Exactly as its title states, this is a very engaging study about “defiant dads” and “fathers' rights activists in America.” But, it is also a book that deserves to have a much wider readership than might be drawn to it by its title and focus on activist fathers' groups. Indeed, one important part of this work's appeal is in the rich tapestry it weaves, simply as backdrop, describing the radical changes and striking continuities in family and gender structure in America. Consider this: in 2004, more than one out of every three births was to an unmarried woman, up from four percent in 1950; in the same period, women's labor force participation doubled from 30% to 60%; and, over the same decades, the gender pay gap rose from under 60% to over 75%. These data signify massive cross-class changes in the social structure of American society that have precipitated government involvement in the family, poor and non-poor alike. Indeed, of the nearly 16 million families that constitute the caseload handled under federal child support enforcement, only 2.5 million were families on Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF)—a fascinating measure of government enmeshment in contemporary family life. And, yet, some things have changed less. As of 2002, mothers still constituted 84 percent of all custodial parents.

The perception that women have made significant economic gains at the same time as they continue to be the preeminent recipients of both child support and custody awards has precipitated a strong emotional sense of injustice among men who are drawn to or recruited by fathers' rights groups. In the eyes of a not inconsiderable number of men emerging from divorce, without satisfactory access to their children and with significant support payments expected, the state has been “captured” by women and “feminized.” Indeed, one of the main findings of this study is the distrust that activists feel towards state involvement in virtually all aspects of the post-divorce phase of the family relationship.

Jocelyn Elise Crowley's purpose in the book is two-fold: to explore what fathers' rights groups want in the way of public policy changes and to reveal what they do in terms of interpersonal activities to assist their membership. The book's main contention is that “father's rights groups have two faces: a political side—focusing on transforming the society which they inhabit and a much lesser-known personal side—focusing on intra-family relationships” (p. 5). On the policy side, fathers' rights groups hope ultimately for a world in which custody is equalized and no money for children's support need change hands. In the intermediate term, activists speak of the desire for accountability over how child support is spent and greater fairness in the expectation of payments and in the formulation of custody awards. But, these ambitions mostly dissipate into ineffectiveness. Fathers' rights groups are, surprisingly, small in number (averaging only about one hundred members in one or two groups per state) and they appear to have little impact on legislation or judicial policy. As Crowley notes, if anything, the state has become harsher, enforcing child support awards, seizing assets, and utilizing both the threat and reality of imprisonment.

Yet, fathers' rights groups, in Crowley's estimation, are far more successful in the ways that they serve the personal needs of their memberships. One of the most interesting contributions of the book is, in fact, the portrayal of the support functions (ironically, feminized) that the groups' leaders and membership afford those whose anger and sense of betrayal can be all-consuming. In the meetings, not only can men seek advice on legal strategy, but they can also find emotional connection in the similarities of experiences and the willingness to hear each other out at the level of very personal detail. The “A-A-like atmosphere” allows fathers to “feel free to express themselves without fear of being exposed in their distraught emotional state” (p. 223). The opportunity to seek advice and emotional guidance, Crowley suggests, seems to have a concrete effect in helping strengthen and steady the approach fathers pursue towards a better relationship with their children and ex-wives.

The question of why fathers' rights groups have failed to expand into a full-fledged social movement arises naturally towards the end of the study. In answer, Crowley points us to a failure of leader entrepreneurship in stirring a broader mass following. But there are a host of other explanatory candidates that might bear consideration, including the lack of political opportunity and the difficulty mostly white, male activists face in claiming victimhood (sociologist John Skrentny's work bears on this discussion). Further exploration of this question would have been welcome.

Crowley approaches her subject through a rich mix of methods. She undertakes a careful analysis of government documents that address the shift in family structure and the changing laws shaping child custody and child support collection and enforcement. But, most interesting is her rich cache of interviews covering 26 groups across the country. These interviews, partially transcribed and spread liberally throughout the text, help to convey confidence in the close familiarity with the fathers' rights groups that she has managed to achieve.

Such confidence in the author's methods is important given that the area of divorce, child support, and custody is a minefield, as any lawyer will attest. To write about these issues dispassionately (leaving aside litigating them) is a challenge of no small dimension. Crowley does not aim to be dispassionate in the sense of writing without emotion. She indicts the policy agenda of fathers' rights groups as overtaken on occasion by “zealots” (p. 262), extremists among them promoting positions on domestic violence which are “just flat-out wrong” (p. 261). “The bottom line,” Crowley says, “is that the political agenda of fathers' rights groups today is potentially damaging to the health of American families” (p. 173). Nor is she reticent about setting out, in the final chapter, a series of recommendations which reformed fathers' rights groups are urged to consider. Throughout, however, Crowley provides a close and sensitive portrayal of the frustrations many fathers experience and of the support and advice/counseling work which fathers' rights groups perform. As a study which adeptly combines careful scholarship with an explicitly evaluative and even prescriptive agenda, Defiant Dads: Fathers' Rights Activists in America is impressively successful.