You don't envy my penis and I won't envy your parturition, OK?

Many will be familiar with the idea of a "pregnant father" - a man who experiences some of the symptoms of pregnancy while his partner gestates his children. Not many will know that this has a name: The Couvade. Of course, in our modern age, so careless of fatherhood, it is often shrugged off with a wry smile as "psychosomatic". That gets a little harder to swallow when you learn that researchers estimate that it affects from 11 to 65 percent of expectant fathers, but there's always someone to come out with a string of jargon to explain it away: "somatized anxiety, psuedo-sibling rivalry, identification with the fetus, ambivalence about fatherhood or parturition envy."

"Parturition envy"? I tell you what, you don't envy my penis and I won't envy your parturition, OK?

Then there's the New Age waffle: "I firmly believe that these 'symptoms' were the result of something a little more spiritual. A kind of symbiotic connection that she and I felt not only toward each other, but to our little girl growing inside of her."

Er, yeah, OK, if you say so.

But there is another possibility - what if it were an evolutionary adaptation? A survival trait?

A what? Well, a survival trait is some aspect of genetically inherited phsyiology or behavior which enhances an organism's ability to survive in the face of the deadly onslaught of daily life. The dinosaurs ran out of survival traits, and died. So did the dodos - being big, fat, meaty and slow just didn't hack it when hungry colonials showed up. Cockroaches and rats obviously have a lot of very good survival traits within our environment as they are just about impossible to kill off. I have heard it argued that intelligence must be a survival trait. Well, as long as we haven't killed ourselves off yet, I guess that might be true, but I reserve judgement for a few millenia.

So how could sympathetic pregnancy be a survival trait? If it contributed to the survivability of the children, that's how.

Let's say, for giggles and grins, that you are a male creature whose instincts dictate that you spend a lot of time looking after your young once they're borne. We don't have to go as far as the sea horse whose female buggers off and leaves the kids with dad, but how about marmosets and tamarins (they're monkeys, folks) the male of which species spends a lot of time looking after the young. It's called parental investment and biologists in their boring white jackets put a lot of store in that and which parent exhibits how much. It turns out that the male mamoset or tamarin spends so much time and effort doing this that he has to prepare for their birth by gaining weight.

Really, male New World monkeys gain weight when their female partners have a bun in the oven. Check it out, and here. It'd be kind of hard to put that down to psychobabble or New Agey crap, wouldn't it?

'Funny thing is, human males do the same thing.

My God! That'd actually make it a good thing, a bona fide, objective even scientific reason to think well of fatherhood! Imagine, men have actually evolved instinctive behaviors with accompanying physiological changes to enhance their paternal investment in the children. That would make it a biological imperative that he help look after the kids. (Conversely, not that I'm one to be melodramatic about it, but it would make obstructing that drive a, er, "perversion of nature", wouldn't it?)

Screw your prejudices and ideologies, I'll go with what nature demands any time.

(Simulposted on Just Another Disenfranchised Father)

Click here for more.

Hear That Vagina Roar

Vagina warrior Susan Paynter says, “We are women, hear us roar.”

Paynter has herself worked up of the prospect of Mike McGavitt defeating Maria Cantwell in November. The single, childless, and cold-as-ice Cantwell is the hero of every man-hating gender-obsessed feminist in the state.

Paynter claims McGavitt’s feet will be held to the fire over his position on abortion. Not only will wrinkled old feminists have a fire reignited in their belly, according to Paynter, but so will the “men who love them.”

One wonders whether the control fantasies of these bitter women meet with reality when their meek husbands and boyfriends saunter into private voting booths. I suppose that in many cases, women like Paynter actually insist on filling out the mail-in ballot forms of their spouses in order to ensure that those poor guys are voting the party line (is this the motivation for all mail-in voting?). Nevertheless, passive aggressive Washington men are probably pretty good at sneaking around the edges and getting their protest votes in when they really want to.

But, even assuming Paynter and her aging sisters actually cast the ballots of their spouses, she is forgetting about a fundamental change in the population census data over the past couple of decades. No Democrat is elected or re-elected in Washington without winning a solid majority of King County voters. That fact butts up against another - nearly 50% of men in the county in their 30’s are not married. A solid chunk of these men never plan to enter this potentially disastrous contract. They are wising up.

With the National Center for Men garnering incredible headlines and fretting commentary for its lawsuit attempting to gain reproductive rights for men, the non-existence of their reproductive rights and gender punitive nature of current law are no longer shunned topics in the news. More wising up.

