This posting discusses York University professor Anne-Marie Ambert's, recently released study, Divorce: Facts, Causes and Consequences .
A feminist quote:"
"Since marriage constitutes slavery for women, it is clear that the women's movement must concentrate on attacking this institution. Freedom for women cannot be won without the abolition of marriage."
Sheila Cronin, prominent member of NOW
I might only slightly disagree with Ms. Kay’s exhortation about the current role of feminism and its impacts. The 3rd wave types are firmly ensconced in DV shelters, which is the heartbeat of the Duluth Wheel ideological construct of women as victims and benign – men patriarchal oppressors. It is psycho babble but firmly entrenched. These shelters hold the Jihadist equivalent of martyrs for the cause. They hold the very essence of patriarchal oppression in word and flesh - or so they want every one to believe. These are the temples of the religion called Victim Feminism.
This mantra jumps off the pages of feminist journalists daily with their mythological and sometimes lunatic rants about how they are such victims, and Antonia Berzizias at the Trawna "RED" Star personifies these small, fringe but very vocal proponents. It takes the form of entrenched misinformation republished a thousand times a year because few have the family jewels to debunk it. These feminists are in Women’s Studies programs, criminal law at places like the University of Ontario Institute of Technology in Oshawa, and hundreds of others across the land. They are feminist law professors, Status of Women Canada bureaucrats and their Provincial counterparts, professors in Sociology and many, many teachers. They are organized in sub-groups within Bar Associations some receiving tax dollars to slander and libel men. Barbara Cross a self described feminist lawyer has it as one of her main life goals to practice this kind of misandrous libel. The mythology is entrenched in our judiciary, bar associations and in the newsrooms of the nation. It is, in most cases, too politically correct to touch by most – unless they and their editors are prepared for the hate mail. Barbara Kay no doubt knows about the latter.
There are interconnected links in the above flowing around tax dollars for support and referrals from the DV shelters to lawyers – the Canadian Bar Association stands to lose economically if shared parenting is a presumption for fit parents. They openly lobbied the Federal Justice Minister Nicholson at their annual meeting in Ireland not too many months back and so moved Nicholson that he stated and I paraphrase his answer. Fathers will always take a back seat to children’s best interests. That was code for the current maternal status quo of 90% sole physical custody should remain intact. The lawyers cheered guaranteeing them the lucrative revenue taken from the pockets of children's financial legacies. With them, no matter what they tell you, its all about the money. Nothing more.
I have always found the level of perceived corruption in the legal field as flying right over the heads of MSM scribes. Here we have the Federal Justice Minister, entrusted to ensure the integrity of our court system and the laws of the land, who is a lawyer, a paid up member of the Ontario and Canadian Bar Association being lobbied by his fellow lawyers openly from this same organization to not change a law because they will lose business. Does any one else see how this is wrong on more than one level. His answer also further telegraphed to judges their current maternal only custody regime is just fine. Lawyers have a vested interest in keeping the divorce rate up as the average litigated case nets then $25,000.00 per client. How many other businesses can lay claim to a $25,000 per customer pay back? When I was in the retail trade we thought $15.00 to $20.00 per customer was good. for our specific kind of operation. Greed is good as was famously stated by Gordon Gekko in the movie “Wall Street” way back in 1987. They use the excuse of abuse as a factor that will force mothers to share children with their “oppressors”. What a bunch of bunk as all valid peer reviewed studies and Stats Cans surveys on DV show otherwise. but it sells well in the MSM.
Just recently I am told a small ideologically predisposed radical group of feminist lawyers (perhaps Pamela Cross' Group who have already filed a brief against Bill C-422 in Canada, ) sent off a missive to the Australian Government to roll back their shared parenting law, which is under review, and use the Canada model of pretty much sole maternal physical custody. It so happened a feminist journalist, named Caroline Overington, in Australia just happened to get a copy of said letter and published a column suggesting it was probably in children’s best interest (read mom into that rather than child) to follow this Canada model. This journalist has been an open supporter of repealing shared parenting laws introduced only 3 years ago and is very clever at wording. Read her column and my response to the newspaper here. parentalalienationcanada.blogspot.com/.../caroline-overington-in-oz-out-does.html
Quebec has one of the few enlightened models for cohabitation and its no wonder it is the highest rate in Canada for that reason. I’d say 50% breakup is probably closer to the mark when both marriage and cohabitation are combined and it could be higher. Married household are now a minority in Canada for the first time in history. That is a rather telling trend but for any man to use this unilateral trip to grief and the poor house not getting married is his best bet. I have found a figure 5% higher than Barbara’s showing 75% of divorces are initiated by the wife. There are too many entitlements incentivizing divorce accruing to females and too many sycophants in the Divorce Industry only too willing to assist her in getting “empowered” out of the relationship. I’ve described earlier who these are.
