Hat tips to Tenya, MinervaB and Jose to pointing us to these great posts. Trigger warning for description of domestic violence and discussion of body issues.
From Fathers and Families, a post on the rise of the single father:
But two things suggest to me that the rise in single fathers shouldn’t cause the same alarm that the rise in single mothers did.
First, when the increase in single mothers began, it was at the expense of two-parent families. More children raised by single mothers meant fewer raised in dual parent households. That was due to the dramatic increase in the divorce rate and the shocking increase in out of wedlock childbearing.
Now, the divorce rate is either stable or falling slightly. Moreover, those single fathers are parenting children who would otherwise be in a single-mother home, not a two-parent one. That is, instead of living with Mom post-divorce, they’re living with Dad.
So the rise in single fathers doesn’t signal an increase in children in single-parent homes.
The second reason is that single fathers tend to earn more than do single mothers. This Census Bureau report from 2007 shows that 80% of single fathers with children under 18 in the home were employed versus about 70% of single mothers.
More importantly, only 26.3% of those dads earned less than $30,000 per year while a hefty 50.5% of single mothers did. We know that single parenthood is bad for kids apart from the fact that single parents have less money than dual parents do. Still, the greater incomes that single fathers bring in can ameliorate many of the problems single parents face, alternative childcare being one of the most obvious.
From Feministing, a post on male body image:
But all comes crashing down around me when he inevitably comments on his own body in a negative fashion. Whenever he makes a body-negative comment, I feel incredibly sad that society has impacted him in the same way that it has impacted me. I understand how crushing those social pressures feel, what it feels like to literally loathe your natural form. I don’t want that for him. I want him to love his body, the way I do – but not because I do.
Unfortunately sadness isn’t the only thing I feel. In those instants the secure walls of love and acceptance I have built around my body start to crumble. I am suddenly very aware of the 15 pounds I gained and never lost again in college. I become self-conscious; I no longer enjoy our sex.
I wish more than anything that our society didn’t affect people this way, but unfortunately it does. I believe that the pervasive body-negativity in our culture affects women AND men. I also feel that not enough work has been done on men’s body messages in culture and the media. In response to the (unfortunately) high incidence of eating disorders, fad diets, and over-exercising in women and girls, we (fortunately) received positive counter-messages, though fewer and farther between than the negative ones. Men, however, receive almost none. There is little to no attention paid to their body-negativity. And given that less attention is paid to men, they have fewer tools to cope with their body hatred.
(Trigger warning for vivid descriptions of domestic abuse) From Racialicious, an excellent post on non-standard survivors and perpetrators of domestic violence:
The police promised me that this was a bullshit charge—“What kind of pussy husband has his wife arrested for cursing at him?”—even though I’d indeed broken the protection order’s stipulation against verbal harassment. The police spent hours working with the DA to follow Q.’s request: Despite having me arrested, he didn’t want the judge to go beyond the “limited” order the court previously had granted; he still wanted us to communicate with each other about the children only. This negotiation lasted for what seemed like forever; at around 8 p.m. I was taken handcuffed in a squad car to Brooklyn’s Central Booking, where I’d be in a holding cell until I could get in front of a judge. My lawyer was pulling every string possible so I wouldn’t have to spend the night in jail.
@ aliarasthedaydreamer: There’s that, but what also annoyed me was the bit about how ‘we know that problems in single-parent families are not just about money, but we’re going to completely ignore that and say single-father families are better because more money’. Whutnow?
Feministing, feministe, that kind of message board, so a mix of both skewed towards the latter I’m guessing. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think that the distinction is part of some plot to erase male victims and female perpetrators. Just that it gets seized on by some who are attached to the old ways of thinking in order to argue that it’s violence by men that really matters.
@Jared: Did you talk to any experts, or just people who were concerned about domestic violence? Because it’s pretty clear both of those were situational, though nasty. Most of the time active celebrities do not lack so much power it’s possible to terrorize them.
