Why Father’s Rights Confuse and Irritate Me

Father's Rights ad, found on this site here.  I understand the viewpoint, however I can't help but be unsettled by this image.  Just because she's your daughter, does that not make her the mother's daughter too?

            In our most recent class on Tuesday, we spent time discussing Susan Bordo’s book titled Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture, and the Body.  Specifically, the chapter we focused on was called “Are Mothers Persons?  Reproductive Rights and the Politics of Subject-ivity”.  And within this chapter, one of the subjects brought up was the movement for father’s rights.  The particular subject and movement of Father’s Rights really stood out to me, mainly because I have never heard of it before encountering it in this reading. 

            The movement for father’s rights was essentially born from men’s desire to control women and their potential offspring.  Also, Bordo presents additional reasoning for the pushing of father’s rights: “One reason why the movement for father’s rights has grown so rapidly is the culturally powerful rhetoric of ‘equality’ with which the movement has trumpeted its cause,” (page 89).  However, Bordo goes on to elaborate that the notion of “equality” is more misconstrued and in reality becomes a mission to gain leverage over a mother’s rights.  Bordo states that “Any father seeking his ‘rights’ in such a case is claiming that his desires should not merely be equal but supersede those of the mother.  That is, what is being sought in father’s-rights cases is not equality for fathers but the privileging of parental interests,” (page 89).  When explained that way, I was appalled that fathers would try to assert their desires over those of mothers, who are the ones physically carrying the child.  Mothers are the ones who carry most of the weight in the baby-making process, and that is one reason why I believe if anything the mothers should have a higher control over their own bodies, not the fathers. 
            Many men also try to argue father’s rights on a belief born from our Western culture that fathers are the “true parents” instead of just one half of a child.  This belief originates from many different sources, some from Greek mythology to the Genesis story to Aristotle’s teachings.  These beliefs additionally contribute to the “mothers are only fetal incubators” idea, which I find to be sick and disgusting, because it is wrong to depersonalize women/mothers into baby-creating machines. 

            While writing this blog today, I keep coming back to one particular quote that we discussed in class regarding father’s rights.  This quote is from Erin Conn, a man suing his wife and taking a strong father’s rights position.  To defend his case, he argues that the “reproductive system” set in place is unfair because he himself cannot carry the fetus, and because he is half of that child he should have a say in whether or not it was aborted.  He makes a very possessive claim over the unborn child, claiming that he is part of this child just as much as the child is a part of him.  Following this claim, he asks: “She wants control of her body.  But what about me?  Am I not allowed to have control of my body?” (page 92).  This quote has been stuck in my mind, because quite frankly I find it completely absurd and outrageous.  This man is attempting to lay claim over a partially-developed fetus that only has half of his genetic material and is being gestated inside the body of another human being.  He seems to be forgetting that half of that fetus is also his wife’s, and that it is his wife that is physically pregnant and not him.  To me, those two factors alone completely outweigh his arguments.  Thankfully, most court cases align more with my thoughts, as mentioned by Bordo the Planned Parenthood of Central Missouri v. Danforth case where the Supreme Court ruled that “…since ‘it is the woman who physically bears the child and who is the more directly and immediately affected by the pregnancy … the balance weighs in her favor.’,” (page 90). 

            I guess what mainly gets on my nerves about the father’s rights movement is how it tries to take away power/rights from women/mothers, who already struggle as is to get and maintain various reproductive and medical rights.  Men have a lot of privilege and rights in our country already, and I feel that matters of pregnancy and abortion are not places that men should be sticking their noses into.  Pregnancy happens to women’s bodies, and I believe it should be left up to them to decide what they do with their bodies.  On a final note, I was browsing Upworthy for any parent-topic articles and came across this comic created by a feminist dad.  What’s really nice about this comic is that the father is realizing that he should not be controlling what his daughter will or won’t want.  It may not be related directly to father’s rights or women’s reproductive rights, but it is on the right track for allowing women to make decisions for themselves.