No, parents shouldn't be let off the hook. Nor should society, nor should GENETICS, or simple human behavior.

Bah! Genetics! What is this hornswaggle?

It's nature AND nurture that influence us - and sometimes we overindulge on the power of nurture. Remember, even with a good family example, the child can choose to ACCEPT or REJECT that lesson. No amount of tongue lashings, time outs, or spankings is going to truly influence if that child ultimately accepts or rejects those lessons.

Some children who were abused as children will be abusers; they will ACCEPT that example. Some will refuse to be abusers; they will REJECT that example.

I was raised both by a nurture parent and a nature parent.

My father was pure nurture; he got up in arms about MTV and rap music, stomped and raved, and moaned.

My mother was pure nature; there was a case where they blamed Beavis and [censored] for the behavior of some adolescents on the news, her reply was "Please, your older brother mooned the neighbors out the front picture window, and he never had Beavis and [censored] to show him how..."

To quote my inner conservative: "What ever happened to personal responsibility?"

Why don't we teach it to our children?

I agree!! And it is much more dangerous because kids accept everything their teacher says at face value. I taught my son to BELIEVE NOTHING!! And he would come home and we would research it and then go back and debate the teacher. It was a GREAT experience in that he learned not to be a mindless sheeple who just accepts everything at face value.

The only class I ever yanked him from was something called "Humanities" which was a thinly veiled name for world communism. They were teaching communism as truth, not as it really is: a system of slavery. So, I used this experience to teach him all about communism!

But, but, but... it's beautiful on paper... much like radical feminism.

I agree! As a parent the buck stops right here. If my son grows up an ignoramus, that falls on me. But most adults are intellectually lazy and just follow the trends. If they are sheeple/followers they can't very well LEAD their own child. And most don't.

radical feminism = some whiny chicks who can't cut it on their own who want Big Poppa daddy gubmint to take care of them...

Here's how "personal responsibility" worked with my mother;

When he was 16, my older brother got picked up by the police at a local 7-11... drunk. They called her up and asked her to come pick him up. Her response?

"Nope. If he's a big enough boy to get drunk and wander the town, he's a big enough boy to spend a night in jail."

She also had enough sense to know when he was out drinking. Her favorite thing to do was wait until he was on the way home, and sit in the front room eating canned smoked oysters.

"Want some oysters, son?"

"Oh, God... mom... no *urp*"

The fact that my mother is an unrepentant adulteress who took us camping with her AP several times, and trashed my father to me is one thing, but she WAS and still is an AWESOME mother.

You are kidding, right? What about her was awesome if she dragged you into her filthy affair and role modeled corruption? How is that teaching personal responsibility?

I don't know, maybe men shouldn't be left to their own resources too much:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20101229/ap_on_re_us/us_frogger_wreck

(And in case someone takes this offensively, this is meant as a joke).

hey, that boy is playing CHICKEN!!

Oh, she failed at modeling marriage, or healthy relationships... kinda why I don't lean on her for my own M problems... she has no clue.

HHH, I was also raised by a corrupt parent [father], so I sympathize with you. He really hurt me and my brothers and sisters by teaching us that wrong is right. He wasnt just corrupt in his relationships but in all aspects of life.

I didn't leave my home, yet my unfaithful ex-wife is the primary custodian of my child.

I didn't beat either my wife or my children, yet my unfaithful ex-wife is the primary custodian of my child.

I'm not addicted to drugs, alcohol, video games, porn or anything else, yet my unfaithful ex-wife is the primary custodian of my child.

I was unemployed about 5 minutes of our 7 year marriage, she was a stay at home mom for about 5 of those 7 years, yet my unfaithful ex-wife is the primary custodian of my child.

So while there may be a minority of men who might match writer1's ex-husband, that's the MINORITY of fathers who are denied daily access to their child.

I'm all for actually proving that someone is a fit parent. But let's be clear, having an affair and remaining in that affair, choosing to divorce the father of your children because you are either "unhappy" or you are falling on the penis of another man is evidence that you are an unfit mother, period.

Yet that question is not even allowed in a courtroom when custody is up for grabs.

If you end no fault divorce, make adultery evidence of being an unfit parent, then I'll believe the system is fair. As long as someone can leave simply because she's not happy, or she's having an affair, and have access to any more than 0% of the marital assets and primary custody of any children of that marriage, the system is broken and you'll continue to have fathers who feel the system has discarded them, discounted their input and blames them for the result they had zero part in creating.

