The Family in the Crossfire

A review of Taken into Custody: The War Against Fathers, Marriage, and the Family by Dr. Stephen Baskerville

Written by John Horvat II

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There is a war that is very little noted in the media. Like all modern wars, civil liberties and the lives of innocent bystanders, often small children, are at stake.

However, this war is not in some faraway land. It takes place inside America itself and is a war upon the family, especially fathers. In a well-documented 352-page book, Taken into Custody: The War Against Fathers, Marriage, and the Family, author Dr. Stephen Baskerville argues that a "divorce industry" favors America's epidemic of divorce, family breakdown, and fatherlessness.

Many factors enter into this war. One driving force is the infiltration of feminist ideas that have become institutionalized in modern family law. This makes possible a penal apparatus that has proven an "effective instrument for waging gender warfare on the most personal level." Because they represent the hated "patriarchy," fathers are often demonized and automatically labeled as official villains by many social workers.

Equally important is the psychological climate that has been created around the "crisis in the family." Dr. Baskerville claims the media has created certain myths that predispose people to accept these policies that supposedly looked after the welfare of children often caught in the middle of divorce or abuse.

One of the greatest myths is that of the "deadbeat dad" which is not only a myth but a hoax, the creation of government officials and lawyers plundering parents whose children they have taken away. In fact, no evidence indicates that large numbers of fathers are abandoning their children. The author further documents the "hysterical propaganda" about domestic violence is destroying families, endangering children, and making criminals of innocent parents.

The result of feminist ideology, media myths and no-fault divorce policies is a government-run system tearing apart families, separating children from fit and loving parents, confiscating the wealth of families, and turning law-abiding citizens into criminals in ways they are powerless to avoid.

The evidence is overwhelming, and the author takes great pains to cite tragic real life cases. Family courts and feminist-influenced bureaucracies trample basic civil liberties, entering homes uninvited and taking away people's children at will, then throwing the parents into jail without any form of due process or trial.

Worst of all, parents and especially fathers accused of abuse or domestic abuse are themselves victims that are seemingly guilty until proven innocent.

Raising a family in these modern times is hard enough in today's hostile culture. Dr. Baskerville's devastating indictment of the divorce industry only highlights just how difficult, if not miraculous, it is that families survive at all in the crossfire of a brutal yet unacknowledged war on the family.

STEPHEN BASKERVILLE, Ph.D., is assistant professor of government at Patrick Henry College. He holds a Ph.D. from the London School of Economics and is a Fellow at the Howard Center for Family, Religion, and Society.

ISBN-10: 1-58182-594-3
ISBN-13: 978-1-58182-594-7
$24.95, Hardcover