Most Women Engage During Maternal Gatekeeping As A Result Or Response For A Failed Romantic Relationship Essay

     In the United States today more than one-half of all marriages end in divorce. The purpose of this paper is to examine the reason why women have typically received custody of the children far more often than the fathers. In order to better understand child custody one must first examine how fathers have often times been left out of the picture, and conversely why mothers have had such hard times raising children on their own. This paper will first examine the perspective of a father who has lost custody of his children.

The differences between gender roles are not so apparent anymore. Men are not always the typical breadwinners and many women are not stay-at-home mothers. An article by Beaupré, Dryburgh, and Wendy (2010) described the transition that many men are going through. According to Beaupré, et al., (2010), fathers were once considered the forgotten parent. “Until recently studies on the family focused mainly on the mothers” (Beaupré, et al., 2010). Fortunately, both parents are now being focused on. Fathers today are much more involved in the pregnancy and birth of their child and their child’s life in general (Beaupré, et al., 2010). Beaupré, et al., (2010) explained that women’s involvement in the labour force could be a factor to this change. Women are more educated than they were in previous years. And while women want to work more, men want to be more involved in their children’s lives (Beaupré, et al., 2010). Fatherhood is occurring later in adulthood. Research stated that the majority of men are very satisfied with their involvement in their children’s lives. (Beaupré, et al., 2010).

The case study of Angela and Adam describes a situation in which a Caucasian teenage mother, Angela, does not appear to have a bond with her 11 month old son, Adam. According to Broderick and Blewitt (2015) Angela and Adam live in the home with Angela’s mother, Sarah. Angela’s relationship with her own mother is described as a bit dysfunctional as Sarah is reported to continue to be angry with Angela for becoming pregnant in the first place. Sarah’s anger has caused her to deny Adam’s father the ability to come to the home and play an active role in Adam’s life, therefore putting more of a strain on Angela, who has already had to drop out of high school in an attempt to take care of Adam on her own. Angela has openly admitted to aggressive behavior towards Adam such as grabbing his face and handling Adam in a rough manner. In return, Adam has reacted by being avoidant of his mother and he is reported to not respond to his mother as an 11 month old child should and he is not reported to have an appropriate bond with his mother.

Often times the young African American mothers end up being young African American single mothers. The father’s involvement impacts many aspects of young African American mothers’ parenting. In a study by Cynthia O Lashley, Sydney L Hans, and Linda G Henson “Young African American mothers’ changing perceptions of their infants during the transition into parenthood”, Lashley et al. included research from McElroy & Moore stating “although most African American teenage mothers are not married to their children’s fathers, there is great variability in the patterns of involvement young men have with their families”. According to Gee and Rhodes, Fathers are usually more involved close after birth, however involvement decreases as the child gets older (Lashley 482). Because the young parents are not married and the pregnancies are often unplanned there is a lot of strain on their couple relationship and the relationship could diminish due to the stress of parenthood, making it easier for the father to be non-present in the child’s

Now, the fastest growing family unit in the United States are single fathers with sole custody of children under the age of 18. In 1970, there were 393,000 single fathers with sole custody. That number jumped to 1.9 million in 1996. Of these numbers, 48% are divorced, 28% were never married, 18% were seperated, and 5% are widowed. underlying this gradual shift is the attitude more and more people are taking towards men and womens societal roles. Along with being more career oriented, women are starting to feel less guilty about losing custody to their partner, and are finding that they aren't always the more suitable parent. At the same time, men are no longer feeling such a strong need to be defined by their job. Also, fathers fear that once they are divorced, they will rarely see their kids, and do not want to be part-time parents.

