'The forgotten father figure'

Opinion piece here. Excerpt:

'If we truly want to do something about gang violence and youth violence, it is time to reverse the crazy incentives that have thrown more and more fathers out of kids’ lives.

Here is what needs to be done, in my opinion.

1.Pass Equal Shared Parenting legislation for fit parents and do it this legislative year.

2. Reform the Massachusetts Family and Probate Courts and make it harder for a father to be relegated to a visitor. Fathers are not visitors, they are parents. Kids need their dads too.

3. Reform Title IV (d) of the Federal Social Security Act and remove the perverse incentives that throw dads out of the house.

4. Reform the Violence Against Women’s Act (VAWA) and make it gender neutral. Enforce due process laws. Make false accusations a crime.

5. Reform the Crime Bill to enforce due process laws. Make sure mandatory arrest laws are applied equally to men and women.

6. Do not hand out restraining orders without an evidentiary hearing. Remove the check box off the restraining order form for contact with children. Any restraining order that prevents contact with one’s children must go through, at a minimum, an evidentiary hearing, but even more important, a jury trial by your peers. It is harder to fire an employee in a large company than it is to remove a parent, especially a father, from a child’s life.

The bottom line: dads, fathers do matter. If we want to get to the root of gang and teen violence, we have to find a way to let a dad be a dad and be involved in his kids’ lives. Putting bandaids to the problem will never work. Having a dad in one’s life will.'