If Martin Luther King Jr. were alive today he would be upset and say "What's up with this?"

What MLK Taught Me About

How to Be a Dad

“We don’t take black money.”

Those were the cruel words my father-in-law, Dr. Little, heard when he was a young man at a public golf course in 1959.

“Good,” he responded. “Because money is green.”

He left his cash on the counter, turned around, and walked out the door to go play a round of golf.

Later, he and his friends were escorted away by police for playing on a “whites only” course. Rather than exploding into a violent rage, as many others would have done, Dr. Little stayed calm and held his head high during his arrest.

That highly publicized event and his example of a dignified man were instrumental in the future of the golf course, which would be integrated a few years later.

On MLK Day, I find myself reflecting on my father-in-law’s story. I am also reminded that Dr. King’s famous “I have a dream” speech was about being a father. It was about envisioning the future he wanted for his children, and then working to make that dream a reality.

“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character,” he said.

Displaced fathers are overwrought at the loss of contact with their children

Dr. Edward Kruk: 'Is Sole Custody

A Form Of Parental Alienation?'

Here's Barbara Kay again with her usual lucid, fact-based piece (National Post, 6/15/11). In it she raises a number of good points, one of which I should have raised earlier myself. I'm delinquent for not having done so and will duly fall on my sword at the appropriate moment. That point is simple; over the past, say, 20 years, fathers have taken on more and more of the care of their children. That's reflected in statistics and it's also reflected in popular culture where we see movies, commercials, sitcoms, novels, etc. about fathers and children or at least involving them in significant roles.

But courts remain firmly stuck in the past; the overwhelming majority of child custody still goes either solely or primarily to mothers. What that means is that children and fathers suffer as never before when parents divorce. In the past, dad may have seen his role as exclusively the breadwinner and therefore taken little part in day-to-day childrearing. In the event of divorce, it could be argued that separating him from his child wouldn't be too traumatic for either. After all, their relationship was a bit distant anyway. I would object to that argument, but now, with fathers bonding ever more closely to children, consigning him to the role of paying visitor is doubly bad policy. It's an important point and one I'll come back to in the future, partly because the always excellent Dr. Edward Kruk makes it in his new book, to which Kay refers.