Denis’ quotes from Stephen Baskerville (see comments after the article) sums it up succinctly. Some of you may recall the recent story in this paper of the man in BC whose income of $200,000 before taxes required him to pay far more in child support than he had left for himself. www.nationalpost.com/.../story.html . In BC the marginal tax rate on that income is 43.7%. His tax bill before taking personal exemptions is $81,400.00. He is left with $118,600.00. Out of this he is obliged to give his ex who unilaterally walked out because she got "wet" over another man $91,200.00 in tax free money. The marginal rate on that is 38.29%. That is an equivalent before tax income of $125,856.00. This man may end up with somewhere between $30,000 and $40,000 depending on his exemptions. You can thank Nicholson, the Federal Justice Minister, for this kind of treatment of men and the entrenched self-loathing male judges who practice chivalry, misandry and obviously give far greater value to maternalism than to the ability of men to share parenting. Many female judges follow the same pattern, some of whom are feminists but there are a small group of both genders who actually practice interpreting the law as written (did I say the Divorce Act is gender neutral and stresses maximum contact of both parents) rather than the current practice.
I would also take issue with the religious conclusions by the studies author. For those criticizing Barbara here is the germane statement “Prof. Ambert cites, amongst other reasons: the de-sacralization of marriage, a consequence of religion’s demise, and the rise of secularism;” It wasn’t Ms. Kay’s conclusion about religion. Quebec, a largely Roman Catholic Province, has the highest divorce and abortion rates in the country and the highest rate of co-habitation. Many people ascribe religions as the place we obtain values as well but that is not entirely true. Ancient Greeks had pretty good value systems even before the birth of current major religions. These values were derived from clear thinking and logic, a sometimes elusive human characteristic. Secularism is just as good as any religion as long as these values are clearly enunciated by our leaders and taught by parents and schools to our children. In these cases action speak far louder than words.
Religions could take up an important role in the saving of salvageable marriages. Modern marriage is, by and large, a religiously inspired institution despite its earlier roots as a less formal arrangement of two parties by mutual consent. My own research shows some missing ingredients that might help to save some marriages but which require legislative change. Shared/equal parenting is the first step. This does show a reduction in divorce as the mom is not guaranteed sole custody and without the financial incentives sober second thought may occur. My reading of this show couples may try harder to get counselling and resolve differences.
This leads to a next compulsory step for couples who wish to divorce and that is a course or counselling session of at least 3 weeks duration designed to look at the problems, see if there are any solutions that professionals can assist with, a step by step walk through all the phases of the divorce process and its consequences for the parties and children. If the couple decides to divorce then compulsory tax supplied mediation, which may save money by not using lawyers and judicial resources in court. Expect lawyers to lobby like hell against this.
A turn away from no-fault divorce!!!! If one of the partners’ behaviour has resulted, on a balance of probabilities, in the failure of the marriage there needs to be accountability. Without accountability we have the current unilateral walking away from marriage as was the case in a previous post I cited. The woman got “wet” for another man and destroyed the family yet she still got full physical custody and over $90,000.00 a year in tax free income. She never has to work again and gets her boyfriends companionship and income as well. That is not natural justice.
The final step is taking the paperwork to the court house for finalization which might be done in a 15 minute session of motions court or through a simpler administrative process. Lawyers only need be involved in complex cases unresolved by the above or those requiring litigation.MJM
A just-released study from the Vanier Institute of the Family (read it here on PDF) by York University professor Anne-Marie Ambert, Divorce: Facts, Causes and Consequences, vindicates assumptions many conservatives hold instinctively, and may provoke some discomfort in “progressives.”
To begin with some good news: Divorce rates are not as high as we thought. Divorce rates have been coming down since the 1990s and since 1997 have plateaued. In fact, first marriages in Canada have a 67% chance of lasting a lifetime.
According to Prof. Ambert, divorce rates peaked in 1987, which she says is the result of the progressive tendency toward no-fault divorce which began in 1968. Divorce slowly lost its stigma and the numbers rose as the reasons for divorce became more and more trivial.
Why did the numbers start going down? One reason, which the study notes, is the tendency for people to marry later. But I would also tie both the divorce peak and its diminution to the rise and decline of militant feminism’s influence. Seventy percent of divorces are initiated by women. Feminism of the man-dismissive type was a strong influence in the ‘70s and ‘80s. In the 90s, however, third-wave feminism relegated the man-haters to the fringes of the movement, and marriage regained respectability as an institution. I predict the numbers will go further down when Canada finally institutes equal parenting as the default custodial policy, as it has in jurisdictions where that is presently the case.
Prof. Ambert finds that there are two kinds of divorce: those resulting from an unhappy marriage, and those resulting from “a weak commitment to marriage.” She found that “some divorces are avoidable and unnecessary” and that “a sizable proportion of marriages that end in divorce were actually quite ‘salvageable,’ even happy, and that many of these ex-spouses are no better off after.”
