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Message to motherhood and apple pie judges blindly awarding child custody to mothers: you are not serving the children's "best interests." A late boxscore demonstrating that mothers are not invariably sugar and spice and everything nice comes from, among other sources, the Toronto Institute for the Prevention of Child Abuse.
In a 1994 family violence study, it reported that of all perpetrators of...
- malnutrition, 49 percent were mothers, 31 percent, fathers;
- child neglect, 85 percent were mothers;
- emotional maltreatment, 79 percent were mothers.
Among children three years and under, boys were 59 percent of victims, and four to eleven, 55.5 percent. The largest number of investigated families were single mother families.
Similarly, in 1986, Health and Welfare Canada reported finding mothers to be 38.7 percent of all child abuse perpetrators, and fathers 18.4 percent. In that same year, Dr. Cyril Greenland, McMaster University, reporting on 100 child abuse and negligence deaths in Ontario, 1973 to 1982, held mothers responsible in 38 percent of cases, fathers in 13 percent, and both in 12 percent.
Findings in the United States
In the United States, according to Child Protective Services (CPS), between 1984 and 1987, mothers in Virginia were 67 percent of child abuse perpetrators; in New Jersey, 70 percent; in Texas, 68 percent; in Iowa, 64.5 percent; in Minnesota, 62 percent; and in Alaska, 67 percent. And in 1984 Joan Ditson and Sharon Shay reported, in Child Abuse and Neglect, volume eight, Lansing, Michigan, that 49 percent of perpetrators are single parent mothers. Similar findings appear in the studies of Richard Gelles, 1978, and Saad Nagi, 1977, and elsewhere.
In a 1988 study, Daly and Wilson reported that for the years 1974-1983, 54 percent of murderers of children under 17 were mothers. And, according to the Statistical Abstract of the United States for the period from 1980-1984 mothers were 57-61.4 percent of perpetrators of child maltreatment cases.
And so on, study after study.
The lesson
If judges truly cared about children's "best interests" and their goal was not to provide women hidden alimony disguised as child support, when deciding child custody they would weigh both parents fairly and impartially. In a word, it would be a rebuttal presumption that the children would go with the parent with the best mental and physical health, education and conduct, and ability to be at least partially self-supporting. Any judge deciding otherwise would be obligated to put his reasons into writing.
As an alternative, 50-50 shared custody might be ordered if the parents wished it and the arrangement were appropriate. It would be assumed both parents were loving and equally capable. Were fair play the standard and women knew they would not get favored treatment, magically, the bloated divorce rate would nose dive.
In reality, when awarding custody judges still tacitly apply the illegal and discredited circa 1800 yardstick established when the appellate courts decreed that children of "tender years" belong with the mother. The current undefined "children's best interests" appellate rule, which means whatever any judge wants it to mean, simply is a subterfuge.
The results of unwarranted judicial discrimination against fathers appear, typically, in the following Pennsylvania Department of Health division of Health Statistics and research data reported in "Number of Children and Custody of Children in PA Divorce Occurrences, 1992-1996." Using data furnished by the state's 67 counties, the report disclosed that in family break-ups 88.9 percent of mothers received custody and only 11.1 percent of fathers.
Similarly, following studies in 19 states, the National Center for Health Statistics in 1990 reported that courts handling divorces gave custody to 72 percent of mothers but only 8.7 percent of fathers. Miscellaneous awards to persons other than parents made up the difference.
This article was based in part on material gathered by Lindsay Jackel and Reinhold Knauss, Jay Todd, Daniel Sanders, and the American Fathers Coalition.
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