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The APE Gazette

Spring 2003

An article written by Kara O'kresic

True Feminists Also Advocate

Gender Equality for Men in the home.

 (Much of the following information comes from the book writings of

 Dr. Warren Farrell.)

      Women are oppressed because  they have to fear being physically

overpowered by men,  are pressured to interrupt  careers for children,

  are not readily accepted into the old boys network and  have less

freedom to walk into a bar without being bothered. Also in some areas

 of our lives, such as the workplace, it is easy for us to feel and

assume we are being treated as second-class citizens.  Almost all

industrialized nations have acknowledged these female experiences.

But a true feminist must acknowledge that men also experience

violence and oppression from women. As with women, in some areas of

their lives, such as the home place, men too justifiably feel they

are being treated as second-class citizens.  It is just not socially

accepted yet for men to complain or even take the time and resources

to study and articulate how our traditional values have resulted in

 society treating them unjustly as well.  True feminists are able to

put themselves in a man's shoes who experiences his marriage become

alimony payments, his home become his wifes home, and his children

become child-support payments for those who have been turned

against him. Psychologically he feels he is spending his life working for

people who hate him.  A true feminist understands how he feels

desperate for someone to love but fears that another marriage might

ultimately leave him with another mortgage payment, another set of

children turned against him, and a deeper desperation. She is able to

relate to his fear of commitment. She does not say, "stop whining"

when he cries for help, but encourages him to speak up for himself

instead of increasingly becoming the suicide gender.  A true feminist

could recognize the logic behind the following imaginary announcement

 from the president of the US, "Since 1.6 million American

men have been killed in war, as part of my new program for equality,

we will draft only women until 1.6 million American women have been

killed in war."

        Many great thinkers throughout history have stressed that if

people want to live in peace they have to strive for justice. The

purpose of this article is to encourage everyone to seek justice for

men as well as women.  Both genders have been oppressed in some

way throughout history, not out of greed or need to dominate but out

of the necessity to ensure the survival of offspring.  Throughout history

 people felt they lived a full and meaningful life if they could keep their

children healthy into adulthood.  The genders together assigned

certain roles to themselves that at the time ensured an efficient use

of time and resources for this survival of future generations.

    It was similar to a pro football team in which different types of

people are conditioned for certain roles for the sole purpose of winning

 football games.  It would not be an efficient use of resources to offer

to train and condition everyone on the team to play quarterback

position for example.  The defensive linebackers best and only role is

to protect the quarterback  so the quarterback  can get the ball, with

each play, a little further down the field.   If the coach was required

 to offer position equality and equal opportunity, the team would not

win and soon cease to exist.

     Since the female gave birth, had natural "nesting" urges, initially

naturally bonded more to the babies by breast feeding for at least two

years, and had on average less muscle mass than men, it seemed

logically more efficient to the group at the time for the female to play

the position of full time caregiver and food preparer in the home.  She

was the quarterback of the home with the task each day of getting

the babies a little further down the path of life toward independence.

  Since men on average had greater muscle mass, did not have babies

dependant on him for breast feeding, mens forced roles naturally,

out of necessity, became that of providing food, shelter and

protection for the female and the offspring. The man became the

"defensive line man" conditioned to protect the quarterback female

who is responsible for handling the all important "football" baby.

If a man expressed a preference to stay home, nurture the children,

and prepare the food he would quickly be ostracized for not doing

that which most efficiently ensured the survival of the people. He

 would not be seen as a team player and would be "kicked off the team".

The man learned early in life what his role would be and cooperated

with the conditioning process of the role of protector. In the past if

cultures decided to tolerate individual desire for equality and freedom,

these cultures did not compete well with other cultures and soon died

out through the forces of evolution.  The cultures that survived the

natural selection process were, in other words, the ones that

enslaved parents to the more important needs of the children.

Everyone worked together to do whatever it took to get the

children (football) to the goal of independence.  Men and women

willingly became oppressed in rigid roles by the needs of the children.

 The gender inequalities that developed were caused by the natural

selection process, not patriarchy, not matriarchy and not one gender

 trying to live a better life at the expense of another. They were

both trying to make a better life for us (their children) at both of

their expense. Our ancestors tolerated all kinds of inequalities and

oppression to ensure we could be living here today.

