History
The fathers’ rights movement in the US emerged with the founding of Divorce Racket Busters in California in 1960 to protest California's divorce laws, which they claimed discriminated against men in alimony, child support settlements and in a presumption of maternal custody. The group expanded into other states, changing its name to Divorce Reform in 1961. With the increase in divorce rates in the 1960s and 1970s, more local grassroots men’s organizations grew up devoted to divorce reform, and by the 1980s, there were a total of more than 200 fathers’ rights groups active in almost every state. These groups focused their actions on what they viewed as gender discrimination in family law, by engaging in political activities such as lobbying state legislatures, filing class action suits, picketing courthouses, and monitoring judges’ decisions through “court watches”. The 1990s saw the emergence of new and larger organizations such as National Fatherhood Initiative and the American Fathers Coalition. Several unsuccessful efforts were made to found a national organization to which local organizations could belong. As a result the movement remains mainly a loose coalition of local groups.
Read more about this topic: Fathers' Rights Movement In The USA
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“It’s not the sentiments of men which make history but their actions.”
—Norman Mailer (b. 1923)
“The history of his present majesty, is a history of unremitting injuries and usurpations ... all of which have in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world, for the truth of which we pledge a faith yet unsullied by falsehood.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)
“Let it suffice that in the light of these two facts, namely, that the mind is One, and that nature is its correlative, history is to be read and written.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)