Check out this piece from the NYT Motherlode blog on the growing number of dads getting primary custody, and the article it references, “Custody Lost”, in Working Mother magazine.
I (Deesha) am penning my reaction to these articles as one of the debut posts in my new capacity the co-parenting columnist for TheFasterTimes.com, coming soon…
In the meantime, here’s an excerpt from the Motherlode blog, which in turn excerpts from the Working Mother article:
The “tender-years doctrine,” a court presumption that mothers are the more suitable parents for children under 7, was abolished in most states in 1994. And, in large part because of the recession, women are poised to outnumber men in the work force for the first time in American history. Job layoffs affecting more men than women have yielded a burgeoning crop of Mr. Moms.
“Men are now able to argue that they spend more time with the kids than their working wives do,” says the veteran New York City divorce attorney Raoul Felder. “This is one of the dark sides of women’s accomplishments in the workplace — they’re getting a raw deal in custody cases, while men are being viewed more favorably.”
Or is it a raw deal? Is it not, in effect, the same presumption — the parent who works harder, parents less — that men have faced for years? You could make that argument, Abrahms says. You could also argue that working women are held to a higher parenting standard than working men, paying a price for not conforming to the cultural expectation that mothers be more hands-on than fathers.
Lisa Belkin, the Motherlode blogger, closes with two questions that I now pose to you: “If a mother works more, and a father less, is that a logical reason for the children to live with him? Have you felt the swing of this pendulum in your own life?”
While we believe that joint custody should be granted except in situations where such an arrangement is detrimental to the kids (e.g., high-conflict parents who can’t even agree on the weather; physical and/or emotional abuse or neglect; substance abuse), we’d like to hear your opinions on this issue.
You may also be interested in reading this HuffPo article on women paying alimony: “What’s Good for the Goose.”
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