Jocelyn Crowley | Live on Sound Authors

February 19, 2009

Dr. Kent: Welcome back to Sound Authors! My next guest on the show is Jocelyn Crowley, PhD. She’s a professor of public policy and she’s the author of the book called Defiant Dads: Fathers’ rights activists in America. It’s a gorgeous front cover and pops right off the shelf and it’s an honor to speak to her today. Welcome to the show.

Jocelyn Crowley: Thank you so much for having me, I’m glad that you like the cover!

Dr. Kent: Oh I love it; it’s that nice blue shirt that dads love to wear.

Jocelyn Crowley: That’s right, they’re trained to wear I guess.

Dr. Kent: So tell me about this book and how you decided to write this one.

Jocelyn Crowley: Sure, well I think there were a couple of reasons that I got interested in the topic. First of all I would say it is my primary area of interest academically so when I finished up my first book which was about the politics of child support policy in the untied states I found out that there were these organizations that were sprouting up all over the country dedicated to pursuing fathers rights and as I concluded that book I started to think to myself, wow, what are these groups about? What do they want? And do these claims have any merit? So I think academically I was just very drawn to what they were doing at the time. I think secondly I was interested in researching these groups because of my own family circumstances. Growing up in a single parent family during the 1970s and 1980s, there wasn’t a lot of interest or research about fathers at that time and the role they play in families. What their absence might in fact do to children, so personally I became interested in the topic as well.

Dr. Kent: It’s been fascinating, since Barack Obama has been elected president there’s a lot of talk especially in the African American community, this role model of a man who loves his kids and is there for his kids, it’s a two parent household in a cultural group that doesn’t necessarily value that as much.

Jocelyn Crowley: Well I think that the president can do a lot in terms of modeling good parental behavior and having two young children in the Whitehouse at this moment in time is definitely good for the nation. It’s a great symbol for what we can aspire to be because there is a general consensus in the research community that two parent families do provide one of the best environments for children. Now of course not every two parent family is perfect, but we do know they buffer children against a whole host of negative outcomes like poor school performance, teenage pregnancy, involvement with drugs and alcohol, so I think what researchers have noted is that increased supervision that these parents supply for their children really help prevent these outcomes. The question my book also tried to look at though was what happens when families fall apart? How do fathers try to stay in their lives and what kinds of barriers do they confront in trying to stay in their children’s lives?

Dr. Kent: Huh. Lets talk for a second about you’ve published many articles that are lets say academic. As someone who came out of academia as well, I know definitely that those aren’t necessarily accessible to everyone. What for you and your career, do you feel that there’s a different message coming out of your articles that are academic and books that are more for the trade audience?

Jocelyn Crowley: That’s a really interesting question. Definitely I would say that there are pushes and pulls in both areas. When you’re in academics you do have to publish more scholarly articles in order to move ahead professionally so it’s something I’ve always struggled with but my aim in publishing this book is to write it so that it meets the needs of both audiences. In the sense that I do believe that it covers some of the more scholarly and academics related to child support and custody issues. However at the same time I tried to weave in and out all of these fathers voices with whom I spoke over the course of a couple of years; 158 fathers rights activists and try to weave their personal stories in the book in order to make the book more accessible to people across the spectrum and hopefully make it interesting to them as well.

Dr. Kent: I think often, I watch a few movies on the Lifetime Networks and I have three powerful feminists, a mother a sister and a fiancé.

Jocelyn Crowley: Oh congratulations on the fiancé part!

Dr. Kent: Thank you but there’s a very strong presence I guess in the world of women that says if there’s someone that deserts the family it’s the father and if someone needs to have more rights it’s the woman. So what does it mean to have father’s rights? I was just writing a comment on twitter about the interview we’re having right now and I got a response that was sort of responded immediately to that term fathers rights and it’s so loaded.

Jocelyn Crowley: It is so loaded. What I found interesting in talking to these guys is that I was really interested in delving into this question of what does it mean by rights and what these activists really want to do is they want to modify child support law and child custody law in ways that definitely will be more favorable to them than they currently are. Basically I argued that’s not necessarily the best thing for women and children. So that’s what I’m concerned about there. in the area of child support, when a family falls apart we know quite consistently that research has shown time and time again women suffer economically, much more than men do. Why is that the case?

Oftentimes they drop out of the paid labor force when they have children or they work part time or from home and their skill set can definitely suffer over time so when the family dissolves they’re not in the same place that their former husbands might be economically. So I find that calls to modify child support awards to reduce them in most cases are not necessarily good for women and children. On the other side of the coin, father’s rights activists talk a lot about child custody and wanting to reform child custody. Right now we know in the majority of cases when families do fall apart, women get the majority of time with their children, they tend to get primary physical custody and fathers have visitation or parenting time.

So they really want a 50-50 split of time when the family falls apart. I think this is a noble goal and something I would support. I think its always in the best interest of a child to have continuing positive contact with both parents in the case where a family falls apart; however, I do think women studies show that they do almost double the childcare work as fathers do so that when the family falls apart that child might have a stronger attachment to the mother figure in the child’s life. So what I would encourage fathers to do is definitely get more involved with their children while the families are together. If that means scaling back on work hours and making some professional sacrifices, I think that is ultimately worth it if heaven forbid they have to divorce their partner down the road, they will have put in that time and be able to show the judge they were in fact an equal parent to that child while the marriage was still together.

