Warren Farrell Quotes

Social policy that reunites father and child must always confront itself with the question, “Are we paying dads to stay, or to go away?” If a single mother receives more money when the father isn’t around than when he is around, there will be fewer fathers around. The government will become her substitute husband.

We need to fund relationship language in our schools so that future parents will know how to communicate about whether they want children; to communicate with the children they have, and teach their children how to communicate with the world. Technical progress without social skills is a Tower of Babel.

Part of our evolutionary heritage is the ability to adapt -- species that survive, adapt. Humans adapt by altering their priorities to match evolving values.

There is little life where no one will listen. These are fathers, sons and families who are needlessly lost.

In brief, part of the need for funding comes from the need to create balance to a third of a century of funding an “attitude” toward men. And part comes from the need to study how both sexes can make a transition from those rigid roles to more flexible roads with a clear enough road map to not go over too many cliffs along the way...

From these biased studies come biased social policy. Hundreds of millions of dollars to enforce sanctions against fathers who don’t pay mothers; almost nothing to enforce sanctions against mothers who don’t allow fathers to see children.

The one-sided funding creates one-sided images that reinforce the press defining as progress an examination of only women’s issues. Thus, a quarter century’s-worth of studies showing domestic violence against men to be more than equal to domestic violence against women receive so little publicity as to barely make a dent on the public’s consciousness.

There is virtually no funding to study the validity of the more muted complaints of men: to study when a false accusation is being used as a weapon to keep the children from dad; or when the child is being bad-mouthed by the other parent; or when access to the child is being prevented; or when statistics about deadbeat dads are including men who are dead, unemployed, or denied their children; or when men are victims of domestic violence.

The feminist-only funding leads to studies that misinform the nation that a divorced mother is economically more hurt than a divorced man, so judges feel a mandate to make his future income hers, and legislatures feel fine about refusing to make his mother subsidy payments tax deductible even as she pays no taxes on the money received. And all this perpetuates the belief that he earns more money....

A paucity of funding from private and government sources would be much less a problem if billions of dollars each year were not funding feminist perspectives on men. This funding leads to Women’s Studies without Men’s Studies; to studies about deadbeat dads, but not dead broke or dead-ended dads -- or moms who deny dads access to children, or make false accusations to obtain children.

We cannot think of dads as being nurturing if we think of men as being self-serving.

Shifting our attitudes about the future of fathers requires shifting our attitudes about the way our fathers loved. Recognizing that the rigid roles of the past were not designed by men to serve only men is not unrelated to shifting our attitudes toward dad.

Many women are discovering that the motherhood instinct implies a responsibility to be certain children have dads -- everyday, not far away; and some are aware that economic independence requires not holding on to her child as if it were her job.

Technology is dad-at-home friendly. It allows the family to be more creative and role flexible than it ever has in the past without being poor in the process.

The challenge is shifting our appreciation: being willing to give up some of dad’s money for more of dad’s love. And, in the process, altering the psyche that makes him lovable.