      Because of the advancement in technology and more global

cooperation we are now at a point in history where we can now

correct gender inequalities with out risking extinction of our culture

from another culture or other forces of nature.

I am a U of I student and have taken U of I Women Studies courses

and have listened for years to radical feminists with an open mind

and understanding heart.  I feel great compassion and empathy for

all of us females as well as males who have been truly oppressed,

victimized or forcefully raped or overpowered by small minority of

 men. However, I think it is time for young women like myself to

organize and start speaking up for the often overlooked gender

inequalities that men quietly tolerate but inwardly do feel.  Many

have had difficulty articulating it because of strong social conditioning

of how they should think. It is hard for them to overcome thousands

 of years of conditioning that their role is that of protector (lineman).

 It  sometimes seems that historically men have been too afraid

of us "victimized" women or unaware of their plight to speak up

for and advocate for a type of gender equality that would go both

ways.

     I think it is time to for us women to be more honest with men and

work together to dispel some outdated ways of thinking  and

acknowledge  that in many ways the weakness of men is the façade

of strength; and the strength of women is the façade of weakness.

 Some facts to consider:

 Fact: Women cast more than 50% of the vote in this country.

There is not a single example in history in which a group that did

cast more than 50% of the vote got away with calling itself the

oppressed victim.

Fact: Men are almost twice as likely as women to be victims of

violent crimes(even when rape is included).  Men are three times

more likely to be victims of murder.  The Violence Against Women Act

provides $300 million for the protection of women against violent

crimes, but nothing to protect men.

 Fact:  Forcible rape constitutes less than 6% of all violent crimes;

 violent crimes of which men are the primary victims constitute the

remaining 94%.

Fact:  The statistic of  one in four women are victims of rape or

 attempted rape  is misleading.  This percentage comes from  Mary

Koss findings of 1988 (funded by Ms Magazine). Only about a quarter

of the women Koss calls rape victims labeled what happened to them

as rape.  49% of those Koss labeled as being raped stated that it

was a "miscommunication".  42 % of these women said they had

sex with these men one or more times after this experience.  Koss

asked  these women, " Have you given in to sex play when you

didn't want to because you were overwhelmed  by a man's

continual arguments and pressure?" , "Have you had sexual

intercourse when you didn't want to because a man gave you

alcohol or drugs?" If a woman answered yes to either of these

questions  Koss  counted them as having been sexually victimized.

  This study is  still the most frequently cited research on women

victimization, not so much by established scholars in the field of

rape research as by journalists, politicians, and activists.

This "one in four" has become the official figure on women's rape

 victimization  cited now in  college women's studies departments,

rape crisis centers, women's magazines and on protest buttons

and posters.  Exaggerated claims of rape rates might be good for

politics, but they are bad for women who want to love men and

they are bad for true gender equality.  I think the solution is

recognize that as a society  we are still  requiring men to be the

initiator or the sexual salesperson but then defining them as

rapists when they do it well.

 Fact:  According to the Journal of Sex Research  63% of the men

surveyed  and 46% of the women  said they had experienced

unwanted  intercourse.  By radical feminist definitions of rape as

unwanted sex, virtually everyone has been raped. Men penetrate

and women envelope through a variety of tactical maneuvers.

 Fact: Wives report that they were more likely to assault their

husbands than  their husbands to assault them.  (This according to

the National Family Violence Survey's nationwide random sampling of

 households.)

Fact: Despite fourteen separate two-sex studies finding that women

 and men are equally as likely to batter, more than 90% of police

 reports are made by women about men.  Men are more ashamed and

 afraid to report abuse.

 Fact: The US Census Bureau finds that women who are heads of

households have a net worth that is 141% of the net worth of men

who are heads of households.

  Fact:  Among the wealthiest 1.6 percent of the U.S. population

(those with assets of $500,000 or more), womens net worth is more

than mens.

Fact: Women control consumer spending by a large margin in virtually

 every consumer category according to the American Demographic.

 Fact: A woman who enters engineering with the same lack of

experience as the man averages $571 per year more than her male

counterpart according to the American Association of Engineering

Society.

Fact: If a man quits his job, he doesnt get severance pay.

 If a women initiates divorce as in most cases they do, she takes

half the corporate stock.

Fact:  According to the Journal of Economic Literature, the average

man works 61 hours per week, while the average woman works

fifty-six (house work and child care time included).

