| Jocelyn Elise Crowley, Ph.D. Associate Professor of Public Policy The Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey  |
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Forthcoming from Cornell University Press in 2008:
They call themselves fathers’ rights groups, and they bring together mostly white, middle class men in small venues to speak their mind about the state of the American family, and more specifically, to articulate their objections to current child support and child custody policies as they pertain to dissolving families.Dissatisfied with these systems as they exist now, fathers’ rights groups advocate on behalf of legal reforms that will lower their child support payments and help them obtain automatic joint custody of their children. Defiant Dads: Fathers’ Rights Activists in America, which relies on 158 in-depth interviews as well as direct observation of these groups in action, takes a hard, analytical view of fathers’ rights organizations in the United States today to understand their concerns and their plans for fomenting social change. It represents an innovative break from past work on this topic by letting these fathers speak for themselves on these important issues. Defiant Dads then goes a step further by analyzing the merits of these fathers’ claims. It incisively answers the following provocative questions: Why do they object to the current child support and child custody systems? Will their policy proposals related to child support and child custody reform, if enacted, serve to damage other members of the family unit, most importantly, women and children? What about the help that they offer to their members in terms of mending their relationships? More specifically, how well are these groups suited to deal with fathers’ interpersonal issues with their ex-partners and children? Do all members of the family—including women and children—benefit in equal ways from the legal and psychological services that these groups provide to their members? And finally, given this array of activities, how can we understand fathers’ rights groups’ prospects for success in achieving all of their goals in the future? Should we, as a country, be worried about their possible success? 
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| © 2007 |