Divorced Dads

0 Comments | Insight on the News, June 18, 2001 | by Catherine Edwards

The story of dads and divorce is being ignored even as ongoing studies confirm that fathers in nuclear families are vital to the welfare of children.

John Barrymore III, the son of actor John Barrymore Jr. and half-brother of actress Drew Barrymore grew up in a home without his dad. John III's parents divorced before he entered first grade. His dad left for Italy and came back to discover that he had been given visitation rights only at the mother's discretion. John was at the door to manhood before his dad came back into his life. He tells Insight he was living in an apartment above his mother's garage when his father started to show up at his window.

"He probably figured since I was almost 18 he could just disregard having to ask my mother's permission to see me," Barrymore says. "That was 30 years ago, and we've been the best of friends for those 30 years. I still speak to him almost every day by telephone and see him every time I go to Los Angeles." If you have any doubt what these two have meant to each other from the beginning, go back and take a look at Insight's cover. That's the Barrymores in 1958 before the divorce.

John's story may be more high profile than most, but it is not atypical. Although the number of single fathers raising kids increased in the last decade by 62 percent, according to the latest Census data, that number still does not compare to the number of single moms raising their children. While more fathers are starting to assert their rights in courts during custody battles over children, physical custody still is more often awarded to mothers than fathers, despite the important role dads need to play in the lives of their children. Stories of deadbeat dads readily are available, but the story of divorced fathers trying to be good dads is one not often told. And new studies reveal that custody battles and divorce have more long-term negative effects on men and children than they do on women.

Today, 50 percent of all white children and 75 percent of all black children likely will live some portion of their childhood with only their mothers. In 1950, about half of all black women lived with their spouses. Forty years later the percentage had dropped to one-third. A 15-year study published in 1995 concerning families and divorce found that 70 percent of children who experienced divorce had worse outcomes on a number of social measurements than if their parents had stayed married.

The importance of fathers has been well documented. Fatherless children are twice as likely to drop out of school as their classmates who grew up in a two-parent home, 72 percent of all teen-age murderers grew up without fathers, and fatherless children are 11 times more likely than children from intact families to exhibit violent behavior.

Although more Dads are getting access to their kids after a divorce, a majority are not. "When you are dealing with equally fit parents, four out of five times the mother will be awarded physical custody of the children with the father sometimes sharing the legal custody," says John Bauserman Jr., a family lawyer in Northern Virginia. Bauserman has noticed that dads often lose custody battles and end up just writing checks for child support without so much as access. He blames the courts and the legal system which he sees as ill-equipped to adjudicate family life.

"The problems of alleged court bias can be partially blamed on myths about divorced men," says Diane O'Connell, a New York journalist who collaborated on Divorced Dads: Shattering the Myths with Arizona State University professor Sanford Braver. He conducted a 15-year longitudinal study of divorced couples and their behaviors. O'Connell says they found the allegations that most men refuse to pay child support wildly exaggerated. While many men do default on child support, the majority pay on time -- and when a father is awarded joint legal custody despite protests of the mother the payment record almost is perfect, she says. Other myths dispelled by Braver and O'Connell include the canard that men are the instigators of divorce and that divorced mothers emotionally are paralyzed and divorced fathers carefree.

University of Iowa law professor Margaret Brinig and Stephen Nock, a sociologist at the University of Virginia, found that in two-thirds of divorce cases women file to terminate the marriage. And in another report to be published by Cambridge University Press this year as part of a book by Robert Rowthorn and Antony Dnes, Divorce and Marriage: An Economic Perspective, Brinig and Nock found that men tend to suffer from postdivorce depression much more than their former wives. They also have a much higher suicide rate in such circumstances.

"Fathers have to try harder, learn more and be a lot better at the court system than mothers do on the whole," says Darryl Hand, a California child-custody expert. His organization, Win Child Custody, helps parents navigate the court system and prepare for custody battles. "And no one in their right mind would be involved in a custody battle which can be so costly unless they thought it was best for the children."