 Fact: According to the National Center for Health, as boys

experience the pressures of the male role, their suicide rate increases

to five times that of women.

Fact: For thousands of years , complaining was functional for women

 it attracted a protector; complaining was dysfunctional for men

it attracted nobody. Complaining and asking for help are evolutionary

shifts for women; complaining and asking for help are evolutionary

shifts for men.

     In the relationship and marriage area, it is can be seen as a

positive thing for us that men, cross-culturally, judge women primarily

for attractiveness while women often find men attractive only if

social, economic, and political status criteria as well as looks are

met. In other words, men may see women as sex objects as

evidenced by the pornography they buy, but women, with out much

criticism objectify men, in female fantasy romance literature, as success

objects as well as sex objects.

     Also, as women should acknowledge the fact that in marriage

 relationships, they have more options now available to them than men.

 For example, it is easy for them to choose to either stay home full time,

work part-time,  work full time and  in any  option they choose still

  always enjoy the position as the  primary caretaker of their  children.

  For men, on the other hand, it is still socially expected that they

work full time and cater to the needs of us (the matriarchs of the

family) or they are perceived as less than a man. According to

statistics only about 4% of us women are interested in a man who

hopes to stay home full time to enjoy bonding with and influencing

the children while she competes full time away from the home in

the work place.  According to Roper Poles in psychology today

magazine , both sexes in Europe, Japan, and the United States found

only one thing consistently in common: Both sexes considered the

 family role much more satisfying than the job role. In a nationwide

poll published in Parents Magazine, when fathers were asked what

part of their lives they would most like to change, almost

three-quarters said, Id like to spend more time with my children.

I think we should express to men some appreciation and respect for

allowing us to spend more time than they do with our children while

they go out and take on the stress earning the money.

      In our ever increasing divorce situations, ( even though we

as women initiate more than 80% of them), we usually are

presumed the more important  parent in most cases due to our

 gender and  get to keep and enjoy the primary relationship with

 the children. Also after we fire our husband from his usual fatherly

 roles and turn him into a visitor and a wallet to his own children,

we are then permitted by the courts to force him to pay for years

to us (not the children) an ex-wife subsidy in the form of child

support payments (with very little accounting as to how we

spend it.)  Since we are often considered the primary care givers,

as a reward for playing this role we get to keep the children, keep

the house,  and keep a significant percentage of the  money coming

 to us. He, as punishment for fulfilling his role as primary bread

winner then gets to lose authority and time with his children, lose

the house he has worked hard  to pay off, lose his money he has

 saved for the family and gets to  subsidize his own firing in the form

of child support that goes to an ex wife  who probably is doing little

to enhance his self esteem. If he does not agree to this societal

arrangement we can easily label him a lazy deadbeat and have him

put in jail. If we choose to sabotage visitation or alienate the children

 against the father so we can have the children all to ourselves,

we almost never go to jail or lose ex-wife subsidy because the judge

 knows we as women have to be able to care appropriately for our

children.  Over 50 % of us ex-wives see no need to have the natural

father involved in our childrens lives.

   Another good thing for us is that when we come to the end of our

lives, it will be  the relationships we  have enjoyed with our children

and friends that we will feel most good about.  The fired father on the

 other hand will most likely not be able to look back on his life and

feel all that good about how he worked many hours to pay subsidy

to the person who fired him so that he could avoid jail and maybe

 have minimal visitation.   He will most likely die with a feeling of

loss and regret no matter how much money he earned or

entertainment he provided during his limited visitation.  We wonder

why many men are afraid to commit!

    What is the solution to the above?  Pure justice would dictate

giving men equal access and responsibility to the home life just as

 we women seek equal access and responsibility in the work life.

 Since these traditional gender roles are no longer as necessary for

our survival we can share in these roles with level playing fields.

The first step is to make joint custody with equal time with the

children for both parents automatic unless there is confirmed

child abuse.  What keeps men who are in the primary breadwinner

 role from sharing equally in the child raising is the "best interest of

the children" court doctrine.  This so called "best interest" philosophy

has been code word for "mother custody" without having to be so

blantent about gender bias. This has also been used as  bias against

 the primary bread winner. This bias  is heavily politically

supported by the  radical feminist movement that is more concerned

with power than with justice. This "best interest" policy has created

many ugly, expensive court battles that could not possibly be in the

best interest of children.  The battle often results in the primary

caretaker taking all based on the philosophy that children need to

stay in their familiar "stable environment" and not have parents or

themselves moving in and out. This usually means the father moving

out and doing visitation and keeping the money flowing as before.

