The Case for Father Custody

Rating:
Summary: I Can't Believe I Read the Whole Thing!
Review: This is a book feminist types certainly won't get! Daniel Amneus may be the principle defender of the recently much-maligned patriarchy, which has given us all the benefits of civilization: much longer lifespans due to decent food supplies and public health, generally affluent and peaceful societies, and such accomplishments of which the I-Net is only one of many if you step back and think about it a second.

In this book Amneus's central thesis is that all this is only possible if women allow men to participate equally in reproduction and have stable two-parent families, a system which benefits men, women, and children and has been breaking down over the last 30-35 years, with often catastrophic results. The way women do this is by accepting sexual law and order (monogamy and chastity generally), which gives men paternity certainty and motivates them to provide and produce all the wonderful benefits of civilization. In the presence of a liberalized female sexuality, things revert back to basic Stone Age and mammalian forms, with the males specializing in predatory and destructive behavior rather than productive and protective behavior -- the matriarchal pattern of the ghetto and the indian reservation. Because many women resist sexual control (but still want the benefits) it's necessary to bind them to males and families by making men the heads of families and doing away with the century-long tried-and-failed experiment in mother custody.

Many books start out with an introduction and ease into their subject, but Amneus launches dirctly into the diatribe from the first page and hammers away at the same themes over and over. Almost all of these would be familiar to anyone who's read Garbage Generation ................... because the male role in reproduction is marginal, the social role of fatherhood has to be as central as the female role is biologically if men are to be equal to women; the feminist / sexual / divorce revolution has only succeeded in reinforcing traditional sex roles, with women even more burdened by parenting duties and men stuck in involuntary breadwinning for ex-wives (from which they receive no reciprocal benefits) and for children which they have little ability to influence the socialization of -- a modern form of enslavement made possible by mom's taking them hostage with the court's assistance, not to mention a system requiring multiple state run damage-control backup systems for functions which the family formerly performed.

At times Amneus merely sounds like someone who's ticked off and grumpy for having missed the sexual revolution, but much of what he's saying makes a ton of sense. Even though we're constantly told about how patriarchal everything is, much of the reasoning in this book will be of the brain-wrenching variety. Here is a perspective on things which is both comprehensive and radically different. While the knee-jerk backlash reaction of many will no doubt be to hurl epithets (such as the all-purpose "misogynist"), Amneus probably reserves his worst criticisms for unthinking judges and politicians who think it's somehow chivalrous to force men to subsidize the destruction of their families.

This is a hard book to read. Fortunately, one can get 90% of it from just reading the first several dozen pages. It's perhaps unfortunate that the tone is so strident (and redundant), since there are many valuable ideas here for correcting (at little cost) many of our seemingly insolvable social problems which trace their roots back to families and how kids are raised. Apply salt liberally to offending passages -- there's little likelihood that these ideas will catch on and be realized anytime soon, even if it's nice to dream.

Rating:
Summary: I Can't Believe I Read the Whole Thing!
Review: This is a book feminist types certainly won't get! Daniel Amneus may be the principle defender of the recently much-maligned patriarchy, which has given us all the benefits of civilization: much longer lifespans due to decent food supplies and public health, generally affluent and peaceful societies, and such accomplishments of which the I-Net is only one of many if you step back and think about it a second.

In this book Amneus's central thesis is that all this is only possible if women allow men to participate equally in reproduction and have stable two-parent families, a system which benefits men, women, and children and has been breaking down over the last 30-35 years, with often catastrophic results. The way women do this is by accepting sexual law and order (monogamy and chastity generally), which gives men paternity certainty and motivates them to provide and produce all the wonderful benefits of civilization. In the presence of a liberalized female sexuality, things revert back to basic Stone Age and mammalian forms, with the males specializing in predatory and destructive behavior rather than productive and protective behavior -- the matriarchal pattern of the ghetto and the indian reservation. Because many women resist sexual control (but still want the benefits) it's necessary to bind them to males and families by making men the heads of families and doing away with the century-long tried-and-failed experiment in mother custody.

Many books start out with an introduction and ease into their subject, but Amneus launches dirctly into the diatribe from the first page and hammers away at the same themes over and over. Almost all of these would be familiar to anyone who's read Garbage Generation ................... because the male role in reproduction is marginal, the social role of fatherhood has to be as central as the female role is biologically if men are to be equal to women; the feminist / sexual / divorce revolution has only succeeded in reinforcing traditional sex roles, with women even more burdened by parenting duties and men stuck in involuntary breadwinning for ex-wives (from which they receive no reciprocal benefits) and for children which they have little ability to influence the socialization of -- a modern form of enslavement made possible by mom's taking them hostage with the court's assistance, not to mention a system requiring multiple state run damage-control backup systems for functions which the family formerly performed.

At times Amneus merely sounds like someone who's ticked off and grumpy for having missed the sexual revolution, but much of what he's saying makes a ton of sense. Even though we're constantly told about how patriarchal everything is, much of the reasoning in this book will be of the brain-wrenching variety. Here is a perspective on things which is both comprehensive and radically different. While the knee-jerk backlash reaction of many will no doubt be to hurl epithets (such as the all-purpose "misogynist"), Amneus probably reserves his worst criticisms for unthinking judges and politicians who think it's somehow chivalrous to force men to subsidize the destruction of their families.

This is a hard book to read. Fortunately, one can get 90% of it from just reading the first several dozen pages. It's perhaps unfortunate that the tone is so strident (and redundant), since there are many valuable ideas here for correcting (at little cost) many of our seemingly insolvable social problems which trace their roots back to families and how kids are raised. Apply salt liberally to offending passages -- there's little likelihood that these ideas will catch on and be realized anytime soon, even if it's nice to dream.