@ aliara, I wasn’t aware of those studies, so I appreciate you pointing that out to me. In general, though, I just feel like people acting like dual parent households are always better annoys me, since I was raised in a single parent household and I (like to think I) am fine. Whereas I’ve seen people in the exact situation you describe, where the parents hated each other but would not divorce, and they were constantly miserable. I also feel like it can be easy to use the “kids from dual families do better” to slut-shame, or make it harder… Read more »
@Sara I believe there have been studies (although I’m not super familiar with them, so I might be misquoting) that state that on average, children from two-parent households do better than children from single-parent households. This obviously varies in individual cases — two people who hate each other and have stayed together “for the kids” probably aren’t that healthy. However, this doesn’t mean and shouldn’t be taken to mean that children from single-parent households do poorly.
@ Camilla
I think it comes from 1) men who are single fathers are usually hugely grateful to be so. 2) Men are socialized not to complain. In other words, talking about their frailties or concerns makes them feel less masculine; whereas a woman’s vulnerabilities can only make her more feminine in our society, thus there’s even incentive to both display and exaggerate them.
Jared: I mean, look at the Chris Brown versus Tiger Woods cases. He responded (inappropriatly) to an immediate provacations which included being struck. There was no mention of situational violence then. On the flipside, despite the far more serious injuries inflicted on Woods where I heard responces from DV representatives they tended along the lines of “this is an issolated incident, which while horrible, does not form part of a larger pattern of abuse”. i.e it’s situational violence. Now, I don’t argue against their conclusion in Woods’ case, but given the fact that they don’t reach the same one for… Read more »
@Camilla, that would probably also go a long way in explaining the cited wage gap.
I have to wonder whether the “men complain less about the burdens of single parenthood” is skewed by single fathers being more likely to have older children. My guess would be that a lot of single mothers of babies and toddlers are partnered up by the time the children are teenagers, whereas single fatherhood is more likely to come about as the result of a later split. (I don’t know this to be the case, I’m just guessing.)
I (female) have never hit my (male) partner, but the description in the Nina Collins piece rings frighteningly true. We have fights that feel like they cross a point of no return (no hope of getting him to understand or listen), where when I have tried the usual tactics (apologies, crying, more talk) to break the silence, I want to lash out at him in any way I can to get a reaction. (We seem to be doing better of late; having him promise me that we will talk about it “in three days” and to schedule a non-negotiable time… Read more »
@Brian, Call me cynical but it seems whether you get a responce of “it only happens sometimes, like, once every two months; it’s situational violence” or “once every two months, regular as clockwork; this is domestic terrorism!” largely breaks down on gender lines. I mean, look at the Chris Brown versus Tiger Woods cases. He responded (inappropriatly) to an immediate provacations which included being struck. There was no mention of situational violence then. On the flipside, despite the far more serious injuries inflicted on Woods where I heard responces from DV representatives they tended along the lines of “this is… Read more »
Brian: According to Penn State sociologist Michael Johnson who is the person quoted in the Elle article about 50% of the situational couple violence is mild (happens perhaps only once or seldom and the violent party feels true remorse), 34% is couples who chronically mix it up but no one is injured (no definition of mix it up is provided) and in “only” 16% the situational violence gets worse with time. Michael Johnson originally had other terms for this: Patriarchal Terrorism (PT) and Common Couple Violence (CCV). And it’s no wonder he states that it’s overwhelmingly men who perpetrate Intimate… Read more »
@tenya Interestingly, Erin Pizzey says the same thing, that the vast majority of partner violence is reciprocal — for which she says she has received death threats. And she started one of the first (if not the first) domestic-violence shelter charities in the world! It’s grown into the charity Refuge which houses 80,000 women and children annually (but offers no places to male victims), and it was through her work there, and her interviews with the women using the facilities that she came to that conclusion.