 If the children are in school, the gender equivalent of maintaining

stability would to have the mother move out, but to maintain the

familiar stable environment for the child would be to have the mother

 come back to the family home three time per week to do the

traditional cooking, cleaning, and shopping but require for her to

be gone by the time the children return from school.  She would

then, for this work, be given her one night a week, every other

weekend visitation.  If she refused to contribute  this work that

the children  were accustomed to having then her ex -husband

could have her put in jail for not providing her traditional

"child support" that the family had been accustomed to.

I am sure many people would think the above arrangement is cruelty

 to the mother.  But this is what we do to men in their traditional

roles based on  so called "best interest"  with few people seeing

the injustice of it unless the flipside is presented where the in the

home worker loses custody.  There is a tremendous amount of

research that indicates that the best interest of the children is to

have both parents equally.  The only way to ensure this is to assume

continued equal responsibility and time to both parents as when

the parents were married. This way, in divorce situations, the only

thing to argue over would be how to equally split the time and the

responsibility. This will be much less costly to the parents and there

will be more money to spend on the kids.   No judge or psychologist

 can judge anyway what is truly in the best interest of the children

when you have two caring non abusive parents who want to be

involved in their children's lives as much as possible. They can

rightfully and morally judge that the best interest of the children

and society is to maintain a stable environment of two equally

involved parents.

Sermon July 13, 2001 8PM Sinai Temple

by Robert Ferrer of Champaign IL.

Dear God, God of the broken hearted, God of the strong and the weak, God of the angry and the grieving: I stand before You today in pain, in doubt, in fear. Many blessings have been taken from me; I hesitate even to call out to You, and yet I must, with every breath, try to speak Your praise, try to be mindful of being alive. O God, thank you for the gift of this breath.

Thats a passage from the publication, When the body hurts, the soul still longs to sing, from the Jewish Healing Center of San Francisco.

As many of you know, Ive been in the throes of a very contentious divorce. It has been the most stressful and humiliating experience of my life. Everything about me is made public and put on trial. Every weakness and foible is exploited, and used as evidence to prove that I am an unworthy human being. In about two weeks, even my future as a dad active in the daily lives of my children goes up on trial. At that time I am going to have to defend myself as a parent, explain why my children should not be taken away by their mother to California, and plea why I should not be reduced to the status of a visiting relation, legally, practically and in the eyes of my children.

I pray to God for the strength and courage to continue --- to share with you, my community, what Im going to say tonight.

I must do this. I have no choice.

In order for me to be able to talk to you --- to tell you how I feel --- I have somewhat objectified my talk. But believe me, every word I utter cuts through my heart like a knife, and constricts my throat like a vise.

A syndicated columnist, Maggie Gallagher, recently wrote about her encounter with the authors of the book, A Healing Divorce, by Phil and Barbara Penningroth. The authors used to be married to each other. They talked of the pain and anger of divorce after 25 years of marriage. They decided to create a ceremony, a divorce ritual, as a way of living in forgiveness, to help end their acrimonious relationship.

The columnist, Gallagher, was very cynical of the concept. She said how can a few words mumbled over a candle, earlier vows having proved ineffectual, somehow massage away the sting of divorce? Gallagher recognizes that there are rituals for painful life-cycle events, such as death. But death, she says, is inevitable, while the death of love is a choice. I bet Gallagher sees the high rate of divorce as symptomatic of our narcissistic culture. Here, we have an Im OK, Youre OK ceremony to make us feel good, while the potentially damaging effects of divorce, especially on children, are swept under the rug. It is well known that children whose parents divorce are at a higher risk of school failure, suicide, mental illness, premature death, child abuse, physical illness, juvenile delinquency, adult crime, poverty, premature sexuality and substance abuse. It is a litany of woe for our society. Although Gallagher wished the authors well, she said that they made her want to cry.

We know in reality that divorce is not necessarily a matter of mutual choice. Sometimes couples feel that there is no other alternative. Im not here to question anyones decisions.