As long as unfaithful spouses are getting custody of children from betrayed, faithful non-abusive fathers, or at the very least, they are merely unhappy so they choose divorce (which I would call being unfaithful) then the system is broken, and the betrayed men are not to blame for the outcome.

As Dr H has said here, the minority of those who leave their spouses are leaving men who are guilty of marital misconduct. So while some can point to anecdotes that their husbands were not fit parents, there's like 10 to 20 fit parents who were divorced against their will and turned into visitors according to the courts for every one of those unfit fathers.

Fix that, and I'll bet things improve.

Stop giving mothers who can't honor their vows custody preference over betrayed fathers whose "crime" is being romantically challenged.

Because it's hard to buy someone's vote when you tell them you made the mess, so you clean it up.

So instead, they find a way to make it look like someone else is paying for everyone's mess. At a federal level, pare the government down to Defense, Foreign Policy, and the Federal Judiciary. Everything else, even Social Security should be dismantled or done at the state or local level if folks want it.

But that won't happen because everyone wants something from the government and they buy the lie that someone else is paying for it.

EE, we have men on this forum who have full custody of their children and possession of their homes AND are getting child support from their wives. We coached them to file on grounds of adultery and to ask for the moon. And some of them got it!!

While that is not always possible, there are states where men have a huge advantage if they simply fight.

Have you read Dr Harley's book, Defending Traditional Marriage? He believes we should bring back civil and criminal penalties for adultery and has a whole chapter on this.

Additionally, he thinks that anyone who has an affair with the spouse of a deployed soldier should go to prison for 10 years.

EE, I understand that some men who do fight end up empty handed, however, if no one ever fights they will always end up empty handed. Even in no fault states like Texas a person can gain a legal advantage by introducing the adultery.

Yet those are an even more rare anecdote than the misbehaving husband.

Sure one can win, in what, 1 in 100 cases? Especially if what you and I and Dr H consider to be evidence of being unfit is not allowed in the courts, then what.

You have a fit father who was stable, works up against a stay at home mom who by all state standards is a fit parent. The fight is lost because the evidence of the mother's unfitness is not even allowed in the courts.

I've fought that fight. I kept the house. I see my daughter every Wednesday, every other weekend, two weeks in the Summer and 1/2 of her winter break and claim her every other year on my taxes.

That's actually considered a great deal where I live, but yet my daughter is primarily shaped and molded by an unfaithful ex-wife.

What message does that send when the courts award her mom primary custody? It says mom's behavior was OK, dad is suspect since he can only see her when the courts and mom deem OK.

If you want more folks to fight, make it a winnable fight.

I agree with Dr H, so what. It hasn't changed the laws here. It hasn't retroactively corrected all the situations similar to mine, nor will it. It might prevent such cases in the future, but I suspect that future correction is still a generation or two away.

My state representatives don't care about correcting this. They like the federal money they get for being able to garnish my wages. That's right, there is a federal program that pays states for every child support obliger they garnish from, so they garnish regardless of if the obliger is paying or not to get that federal cash.

So what's the incentive to correct the problem when someone sees money and power in the status quo?

Our state supreme court ruled that sexual conduct cannot be used in a custody case unless it directly impacted the minor child. So in other words, unless the unfaithful mother is doing her affair partner on the dining room table with the child watching, it's not going to matter.

So the faithful father is on the same footing as the unfaithful mother. If she's a stay at home mom, there is no way dad is ever getting custody in my state as long as his only complaint is her affair.

The law here supports that outcome, and until you change the law, no fight will change the outcome.

And why do you think the judges, lawyers, and law-makers jointly decided that "motherhood" - good, bad, or skank-provided - is automatically better than "fatherhood"? Because they've been brainwashed by the same crap that the whole society has.

As an aside, my (least) favorite news story in this regard was a case involving a child's death here in enlightened NY. "Mommy" was living with "D1ck" her boyfriend du-jour, when they, evidently jointly, saw to it that her 2-year-old starved to death.

So tell me, who was the greater criminal here? The brood-mare who watched her flesh and blood wither and die, or the boyfriend (not party to the child's conception) who joined her in that exercise?

Result? His sentence was 15 years. Hers? Seven to ten.

Wonderful! What punishment for the spouse who has the affair? It is convenient around here to paint OP's as predators - overlooking the fact that many waywards are willing prey, if not predators themselves.