Sure, some single issue environmental extremists will vote for Cantwell anyway. Not all though. After spending so much of its political capital on gender feminist causes, the state’s Democrats run the risk of loosing enough of these male votes in King County to toss Cantwell out of the cozy Senate dining room.

And, what of that feminine “roar”? Feminist controlled organizations in the state have been running at full tilt for years. Their money supplies have probably been maxed out for a while. Editorial comments in the region’s mainstream news media could not be any more biased toward self-censured political correctism, and some of that media, like Paynter’s Seattle PI, are in their death throes.

It’s hard to imagine an audibly distinct roar rising from the whinny feminist cacophony.

Click here for more.

Workplace Quotas for Women?

The following is based on this post at Richard's Midlife Crisis.

Imagine eight young people graduate, four girls and four boys.

G B
G B
G B
G B

Reasonably, their skill levels are different. Statistics on the variability of people's intelligence are available on the web, and most people understand that there is a 'bell curve' of abilities. Let's assume that our population of Boys and Girls is like this.

Lets also assume that the girls are just as effective in the workforce as boys.

Then let's say that our top performers are the kind who will test in about the 85th percentile (15% below perfect) and our bottom peformers will are 15% above the bottom - the 15th percentile. The middle two tiers we will make 65% and 35% - Just 15% on either side of the 50% average.

G(85%) B(85%)
G(65%) B(65%)
G(35%) B(35%)
G(15%) B(15%)

Now, we all know that there are only a few 'top jobs'. Affirmative Action for Women would mean that half of those jobs go to women. Let's say that half of our graduates can nail these jobs.

G(85%) B(85%)
G(65%) B(65%) Working at Top Job
-----------------------
G(35%) B(35%) Didn't get a Top Job
G(15%) B(15%)

Note that the full top job workforce contributes 300 percentile points to their employers.

Now, imagine that our top performers age - everyone does - and most women at some point decide to have children. What does this do to the equation? Well, obviously these women leave the workforce for some period of time. In the interim, their male ex-co-workers have to take up some of the slack. Additionally, the top jobs must be filled with other women to maintain the 50% quota:

G(35%) B(85%)
G(15%) B(65%) Working at Top Job
-----------------------
B(35%) Didn't get a Top Job
B(15%)
-----------------------
G(85%) Home with kids
G(65%)
Note that the full top job workforce now contributes 200 percentile points to their employers.

So, our average Girl-employee has a skill level in the 25th percentile,
-they contribute a total of 50 skill points.
Our average Boy-employee has a skill level in the 75th percentile, .
-they contribute a total of 150 skill points.

So with enforced full equality, effectively a man has to be three times (300%) as skillful, work three times as hard as a woman to compete for the same job.

If the corporate that has the top jobs actually requires those 300 percentile-based skill points to get the work done, then the men in the top jobs have to come up with, in addition to their current 150 points, an additional 100 points to make the corporate whole. That would bring the men's average output to 125%.

So to keep the corporates going, the men on the job have to put out an average performance that is five times (125%/25%) that of the women on the job. One might try and distribute some of this to the new women on the job, but remember, they are trainees, and have less skill to start with. Demanding an extra 25% from a worker who is starting at an average 25th percentile, and who is new on the job is just not going to make up the shortfall.

But perhaps you say 'well, eventually the women who left the workforce return.' Most of them don't, not until their kids are a few years into school, and when they do they generally do not choose jobs that are at the 'top firms', instead choosing jobs that are closer to home, require less hours, and the like.

The real losers are the men, who want to work, but can't compete for jobs that are slated for women. Every bit as skillful, or more skillful than the women who pick up those jobs, no, ENTITLEMENTS, these men sit on the sidelines, perhaps work retail, and learn how to ask if their clients would 'like fries with that'.

Also losers are those men who have the jobs, who have to work 500% as hard as their female counterparts. They never see their families, - if they can afford the time to build families.

As all of this sounds frighteningly familiar to me, let me add the next piece. Imagine one of the men has a family. Well, his wife gets tired of his not being around at all, and he finds himself divorced. Windfall for the wife, for she now gets half of his output from his job where he is putting in that 500% effort to make up the slack.

Of course he can't quit, he is now locked into the rat race, with the full weight of the US Government forcing him to continue slaving at his 500% effort job until he dies.
(A voluntary reduction in income is no grounds to reduce alimony or child support.)

- And his passing falls suprisingly at an age that for no apparent reason, is much younger on average than the age at which women die.

Gee, wonder why.

(All of this is assuming he doesn't just commit suicide.)

