Chaos At the Crossroads: The Birth of Dads On the Air

By William John Stapleton

Dads On The Air, often shortened to DOTA, is a community radio program which began in western Sydney in August of 2000 with a small group of extremely disgruntled separated men who had no experience of radio and no resources. The author of Chaos at the Crossroads: The Birth of Dads On The Air, William John Stapleton, worked as a mainstream journalist and was the only one with any media experience.

The series of short books in the Chaos at the Crossroads series tell the story of the long struggle for family law reform in Australia, not just by separated fathers, their supporters and their lobby groups, but by grandparents and other family members cut out of children's lives by the discriminatory and destructive sole-custody model purveyed by the court.

Chaos also tells the story of how, from the humble beginnings of a disheveled group of disgruntled separated fathers, Dads On The Air became the world's most famous radio program dedicated to fatherhood issues.

The program evolved with the information revolution. The technology which would allow a small group of people with few resources to make available a weekly 90 minute radio program and give it the penetration and power it went on to achieve simply had not existed five years before. Dads On The Air has over time interviewed almost all the world's leading national and international activists, advocates, academics and authors.

• Language: English
• Publisher: eBookIt.com
• Release date: Apr 26, 2016
• ISBN: 9781456615000

Book preview

post-divorce.

Chaos At the Crossroads:

The Birth of Dads On the Air

Chaos at the Crossroads concentrates on the Australian experience of the long struggle to reform that nation’s divorced laws to promote contact between both parents and their children post-divorce - to move away from the sole custody model which has ruled the nation’s despised family law system for almost 40 years. What makes the Australian experience of universal relevance is the fact that during the prolonged reform process the various models being proposed were being hailed around the world as progressive reforms of a fraught jurisdiction.

What happened in Australia is at once a microcosm as well as a moral tale reflecting much of the Western world’s experiences in family law.

The personal anguish and social chaos created by these Marxist feminist style courts, introduced throughout much of the Western world during the 1970s, have poisoned the social fabric. But despite the accumulated pain these institutions, now entrenched within the societies on which they feed, have changed little since their introduction.

Reforms to family law enacted in the 1970s were hailed as major steps forward in the fight for gender equality at home and in the workplace.

In reality the world’s Family Courts have harmed the lives of as many women as they have men.

They have also done great damage to children under the masquerade of that great legal falsehood: The best interests of the child.

Dads On The Air was fond of claiming this was the most dishonestly used phrase in Australia today.

Chaos at the Crossroads was first published in late 2010 as a single volume under the auspices of the world’s longest running father’s show, Dads On The Air.

To listen to an interview with the author at the time of publication of the first edition of Chaos at the Crossroads go to DOTA’s archives at:

http://www.dadsontheair.com.au/shows/chaos-at-the-crossroads.html

To be frank, in its original format Chaos at the Crossroads did not sell well.

While there were advocates happy to describe it as a significant achievement and an important piece of social history; few of those praising it – or for that matter those condemning it - put their hands in their pockets and bought a copy.

Other factors played into the poor sales.

The price point of $US20 seemed fair enough to the author for a 100,000 plus word text which had taken hundreds of hours and several attempts to complete. But it was simply wrong.

Most punters are unwilling to pay this sort of price for an online text. At the time Chaos was not available in hard copy.

The timing of the book’s release, just prior to Christmas, was also poor.

Few people want to dwell on the infinite well of pain that is family law at a time which is meant to celebrate family; and which in Australia at least is a time of the year to relax, go to the beach and party to excess.

As many commentators, including such erudite and well qualified figures as Dr Warren Farrell, a former member of America’s powerful lobby group the National Organization for Women and author of The Myth of Male Power have observed, going against the prevailing western orthodoxies and putting father’s and men’s side of the debate in the single party arena of gender politics produces neither sales or applause.

Farrell’s efforts to negotiate the thicket of the Western world’s numerous gender studies programs and onto the syllabus lists have failed.

Even his book published by Oxford University Press, Does Feminism Discriminate Against Men, targeted at the massive tertiary education and gender studies market, failed to become a standard text or achieve significant sales. The book presented a debate between Farrell and philosopher and feminist advocate James Sterba.

Lawyers at 50 paces, the general rule in the West upon the dissolution of marriage, is a virtually unknown phenomenon in other parts of the world it.

In Asia gender roles and divorce laws do not attract the same controversy or attention. Nor are they trained to look to government to solve their personal problems.

The fluidity of gender, family and inter-personal relationships amongst many ethnic groupings across South East Asia means compromise is the order of the day. A cultural de-emphasis on the possessive styles of love common in the West and the Buddhist reinforcement of letting go of all attachments as a pathway to enlightenment feed into the less adversarial methods of dealing with the almost universal phenomenon of falling out of love.

While Western academics ponder the patriarchal nature of society and throw these interpretations across eastern and African cultures; many parts of Asia, including the region’s powerhouse of Thailand, are essentially matriarchal in character. They belie the simple Marxist feminist analyses which rule Western academic, judicial and political groups.

In Thailand, for example, not only is there presently a woman Prime Minister but women run many of that nation’s workplaces and businesses. At the same time women routinely if sometimes affectionately dismiss their menfolk as lazy and unfaithful butterflies.

The world’s billion plus Muslims also do not reach for lawyers if parental relationships break down. The father is permitted access to see the children - only the mother has no right to approach without good reason.

The children are deemed to live with their mother until the age of seven and then with their father.

Remarrying or being seen to be of immoral character are interpreted as reasons to remove the child from the mother and either grant custody to the father or an appropriate relative.

In late 2010 I wrote an article for Online Opinion, Australia’s leading website for intellectual and cultural debate, to mark the launch of Chaos at the Crossroads: Family Law Reform in Australia. At the time I claimed the book fulfilled a long held dream of Dads On The Air to include publishing alongside its weekly broadcasts.

This dream was not fulfilled. However it is hoped that men’s issues will be included as one of the streams in the small publishing enterprise A Sense Of Place Publishing launched in the latter half of 2012.

The article and the commentary that it provoked can be seen at:

http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=11340

Dads On The Air, often shortened to DOTA, is a community radio program which began in Western Sydney in August of 2000 with a small group of extremely disgruntled separated men who had no experience of radio and no resources. I worked as a mainstream journalist and was the only one with any media experience.

To quote the article: "The book tells the story of the last decade of struggle for family law reform in Australia, not just by separated fathers, their supporters and their lobby groups, but by grandparents and other family members cut out of children's lives by the discriminatory and destructive sole-custody model purveyed by the court.

"Chaos also tells the story of how, from the humble beginnings of that disheveled little group, Dads On The Air became the world's most famous fathers radio program, regularly interviewing national and international activists, advocates, academics and authors. Dads On The Air, broadcast on Liverpool's community radio station 2GLF each Tuesday morning, went on to attract a talented team of people with legal, journalistic, managerial, entertainment, academic and counseling backgrounds.

When Dads On The Air began we had no idea we were part of a worldwide trend protesting the treatment of fathers in separated families. Internationally, Fathers 4 Justice in Britain had yet to climb Buckingham Palace or invade the House Of Commons. Bob Geldof was yet to speak out. But we were fortunate to find ourselves broadcasting in an era when there was no shortage of stories. As that first small band of dads rapidly discovered, like no other subject, family law cut deep into hearts and lives."

The history of Dads On The Air coincided closely with the evolution of Australian groups such as Dads In Distress, which was formed in the same year, the Non-Custodial