Gender Discrimination & Citizenship

Link to article on Capital Newspapers
http://host.madison.com/news/national/government-and-politics/article_7f95c6bb-5885-5e5e-bbdb-2b4eaf1c7397.html

Court Weights Citizenship Rule That Varies By Sex
By: Mark Sherman

In this article that just came out today, it involves the different laws for mothers and fathers that are trying to gain citizenship. For men it states, "For people born before 1986, their American fathers had to have lived in the U.S. for 10 years, at least five of them after the age of 14, in order for their citizenship to be passed on." For women, "American mothers need only have lived in the U.S. continuously for a year before the birth of a child." That means that men have to had lived in the U.S. for nine more years then women in order to be the father of their children. I believe this is extremely sexist because it's saying they want the mothers to be the ones taking care of the children. Just because the mother is the one who bears the child and gives birth to him or her, doesn't mean she would be a better parent. In a lot of situations the mothers are alcoholics, drug addicts, or abusive, and can't handle taking care of their children. In cases like that the father should be able to have full custody, but if he hasn't lived in the U.S. for more then 10 years then the child has a harder time becoming a U.S. citizen and the father loses rights.

I understand that they are trying to control the border and the amount of immigrants that are coming into the U.S., but men and women should have the same rights. At the end of the article it says that the court agreed that the law discriminates against men, but what are they going to do about it then?

This topic relates to many other things other then just citizenship. This article is a prime example of how women are treated better then men when it comes to the children. In the workforce men are treated better then women, and in the household women are treated better then men. Why can't men and women be treated equally in all aspects of life? It's issues like these that teach the children bad ideas of how to act when they get older, and that's not what we want. In the book it talks about how baby boys and girls are put into a specific gender from the first day they are home. It's either pink or blue walls, clothes, or toys that the child is forced to wear and play with, and it's things like this that put children into gender norms. More and more men these days are becoming single-parents and they are very caring, loving, and good at parenting just like a mother would be. You can't discriminate parents by gender because it's based on their interest, values, and personalities that make a good parent, whether or not they are male or female.

"The justices could decide that the case is so knotty that it was a mistake to take it up," and no decision was made because they knew what was going on is wrong, and they don't know what to do about it.