Custody Advocate : Fathers’ Day in Court Is Tabloid Goal

Rod Bivings, editor and publisher of a new monthly tabloid newspaper called The Father’s Forum, says he knows the pain that divorced fathers experience when they are denied custody of their children.

Before his divorce in 1970, Bivings recalled, he visited four different attorneys. Each told him the same thing.

“They said the only way I could get the kids is if she (his ex-wife) was in a mental hospital under lock and key,” he said. “They said this was standard procedure because of what they refer to as the ‘tender years doctrine,’ which stated that all things being equal, children of tender years should go with the mother.”

After his ex-wife moved to North Carolina with their two young sons, Bivings, who was managing a jewelry store in Walton Beach, Fla., at the time, was able see his children only about once a year.

‘I’m Losing My Children’

“It took me years to overcome the emotional impact of that,” said Bivings. “That contact with the children is so important. It’s like most of the fathers I’ve seen. The first thing they say is, ‘Oh, my God, I’m losing my children.’ ”

That, he said, was the genesis of his new, Santa Ana-based publication, which is dedicated to “defending the position of the father” in divorce and child custody cases.

The 16-page tabloid debuted in July, with the editorial promise that “we will report some outrageous events and some points of view that will undoubtedly be slanted toward the father. We do this deliberately, not just to counteract the similar reporting from others, but to help show just how far this insanity has progressed.”

In its August issue, The Father’s Forum pulled no punches in presenting its view of the feminist movement.

The front page features a caricature of a muscle-bound member of the National Organization for Women (NOW) wearing cleated shoes and stomping a helpless male body. Her T-shirt bears the slogan, “Men Have No Rights.”

In an editorial, Bivings declares that, “In the words of their own leadership, NOW has declared war on the male population of our nation.”

“That would certainly be a surprise to NOW members, especially to male members who make up about one quarter of our (chapter’s) membership,” said Wendy Lozano, legislative coordinator for the South Coast NOW Chapter in Orange County.

Lozano views the caricature in The Father’s Forum as “obscene. It’s extremely violent. We have never taken violent tactics.” As for Bivings’ editorial, she finds it “extremely offensive and inaccurate . . . the major concern of (The Father’s Forum) appears to be the demise of the family, which he appears to be blaming on NOW.”

For his part, Bivings maintains that “our focus is not to be anti-woman, anti-mother or anti-female, but to be pro-family. We’re trying to repair the damage that has been done to the American family by providing information about what’s happening in our legislatures and in our courts.”

But Lozano, a lecturer in sociology and women’s studies at Cal State Long Beach who has a master’s degree and Ph.d in family sociology, views it differently. “The so-called traditional family is kind of an anomaly of the ‘50s; the breakup of this particular family occurred long before this wave of the women’s movement.”

Lozano added, “NOW makes a real easy target, especially for people who deal with complex issues with a simplistic approach. I think you do your readers a disservice when you give them information that is so severely biased.

“Obviously, their problem is with custody. . . . I do think most of us would like to see fathers much more involved in parenting and for those fathers who have been intimately involved in parenting before a divorce, certainly arrangements should be made so they can continue to be intimately involved after a divorce, whether through shared custody or other arrangements that the couple work out.”

Bivings, co-founder and president of United Fathers of America, a Santa Ana-based nonprofit support group for men and women going through divorce, said he first thought of publishing a newspaper for divorced fathers in 1980, but the time wasn’t right.

‘We Will Stop It’

“Things happening today make the time right--the feminists and the fact the father’s movement has grown. Fathers have been pushed out of their children’s lives and they’re now banding together to stop it. And we will stop it.”

At the same time, Bivings, 51, acknowledges that fathers have made gains in the courts.

The tender years doctrine, “deemed antiquated and no longer in touch with today’s world,” was thrown out in California in 1972, and most other states have followed suit, he said.

Since 1980, Bivings said, joint custody also has become more common. Now, he said, the law “basically says the judge may award joint custody at his discretion if (the parents) don’t work out an agreement between themselves.”

