“For me, it shows a lot of people that you need to fight to be in your kids’ lives sometimes. You fight until you can’t fight any more. That’s all I was trying to be, a father in my kids’ lives.”
A Chicago court has granted Dwyane Wade the sole ‘care, custody and control’ of his two sons with ex-wife, Siohvaughn Wade whom he separated in August 2007 but was only officially divorced in June 2010.
—Men’s Divorce Law Blog (quote and image)
I hate the Miami Heat perhaps more than any professional sports teams on the planet. The LeBron show is something that I don’t admire. The team brought together with massive egos and tons of money. I’ve seen them up close when watching my Celtics. I used to grudgingly accept Dwayne Wade’s toughness and clutch shooting. But ever since they assembled the big three, it’s been a team to despise. I am a Ray Allen guy, shooting perfecting based on hard work and discipline. Not the middle linebacker with freak ability who hangs on South Beach.
Well, I am going to have to change my tune.
I didn’t know that Dwayne Wade fought for custody of his kids, just like I did. I didn’t know that he has dedicated his life to bringing them to school and being as involved dad as he could possibly could be. I didn’t know that his priority is to address staggering single parent statistics particularly among African-American kids.
Those are frankly the issues I care most about too. About how we all become good fathers, even in divorce, even when the law conspires to make it gut-wrenchingly hard.
Standing ovation Dwayne.
I’m not sure I can root for the Heat but I sure am rooting for you as a dad.
♦◊♦
The moms at school drop off didn’t know what to make of him at first.
“I was like one of the only dads,” Wade says with a smile. “Everybody was looking at me, it was kind of weird. They called me ‘Mr. Mom’ for a while.”
It’s an apt nickname for a man who’s on a mission to bring back a bedrock American value: family.
Wade is reaching out to fathers and sons through community groups and his non-profit organization, Wade’s World Foundation,to combat the jaw-dropping statistic that 72 percent of African-American kids are being raised by a single parent, mostly women.
Even President Obama asked Wade to become a kind of ambassador-at-large for fatherhood.
The thing is, a family centers around the mother and the father, not the children. The health of the family depends on the parents. A happy parents means happy children. Wade’s uncaring regards to his wife, his children’s mother is a very great flaw to his fatherhood. Just because he has the resources, he somehow think he could go without the mother part of the family. He just wants the children. Now he goes for the more questionable women. Not very great if you ask me. Sure he could talk about being a good father and all those things but… Read more »
Yes – perfect AND rich.
The message here is, if you are a dad and you want to remain a part of your children’s lives, you had better be perfect. And you had better pray that your ex- is a basket case who commits, fraud, abuse, and perjury.
In any other situation, the feminist family court is going to treat you like an ATM machine, and not a father.
I also can’t help but think his money allowed him to win custody to a certain extent at well.
This is great but surreal. He needs some applaud for doing the right thing, sure. But this is not the hard thing. Try doing it on a 30K salary (that’s after 5 -10 hours a week overtime). Try it while working and going to college at night. Or working a side job. And battling a life-threatening disease.
Anything these surreal stars do – you need to look at differently, sorry.
Just my 2 cents.
As a society everyone once in a while the “BIG FOLKS”, the obamas in the US, the Harpers in Canada, talk the big talk about families, about embracing fatherhood, bla bla bla, but when they sit down to pass legislation, they invariable listen to those with the real power, the lobby….Or big orgs like NOW. Shared parenting should be the starting point in all child custody arrangements, unless there is a proven reason not to. But as it is now. we judge situations from a different perspective than one in which those situations were created and we assume that this… Read more »