How very, very fair.

Simulposted on MIsForMalevolent

Click here for more.

Children Would Benefit From Male Repoductive Rights

The National Center for Men is attempting to expose some of the logical inconsistencies of current abortion law (women have all the rights, men only have responsibilities) through a court challenge. Read about it here.

Fine, go ahead and point out the obvious. Again. But, these sorts of issues will not be settled through court challenges. Courts do what is currently politically correct while following loosely within the bounds of statutes and Constitutions. Meanwhile, the important issues of our time for men and fathers (and children too) get lost.

These issues include: Giving men some rights regarding when and how they become a father (in other words, at least some of the so-called "rights" that women currently have in abundance), unfettered access to their children, and teaching society that fatherhood and "child support" should not be confused and are not interchangeable. These issues need to reach the political realm with a much more effective message than "abortion for men." Otherwise, the message is lost on nitwit columnists such as Nicole Brodeur of the Seattle Times, who confuses the motives of South Dakota's abortion ban effort with the court challenge undertaken by the National Center for Men.

Real progress will require a real male voting block. Yes, a majority of men vote for Republicans, but most have no idea what VAWA is, how non-existent their rights are when it comes to accidental pregnancy, or how their most basic rights to parent their own children have been demolished by the gender feminist state.

A small but organized group of men within the Republican Party could hold it accountable to the male vote it takes for granted. If not, men should abandon the GOP in droves. Similarly, male dominated unions, which are major backers of Democrats, should begin to ask their party why they have spent so much political capital on gender politics while doing so little for the average working man or women. Hell, even women union members should support their unions pushing Democrats back to the basics. And, if that doesn't work, perhaps its time for a third party, as Alan Greenspan recently suggested in a speech. These are the only scenarios that will get balance back to issues such as reproductive rights.

The real message behind the National Center for Men lawsuit, and the one that needs to forcefully make its way into the political realm is simple: All kids need fathers. Sure some kids do OK without them, but they are the exceptions, not the norm. (I'd be willing to bet that there is no correlation between the success of fatherless children and payment of child support - but nobody wants to do that study because it would be too politically incorrect while also threatening the huge industry that has developed around child support collections). On average, children do best on practically every objective measure when their father is actively involved in their lives.

Because children need fathers, when a women becomes pregnant, and the father of the unborn does not want the baby, society has a compelling interest in giving him a say in what ultimately happens. If the mother will not choose abortion, and the man will not choose to be a father, no amount of "child support" payment will address or compensate for the lack of a father in the child's life.

While saying that abortion rights is about the human rights of women, people like Kim Gandy, President of NOW, will then turn around and say that men should not be able to opt out of financial responsibility for an unintended pregnancy because its "all about the the children."

The president of the National Organization for Women, Kim Gandy, acknowledged that disputes over unintended pregnancies can be complex and bitter.

"None of these are easy questions," said Gandy, a former prosecutor. "But most courts say it's not about what he did or didn't do or what she did or didn't do. It's about the rights of the child."

Really? Rights of the child? Suddenly Gandy cares about the rights of children? Obviously only when hiding behind children becomes convenient as a method of deflecting a rational discussion.

But, since Gandy mentioned them, here are some rights children should have: They have a right to a loving, caring father. A child has a right to grow up in an environment that statistically gives him or her the best opportunities in life, which means growing up in a household with a father present. They have the right to masculine protection from the evils in the world. They have the right to see male and female as complementary sides of the human race as opposed to the two sides of a viscious battle. Children have the right to see the truth about men - that they are generally good. They have the right to know that evil comes in all sexes and genders.

Of course, people like Gandy believe that lesbian households are the best environment for children. Second to lesbains in preference, in Gandy's view, are single mother households with financial support from both an excluded father and the government. But, any scholar aware of the statistics can tell you about reality. So, if we really care about the rights of the child, we should not be so wilfully encouraging single mother households and then fooling ourselves into believing that "child support" should only be seen in financial terms and can replace the love and protection of a father.

Giving a man the chance to opt out of an unwanted pregnancy brings some clarity to the situation at a critical moment for both parties to the conception. When the father opts out, the mother has a choice to make - do it on her own or put the baby up for adoption. Or, for a short while longer in some states, get an abortion. Similarly, if a woman decides to go forward with a pregnancy, the man in the equation would be forced to make a stark choice. He will have to either irrevocably decline to participate the child's life or forever accept his responsibility to that child. Few men, after facing such a choice, would be under the misperception that they can simply float in and out of the child's life, and in and out of financial responsibility, whenever he feels like it.

