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Posted
Monday, August 04, 2008 11:42 AM
| By
Meghan O'Rourke
Has anyone been following the amazing story of Clark Rockefeller, the divorced father who kidnapped his daughter last week when she was visiting from England with her mother? There are many incredible elements to the story, including the fact that Rockefeller may not be who he said he was; the FBI has said he doesn't have a Social Security number. But what I found most striking are the quotes from friends of Rockefeller's saying how much he loved his daughter and how much he missed her after his divorce. Weirdly enough, I know someone who knew Rockefeller; this person had talked to me not long ago about how heartbroken Rockefeller was to have been separated from his daughter by divorce. (Rockefeller's wife, who works for McKinsey, had moved to England, making it hard for him to see their daughter.) While I certainly don't approve of kidnapping in any form, and there may have been good reasons for the wife to want to keep her daughter away from her father, I confess the whole saga has got me feeling a lot of empathy for all the divorced fathers out there who find themselves suddenly distanced from their children with very little power to change the fact. Fascinatingly, the comments sections on the Rockefeller story on news sites are full of post from divorced fathers who sympathize with Rockefeller. When you think seriously about it, the way custody laws are set up is inescapably unfair. As it stands, there's a hypocrisy at the heart of the second-wave feminist movement: It demands that men be equal partners in child-raising, but when push comes to shove and a marriage dissolves it also implicitly claims that women are the true parents and men are not. While the letter of the law gives men certain rights, divorce lawyers are often shameless about using the threat of claiming there was child abuse to get fathers to back off from fighting for more custody rights. Over the past few months, by total chance, I've talked to a couple of newly divorced fathers, including old college friends, who have suddenly seen their children swept away from them. They were dedicated fathers; they now pay child support, and yet their right to see their children is severely circumscribed. I know there's no perfect solution; but couldn't we come up with one that's better than this? If women really want equality in child-rearing, don't we have to acknowledge that this extends even to divorce?
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