Nevertheless, once embarked on that road, divorce has been compared to experiencing the death of a loved one. However, with death, mourners are publicly recognized. There are rituals, prayers, and expressions of concern. There is an established network of support from the Jewish community. No such thing exists on a formal level in the case of divorce. At a time when the need to connect with other recently divorced and single-parent members of the community is at its greatest, no such mechanism exists, especially for middle-aged singles.

The synagogue, with its traditional family-centric orientation, can exacerbate the sense of rejection and isolation. Lets face it, despite the fact that divorce is more common than we would like to think about, many of us still feel uncomfortable in the presence of recently divorced congregants.

Eleven-year old Randy of the book, The Broken Letter Divorce through the eyes of a child by Carl Lawrence, writes to his AWOL dad shortly after he and Randys mom break up.

Mom and I still try to go to church, but everyone acts weird when were around, like they cant think of anything to say. The people who always talked to us after the service sometimes even act like they dont see us, kind of like we used to do to the new people. We walked up to the Grahms and the Larsons after last Sundays service, and they all just said, Hi, really fast and then took off for their cars. Nobody even asks us out to lunch at Dennys anymore. It sucks. I feel like a big geek there.

It is not uncommon for many synagogues that almost one-third of the children enrolled in Religious School are from divorced-parent households. Does the curriculum reflect this reality? No. For example, the illustrations used in school materials depict only traditional nuclear families as celebrating Shabbat and other holidays. Are children taught or reassured that their Jewish identity is valued regardless of family structure? Does divorce mean for children that they do not have to be Jewish anymore?

Fathers, who constitute the overwhelming majority of non-custodial parents, can feel even more isolated and stigmatized. Unless the father makes a concerted effort to do otherwise, children are by default listed only with the mother in the Temple directory. Religious school enrollment forms do not ask for the names and addresses of both the custodial and non-custodial parents. School mailings and reports are not automatically sent to the non-custodial parent. Jean Deichman, our Temple Educator, is actually the exception to the rule in that she has gone out of her way to insure that Im kept informed regarding my children in Religious School. For this I am most grateful.

The importance of marriage and family in Jewish tradition as they are characterized by the Jewish home is a given. The home is called a mikdash mat, a small sanctuary. The primary role of the family is to safeguard the transmission of Jewish heritage to the next generation.

Judaism does recognize the reality of marital and familial discord just look at the stories of our patriarchs and matriarchs. Divorce is looked upon as a sad alternative to an untenable relationship. The Talmud puts it poignantly when it says, When a man divorces the wife of his youth, even the altar weeps.

Divorce is first referenced in parasha, Ki Tetze, which we will read in about a month and a half. Deut. 24:1 states: A man takes a wife and possesses her. She fails to please him because he finds something obnoxious about her, and he writes her a bill of divorcement, hands it to her, and sends her away from his house.

The biblical viewpoint of divorce seems cruel and arbitrary to us, and very one-sided. Apologists often cite the bill of divorcement, or get, as a means of limiting the husbands absolute and capricious authority. In fact, reforms based on the elaboration of Jewish law from Talmudic decisions were considered very sensitive to women for those times. For example, a 14^th Century court ruling sided with the wife in her demands that the husband either stop his compulsive gambling which was bankrupting the family, or give her a divorce. The court said that we can compel a man to divorce his wife on a complaint that he has chronically bad breath, how much more so can the marriage bond be severed for reasons affecting life itself. But even with all of the reforms, for all practical purposes, Jewish law or halacha never accorded women full parity in suing for divorce.

Reform Judaism categorizes divorce as strictly a civil matter. The Halachic process of divorce is viewed, perhaps rightly so, as demeaning to women. Classical Reform Judaism was also concerned about charges made by 18^th-19^th Century Europe that we were too clannish, inherently incapable of becoming full citizens of the countries that our great-grandparents lived in. The anti-Semites of Europe made questions of loyalty and honesty apparent by showing that Jewish marriages and divorces were made outside the domain of civil authority. As we took our baggage, we also took our fears of Europe to America. In 1929, CCAR, the reform rabbinic assembly, declared when a Rabbi officiates at a marriage, he does so as an officer of the state. A divorce is purely a legal action with which the rabbi has no connection. This has remained the case until today.