The essence of the relationship between a mother and child is a mutual ascendency in regards to identity. Children are subject to an instinctive longing for a mother. It is the mother’s influence that guides them in their process of discovering all the realities the world posses and in that processing discerning their identity. Conversely when a woman becomes a mother the presence of her child causes her to evaluate and develop her identity under the pretense of motherhood. Paula Nicolson touches on the value of both these scenarios in her article “Motherhood and Women’s Lives” where she expresses how the mother child relationship gives the pretense for both parties to find their authentic identities (Nicolson). Sue Monk Kidd evaluates the

Even though this portion of the group is not as large as the other side of the teen dad group, it still exist and it still has a large impact on the teenage father community. Despite the fact that dropping out of high school is frowned upon, many teenage fathers make the sacrifice and dropout to get a job and financially take care of their family. Plenty of teen fathers also quit the teenage years and officially commit to the mother; according to the ModernMom, in the article Teen Dad and Pregnancy Facts, about “20% of teen fathers marry the baby’s mother.” However, the ModernMom Staff continue to say that the other portion of teen mothers continue to live with the parents and the baby; this affects the relationship with the father in which domino affect the relationship between the father and son. This generally cuts the interactions and ends the relationship with the child. Even with this in mind a good portion, although it is the lesser percent of the whole, continue to make an effort to be in the child’s life, in spite of the relationship between the mother and father. Although this portion of the group of teenage dads has give the entire groups some better credit, the other portion where the teen fathers do not stay and are incompetent of taking care of a child still

First addressing the idea of motherhood, Johnson argues that all three of the books critique the notions about and the concept of parenthood. with Friday’s book and Dinnerstein’s book, respectively, analyzing the “damaging effects of the fact that human infants are cared for exclusively by women” (Johnson), and arguing that having a mother who cannot reconcile with herself leads a daughter to being

Now let’s go back to a much more basic, established and dangerous reality I stumbled upon these last two weeks as I was editing an academic book about the many forms of contemporary “paternities.” Yes, you heard it right. The book reproduces articles and panels from a Psychology Congress that took place last year, whose main subject was, as the title describes, a variety of possible family arrangements concerning children’s care in a world where diversity of gender is the highest value.

The mothers are staying home and taking care of the family members, their children, and capturing a memory that they will cherish forever. Overall they are nurturing, feminine, and devoted to raising their children. The fathers are unwilling participants forced into the portrait without a care as to how it turns out. They are emotionally controlled, masculine, and devoted to their professional lives outside of the family. These behaviors reflect the traditional dominant beliefs our culture shares about the role of the mother and the father.

In his work “Good Dads Bad Dads”,Furstenberg discusses and analyzes the differences between the fathers who continue nurturing their child after birth and those who entirely pull out of the experience to raise their offspring. Sara McLanahan, in “Diverging destinies:How Children are faring under the second demographic transition”, compares the outcome of a child by analyzing different variables in their mothers.

Even if women are strong enough to raise children on their own, kids need fathers. Children from a fatherless home are: five times more likely to commit suicide; 14 times more likely to commit rape; 10 times more likely to abuse drugs; and 20 times more likely to end up in prison. It is not fair for a woman, feminist or not, to deliberately force a father out of a child’s life. If he doesn’t want to be there, at least try to find another person to be the father figure. A grandfather, uncle, or just a close male friend could do the job nicely. [Kelly, Joan B]

According to recent studies, the love of a father contributes as much and sometimes even more to a child 's development as does the love of a mother. One of many findings in a new large-scale analysis of research talks about the power of parental rejection and acceptance in shaping our personalities as children and into adulthood” (reference 1) “Growing evidence suggests that fathers’ high-quality Involvement is beneficial to children’s wellbeing and development, even when provided by a nonresident father (Amato &Gilbreth, 1999), so the father-child relationship represents a promising—but unexplored—mechanism for understanding how differences in family structure may lead to differences in child outcomes.” (Carlson pg.137)

Studies have shown that some vulnerabilities are more associated with men than with women like driving recklessly, receiving unequal court justice while going through a divorce. Parenting is also an addition in this. These problems are explained by male socialization where they are supposed to be strong and self-reliant. Another component here is the social organizations staffed largely by women which are mainly focused on children and women. New fathers not only have to deal with their new responsibility but also with complex life context situations. They become a father in young age and therefore are deprived of studies, employment and are facing instability in life (Bruce & Fox, 2009). They show little responsible behaviour and do not exhibit

More fathers are emerging in raising their children solely without the help of their alternate partner. Sometimes, the best place for children is with their Dad. These comes as a result of