You can tell this is an
election year in the U.S. because politicians, bureaucrats, and TV
"talking heads" are bashing fathers. In the mid 1970s Congress
decided to get the federal government involved in domestic relations
law. Ever since, the war against dads has driven gender politics,
expansion of the welfare system, and increased spending. By the early
1990s it seemed commonly accepted that battering women and abandoning
wives and children to welfare was a character flaw genetically fixed by
every Y-chromosome.

Enter Stephen
Baskerville -- a knight defending fatherhood. Baskerville might not be
what many people imagine as "one of those fathers' rights
guys." A political scientist at Howard University, Dr.
Baskerville's files are filled with scholarly articles with lots of
citations to other scholarly articles, a growing number of which he has
written. In his appearances on television and radio however, as well as
in the articles he has written for the general public, one might
occasionally sense a certain irritation with mis-educated public remarks
about fathers.

"Special interest
groups demonized fathers," says Baskerville. "They called them
'deadbeat dads' and criminalized them. The result is a system that
traces newly hired employees, shifts the burden of proof to the accused,
and throws fathers in jail for losing their jobs." He is not alone
in that opinion. His article sports 46 citations from a mixture of
sources, including books and academic journals, the popular press, and
even relevant Web sites.

"The system of
collecting child support is no longer one of requiring men to take
responsibility for their offspring, as most people believe. The
combination of 'no fault' divorce and the new enforcement law has
created a system that pays mothers to divorce their husbands and remove
children from fathers."

Baskerville presents a
convincing argument, well supported by research and other commentary.
Quoting an article entitled "The Strange Politics of Child
Support"; "By allowing a faithless wife to keep her children and
a sizable portion of her former spouse's income, current child-support
laws have combined with no fault jurisprudence to convert wedlock into a
snare for many guiltless men." (Bryce Christensen, Society,
Vol. 39, No. 1 (Nov.-Dec. 2001, p. 65)).

Baskerville adds,
"This 'snare' can easily amount to a prison sentence without
trial."

His work and commentary
have captured the attention of the fathers rights movement. Dave Usher
has been a leading activist since 1987 and served for nine years on the
exectutive boards of the two largest fathers rights groups in America.
He knows that political opinion has been influenced by false information
and how difficult it has been to report serious problems with policies
that effect fathers. Too few "researchers" who have witten
about fathers and fatherhood actually did any research. "We need a
few dozen more Baskervilles," he says. "He is a solid
researcher."

Although there are many
wrongs yet to be righted, the fathers rights movement does not face the
extreme prejudice that it once did. Hundreds of organizations and
conferences, loads of scholarship, and countless Web sites have sprung
up over the past few years focused on issues of concern to fathers. Dr.
Baskerville organized one of the first fatherhood conferences three
years ago at Howard University. Conferences on fathers issues and
fatherhood have been organized and supported by the Ford Foundation, the
U.S. Department of Labor, the state of California, and other well
established institutions.

Ironically, the
Democratic Party -- the party that started the war against fathers in
the mid 1970s is "http://www.usatoday.com/news/washdc/2002/05/22/office-dads.htm"
out to capture the male vote. Before they finalize their strategy
someone should conduct a poll to see how many males age 25-50 want to be
their own worst political enemies. With fatherhood knights like Stephen
Baskerville around, father-bashing will not be as easy to get away with
as it used to be.

Roger F. Gay is a professional analyst and director of the www.geocities.com/capitolhill/5910/index.html
Project for Improvement of Child Support Litigation Technology. His
research on child support over the past ten years brought him in touch
with the national database issue.