Rabbi Sanford Seltzer is the past director of the UAHC department of Jewish Family Concerns. He is currently the Rabbi at Congregation Ohabei Shalom in Brookline, MA. He also serves as a trained family mediator in the Boston area, and is the author of a recent UAHC publication, When there is no other alternative: a spiritual guide for Jewish couples contemplating divorce.

He says that the classical reform movement did not anticipate the prevalence of divorce today in this country. Nor did the movement anticipate the spiritual needs of the present generation of reform Jews, as I had talked about last summer. We are a generation of Jews searching for a spiritual home; hopefully we can find it in the synagogue. Ritualizing all life-cycle events is important to us. The lack of ritual regarding divorce is disconcerting, and many of us would welcome it.

In 1988 the CCAR departed from the classical reform view of divorce as strictly a civil issue. Under the leadership of Rabbi Seltzer, it introduced a divorce service called Seder Preidah, or a Ritual of Release.

Seder Preidah provides a spiritual setting for the termination of marriage. It attempts to create a sacred space marking the transition from marriage to singleness. Such a spiritual space is needed at a time when divorcing couples become combative litigants, and are thrust into the setting of hostile courtrooms and bellicose attorneys. Hopefully, the service may help lessen divorces adversarial and destructive potential.

Seder Preidah also provides a religious context for the expression of loss and grief. May it make tangible the hope expressed in the daily prayers: Heal us, O Lord, and we shall be healed; save us and we shall be saved; grant us a perfect healing from all our wounds.

Seder Preidah is a way of re-integrating divorcing couples into the community. It can be a public way of telling them that they are welcomed in the synagogue. That has not changed due to new circumstances.

Some may say that divorce is too painful to have a ceremony. So is death yet almost all of us observe rituals associated with it. As ritual, it offers much needed closure and consolation.

Unfortunately, most people are unaware of the Seder Preidah. Little effort has been made to explain or encourage it. Maybe the time has come to change that.

The columnist, Gallagher seems to dismiss the importance of the claim that a divorce ritual such as Seder Prediah can help ameliorate the acrimony between divorcing couples. Couples are thrown into a legal system predicated on the presumption that one is totally innocent and the other is totally guilty. At the onset, petitioners filing for divorce are encouraged by their attorney to state, that without provocation the respondent is guilty of extreme and repeated mental cruelty as grounds for divorce. It is more to humiliate and gain a strategic advantage than a statement of fact. Basically, Judges simply ignore it --- but how it goes against the grain of Jewish values where we are enjoined to respect each other, and to guard against slanderous behavior.

Lawyers are so tuned to their roles as adversarial agents to warring parties. The courtroom is seen as a civil war battlefield with the objective of winning at any cost.

The Jewish value of Shalom Bayit, or peace in the home should be the operative, even within the context of divorcing couples. It is a principle that can motivate couples to seek conciliation through mediation, rather than the victory of one party over the other through courtroom battlefield exchanges.

Centuries ago, when courts of Jewish law were in existence, the emphasis was on conciliation. Maimonides said a court which always settles cases by compromise is praiseworthy. Our grandparents who first came to the United States from Eastern Europe had organized conciliation courts for the purpose of resolving disputes. Rabbis can and should play a more proactive role in encouraging divorcing couples to seek mediation as an alternative to courtroom drama, where the underlying idea is that there are winners and losers - the winners earn custody and the losers have few rights. But who are the real losers in such a zero-sum game?

And so what about the children? Rachmonis fir de kindela. For the most part, divorce usually means that children have to contend with the stress associated with the loss of a parent at a very early age. That loss is usually the father.

In his Fathers Day address to the fourth National Summit on Fatherhood, President Bush lamented over the statistics that have become all too familiar in our society. Over one-third of children live apart from their biological fathers. Two years after divorce, over 50 percent of children only see their non-custodial parent once or twice a year, or less. Statistics are even gloomier for those children who live more than 100 miles from their dads. The sad fact is that divorce, more often than not, results in children losing contact with their father.

Few social theorists are willing to argue that a father can be replaced by a check either from the government or the father. However, in direct opposition to the latest research, we are dealing with a legal system that, for example, looks favorably upon the concept of virtual visitation, that is the use of video conferencing as a creative and innovative way for fathers to stay in touch with their children. All it does is to make it easier for custodial parents to get court approval to relocate with their children far away from ex-spouses. Not only are fathers being replaced by checks but by video cameras.

