A New Fatherhood : Single Dads Who Want to Be Daily Dads Are Finding Friends In and Out of Court

Two years ago, a judge told state Sen. Charles Calderon that if he truly wanted to care for his young sons half the time, he would have to prove that he could handle the extra work. Calderon ultimately gained joint custody, but he said the effort cost him $90,000 and produced “immeasurable emotional costs” for himself, his ex-wife and their children. The process, he said, “was like a death.”

Like many divorced and unwed fathers, Calderon (D-Whittier) contends that government has favored mothers for decades--at everyone’s expense. Rather than deadbeats who can’t be trusted, these fathers say they are sincere men who truly want to be involved in daily parenting but are often pushed out by mothers and the officials who back them.

Now, they say, their voices are being heard. Leaders of diverse grass-roots groups that have worked for years to change public attitudes say they are finally starting to win sympathy from government leaders who see fatherlessness as a major social problem; from the courts, which are awarding more custody to fathers, and from some feminists, who see more and better father involvement as a boon to working women.

“Men are beginning to try and express themselves, something they’ve never done before,” Calderon said. “You usually hear horror stories from women. Now you hear horror stories from men. . . . It’s like the real estate market. We’re socially correcting ourselves. And not for the worse.”

Already, a federal welfare reform commission has recommended that millions of dollars be spent on programs that go beyond punishing deadbeats--to identify fathers, give them job training and parenting classes, and provide paying fathers with better access to their children. A new 15-member federal commission on child and family welfare will study visitation and other issues.

Statewide, an unusual number of controversial bills are swirling around the Legislature this year, including bills to reduce child-support payments in general and specifically by fathers who provide child care themselves. Competing bills propose to regulate the freedom of custodial parents--usually mothers--to move away with their children.

Calderon has proposed a bill to widen rights for unwed fathers. He also supports another to bring back a presumption of joint custody in divorce cases, which some women’s groups lobbied successfully to remove in 1989; many of those same groups have vowed to fight the bill if it passes this week in the Assembly Judiciary Committee.

Dorothy Jonas, a member of the executive committee of the Beverly Hills-based Coalition for Family Equity, a group of activists working on economic problems facing women after divorce, gave the bill little chance of success this year. Even so, Calderon insisted that society “should expect fathers to take more responsibility in cases of divorce to raise the children. In fact, the law should demand that,” he said.

Fathers’ rights activists estimate that 20 million children live without fathers, with 6.5 million having no contact at all. Although they acknowledge that batterers and so-called casual inseminators are not good father material, some groups insist that in general men are needed in the home to help children develop emotionally and turn away from violent crime and welfare dependency.

Other activists are taking a different tack, pushing to change family laws they say have given fathers a raw deal.

Over the past year, William A. Galston, President Clinton’s domestic policy adviser, has been lobbied by a variety of fathers’ rights groups seeking everything from proclamations in favor of fathers to federal enforcement of visitation rights for parents who pay child support.

Galston said he is leery of mandated joint custody, but he recently told the Institute for American Values: “If fathers don’t feel emotionally connected--and particularly if they feel shut out--they are much less likely to discharge their economic responsibilities. We have to do something about that.”

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What once seemed a simple battle of the sexes in making dad pay has spun into a highly charged, complex web of interests involving grandparents and second wives as well as ex-spouses.

In California, where remarriage is common, a particular bone of contention is a 2-year-old law that dramatically raised child-support payments. Rallying against the measure, the Coalition for Parents Support has quickly grown to 12 chapters with 3,000 members, half of them second wives. Members say the measure, which also provides for lower payments by non-custodial parents who spend more time with their children, serves only to create animosity between ex-spouses and new mates.

Considering the high rate of divorce and remarriage, critics predict that families will soon be supporting other households in a daisy-chain effect.

“It’s just crazy,” said Robert Chandler, 53, an Irvine salesman whose daughter lives with her mother in Northern California. Chandler started a weekly radio program May 1 on Orange County’s KWIZ-FM, “The American Family Expose,” which he said “refers to the fact that family law is very lopsided. . . . There are so many non-custodial parents who are being separated and devastated by this money thing and time and visitation. The word just needs to be gotten out--we need support.”

Meanwhile, in Los Angeles, an organization called My Child Says Daddy wants the courts to give good supporters better access to their children.

The group has a mailing list of a few hundred and has drawn interest from around the country, founder Reginald Brass said. In addition to educating members on legal issues, Brass also hosts regular meetings for the fathers to improve communication skills in relationships. Recently, the group staged a demonstration in front of the Los Angeles County Courthouse to counter public images that all single fathers are deadbeat dads.

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In Colonial America, a mother had no legal rights to her children when her husband was alive and only restricted rights when he died, said UC Berkeley professor Mary Ann Mason, author of the upcoming “From Father’s Property to Children’s Rights.”

