To start with, “primary caregiver” is not about working or not working. It is about giving care. Who packs the lunch, who goes to the PTA meeting, who gives the kid a bath and puts them to bed, who stays at home when they are sick, etc.
Secondly, labor force participation just tells us who has a job, not hours worked or time dedicated to the job. A part-time job during school hours is an entirely different beast than a consultant with 50% travel.
Please respond to the fact that over 90% of child custody agreements are settled without court intervention and arguably in the best interest of all parties concerned.
Also offer your explanation on why/how feminists are to blame for this seemingly favourable outcome.
Non-sequitor.
This makes as much sense as:
Heterosexual women like apples. No amount of feminist propaganda will make them like pears instead.
You used “women”, unqualified, to characterize a particular conservative antifeminist group of women. And you’re trying to blame “feminism” for that group’s social “shaming” of men’s behavior.
So I stand by my description of your illogical reasoning: you’re deliberately using explicitly antifeminist ideology to provide “feminist” strawmen for you to complain about.
Calm down. If you actually read the article, you’ll see that the (male) author isn’t actually criticizing men as human beings, but rather the socialization of men into artificial and antisocial ideals of “masculinity”:
Do you believe that being masculine means that a man “can’t” wear pink, say? Or that he “shouldn’t” help his daughter paint her fingernails? Or that a real man “doesn’t” ever cry? Or that he “must” be physically taller or stronger than other men in order to attract women? Or that he “ought” to respond to conflicts with other men by automatically threatening physical violence?
If you don’t believe that true masculinity depends on conforming to these rigid behavioral stereotypes, then relax, because your masculinity is not in fact being threatened by this article.
This is a long thread in which I find the walls of text boring. If you feel that someone has insulted you, report the post and i will review it.
If you want a poster to be modded for simply saying he thinks you are “confused,” I am pretty sure that your own statements will invoke rather more Warnings. You have not been Warned for any number of statements that I would regard as much more insulting than “confused.” You have, after repeatedly violating the rule regarding accusations of lying, been told to stop that with no Warning issued, so your attempt to play the martyr is a failure.
The labor force participation rate of married women with children in 2014 was 67.8 percent. Source. Which means a little over 30% of married women with children were stay at home mothers.
Given that there are many more stay at home mothers than stay at home fathers, the fact that on average women spend more time with their children is not surprising.
On the other hand, 67.8$ of married women work. If almost 70% of married women work, why are women awarded custody 85% of the time?
Are you assuming all those working mothers are spending more time with their children… and if so, why?
If we’re going to go by whether both parents work, we should be seeing shared custody about 70% of the time - instead of mothers getting custody 85% of the time.
Perhaps there’s something else in play, that you’re not considering?
And the vast majority of custody cases are decided by mutual agreement. AGAIN. Why are men agreeing to such an unequal division? Because they don’t feel that it’s in the best interest of the child? Why are you blaming women for the agreements reached in divorce cases?
But it’s been patiently explained to you time and again that what “we go by” in custody disputes is not “whether both parents work”, but rather which parent is actually providing most of the childcare.
The studies that other posters have cited show conclusively that on average, mothers do more childcare and other domestic duties than fathers do, whether or not they also work outside the home.
Now, if you’re complaining that it’s unfair that more mothers than fathers are stay-at-home parents without outside work responsibilities, then I and most other feminists are right with you. Individual couples should make whatever arrangements they freely and mutually choose for dividing responsibilities for household duties/childcare/financial support. But it should not be automatically expected that women should be stay-at-home parents or that men shouldn’t be.
If men want to be equal or primary caregivers for their children right from the get-go, and are willing to adjust their career expectations as necessary to make that possible, then all the feminists I know of will support them up to the hilt. But you can’t expect a responsible family court judge in a custody dispute to assume that it’s in a child’s best interests to assign the father as the primary caregiver if the father didn’t do much (or any) of the caregiving prior to the divorce.
Strawman “feminists” again. You haven’t shown any actual evidence of a significant real-life cohort of “NOW sisters” who actually advocate for any such “standard”.
What feminists in general want for post-divorce arrangements is for children to be happy and cared for and adequately supported. There is no mainstream feminist principle that endorses any custody “standard” for achieving this aim.
Nonsense. A’isha has shown you a very representative example of that very phrase in the Casselman book she cited. Here’s some more of Casselman’s description of the concept, from that link:
Casselman’s book was published within the last ten years, but this concept of a form of socially imposed “femininity” that is rigid, artificial and toxic in its effects goes back much, much further in feminist thought. In particular, it is sharply articulated in Betty Friedan’s 1963 book The Feminine Mystique:
So feminists absolutely do criticize the social imposition of toxic stereotypes of “femininity”, just as they criticize the social imposition of toxic stereotypes of “masculinity”. There’s nothing “misogynist” about that whatsoever.
Cite that this is a standard or default, and that NOW supports this as a legal standard/default? My recollection is that NOW supports every case being treated differently, without a standard or default.
There is no need for assumptions. The American Time Use Survey keeps track of time spent on various activities for people of all demographics. The data is available here and here for example. Raw data for every year is available for download and analysis. Full time employed mothers spend about 50% more time with children than full time employed fathers. Full time employed mothers spend more time with children than non-employed fathers.