divorce than do men.
This is not to say that men do not reap what they would view as psychological benefits from divorce. Men are more reluctant than women to divorce, and one reason why men fare so badly in contested divorces is that he will still be trying to keep the marriage together when she has the process of its destruction well begun. She walks out of the temporary orders hearing with the children, the house, the car and the money, and he walks out pleading for another chance. It will be weeks or months before he discovers that he has lost everything already and that only by the most outrageous luck will he win his children back.
But: don't let his mourning fool you. He is bereaved for the loss of his children, surely, most especially because his role as a father is wholly psychological. A non-custodial mom will live apart from her children, but she will never have not birthed them. Fathers have nothing but their social role to define their fatherhood, and when it's gone, it's all gone. But what is returned to dad by divorce is his independence. He may be living in a trailer, but it's all his. He may be out a lot of money--but it's only money.
A non-custodial father is heavily taxed by divorce, but like all taxpayers, he acquires the right to bitch incessantly about the injustice of it all. He wuz robbed by the divorce courts, cheated of his children and shafted out of all his money. But there are no kiddies around to disrupt the TV football game, to interrupt his dates with women half his age, to smear toothpaste all over the bathroom walls. For a high price, he gets the best of both worlds, the ability to brag about what a great father he is, and no children around to contradict his posturing with dirty clothes, runny noses or scatological back-talk.
Cameron dressed up for Halloween as Raphael, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle.
He says, "It's her fault the children are such animals!"
And this, ultimately, is what a divorce is: the transformation of a partnership, perhaps shaky, into a dyspartnership, infinitely sturdy. Where before the two partners worked together toward the common goal of raising great kids, now each works separately toward that goal and does as little as possible to effect any part of the other's labor. He will pay nothing more than is mandated, and he will stop paying altogether when the children reach majority. She will permit the children to see their father no more than is mandated, minus five percent, and she will bad-mouth him to all her friends. Each parent will happily take credit for any achievement that happens to occur in his or her home and will with equal relish dismiss as trivial any milestone reached in the other's home. They will each be working toward the same goal, but they won't hold the goal in common, and they will work in parallel but rarely together, each particular chore underscored by a grumbling monologue about the unfairness of the division of labor. Friends may come and go, but enemies are forever...
I can think of two very simple solutions to this whole mess. First, pre-nuptial agreements. The ideal agreement would specify what is to happen to the children in the event of divorce. Property and debt are transient, but children are permanent. Certainly no man in America should marry without a pre-nuptial agreement putting the children in his physical custody after divorce. This one provision would completely divorce-proof the marriage. A woman who was not convinced she wanted to remain married until the last child reaches majority would not marry. One who was convinced would stay married, even if she later had second thoughts. And, ultimately, if the psychological benefits of freedom come to be more important to her than her children, she will be free to leave them. At the same time, he will be bound to his children in a way that makes it plain that merely paying child support is an easy way out. He would either meet his wife half way or pay the consequences; no escape into a second bachelorhood at the trailer park.
But: people are seemingly unwilling to anticipate the possibility of divorce when they marry, and it is easy to envision courts setting aside pre-nuptial agreements that do not conform to statute law. Therefore, my second solution is to legislate custody in the same way: custody to dad automatically unless it can be demonstrated that he's a total basket case, and no child support in either direction. At present, mom has two incentives to divorce, however badly thought out: she gets a lot of free money, and she keeps the kids. Dad had his own incentives: he regains his independence, and he doesn't have to raise his kids, just pay child support. Custody to the father with no child support removes all these incentives. If mom wants daily contact with her children, she stays married. If dad wants mom to clean the toothpaste off the bathrooms walls, he stays married. The kids keep getting eighty percent or more of every dollar dad produces, and the flow of money doesn't stop at majority. If mom decides she must spread her wings and fly, she pays her own airfare--but her money is all her own.
Incidentally, this is the way things were done prior to the "progressive" era, back when divorces involving children were a statistical anomaly. Going back to this arrangement would make them a statistical anomaly again. The purpose of a marriage is not to assure the maximum satisfaction of either parent, but to provide the maximum security for the children. The best way of doing that is to make the disincentives to divorce exceed the incentives in all but the most extreme cases.
Cameron the Shy, Noble Viking.
