A self-censored chronicle of family court dramas, lived by parents who lost all or some visitation with or custody of a child or children based on perjury and/or other false courtroom evidence
The film follows the dramatic journeys of ten women from city of Chicago as they struggle find healing and reconciliation, after haven been dealt the most difficult of circumstances… the absence of their fathers.
We Need To Talk is not only about the struggles to survive and navigate as a woman of color, but at its core, it’s about the importance of a father’s role in the lives of their daughters.
Harriet Tubman once reflected wistfully, “If I could have convinced more slaves that they were slaves, I could have freed thousands more.” Now, that telling quote has been resurrected by Janks Morton ostensibly with the hope of shaking another generation of African-Americans out of the doldrums.
Morton employs the sage adage during his prefatory remarks to What Black Men Think, a thought-provoking documentary which he not only produced and directed, but also appears in it periodically as narrator, commentator and interviewer. The picture paints an enlightening and empathetic portrait of African-American males by employing some rather surprising raw statistics to suggest that we all reconsider some commonly-held beliefs about brothers.
Child custody and support laws have become more onerous over the last 50 years due to fewer parents staying together and women becoming equally as capable as men at earning a living outside the home. Instead of reflecting these changes, the laws have lagged behind, continuing to favor mothers over fathers. The laws generally award primary custody to the parent who spent more time at home with the children and less time working, even if the difference was miniscule.
The other parent is then ordered to pay a crushing amount of child support, sometimes on top of alimony. In a small percentage of situations, usually where the father was the primary caregiver, this situation is reversed and the laws punish the mother…
Although a few small changes have been made to the laws within the last few years, due to exposure and the efforts of advocacy organizations, there has not been significant progress. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 84 percent of custodial parents are mothers, a figure that has not changed since 1983. This is unfortunate, because Canadian economist Paul Miller analyzed data on families and found that “parental gender is not a…predictor at all of any of the child outcomes examined, that is behavioral, educational or health outcomes.” The children often end up with “Parental Alienation Syndrome,” developing a dislike for the noncustodial parent bought on by the custodial parent.
The film follows the dramatic journeys of eight young women from the tough city streets of Washington,DC as they struggle to overcome poverty, poor educational systems, no healthcare, and the most difficult life circumstance they have been dealt… the absence of their fathers.
Dear Daddy is not only about the struggles to survive and navigate as a young woman of color, but at its core, it’s about the importance of a father’s role in the lives of their daughters.
