Post Title: Major Transform/Reform Campaigns [Regardless of Cause] Involve Branded, On-line Media Platforms. Keep an Eye on Who Owns Which Brands & Platforms: Do Periodic Drill-downs.. [Publ. Feb. 12, 2020, but Media Drill-Downs from my Feb. 2018 Page ‘Consolidated Control of DV Advocacy’]. (shortlink ends “-c9y, about 12,800 words; expect some post-publication edits, to add tags and for more fluency between sections.  Last revised Feb. 14th).

To comprehend the context of the domestic violence organizations in the USA — which entails unacknowledged, built-in conflicts with marriage/fatherhood promotions and characterizing single-mother households as a social scourge to be handled in the name of public welfare by a national policy promoting fathers’ rights — is beyond urgent and I believe just not optional, even if one’s home country is not the United States of America.

Consider:

(This section has many points of reference, but being summary, just a few links to them.  Generally, I’ve already provided the links on earlier posts or pages, many of them, several times.  

Because it’s written by my recall from prior research, there may be some (minor) inaccuracies in labeling, any of which could be corrected by looking up the points of reference, and about which I’m not particularly concerned for the purpose of summary here).

The foundation of “fatherhood.gov” as it operates now goes back identifiably and through the present to the mid-1960s in Daniel Moynihan’s call for action and a National Policy towards “The Negro Family,” featuring female-headed households as “pathology” because we were (this country was), essentially, it said, a patriarchy.

It’s been said that the organization “NOW” was formed in 1966 in response to the Moynihan report.  

I’ve summarized many things about the situation in the “Opening Spiel” of this post but am providing these links to prior write-ups for some further reading.

My prior posts on The Moynihan Report include one from Dec., 2017 and another from July, 2016.  There are more, but here below are quotations (their introductions, in all their colorful, gory fine-print detail, in two separate text boxes).  Recommended, not necessarily easy, reading, to comprehend what’s up with the domestic violence prevention business these days — key things most so-called feminist leaders of well-known nonprofits DON’T want to bring up in their academic writings, or with you.  Once you grasp the situation, try bringing it up (for example, to nonprofit domestic violence leadership, or front-line staff, in person or on-line/in writing, or other places) and see what responses, if any, you get… I already have…. I’m convinced these individuals have no shame, remorse, or conscience about the types and extent of information they routinely withhold from the public, and their clients, warm-body pre-requisites to ongoing existence as nonprofits.  

and,

Moving on….

Judging by when Ivy League/East Coast universities (Harvard, Yale, Brown, etc.) and the “almost-Ivy” Bowdoin (Maine)** began admitting women as undergraduates, and by how much later than men (including freed slaves) women got suffrage in the US, that’s probably a fair assessment, functionally speaking.

**The Bowdoin situation gets to me particularly when, in writing this blog, I run across profiles of both men and women about my age, whose adopted policies (focusing on correcting “fatherlessness” and racism, not sexism) has impacted options for my children’s futures, as it’s clear 1996 Welfare Reform policies did.   “To Be Continued…,” it supports my point that the USA has been in many ways a “patriarchy.”  The “Bowdoin” discussion, however, involves key figures in education, finance and politics of the last fifty years; I’ll not burden this post with those details.

But while the late (and while alive, powerful on Capitol Hill) Senator Daniel Moynihan did come from a father-abandoned family, grow up poor, and was raised Catholic, he was not a conservative, or Republican, nor was his report phrased in religious terms.

It was phrased in sociological terms.

If fatherlessness was the scourge, his life seems to have missed the lashes…

Nevertheless the genealogy of The Moynihan Report, as I’ve mentioned so much on this blog, continues through today in the “Moynihan Award” to “bipartisan” co-editors (?) and co-directors (at Brookings) Ronald Haskins and Isabelle Sawhill, of Brookings Institution, functioning for many years now in partnership with a center at Princeton University featuring publication “The Future of Children” and working internationally, so its “Partners” site says, with the University of Cambridge (i.e., England), the Jacobs Foundation (Swiss, but care/of a German coffee-chocolate dynasty).

The director of the particular (Bendheim-Thoman) Center for Child Well-Being at Princeton University (Sara McLanahan), married to Columbia University (NYC) Irwin Garfinkel, I was reminded recently (i.e., I looked at her  c.v. again) is a sociologist from the University of Texas-Austin, which MAY explain why a Center there, under direction of a woman probably mentored in part by her (Cynthia Osborne, Ph.D. from Princeton, about 2005 as I recall) has continued “carrying the (fatherhood) torch under the “Children and Families” Banner  — University of Texas-Austin. (Cynthia Osborne bio also seen at FRPN.org (below) as “Chair of the Responsible Fatherhood WorkGroup” (first one of four listed there), whatever that signifies. I’ve publicized this often on Twitter also, from the University of Texas perspective).