In return, fathers were legally responsible for the children’s education and moral training. But as women gained more status, a “cult of motherhood” evolved, culminating in a “tender years doctrine” favoring mothers in custody disputes that held sway until the 1970s.

Although California courts are now required to use “the best interests of the child” as a criterion in judging, mothers still receive the majority of custody with fathers required to pay support.

In some respects, a pendulum swing back toward fathers is a “natural reaction to the failure to recognize that there are two sides to any argument,” said Douglas J. Besharov, resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C. “Naturally, with everyone talking about deadbeat dads and the need to have better child-support enforcement, someone would mention (that) sometimes fathers don’t pay because they have justifiable reason to be angry at the mothers.”

To be sure, there are also those who complain that fathers have too many rights already. “Many states say there is a fundamental right of the father to visitation with his children. The courts have used that general concept to order visitation even when the father is convicted of sexually abusing the children, or have allowed that when the father is convicted of murdering the mother,” Besharov said.

Mothers complain of judges preventing them from moving away with their children for better jobs, education or new marriages if their ex-husbands object. They say fathers use custody claims to reduce support payments or gain power.

Calderon’s ex-wife, Jeannine Newton of Mission Viejo, says Calderon and other father-lawmakers are proposing and supporting new laws favoring fathers because they have personal axes to grind.

“All these bills coming out of Sacramento, it’s everything Chuck tried to pull in court with me,” said Newton, who has since remarried. “He said, ‘I’m going to try and change the laws.’ He’s affecting all the people who have primary custody in the state of California. To prove a point? It’s all unfair.”

Calderon denied having ever carried a bill that related to his own divorce.

But, he added: “There’s no question that all of us bring our personal experience into our jobs. . . .

“When I found . . . that I had to fight so hard just to stay in their lives, I realized just how broken the system is. I’m trying to fix it one step at a time, one issue at a time.”

Calderon said that because the Legislature abolished joint physical custody as a presumption, the burden of proof was on him to show the judge it would work.

“Each time, the presumption was I couldn’t do it: ‘You’re a legislator. You can’t be home to provide the nurturing environment necessary for the children. Their mother will be home on time. Why don’t you just take them for a couple of months during the summer and pay child support and come see them once a week when you’re around, maybe take them out to dinner and be satisfied with that?’ . . .

“But I didn’t think it was enough for the kids. I know I have something to offer those children besides money, and I can’t do it unless I’m there. And I’m willing to make the changes it takes in order to be there.”

Now, he said, his sons are with him in Whittier every Thursday night through Monday morning except the third week of the month. “On Thursdays I fly (from Sacramento) into Orange County and pick them up at their school in Mission Viejo, bring them back to live here and do homework, give them a bath, get them ready for bed, do some reading, watch a little TV sometimes.”

Friday, he drives them back to Mission Viejo to school. Their mother brings them back to his house after school. Monday morning, he drives them back to school in Mission Viejo, then catches a plane from Orange County to Sacramento. They take turns on holidays.

Calderon attributed his victory in attaining joint custody to “persistence and the ability to stay in there financially.” He also said he agreed to pay $1,500 a month in child support.

But often, mandating hostile parents to work out parenting decisions together only increases problems for them and their children, said Jonas, of the Coalition for Family Equity. “Even when large chunks of custody are awarded the fathers, very often it slips back into the old patterns anyway,” she said.

But according to the National Fatherhood Initiative, a month-old Lancaster, Pa.-based nonprofit organization that aims to “restore fatherhood as a cultural priority,” the mere presence of a father can help reduce the rates of poverty, welfare dependency, crime, teen pregnancy and educational failure.

The group is convening a national summit on fatherhood in October in Dallas and plans to produce public-service announcements and educational products that explain what it means to be a good father.

“We’re looking for a new fatherhood,” said NFI Director Wade Horn, a former U.S. commissioner for children, youth and families. “One where it can be the fullest expression of masculinity and manhood, at the same time connecting with a new nurturance with their kids. We don’t think it’s about how many diapers you change, but it is about how much time you spend with your kids.”

Some women think it’s about time.

Karen DeCrow, a former president of the National Organization for Women, supports joint custody, saying: “There’s no advantage to women to have the sole responsibility, or major responsibility, for children. If women are trying to get out into the marketplace and participate as professionals, full-time workers and so on, it’s to our disadvantage to also be considered always the primary parent. . . .”

Jacqueline Kennedy, an unwed mother from Los Angeles, said she prefers personal involvement to child support from her child’s father.

“He calls. He sends cards. He’s an excellent father,” said Kennedy, who supports her family with her job as a child-care worker. “You don’t have to be together to raise a child. Women need to get off (Aid to Families With Dependent Children) and stop thinking about fathers paying child support. What makes a good father is whether he gets involved.”