[Porsche-O-Phile]

Of course fathers matter. Who else would the courts be able to force to pay tens of thousands of dollars to b**chy ex / former spouses under the guise of "providing for the children"?

According to our legal system males are good for exactly one function in the universe - accreting money to all hand over to former spouses so the mothers can (hopefully) make all the decisions and perform every other function in raising the kids. Fathers are not deemed to be good for anything else.

Sorry to be bitter / cynical but I've seen this play out in court way too many times with people close to me (both friends and family - the result is always the same: mothers get the kids and fathers get the bill, little or no contact and are all but scoffed at for thinking they're of any value). It's total BS but that's the way it is. The only way a father gets "custody" or really any meaningful say in his kids' upbringing is if the mother and her whole family are to die in a car wreck or something - and even then it's not a guarantee.