Major Academic Review of Taken Into Custody

This is good news, indeed!

God bless!

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Stephen Baskerville
Date: Fri, Jul 18, 2008 at 7:28 AM

A major academic review of Taken Into Custody has just been published by the American Psychological Association.  PsycCRITIQUES is the APA's principal book review and the biggest review in the field of academic psychology.  This is major respectability in the academic world.

 

Though the APA is often pervaded by feminist bias, the review is entirely positive.

 

Copyright restrictions prevent circulating the full review, but excerpts are below.  It is online here but only for a fee (though more excerpts are in a free abstract).  Those with access to universities or other institutions may be able to gain access.  In fact, some local public libraries subscribe to these research databases. 

 

Stephen Baskerville

 

 

Stephen Baskerville, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Government
Patrick Henry College
1 Patrick Henry Circle
Purcellville, Virginia  20132

 

 

 

Parental Rights: An Endangered Species?

 

A review of

 

Taken Into Custody: The War Against Fathers, Marriage, and the Family by Stephen Baskerville

Highlights:

 

"...the state and its agents increasingly are acting as if they are the superior parents while the biological parents are subject to review and removal by the state at will."

"Stephen Baskerville's masterful new book...explains in detail how a man's (or woman's) home no longer is his or her castle, that parents no longer have the right to determine how and under what conditions they may rear their children. Rather, these rights have been usurped by the state acting through an extraordinarily complex and interlocking nested set of professionals (including psychologists, social workers, lawyers, and judges), and enforced by civil bureaucrats (often armed) with police powers."

"...these agents and agencies have placed America's children and families at the mercy of a state acting much like that envisioned by George Orwell in Animal Farm (Orwell, 1945) and Franz Kafka in The Trial (Kafka, 1925)."

"...this is happening behind a fog of legal terminology and process that hides from the general public the sinister nature of this covert seizure of the children by the state—until it happens to them. Even those going through the process hardly understand how this could be occurring and think they are simply suffering some unusual misfortune. Arguably, Baskerville's greatest contribution to the social good is his bringing to public light that which otherwise is practiced only in the secret shadows of family law."

"The powerful effect the book has on readers…comes from the clear presentation of well-documented…social science research, media reports, and case studies."

"...family courts, judicial retainers, and ideologically driven government bureaucrats (at taxpayer expense) have taken virtually complete control of anyone who is in any way related to a child."

"The state creates powerful perverse incentives and easy mechanisms for mothers to divorce fathers.  These include a near guarantee of physical custody of children to the moms [and] child support awards set far above the actual cost of rearing a child."

"Once driven from his home and separated from his children, any distraught father who pursues custody becomes a 'cash cow' for the state and its hanger-on's (custody evaluators, psychologists, social workers, divorce lawyers, judges, guardians ad litem, supervised visitation centers, etc.)."

"Baskerville discusses in detail the mechanisms through which dead-broke dads are turned into deadbeat dads by the state."

"…the state has succeeded in gaining sway over all the members of the postdivorce or never-married family, and only the lawyers and state actors win. The parents and children lose, and society as a whole suffers greatly from the social consequences that accompany high rates of divorce and out-of-wedlock births."

"Baskerville recommends…(a) setting reasonable limits on unilateral divorce when children are involved; (b) establishing a rebuttable presumption of equally shared parenting for children of divorce or separation; and (c) restoring and enforcing the fundamental rights of parents to the care, custody, and companionship of their children."

"Taken Into Custody makes a major social contribution by exposing a massive, yet heretofore hidden, divorce and 'child protection' industry with its negative impact on children, mothers, fathers, and society. If read widely, it has the potential to become a powerfully paradigm-shifting work with an impact on both public opinion and public policy."

 

************************************************

 

Stephen Baskerville, PhD
Associate Professor of Government
Patrick Henry College
1 Patrick Henry Circle
Purcellville, Virginia  20132

 

 

From Cumberland House Publishing:

 

Taken Into Custody: The War Against Fathers, Marriage, and the Family

STEPHEN BASKERVILLE, PhD

 

"This book is a tremendous and much-needed report on how family courts and government policies are harming children."     -- Phyllis Schlafly, President, Eagle Forum

 

 

Order today at Amazon's special price of $16.47 (regular price $24.95).

For more than 80 articles and studies in mainstream publications on the abuses of the divorce industry, see www.stephenbaskerville.net.