You can also read about the U Texas connection to FRPN (and Cynthia Osborne) under the “Supporting Organizations” (not that the federal government, listed first, is an “organization,” nor is a website an “organization” either: very sloppy labeling pads the apparent number of supporters.  Sort these into entity vs. non-entity, and you’ll get some (trackable) nonprofits, and the US DHHS, basically.  Sample (the link is from FRPN.org):

Child and Family Research Partnership

The Child and Family Research Partnership (CFRP) is an independent, nonpartisan research group at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at The University of Texas at Austin, specializing in issues related to young children, teens and their parents. Cynthia Osborne, director of CFRP, serves…Read more

Visit Website

• At the University of Texas, Austin, the “CFRP” is not a school,  but a research group AT a school at a university.
• At Princeton University, there are several centers; this one seems named (as often happens) after alumni benefactors, but the reporting entity is the university itself.  What money actually goes to the Center, and how it’s accounted for is unclear. Internally, by the university, it may have its own account code/s, but what about the public?
• At Brookings Institution (also a nonprofit), if you read its tax returns, are the “Centers” accounted for separately somehow accessible to the public?

By definition, this type of focus on “Centers” [and/or university-based “partnerships”] clouds the financial accountability / money trails.  What, if anything, guards against special interests taking over public universities and using their established reputation to promote less than reputable causes?  Like setting up a virtual sociological religion within the USA by means of interstate networks taking public resources and (because so hard to track, how much private money is un-knowable, to most people) probably private, too, while publicizing through the on-line websites created and inter-linked?

I say this having seen many of them in the course of investigating nonprofits and professionals in these fields for this blog. It’s stunning, the proliferation of “Children and family”-named centers which on closer examination, turn out to be father-focused, especially non-resident fathers.

Meanwhile, Columbia University (with Irwin Garfinkel) also features, and has for MANY years, another fatherhood [Fathers and Children] center directed by Ronald D. Mincy, with former (or perhaps still current) backing by both the Ford Foundation and the Annie E. Casey Foundation.  It’s got enough initials I continue to forget in which order, but, (looking them up now), they are:  CRFCFW:  “Center for Research on Fathers, Children and Family Well-Being.”  Mincy is Maurice V. Russell Professor of Social Policy and Social Work Practice at (naturally) the university’s School of Social Work. A basic search of his name also brings up other fatherhood organizations, and the one I mention in the next paragraph:  FRPN.org.  He also presented, I’ve mentioned repeatedly, at an AFCC conference in about 2000, alongside key domestic violence organization backers (the late Senator Paul Wellstone and his wife Sheila, from Minnesota).  There’s nothing ‘conservative’ or Republican about the Wellstones or, that I can see, Professor Mincy, but somehow it still translates to fatherhood as national policy under the label of “Families” (Fragile or otherwise).

Among the featured members (sic) of that University of Texas Consortium [and/or CFRP Partnership: visit and explore the website and their referral links] is a (non-entity, see links added above Feb. 13), which I’ve also featured on this blog, whose website “FRPN.org” (Fathers Research and Practice Network) turns out to be an HHS-funded project at Temple University in Philadelphia, with co-directors (how does one “direct” a non-entity project at a major university?) Jessica Pearson, Ph.D. (Princeton) of — get this — the Colorado-based and historically (as to Pearson at least) “AFCC”-connected “Center for Policy Research,” and

Temple University Professor Jay Fagan (who’s been at Temple, after his 1988 Columbia Univ. PhD, nonstop since about 1990)… He has articles published in a magazine (‘Fathering”) he co-founded, and a key association on the c.v. (also listed at FRPN.org under “Other Organizations”) seems to be the ‘National Council on Family Relations’ (19 references in 15pp c.v.: [Click twice to read the pdf: Jay Fagan,Prof~BA Psych (TrinityCollege, CT 1973), MSW (UPA, SchlSocialWk SW,1977), PhD (in__??)Columbia SSW 1988) |Temple Univ Philadelphia (+ FRPN.org), 15-pg CV Oct 2019 (see 19occ ‘NCFR,’ ref to the HHS grant (for FRPN) + only 2books (@ 2020Feb13)] The c.v. says “School of Social Administration” not “School of Social Work.”

…He is currently conducting studies on nonresidential fathers’ coparenting relationships and the effects of mother-father co-parenting relationships on at-risk fathers’ involvement with children… (https://cph.temple.edu/about/directory/jay-fagan)

Nancy Thoennes, like Jessica Pearson, long-time at CPR (whom I’d listed by recall; checking back the next day to verify) IS listed there, but her exact role isn’t quite clear.  The co-directors of FRPN are clearly Fagan & Pearson.

Images from FRPN.org; the “about” information is repetitive (circular phrases) and still vague.  See annotated image (as well as classic-looking main page, and footer citing one HHS grant only for 2013-2019, rectangular image):

FRPN.org basic screenshots ~~Screen Shot 2020-02-13 [Page footer, annotated]

Once you even start to look …**

**at this father-focused, Welfare Reform-based, HHS-grants (and contracts-) supported landscape

a few logical questions come to mind (they certainly have for me):

~>At what point should the also vast (but less extensive and well-funded) “domestic violence network” (USA) [See Roadmap on my Feb. 2018 page, and prior posts on it] completely lose credibility for not examining the connections between federally-funded “fatherhood.gov” and outcomes in the family court venues?

~>Does this domestic violence network in fact exist instead to distract us from that reality with false assurances [or hope] of safety nationwide? BOTH networks are federally and privately funded. Nor is the coverup unique to either political party.

~>Why should we even continue to listen in on the scholarly debates or expect /hope for good things to come out of this level of systemic (“you don’t really need to know about federally-funded fatherhood, the AFCC and other interconnected private [conflicts-of-interest] personal interests in keeping the conflict going…”) coverup?

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