A request for an interview

A request for an interview

Bill [not his real name] wrote:

Dear President or Chair person,

I’m [name omitted], a student of the [location omitted] Film School.

I’m going to make a 10 minutes mini documentary about marriage life of Man.

I came from Korea and had run Korean Fathers Club for 10 years before I moved to Canada. So I have quite a keen interest in fatherhood.

According to your research, about 75 % divorces are being initiated by women.

I would like to interview about this matter

It won’t be long and it will take 2 hours maximum.

This film will show that why young people hesitate [to enter] marriage.

Your prompt reply would be highly appreciated.

Thanks and Regard

Hello Bill [not his real name],

Thanks for writing,

The research you referred to is not mine.  I just reported on it.  The research was done by the authors of the studies mentioned in the article that may have sparked your interest.  (Unfortunately, you failed to identify which specific article out many on the topic at our website it was that you referred to.)

You can find more details on the statistics of concern in the following (source location):

Shattered Myths

When it comes to child custody, Canadian divorce law is weighted in favour of the wife.  But new research has stripped women of their moral superiority: It suggests they initiate divorce twice as often as men. (Alberta Report, Jan 11, 1999; the article is no longer available at the website of the Alberta report.  It is now available here.  2003 03, —WHS)

See also the study report “These Boots are Made for Walking: Why Wives File for Divorce,” by Margaret F. Brinig and Douglas W. Allen.  The article quotes extensively from that report.

• “These Boots are Made for Walking: Why Wives File for Divorce,” by Margaret F. Brinig and Douglas W. Allen.

This study report is based on an analysis of 46,000 divorce certificates from Connecticut, Virginia, Oregon and Montana.  The authors state that the data from these records are relatively accurate, “since they are compiled by judicial personnel from facts alleged by the parties and proven based upon sworn testimony in court hearings.”  [My emphasis, —WHS]
That would reflect assumptions that all allegations are true, that only sworn true testimony is being accepted by the courts, and that the judicial system is absolutely neutral and doesn’t exhibit any gender bias.  Because all three of those assumptions are patently false, it is debatable to what extent the conclusions by the author are accurate, namely that although often the act of filing for divorce is being motivated by considerations of material gain through seizing assets, it is also driven to a considerable extent by the wish to escape exploitation.  The impression is given that in the latter case it is the wife who has the impression that she is being exploited by her husband.

The authors found that “who gets the children is by far the most important component in deciding who files for divorce, particularly when there is very little quarrel about property, as when the separation is long.”  Although the authors report that women file more often for divorce, by far, and increasingly so, they purport that this is so because women generally are more attached to the children of the marriage than the fathers are.

Information from the report was extensively quoted in Shattered Myths.

MS Word files containing the study report are available at

• http://fathersforlife.org/boots113.doc (text and footnotes)
• http://fathersforlife.org/tables10.doc (tables)

Caution: The footnotes weren’t shown when I displayed the files using MS Word6 on my PC.  However, the printouts of the files contained all of the footnotes.

The study report by Brinig and Allen is also available in HTML (abstract) and in PDF format (full text — 189 kB).

I suggest that you read the study report by Brinig and Allen, and that you then try to arrange for an interview with them.

For some constructive alternatives to that, I suggest that you contact Stephen Baskerville, the author of “Taken into Custody: The War Against Fatherhood, Marriage And Family.”  He has researched and written extensively for a considerable number of years on the issue of fatherhood.  His website is at http://www.stephenbaskerville.net/

A discussion of marriage and fatherhood lacks in an important aspect if it leaves out divorced and expunged fathers, that is, fatherhood (or the lack of it) for children of divorce.  Feminist propaganda tells us that fathers routinely and overwhelmingly walk out of their marriages and their children’s lives.

A thorough debunking of that feminist, propagandistic maxim is contained in a book you should also familiarize yourself with before interviewing either Brinig, Allen or Baskerville.  That book is based on the findings of extensive, government-sponsored research done by Sanford Braver.

Braver, Sanford Ph.D. — Divorced Dads: Shattering the Myths : The Surprising Truth About Fathers, Children, and Divorce (Hardcover – 288 pages (October 1998) J P Tarcher; ISBN: 087477862X ) Review

According to Marty Witbeck: “…Buy extra copies for judges, key lawyers, and members of your state legislature.  Send a copy to your Governor, the Speaker of your House, and the presiding officer of your Senate.  Send a copy to each journalist writing on family issues in your local newspapers.  Send copies to the editors of those newspapers.”

The book reviews accessible at Amazon.com are few and short.  They do not do either the subject or the book full justice.  I wrote extensively and frequently about Sanford Braver’s book.  He and his book are mentioned in everyone of the articles on this list.

It is my understanding that Dr. Braver, too, is readily available for interviews.

It is not that I don’t wish to be interviewed by you, but the reality of it is that I am sufficiently well informed to be able to judge correctly that any or any combination of the individuals mentioned above (or any others like them) would be a far better choice for interviews.

I am getting on in age (74 years old), am very tired and have not done any original research (other than writing about the research done by others).  Most importantly, I have no academic credentials.  I would not be the best choice through which to promote objective knowledge about the issue of interest to you.

All the best,

Walter Schneider
http://fathersforlife.org
_______________
P.S.: Much of the social research and the issues it relates to that I wrote about it somewhat dated.  That does not mean that the information pertaining to it is now false.  It is just as correct as it always was.

Things have become worse for fathers, families and marriage.  We see now some of the final battles in the war against the family.  That war is nothing other than an outcome of the agenda for the implementation of the planned destruction of the family.

By the way, and on a more personal level, I worked in Seoul, in 1961 and 1962, on the construction of the Kwang Wha Moon telephone switching exchange.  Perhaps that is why I was happy to accommodate a more recent comment from Korea about the issues of men and fathers.  Well, I can’t date that information quite exactly.  Normally I show the dates for when something was posted or updated but, for unknown reasons, not in this case.  Nevertheless, I believe that the information dates to about the time when you left Korea, for which reason you can probably relate to it fairly well.  Therefore, you will be able to determine to what extent things differ now with respect to how little men are respected in our society.  But that is not all.

Things are no longer the way they were for families and fathers in Korea when I was there or when you still were.  Things will become somewhat worse yet, before or if they become any better.  However, before any improvement takes place we will most likely have to endure a socialist, totalitarian world government through which we will all become normalized down to the lowest common denominator, the status of the poorest nations in the world.

The goal of the agenda for the implementation of the planned destruction of the family is the reduction of the world population down to 300 million to one billion people. –WHS