I am not arguing that there currently is an exact parity between violence from men and women. However, all people have the capacity to be violent and the vast majority of women and men have at some point in their life been violent (caused someone physical pain intentionally). More and more studies seem to show that there isn’t a large gendered difference in committing violence against partners. Any gap between the genders seems to be closing, whether that is because of previous massive underreporting of women’s violence or because women now are more violent than before I don’t know. Some… Read more »
The other note that I don’t think is mentioned in the article Racialicious links to but was in workshop I attended about domestic violence is that the domestic partner terrorism is more rare – you’re much more likely to have the couples where one or both partners express their problems through violence (especially when we extent that to verbally) and while that is not healthy, and their partner has every right to leave and not look back because they don’t deserve to be treated that way, (and if it is physical it is illegal too) that is not the same… Read more »
@Tamen: I actually think the distinction is good.
Remember, the “situational couple violence” category is mainly designed for things like playful hitting, or at most a fight breaking out every once in a while. It’s called situational because it is situational; it doesn’t happen all the time. It’s called couple violence because it is couple violence; usually it’s both partners hitting each other, in self-defense or not.
Tamen: Yeah, I can see making a distinction as well. It’s just strangely convenient how just about all domestic violence with a female perpetrator is placed in the more mild category. I think its a result of trying to maintain the “its something men do to women” line. In that Racialicious post look at the quoted part where they talk about intimate terrorism and situational couple violence. So anxious to get the “men do it more” out there that we’re told that men do it more often before we are even told what it is. (Someone over there commented that… Read more »
@ aliarasthedaydreamer: I agee with you! I really don’t like the implication that single fathers are more acceptable than single mothers because they make more, when in a perfect world the wage gap wouldn’t exist. Also, frankly, I’m a little disturbed by how the Fathers and Families post treats dual parent families as inherently better than single parent ones. I grew up in a single father home (not due to divorce; my mother died when I was small), and I like seeing more people acknowledge that single fathers exist because it reflects my life more and it means that childrearing… Read more »
@Tamen: It is possible that there’s a gendered difference in committing violence though, isn’t there? It’s not necessarily the case that women are as likely as men to do something, or vice versa.
Sorry, I recalled a bit too late that the ex-husband finally defended himself and threw her into the wall and called 911.
ozymandias42: Yeah, I can see making a distinction as well. It’s just strangely convenient how just about all domestic violence with a female perpetrator is placed in the more mild category. Also note that situational couple violence by both name (couple violence) and from your description (partners get angry and express their anger through violence) implies that the violence is reciprocal when it can also be one sided – as in the case of Nina Collins in that Elle article – where one part doesn’t do any violence at all – not even in defence.
Typhon: Yeah, they probably would have been. :/
Tamen: I can see making a distinction between a systematically abusive relationship and a relationship where the partners get angry sometimes and express their anger through violence. Both are dysfunctional, but they’re differently dysfunctional. It’s important, however, that we not erase the existence of men who are systematically abused.
Noah: The way I simultaneously manage to believe I’m too skinny and too fat? o.O Body image issues are ridiculous, yo.
Oh man, that body image post resonated way too hard. One of my girlfriends has a particular type when it comes to guys, and that happens to look exactly like me. Tall, broad shoulders, shaved head, muscles, bit of a belly, huge hands. I believe her that this is her type; I don’t think she’s making it up or lying. And yet every time she says my body’s sexy, I feel compelled to argue the point and insist otherwise. I’m gross and hairy and fat and have stretch marks, and my BMI lists me as obese. And I KNOW that… Read more »
What stood out for me in the Racialicious article was the part about how domestic violence is now put into two categories: Intimate terrorism and situational couple violence. The first one has a pretty damning name and it is said that it’s overwhelmingly perpetrated by men, the other one has a name that almost implies that it’s just something that happens and this is what men and women engage in in roughly equal parts. I can’t help but wonder if this re-framing is to account for the more and more un-deniable fact (oh, plenty in the feminist dominated DV sector… Read more »
I admittedly haven’t read much of F&F, but maybe it was because he didn’t have space to mention it? We can’t cover every gender egalitarian issue in every post, after all. 🙂 It’s true though that the gender pay gap is an important issue– especially since single fathers remove one of the largest explanations for the gap (women prioritizing family over work).