“Things have improved,” he conceded. “But the problem is that that improvement has now sparked the tremendous activity on the part of the feminist movement--feminist attorneys, judges, politicians--to turn back the clock to the days of the tender-years doctrine. There’s a tremendous effort on the part of feminists in every state to influence legislation in family law and to make changes in the various statutes relating to custody of the children.”

Bivings, who believes The Father’s Forum is the first publication of its kind, said 25,000 copies of the first issue were printed. He anticipates the publication will grow from 16 to 60 pages, with 10,000 subscribers and more than 100,000 printed copies per issue, by 1988. The subscription rate is $24 a year.

More Than Dozen Articles

Although small in size, the newspaper offered more than a dozen articles in its premiere issue. Topics ranged from a historical look at child custody trends to a first-person story on “The Heartache, Bitterness of Divorce--as Seen by a Daughter of Divorce.”

Also featured were a book review of Lenore Weitzman’s “Divorce Revolution,” a state-by-state overview of divorce, alimony and custody statutes; a review of court actions around the United States, and a reprint of a newspaper profile of Tustin attorney Paul Wallin, a specialist in the defense of fathers, stepfathers and teachers accused of molestation. Wallin, who bought an ad in the first issue, was one of 11 of the newspaper’s first 16 advertisers who are attorneys.

On the lighter side was a listing of “50 ideas” of things divorced fathers can do as weekend activities with their children.

Complimentary copies of the first issue of The Father’s Forum were sent to men’s organizations and fathers’ rights groups around the country, Bivings said. Copies also were left in the hallways outside Orange County courtrooms.

Judge Ronald E. Owen, presiding judge of the family law department of Superior Court in Orange County, said he had seen copies of The Father’s Forum outside his courtroom, but had not read them.

“Basically we (judges) tend to ignore those things, although we should read them for our own edification,” he said. “But we try to be objective. We prefer to read statistical and objective articles; and knowing this has been printed for fathers . . . it would tend to be biased.”

Judge Jack Mandel, the county’s family law settlement judge, said a bailiff picked up a copy of the first issue of The Father’s Forum for him and he “skimmed it briefly. You want to make sure it’s not something bad being passed around the corridor.”

‘No Great Interest In It’

Although he didn’t find The Father’s Forum to be an “inappropriate” publication, Mandel said, “after I saw it came from a vested interest, I had no great interest in it.”

Santa Ana attorney Edison W. Miller, who bought an ad in the first issue, said he hasn’t gotten a single referral from an advertisement, but chose to buy an ad because “saw nothing wrong with helping them to whatever extent” he could.

Miller, a former Orange County supervisor who is familiar with Bivings and United Fathers of America, believes father’s rights “is an area of the law that still has not reached its potential by a long shot. Therefore, I think activists have to be involved in pursuing this cause.”

“In the family courts, I still sense fathers are discriminated against,” Miller said. “I don’t think society recognizes that fathers can be good, nurturing parents--not all of them, but not all mothers are either.”

Sister Helen Szekely, clinical director of the Pilgrimage Family Therapy Center in the City of Orange, said that “even though in California, both parents have equal rights by law to contest for custody, it’s still more frequently the mother who gets the physical custody.”

And a father’s sense that he is losing his children through a divorce is “a very common pain,” she said.

Szekely believes the hostile feelings that many divorced couples continue to have for one another “many times are acted out through the children, which of course puts the child in a terrible predicament. They feel a divided loyalty, and that’s very difficult for a child to cope with.”

Barney Peters, who is pictured on the cover of the first issue of The Father’s Forum along with his 6-year-old son, Brendan, thinks there is “a tremendous need” for the publication.

“I think this newspaper will be another view of how the system is treating the family, particularly the father-children relationship,” explained Peters, 42, who said he quit his job with the Bureau of Land Management in Washington, D.C., five years ago to move to California to fight for custody of his son.

Peters, who now does paralegal work for attorneys, said he has been to court more than 200 times for various custody and visitation hearings. He has had joint custody of his son and now is fighting to gain sole custody.

“All I’ve ever wanted,” Peters said, “is a relationship with my child.”