Dr. Kent: I guess this whole issue is really tied up with lawyers and judges and depositions and all of that and that takes a huge emotional toll on all parties.

Jocelyn Crowley: Oh absolutely. I mean there definitely is a cottage industry around divorce and child custody and a lot of my interview respondents really complained about this. There are social workers that can become involved when custody is in contention, there are psychologists, there are mental health evaluators and what is a little bit troubling is that they do try to play God in a sense where they become involved in a particular case and try to create a report for the judge saying in their view who might be the parent for primary custody. I think this can be definitely problematic.

The mental health professional might not have the best idea of who the best parent might be after exposure to the family only for a brief period of time. I understand the force of those complaints. Again I think ideally at one point in time we are going to move toward the more 50-50 standard of custody if that’s possible if both parents live near each other but at the same time we do need to encourage fathers to take more responsibility for childcare while their families are together so when the judge does look at what’s going on in the family, he or she can say look, both parents did equal amounts of care giving, therefore a 50-50 decision is warranted.

Dr. Kent: I just had someone comment in on the show and they said, there are no such things as father’s rights. There’s a great deal of vitriol on both sides; whether an individuals had a bad experience as a man or woman in one of these situations. What kind of stories did you find when researching all of these?

Jocelyn Crowley: It’s definitely true. Wherever you are, when you have a family that breaks up emotions are high on both sides and in my book I only spoke to these fathers’ rights activists so I didn’t speak to their former partners to get their side of the story but definitely emotions are running high. Although I’m critical of some of the father’s rights policy positions in that I don’t know if they’re necessarily helpful to women and children, what I did find was they created in many cases a positive set of circumstances by which fathers could start to rebuild their lives and make the best possible relationship with their ex-partner and their children.

For example one of the father’s rights activists that I interviewed was in one of his group meetings and talked about how he was extremely angry with his ex because she never told him about his daughter’s doctor appointments, dentist appointments and all these things and he yelled at her. The group really gave him a talking to and said that’s not the way to make things work. You’re not supposed to be yelling at your child’s mother. If you have an issue, speak in a civil non confrontational way. He actually took from that group that experience and advice and ended up writing a card to his ex saying I’m really sorry for what I did. The group also tends to give really good advice when it comes to making sure fathers are confident in their new roles as perhaps non-residential fathers.

So one man in a group described his experience of wanting his son to stay with him the entire summer because he didn’t get a lot of time during the year but that son wanted to go back to school early because he wanted to try out for the football team. The father was struggling because although he wanted his son to play football, at the same time he wanted the most amount of time with him. The group really counseled him to go and be a little bit generous and make sure that child was able to play football because that was what would make him happiest at that stage in his life. So he ultimately decided to give up some of his time to benefit his son down the road. So there were lots of stories like that and lots of ways the group was able to help these fathers move along and like I said rebuild relationships in families.

Dr. Kent: So what’s with the title Defiant Dads?

Jocelyn Crowley: I was thinking of what a catchy title might be and when I talk about them being defiant, what I mean is they are definitely trying to defy current policy positions in the areas of child support and custody. They think they’re paying too much child support in most cases and definitely want more custody. So they’re trying to organize politically and trying to defy the current status quo in those two areas.

Dr. Kent: It’s such a fascinating topic and I have a good friend who is a wonderful house dad and his wife goes off to work and he stays home with the kids. I have a brother in law who took my sisters name so there are some very sensitive men. What is the future of moms and dads and fathers rights and all that?

Jocelyn Crowley: Well I definitely think that these fathers’ rights groups have a role to play in American family policy. I think they should continue to provide the support that they do to fathers going through a break up to provide them with legal information regarding obtaining a lawyer, getting proper advice as to what to do in their case. I would ask and encourage them to reconsider some of their more hard-line policies on child support and custody because I think we need to really take into account not necessarily completely what they want and desire but what’s in the best interest of the children and the former family unit. So I encourage them to think about modifying some of their position but continue the really good work in terms of helping fathers rebuild their life in the aftermath of a breakup.

Dr. Kent: It’s been a fascinating discussion, it’s not something I think about every day but it’s a beautiful book; Defiant Dads: Fathers’ rights activists in America and are you working on any new projects?

Jocelyn Crowley: Right now I’m working on a project that focuses on mothers. Mothers for a change; I’m interested in how mothers right now in 2009 are trying to combine having careers with having children and how did they balance it all? So I decided to take a step back from fathers and now focus on mothers.

Dr. Kent: And it’s such an important time right now to think about single mothers because they really are the ones suffering the most in this economic downturn.

Jocelyn Crowley: Absolutely I agree.

Dr. Kent: Well it’s been such an honor chatting with you and the book is called Defiant Dads: Fathers’ rights activists in America by Jocelyn Elise Crowley, thank you so much.

Jocelyn Crowley: Thank you for having me, I really appreciate it.

Dr. Kent: My next guest on the show will be a birth activist. Her name is Karen Brody and her latest book is called Birth and we’ll talk to her in just a minute so come on back for that.

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