Q&A with Stephen Baskerville
      Stephen Baskerville holds a Ph.D. from the London School of Economics and teaches political science at Howard University in Washington, D.C. In January 2004 he became President of the American Coalition for Fathers and Children.  His writings on family and fatherhood issues have appeared in leading national and international publications, both popular and scholarly, including the Washington Post, Washington Times, Independent Review, Catholic World Report, and Crisis magazine, as well as Family Policy, The Spectator, and National Review, among others.  He is an advisor to the American Coalition for Fathers and Children and the Men’s Health Network and spokesman for Men, Fathers, and Children, International, a coalition of 12 fatherhood organizations from 9 countries.  He also serves on the board of affiliates of Gendercide Watch, a human rights organization that monitors gender-selective atrocities. He is a contributing editor to the journal, In Search of Fatherhood, and his articles on family issues are available at: www.stephenbaskerville.net.  "

Women's Freedom Network:  You've written a great deal about the "myth of the deadbeat dad."  Could you describe what this myth is and why it has become the conventional wisdom in debates about the family? 

Stephen Baskerville:  We all feel revulsion as the thought of someone creating children and then abandoning them, and fathers who do so are a real but minor problem in every society. Over the last few decades children without fathers have become a major problem, so there was a natural tendency to assume that the expanded problem was attributable to an expanded number of men behaving irresponsibly. In fact, while individual examples of anything can be found, there is no evidence that the main cause of fatherless children is abandonment or that it is even a significant contributor. In addition, the interests that really were responsible for fatherless children all had professional advocates. First, the welfare state created widespread fatherlessness among the poor, by substituting a government check for a father's paycheck. Advocates for the poor, social workers, child support enforcement agents, child protective services, and others who benefited from the growth of welfare obviously had no interest in acknowledging that they were creating the very problem them were supposed to be solving. Even critics of welfare found it easier to blame fathers, in an attempt to recover some of the expenditure, than to tackle the behemoth that had been created. As fatherlessness spread to the middle class through "no-fault" divorce, powerful legal interests -- lawyers, judges, forensic psychotherapists -- were added to the gravy train, and everyone involved found deeper pockets to mine in the middle-class fathers. So it became a free-for-all, with everyone mugging the father of his children (plus his property and even freedom) and then saying he had abandoned them. What is striking is how the problem feeds upon itself and generates endless work. The more fathers were removed, plundered, and criminalized, either through welfare or divorce, the more calls there were for government relief of the women and children. When the "solution" creates the problem you end up with a vicious circle that spirals out of control. That's precisely where we are now.

WFN:  In the Spring 2004 issue of The Independent Review, you discuss the federal government's efforts to promote fatherhood and note that this raises two questions: the "appropriate role of public policy with respect to fatherhood and families" and whether or not paternal abandonment is the root cause of the decline of the family. What role has the state had in this debate -- particularly through federal welfare policy (and welfare reform in the 1990s) and the activities of the courts? And what, in your opinion, is the appropriate role for federal and state governments to play? 
Baskerville:  The growth of government power is the central cause of fatherlessness and family dissolution. It is not a sociological phenomenon but a political one. On the state level, this has centered on the family courts and their massive entourages, which originated in the early 1960's along with the growth of welfare and divorce (though their roots go back decades in the juvenile courts).  But despite the fiction that family law is a state matter, much of it is federally driven. You are right that federal welfare created the fatherhood crisis among the poor. But the machinery put in place for welfare now governs the middle class much more than the poor. Federal child support enforcement, for example, was created to recover welfare payments. Today it mostly subsidizes middle-class divorce. The latest Department of Health and Human Services Figures figures show that 83 percent of child support cases do not involve welfare. The welfare cases that rationalized the program's creation constitute only 17 percent. Likewise, the federal Violence Against Women Act should be called the Divorce Facilitation Act, since it funds agencies which encourage mothers to divorce and use trumped-up charges of domestic violence and child abuse to secure custody of the children. No constitutional provision justifies federal involvement in domestic violence. Here again, the solutions generate more of the problem. But I do believe one federal role is very appropriate and could be very effective: upholding parents' constitutional rights. Common Law principles going back centuries have established that parenting is a fundamental constitutional right. The federal government, especially the judiciary, should enforce this right instead of violating it. If governments could not remove children from their fathers without cause and due process, this would strike the fatherhood crisis at its root and without involving the federal government inappropriately in family law.

 WFN: What impact has the mainstream feminist movement had on the debate over fatherhood and families? 

Baskerville:  It has had a  complicated but also a very fundamental one. Feminist groups say little about it, and many people assume that feminists will want to encourage fathers. After all, didn't feminists always urge fathers to be more involved in childrearing?  Unfortunately, power tends to trump principles. Children make great weapons, and feminists have vigorously encouraged this.  So while one might expect feminists to support equal rights for parents such as shared parenting provisions -- and at one time groups like the National Organization for Women did support them -- now they propagate rationalizations for taking children from their fathers. Understandably, this is not a high profile issue for feminists, who see no need to call attention to a double standard that works in their favor and gives them enormous power. Demonizing fathers -- who embody the "patriarchy," after all -- has also been a very effective strategy for feminists, because it appeals to a certain conservative tendency to treat women as helpless and hold men responsible for their families. Thus while the more strident features of the feminist agenda are creating a strong backlash, feminist claims of "domestic violence" and "deadbeat dads" are accepted uncritically, even by feminism's opponents. The result is that few challenge or oppose the mass violation of constitutional rights of those targeted as public villains. It's very reminiscent of Stalinism, which utilized the czarist machinery of repression. Feminism's authoritarian potential achieves its breakthrough not by challenging traditional male centers of power like the job market or public office (where it meets resistance) but by politicizing women's own traditional sources of power, such as children, where they merely touch the door and it swings open.

WFN:  What do you see as the major social and cultural effects of these trends -- if fathers are not supported by our cultural and legal institutions, what risks exist for children? As well, are you optimistic that Americans can find answers to these questions, particularly answers that are based on objective social science research rather than ideology?

Baskerville:  The fatherhood advocates who have served both the Clinton and Bush administrations have done a good job of making us all aware that our most serious social problems -- violent crime, substance abuse, truancy, suicide -- are directly attributable to fatherlessness. Unfortunately, they have also left the impression that this is some spontaneous social or cultural problem that government officials must combat. To recognize that it is government-created is to realize that, harsh as it may sound, no government really has an interest in controlling it. The problems bred by fatherlessness all justify expanded government power. Bipartisan programs at the federal, state, and local levels to "promote" marriage and fatherhood through psychotherapy might make policymakers feel better, but they cannot possibly have any significant impact. In fact, these too can easily become part of the problem. Some relatively simple policy changes could make a difference: limiting no-fault divorce on demand, shared parenting after divorce, and a new parents' bill of rights (which we are now promoting). But these would be politically difficult. So many entrenched interests are pushing so many ineffective and counterproductive measures that sometimes I think it will effectively be confronted less through public policy and instead through some kind of political revival of the citizenry, standing up and demanding that the state withdraw itself from our private lives.