From: root@dogear.spk.wa.us (Bob Kirkpatrick)
Newsgroups: soc.men,soc.women,alt.child-support
Subject: Re: Equal Male Rights
Date: 22 Aug 92 22:16:19 GMT
Organization: Dog Ear'd Systems of Spokane, WA

In article <VIXIE.92Aug22131333@cognition.pa.dec.com> vixie@pa.dec.com (Paul A Vixie) writes:
>[bevans@carina.unm.edu (Mathemagician)]:
>>
>> Why is it that the biological father has to convince somebody to let
>> him have custody of his own children?

For all three of my kids, when it was time for them to leave the hospital,
I picked them up. I didn't have to show ID, I just went and asked for my
kids. I was told congratulations, handed a box full of baby products, and
given the child.

In two cases, my wife had preceeded me out the door. In one, I'd returned
to get my daughter who was held an extra day because there was some small
concern about her temperature --turned out to be no big deal.

A picture is painted here as though fathers aren't permitted to do much
else than peer through the glass at the nursery. Not so. Not so at all.

>The fact of the mother's motherhood is usually not in dispute, at least
>in the hospital where the birth occurred, since various people witnessed
>it.  While it's biologically possible for the birth mother to not be the
>genetic mother (as in host-mother cases) this is not the usual situation
>and if such a claim were made no sooner than the day of birth, I suspect
>that the hospital administrators would not take it very seriously.
>
>On the other hand the people in the hospital have only hear-say evidence
>of the father's identity, since the his biologically neccessary participation
>was presumably not witnessed by the hospital staff.

:-)

>
>That's the short answer to "why does the baby just get handed to the mother?"
>You can infer from this why suits to "establish parental relations" occur.

There are other reasons too. If the parents aren't married, it's necessary
to establish paternity --even beyond appearing as the father on the records
at the hospital. This has to do with local legality --although I expect it
to be pretty much the same everywhere. In essence, there is a difference
between a biological and legal claim to the child. In cases where both mom
and dad say that Mr. X is the dad, no suit is necessary --at least in this
neck of the woods, that's true.

If there is a contention about paternity, then the short answer to "Is this
the father?" is settled pretty rapidly by tests. A better circumstance than
playing eenie-meenie-miney-mo with the stories that the court hears.

>The original topic of this thread was: if a mother wanted to give a baby up
>for adoption, the father would have to go to court rather than just being the
>one to take the baby home from the hospital.  This is sad, but true.  In the
>grand scheme of sexually-biased injustice men face in family court, this is
>not a big deal -- because at least it's possible to trivially overcome it,
>at least in most counties in California.  I'd suggest saving our mental efforts
>here for things which are a lot stickier than this minor injustice.

Fortunately, I live in Washington, where if the mother wants to give the
child up, legal notice has to be served on the father who has first option
to take the child... and without adoption. It's simply his.

As to better fish to fry, you betcha. Let's see what we can do about table
driven support, a preconception of maternal custody, unenforced visitation,
and the myriad other maladies.
-- 
root@dogear.spk.wa.us (Bob Kirkpatrick)
Dog Ear'd Systems of Spokane, WA
Newsgroups: soc.men