And I think this highlights the disease that is divorce law as presently contrived. In Arizona, in general, you can move away on your ex-spouse, but you can't take the children with you. In other words, except in exceptional cases, if a non-custodial parent objects to your removal of (typically) his children from the state, you must either remain or surrender custody. The logic is simple and obvious: if the children are to have an insuperable barrier to contact with one of their parents, it should be with the one who is volunteering to move, not with the one who is staying behind. This provides an incentive to keeping all members of the family near each other, and a disincentive to dispersal. In seeking to undermine this law, my former wife is not just trying to rob Cameron of his father, but to rob hundreds or thousands of Arizona children of half of their parents. As much as she has done to me, and as much as I might despise her for it, there is no fate that I could wish upon her that is worse than what she has volunteered to become, a person who actively seeks to ruin thousands of tiny lives for the sake of ruining her own son's life.
And I guess this is what I have to say to parents in divorce, reforms or no reforms, this is the song I learned best while fighting for Cameron: To thine own self be true. I never would have volunteered to divorce on my own, and I'd have to be an idiot to claim to be proud of the way my divorce has gone. But I can be proud of the way I comported myself during my divorce. I did not tell lies, even where lies would have gained me a lot. I did not pursue ends I would regard as evil if sought by another. And I did not deploy my children as pawns in a game. I am saddened and mortified that so much of my life has come to so little. But when I look at Cameron--and Meredith when I am lucky enough to see her--I am proud that so little of my life has come to so very much.
Cameron had a Halloween party at his school on Saturday. His mother had made him a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle costume, and he was quite stunning in it. But the school had a United Nation's Day observance on Friday, and I think I'm prouder of him for what he did then. Cameron will be five years old in just a few days, and his facility with words, both in thought and in speech, is growing even faster than his body. For UN Day, he represented Norway as a Viking, and I wrote a short dirge for him to recite:
Cameron's songCameron thought this was the cat's pajamas, easily memorized, but with all the bluff and bluster of a Saturday morning cartoon. But as hokey as Cameron's song is, I must confess this: I am a Viking, too. I can and do choose different words to describe the way I live, but those words do the job just as well. The night of the custody verdict, I wrote this to family and friends:I am a Viking.
An explorer. A trader. A warrior.
A hero.
I suffer not treachery.
Nor abide injustice.
I prize nothing above my honor.
I am a Viking!
There is this: If you can hang in long enough, the truth will out. If you believe you are right as to a matter of principle, and if you dare to stand firm, you will triumph. You may lose, lose utterly. But you may win. Either way, you will know that you have stared tragedy in the face and said, "Do your worst. I will not kneel." And win or lose, you will come out with your integrity intact, and your integrity is your life's highest treasure. There is nothing to be had in exchange for it. I've said all this a hundred times before in stories and essays, and I'll say it all a thousand times more. But right here, right now, I stand before you as living proof.Do your worst. I will not kneel. My son, at least, lives with me, not 2,000 miles away. And he lives here because I fought when I had every reason to quit. I fought when I was decimated financially, when any deal would have been better than what I was living through. I fought when it seemed certain I would lose. I fought when every attorney I knew promised me I would lose. I fought because like Cameron the Shy, Noble Viking, "I prize nothing above my honor."
I'm fighting still, alas. My wife's attorneys keep filing ever more stupid motions based on ever more outrageous lies, and it is my unhappy fate to pay for the deconstruction of each one. But since March 18, 1996, my money is my own, and I can think of no better use for it than to defend my honor by protecting my son. Though unlikely, it's still possible that I may lose, lose utterly. But what I will not do, what I will never do, is surrender to injustice.
Do your worst. I will not kneel. A close friend and I were talking about the irony of the practicality of valor in real life. The "practical" men are always advising compromise, give a little, get a lot. But the trouble with that sort of "practice" is that what you give--your integrity, your self-love--can never be replaced. In my fight for Cameron, I held onto my integrity and I was lucky enough to win. But even if I had lost, I would still have my integrity, and there is nothing to be had in exchange for it.
And although I may never be more than minimally proficient as Cameron's mommy, I know I am an exceptionally fine father to him. Income and toughness, upkeep and tenderness, boo-boo kissing and roughhousing and the quiet joy of being at home together. Mommywork, daddywork and kidwork, the most important work of all.
Our truth is in our lives; we are what we do, not what we say we do. Fidelity. Integrity. Honor. I don't just sing Cameron's song, I live it. And I will know I have done my job as a father when I hear Cameron shout his defiance to the world, when his song and mine are one: Do your worst. I will not kneel.