Fathers’ Rights Movement
“I’m her father; why should I have to be supervised?” said Shannon Chidester, a man fighting for his right to see his daughter after three years. The Fathers’ Rights Movement is a social movement that is advocating for the rights of fathers in custody battles and child support cases.
According to fathersrightsmovement.us, most of the members of the Fathers’ Rights Movement simply want shared custody with their child’s mother.
According to the U.S Census Bureau, there are 24 million children in the United States and one out of three of those children grows up in a household where they do not have a biological father present.
In recent years, according to the National Coalition for Men (NCFM), fathers have usually asked for just 50 percent custody, whereas mothers have asked for 80 percent and have gotten that. Fathers are basically just there to visit occasionally and to pay child support. Men represent 87.1 percent of child support payers and on average pay $4,250 in child support each year, according to DadsDivorce.com.
This has become a problem and many people are looking at our court systems. “Virginia is an interesting case because we already have the rights in place, but they just aren’t socially acceptable yet,” said Arif Vega, a PVCC student in the battle for more parental rights.
The main goal for the Fathers’ Rights Movement right now is to help people going through similar situations to see what they can do to make this process easier.
“It is like we’re fighting over a piece of property,” said Vega, referring to his experiences with the court system. Vega and many others are trying to fight the system just for the right to be in their child’s life.
