We were embarrassed when conditions in US prisons in Iraq were revealed. We would rather point at other’s atrocities than admit to and face our own. But our “advanced” society is continuing to constantly commit some of the ugliest atrocities ever known to man, and everyone pretends it’s not there. I sometimes feel it’s the 1680s and the issue is slavery. Back then, too, only a few “radicals” recognized and spoke against the atrocities systematically committed by slavery. Few listened. Most would say, “It’s unfortunate, but what can you do,” while those directly involved insisted, “It’s in their best interest,” and presented convincing arguments. It didn’t just take the 200 years to the civil war to eliminate those horrors, but 100 more to the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s and ’70s. Only gradually did society, first, not simply allow that whippings, lynchings, and bestial treatment was immoral and had to be stopped – that the dignity of all people should be equally protected – but take action to that end. Today, society is just as systematically committing equally horrible atrocities to its own members, every day. Parents are routinely and just as mindlessly torn from their children’s lives with the same callous carelessness as Blacks were bought and sold. One woman who interviewed me said, “It must be like losing a loved one.” No. It’s not like losing a loved one and should not be trivialized. It’s like watching your child ripped apart in front of you while everyone laughs and says, “What’s wrong with you?” The same is felt by a child watching a parent permanently removed. I told you. This society is committing horrible atrocities, every day, to thousands of its own members. And the best you hear from those not (yet) effected is, “How unfortunate, but what can you do?” Those doing it insist, “It’s in their best interest.” The atrocity is sole custody, or anything that supports or allows a child to have only one of its parents. It is anything that does not support both parents equally as parents. That is what our divorce practices still almost universally do. And with a divorce rate of over 50%, consider how many are effected. It is horrible to say, but the moral blind eye is because it is done to children and men. Children have no voice, so everyone claims that voice as their own. We’re doing this for their sake, after all, so their cries and pain should be ignored. They’ll get over it, especially when properly educated that their father left, not that he lacked equal protection as a parent. Except that studies have universally shown that children never get over it. But they also rarely realize who really did or didn’t do what to whom back then, so society is safe. Men should always suck it up, whatever’s done to them. They’re who we complain to, and about, so not allowed feelings or complaints of their own. The voices of fathers are ignored; any who complain are wimps. Except this is not only done to fathers, but sometimes, even to mothers. Divorce should only be divorce of the adults and have the least possible impact on children. Efforts should be to separate the parents, then equally protect the child’s involvement and care from each so the child retains its whole family. We will stop committing these crimes only when we stop thinking that “parent” can only be one entity or one brain, and realize it is commonly two, often very different entities and brains. That is the value to the child of two parents, and would be more civilized to protect instead of destroy. ©2010 KC Wilson To nourish children and raise them against odds is in any time, any place, more valuable than to fix bolts in cars or design nuclear weapons. - Marilyn French
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