The current legal practice of granting mothers sole responsibility for their children, and of relegating fathers to the role of part-time weekend or summer social director, a.k.a. the fun parent, with little or no ongoing input into the childs life is what many theorists say contributes to our growing society of disposable dads and fatherless children. The current system tends to disenfranchise the non-custodial parent leading to that parents disengagement. Eventually, the parent simply drops out.

Make no mistake about it. Those who trivialize the important role that fathers play in the development of their children do so at the expense of the children, and of the family and society.

Judaism is very clear about this. Expanding on what the Talmud says so that it applies to all children, the father must see to it that his children study Torah, prepare for their bar/bat mitzvah, teach his children a trade and how to swim, and prepare them for marriage.

Studies show that the level of the fathers involvement with his children impacts their cognitive development, probably due to their being exposed to double the intellectual stimulation. In another study, the fathers moral judgment and education are shown to be a strong predictor of his daughters moral reasoning during early adulthood.

Children need both parents as an integral part of their daily life and activities. This is best achieved by frequent and continuous contact with both parents. Hugging ones television set each day does not constitute making contact with ones child.

The bottom line ---- children do better with both parents.

That is why Rabbi Seltzer, as well as many other professionals, supports the concept of rebuttable presumption of shared custody. Research has shown that shared parenting is associated with many positive outcomes for children, including greater father involvement, better adjustment to separation, child support, and even reduced parental conflict. Non-shared arrangements create an unequal balance of power, and can have a deleterious effect on children on how they perceive the weaker parent. What some form of shared parenting achieves is that children do not feel deprived of the involvement of either parent in their lives, and the father does not consider himself disenfranchised as a parent, but can be an active participant in making decisions regarding his children.

Judith Wallersteins latest book, The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce shows that children of divorced parents are still haunted by it 25 years after the divorce. She says that a clear indicator of how well children adjust is associated with the degree of conflict between parents. It is an issue the less conflict and acrimony the better it is for everyone.

But I do take exception to those who use it as justification for not having shared parenting because they say it will not work when parents cannot get along. They say that parents must be totally cooperative and without conflict.

Rabbi Seltzer says: Experience has shown that there is no necessary correlation between how couples interacted during marriage and their ability to communicate after it ended. Studies have shown that conflict between divorcing parents did not necessarily worsen as a result of the increased demand for cooperation associated with shared parenting. Non-shared arrangements may not reduce disputes in high conflict situations nor protect children from their effects. Certainly the current trend of eliminating the father from the childs life to make things easier is not in the childs best interest. Shared parenting, when coupled with a detailed legally enforceable parenting plan may even help reduce parental conflict.

One study sees joint custody as a disincentive to divorce. The parent who receives full custody is more likely to be the one filing for divorce. How often is sole custody used as a weapon or bargaining chip in the battle for better terms, to punish the ex-spouse, or as a first step in the process of excising the parent not only from their life but also from the lives of the children? Does the current divorce process actually provide an incentive for divorce? Would those considering divorce think twice about it if it meant that the person would still have to deal with the other parent; that sole custody, child support and the family home are no longer automatic givens?

If the Seder Preidah can reduce the acrimony that may contribute to the view that one parent must have sole custody, then I believe it is something that should be encouraged. I call upon the Rabbi to promote such a service for this traumatic life-cycle event.

Helping congregants deal with lifes trials and tribulations is an important function of the synagogue community. The synagogue needs to be a safe haven and not another source of discomfort. Issues of divorce must not be absent from our consciousness within the perspectives of contemporary Judaism. It is also a temple responsibility to demonstrate to divorcing couples that there is a strong Jewish component to the ending of a marriage; that it can be done without relentless antagonism and acrimony. Perhaps the service can be a vehicle that drives the point of divorce being done with mutual respect and the memory of what was once shared together. In the case of children, it re-emphasizes the bonds that both parents have with them, and that divorce does not sever those bonds. How you treat one another directly affect their lives as well as yours.

It is not the service that the columnist, Gallaher should be crying about ---- but the fact that such services are rarely done.

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An article on true gender equality and best interest of society by modern feminist Kara O'Kresik.

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