Child custody: Where men hit a glass ceiling

By Rachel Alexander
web posted August 19, 2002

Child custody has emerged as an area where men run into a
glass ceiling. "It's awful to take a child away from its mother!"
Sound familiar? That is because it is the message that has been
repeatedly hammered at society by feminists, as well as some
conservatives. But you won't hear the equivalent, "It's awful to
take a child away from its father," because the feminists aren't
pushing equivalent respect for fathers. Instead, you are more
likely to hear this mantra about fathers, "there's so many
deadbeat dads." The feminists have successfully changed the
law, the courts, and societal attitudes when it comes to the
custody and care of children from split homes. Instead of looking
at fathers' capabilities and indiscretions individually, the law
makes sweeping assumptions and treats all fathers as second
class. Women, if you are successful in no other area of life, read
this article closely, because you can easily succeed here, the
system is so weighted in your favor. Free money, free legal help,
and kind court staff. If you don't work, or don't work much,
you'll make out even better, so it is best not to work much. And
all you need to do is get pregnant! Men, all I offer for advice to
you is this: if you have children, you'd better pray that you remain
a couple.

Sad as it sounds, this is where the law is at. When a couple that
has mutual children splits up, the courts examine just a few
factors to determine custody, known as the "best interests of the
child." These factors make it very likely that the woman will get
custody of the children and hence child support money. Two of
the most important factors include who is better able to "take
care" of the child and whether there has been domestic violence
by one of the parents. Well, these factors "sound" good, but in
reality, they have been specifically selected for their heavy bias
against fathers. There are numerous other factors that address
equally as serious issues, that could affect mothers for the worse,
or at least equally affect both parents, such as drug abuse, but
these factors are conveniently not found in the "best interests of
the child" statutes (there must be an actual drug conviction -
which is absurd - one drug-addict mother was able to take away
custody away from the father even though she snorted meth
every single day - the courts had no knowledge of her drug
habit!). "Take care" of the child has little to do with being able to
financially support the child. It should, since almost as many
women as men work outside of the home now, but because a lot
of women with children who split up with the fathers aren't very
ambitious and sit around the house watching soap operas, the
law has been crafted to label this as "taking care" of the children,
instead of earning money. Since most fathers work full-time, they
lose here.

"Domestic violence" is another disguised way of guaranteeing
that the fathers lose. Women are now trained by society to call
the police anytime their boyfriend or husband loses his temper,
and are using and abusing this taxpayer funded "helpline" at an
increasingly alarming rate. Murray A. Straus, a sociologist and
co-director for the Family Research Laboratory at the University
of New Hampshire, reported that at least 30 studies of domestic
violence, including some he had conducted, found that women
were as equally culpable of domestic violence as men. Yet this
information is not widely publicized, and is downplayed by both
police officers and the courts. Women are also abusing
restraining orders. A recent article in Human Events cited a
government study that found that fewer than half of all restraining
orders contained even an allegation of physical violence. Instead
of working out their fights, or leaving the man, women are taking
the easy way out and forcing taxpayers to pay for their "tattling"
every time they take up the time of a police officer or court. Of
course, many times it is the woman who caused the fight, but that
is not going to end up in the court's minute entry. Men are
laughed at if they are the victims of domestic violence. One
young father attempted to seek free legal help from a domestic
violence law clinic after his ex-wife continued to hit him, and the
clinic turned him away in amusement. Another young father had
the domestic violence of an ex-girlfriend, who had hit him, used
against him in order to justify taking away his child.

It is easy for mothers to obtain free legal aid in pursuing custody
of their children. There are flyers everywhere - in women's
restrooms, in doctor's offices, and in government buildings
offering free legal resources for women to use. The Legal Aid
clinics help out so many mothers with custody disputes and
divorces that recently they have had to limit their representation
of custody cases to cases alleging abuse. Domestic violence legal
clinics are at many of the law schools now, and give women free
legal help with divorces, custody disputes, and restraining orders.
If there are low-income requirements, they are rarely verified;
any woman can come in and say she makes very little money,
and on her word alone she will receive free legal help (just like at
Planned Parenthood).

The child support laws are crafted not just to provide for the
cost of raising a child, but to bring the parent receiving the
support to the level she would have been at if she were still with
the father! The absurdity of this situation can be seen in this all
too common example: A woman cheats on her husband and then
files for no-fault divorce. She gets custody of the children, AND
the benefit of his salary and pay raises until their child turns 18 -
all the money benefits as if they were still married (and she may
even get alimony on top of that, but that is a different issue for
another column, and at least with alimony, once the mother
remarries, the alimony goes away)! Why should an ex-wife be
guaranteed, years after having been married, the same living
standard of her husband? Absent unhealthy circumstances, why
shouldn't the parent with the BETTER living standards be
considered the one better prepared to take care of the child?
That way, one parent isn't stuck paying for the ex-spouse too.
Currently, though, most child custody laws do not consider
financial responsibility of the parent as one of the "best interests
of the child."

Child support is widely touted by governmental agencies as one
of the most important things government does, and the duty of it
is glorified almost Nazi-like to the level of a moral authority. Yet
what exactly does child support do? The charts for child support
award way too much money to the custodial parent - does
anyone really believe that it costs $800/month to raise a child? In
most situations, the mother has custody and makes considerably
less money than the father. According to fairly standard child
support guidelines, if the mother makes $20,000/year and the
father makes $40,000/year, and there is one child, the father
should pay $535/month in child support (the formula adds both
parents' salaries together, then comes up with a random number
of how much they think that child costs - here it was $800 - then
has the non-custodial parent pay the percentage his salary is -
here it is 66%). Does anyone REALLY THINK that many of
the mothers who resort to going to court to collect child support
are the types of mothers who would spend a full $535/month on
one child, as well as another $265/month of their own money
(particularly if the child is older than 5 and in school)? There is
no monitoring of that money, and it is very difficult to get a court
to order any type of accounting by the mother. One such mother
of a 6-year old has stated that she is saving the money for breast
implants.