In most cases when the father wants to opt out, adoption is best for the child. (Comparing the general welfare and future success of adopted children to those of single mothers is another study you will never see, but we all know what the results would be). Financial-only "child support" only creates an incentive for the mother to make a sub-optimal choice.

Or, if you don't like the idea of accidental fathers opting out of unwanted pregancies, consider what is probably an even more powerful option. We should make it clear within both federal and state law that the State will hardily stand behind the right of a father to be significantly involved in the life of his child, whether born out of wedlock or not. (I can see the feminists reading this now and going apoplectic over cases of rape, but that's just a red herring. Few people believe that a rapist should ever have any rights in this regard).

In other words, ladies, if you have that child, the father will have a clear and unambiguous right to be a parent to that child, just as you have now, whether you like it or not. This means that you will need to have a relationship with the father on some level, if only for logistics, maybe for the rest of your life. This means you can not be a Move Away Mom, at least not without permission. It means the values and concerns of another person will hold sway over the upbringing of your child. So, you'd have to think twice about what it is you really want to do and how much freedom you are willing to give up in order to receive that "child support" payment.

The refusal of orthodox feminists - make no mistake that they are the women in charge of the cult - to consider even this last possibility is the reason that they receive so little support from men like me on issues such as abortion, even though I would prefer that the government stay out of the matter. Most people care about fairness, and it's become increasingly obvious that labeling men with no parental rights "Deadbeat Dads" is unfair.

While the South Dakota effort to ban abortion at first seemed ominous to me, perhaps it is about the only thing that stands a chance of forcing a reasonable discussion on the issue of father's rights. Hell, I'd settle for getting the topic on the radar screen. SD may indeed put Hillary Rodham into the White House, and for a while, things will probably get even worse. But, Supreme Court decisions last, and the Court is on equal standing to the President within the balance of powers of the three branches of government. Unless the balance of power regime of government is overthrown, a Hillary presidency would be able to do little about making abortion available in every state.

In order to do something about the immiment overthrow of Roe, abortion activists will need the support of average guys like me. But, like most people, guys like me don't get active in support of the rights of others unless we have some rights too.

Click here for more.

Hey! Fathers matter after all!

Mark Richo will like the report below but it must have the feminists grinding their teeth. Fancy fathers being good even for DAUGHTERS! I myself have always said (I’ve said it here) that “Daddy’s Girl" is one of the most beautiful human relationships so I am glad to see that the facts bear out that judgment. I have always greatly regretted that I did not have a daughter but I had a very good relationship with a beautiful little stepdaughter so I do not feel totally deprived. She is now a radiant and happily married young woman.

Girls who have good relationships with their fathers tend to wait longer to have their first sexual intercourse experience, according to a new study by a University of Texas at Austin sociologist. In a study published in this month’s Journal of Family Issues, Dr. Mark Regnerus reports that girls who claimed to have very low quality relationships with their fathers were nearly twice as likely to lose their virginity over the course of a year than girls who reported very high quality father-daughter relationships. No similar correlation was found between girls and their mothers, or between boys and either parent.

“This shows us that it is not enough for dads to be merely present,” says Regnerus, an assistant professor of sociology at The University of Texas at Austin. “They need to be active in their daughters’ lives. There are hints here that girls who have poor relationships with their dads tend to seek attention from other males at earlier ages and often this will involve a sexual relationship.”

Regnerus reviewed data gathered from about 10,000 seventh through 12th grade students living in two-parent households. The data came from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, a study designed to analyze the causes of health-related behaviors in teenagers. While the parent-child relationship did not have a strong effect on boys, the number of an adolescent’s romantic partners did affect the probability of both sexes having intercourse for the first time. “For each additional partner reported, the odds of a boy losing his virginity increase by 88 percent,” notes Regnerus.

The biggest shift for girls was between those who weren’t actively dating and those who had one dating partner. “For girls, it’s not dating around that adds much risk, but whether they date at all,” says Regnerus.

The study also showed that anticipation of guilt curbed the likelihood of both boys and girls having sex for the first time. Two other factors that delayed girls’ sexual activity were religious service attendance and their mothers’ education level. Girls whose mothers had college degrees were 64 percent less likely to lose their virginity compared to girls whose mothers did not. Researchers have previously studied the sexual behavior of adolescents who come from broken homes or live with stepparents, but this study is unique in that it examines teenagers whose biological parents are still together.

--------

http://majorityrights.com/index.php/weblog/
comments/hey_fathers_matter_after_all/.

Click here for more.