Furthermore, the concept of child support money discourages
personal responsibility and ambition. It penalizes the custodial
parent for working harder and trying to get ahead, because a
higher paying job would reduce the amount of free money they
get from the other parent. It is akin to welfare - if you work hard,
you aren't eligible for it. And it is a double penalty, because it
also penalizes the non-custodial parent for working harder. The
more money the non-custodial parent makes, the more money is
taken out of his paycheck to go to the residential parent.

Do we really want to heap benefits on mothers who split up with
the fathers, essentially giving "reward" money to women who
have sex, instead of letting them suffer the consequences?
Everyone knows that sex without true commitment leads to
broken down homes and emotional trauma, particularly for any
children involved. Everyone also knows that when you have sex,
you may get pregnant. In some ways, child support is merely a
disguised form of prostitution - women are encouraged to have
sex and receive money from any man who succeeds in
impregnating them. After sex, the man then has no other contact
with the woman except to give her money for the child, and any
modicum of visitation he can squeak out. Instead of teaching
women to avoid gratuitous sex, our society encourages sex with
its condom education and giveaways, and easy access to
taxpayer-funded Planned Parenthoods. Women realize they can
have gratuitous sex without suffering any consequences, because
the safety net of a man's pocketbook will always be there for
them, thanks to the long arm of the moral authoritarian
government child support agency that reassures them that they
are right.

And what exactly are deadbeat dads? Many "deadbeat dads"
are simply fathers who are going through a hard time
economically; they may have lost a job, or simply are having a
difficult time paying $800/month in child support. Sure there are
some fathers who have completely rejected any responsibility
towards their children, but that doesn't mean all fathers should be
treated like criminals and rounded up by Sheriff's Offices and
taken into jail. Why are the fathers held accountable while the
mothers aren't?

Why this bias against fathers has been allowed to develop may
be the result of conservatives' neglect of this area of the law.
Conservatives have avoided domestic relations law, not wanting
to get involved in this area because of their strong dislike of
divorce as well as their old-fashioned view that mothers are
better nurturers than fathers. Consequently, liberal feminists have
had free reign here. What is interesting however, is the flavor of
feminism which has prevailed - it is not the version that
encourages men to be more sensitive, but instead the version that
accepts prostitution and rampant sexual promiscuousness as a
component of womens' equality.

The feminists' efforts in this area are no doubt driven by both
their beliefs that mothers are better nurturers of children, and
their resentment towards men who use women for sex and then
leave them. But punishing all men equally fails to take into
account certain things. First of all, those men eventually remarry
and move on with their lives. The courts consider the new
spouse's salary when computing child support! So punishing the
father also results in punishing another completely innocent
woman. Secondly, child support creates resentment and
additional fighting between the parents, since the paying parent
resents the other parent and will try to change the situation. This
clogs up the family courts.

So what should the solution be? For starters, how about ending
child support between parents who both want custody of their
children? If someone really wants their children, they will find a
way to make ends meet. It just doesn't cost that much to raise a
child, no matter what people whine. The message we should be
sending is, if you can't afford a child, then abstain from sex!
Foster parents receive around $300/month per child. This isn't
very much money. Nobody seems to complain about those
children not receiving $800/month. Why not let the parent who
wants to care for the child, and is more financially capable, have
the custody, or at the very least cut out the child support? That
way, no parent is stuck supporting the other parent. This would
also send a message to parents that they should be ambitious and
set good work ethics for their children, instead of the current
message which encourages parents to be lazy and earn less. If
the mother has to work during the day, and the father works
evenings, let the father take care of the children during the day
instead of putting them in daycare. There are better workable
solutions than giving the children to the mother just because she
is lazy and stays at home, utilizing the father only as a money
funnel. One mother sat around the house getting high on her days
off, yet still put her child in daycare, using the father's money!

Finally, "domestic violence," which has been abused by women,
should be looked at more closely by the courts if it is to be a
factor in determining child custody. There may be more to
"domestic violence" than appears in a brief minute entry or police
report. For example, the mother may have been racked out on
drugs at the time she called the police, as well as every day of
her life, yet this is not taken into consideration as part of the "best
interests of the child" unless there is an actual drug conviction.
The courts should also examine whether the mother is the type to
move from abuser to abuser, which ultimately creates an unstable
upbringing for the child. Is it really better that a child stay with a
mother who cycles through violent or volatile relationships, or is
it better that the child live with the father whose only "history of
domestic violence" occurred when the mother obtained dubious
restraining orders against him when she was having affairs on
him? Unfortunately, the laws do not currently take these
circumstances into consideration when considering the "best
interests of the child." Unless a father has an excellent attorney
who is able to get ahold of hard evidence proving these types of
circumstances, and has success persuading a judge to give these
factors some weight even though they are not in the law, a father
is simply out of luck. He has reached the glass ceiling for fathers
in child custody.

Rachel Alexander can be reached at
editor@intellectualconservative.com. She has done work with a
domestic violence law clinic and has studied this area of the law
in law school. She is the founder of the web site Intellectual
Conservative (http://www.intellectualconservative.com).

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