No

by Lisa H Warren

Created on: April 02, 2008

When asking if fathers should have "equal custody rights" in a divorce situation, one must clarify exactly what "equal custody rights" means.

If it means that under any custody arrangement fathers should have equal rights as a parent, then of course they should (provided they aren't a danger to the child/ren). Ideally, regardless of physical custody, both parents should share in the rights, responsibilities, and joys of parenting. They are, after all, equally parents to their child/ren.

If "equal custody rights" is defined as "equal rights to file for custody," that is a different question, to which the answer is still, in my opinion, "yes". Both parents are parents. Both should, and usually do, have the right to file for physical custody. In cases where the mother is negligent, abusive, or otherwise an inferior parent such mothers should not automatically gain custody of children simply by virtue of their gender.

If the term, "equal custody rights," is intended to mean, "leveling the playing field" for the sake of leveling the playing field, then I don't believe that type of "equal custody rights" should necessarily be the law. The way many good and loving fathers are treated in divorce situations is a crime; and I don't underestimate the quality and intensity of love, the degree of loss, or the gross unfairness suffered by good fathers who do not get custody of their child/ren. A major overhauling of the way things are handled in custody cases is required. Still, when there are two good, capable, loving, parents I believe that there are elements of the mother/child relationship and bond that are unique, important, crucial, and powerful.

That is not necessarily saying that all mothers must automatically be better parents or people than all fathers. It is saying that between two people who are equally loving, decent, and capable as parents the maternal relationship is unique and cannot be replaced or replicated by any other relationship. My view is not based on the thinking that the person who carried the baby for nine months (on in my case seven months) wins. Besides being a biological mother of two, I'm the adoptive mother of one. When it comes to bonding and relationships, I don't put much weight on who it was that delivered the baby (or even some automatic and interminable rights associated with shared genetics). My argument is based on the bond and the interaction that exists between mothers and their children.

It is now known that when mothers have and nurture a baby their brain develops new brain connections. It is also now known that fathers who remain actively and regularly in a nurturing role have increases in brain connections as well, although the increase is not as substantial as the one mothers have. In other words, nurturing a child (not just fathering one) increases a parent's intelligence to some degree; but Nature has still given mothers the edge on this.

Fathers who had a normal relationship with their mothers usually have some understanding of the quality and depth of that mother/child relationship. Fathers who respect and value that relationship are not likely to try to separate the children they love from the mother with whom their children are so bonded. There are, of course, fathers who recall their own wonderful mother and their relationship with her, but who somehow don't see their children's mother as the same kind of mother to her own children. Again, in the case of two good parents, the father who sees his children's relationship with their mother as less valuable than their own relationship with their mother are demonstrating a lack of respect for the mother of their children, the maternal relationship, and even their children's rights as children not to be separated from their mother.

When both parents are loving, good, parents who are appropriately bonded with their child/ren, one might ask of anyone willing to consider separating children from their mother, "What kind of monster wants to separate mothers and children?" I would venture to assume that it is precisely the fathers who are most worthy of custody who would, in fact, refuse to do such a thing. In view of the fact that the "King Solomon approach" is unacceptable, it only makes sense that Nature be respected. (Those who recall the story of King Solomon will recall that two women claimed to be a child's mother, and the real mother was identified when she chose to give up her child rather than allow it to be cut in half and shared equally.)

While loving, good, mothers and fathers can be equal and identical parents in many ways; as with so many gender differences, there are differences between mothers and fathers. Without a whole in-depth discussion of brain differences and similarities, hormonal influences, childhood nurturing, communications styles, and biological hardwiring; it should be enough to simply recognize that the mother/child bond and the role of that relationship is unique. While humans have, of course, evolved in intellect and social interaction/lifestyl e, across the animal kingdom Nature has usually arranged things such that mothers have the babies and babies remain with them until they are old enough to go off on their own. (Yes, there is the example of penguins, who are carried by their fathers, but they aren't the general rule in Nature.)

Animals or penguins aside, normal women/mothers tend to have an edge when it comes to the part of the brain that is best suited for bonding, teaching, communicating, and understanding human nature. It is generally accepted that the biological basis for this is related to nurturing and child rearing; and when it isn't an aching father who longs to stay close to his children, most people do not question the mother/child bond's uniqueness and importance.

There could have been no child who loved both her mother and father equally as I did, but no matter how much I loved my father I had a different relationship with him in some ways. I was six when my mother was hospitalized for seven months. My sister was twelve. Our father was wonderful, and our aunt (who watched us while he worked) was wonderful too. Still, we could not feel whole and OK until our mother could come home. Fortunately, because my father had been so close to his own mother, he understood that our incompleteness without our mother with us was no reflection on our closeness to him. Children who are separated from mothers with whom they have a normal mother/child relationship long and pine for their mothers when they're separated from them. The effects of such unhappiness on emotional and physical wellbeing and development must be seriously considered.

Last year in my neighborhood, a wild turkey and her babies began to walk around our circle each morning and evening. The proud and beautiful mother turkey would lead her five babies to lawns, where they would stop for a snack and move to the next yard. Before she left each yard to move on to the next she would call any straying babies, and all would follow. Over the course of the Summer we and all our neighbors loved seeing the family make its rounds. As the months went on we watched the babies turn from little birds into birds just about their mother's size. Still, she led her family, and she somehow seemed to be so proud and strong and to know exactly where it was they must go.

I once went close enough to take a picture of our newest neighbors, and when I saw the face of that mother turkey, as she led her half-sized babies across the yard, it was so clear that she was every bit as much a mother as I am.

Men who were close to their mothers as children know how they felt about their mothers, but even they can't know what it is to be a mother. People who had bad mothers don't even know that much. Women who were close to their mothers know how that felt, but women who had bad mothers and women who are bad mothers have no concept of the solid mother/child relationship.

Women who are properly bonded, good mothers, and who also had good mothers, are the ones who have experienced both sides of the mother/child bond - and again, it isn't about who gave birth to the child. Fathers, advocates for fathers, and many law-makers, however, do not fall into the group with personal knowledge of the mother/child bond.

We live in a time when society rightfully wants to end unfairness. Men continue to be treated with gross injustice and even cruelty in many divorce situations. This is something decent and reasonable people want rectified, because reasonable people acknowledge the depth and importance of the father/child bond too. I believe, though, designing laws aimed at leveling the playing field, which Nature has made uneven in a very fundamental way, would leave too many children growing up feeling less than whole, and could damage society, on the whole, in a way that many today would not foresee.

In the debate over men's equality in custody cases, men will often have scorn in their voices when they say, "Women think they're in a special club just because they carried the baby for nine months." This kind of thinking results from the fact that men see the difference between fathers and mothers in terms of who delivered the baby. Women know, from personal experience, that that "special club" to which men refer is about day-to-day bonding, mutual interactions, and even physiological effects in both child and mother. It is a "club" to which men simply cannot gain entrance, and so they cannot and will not ever understand the qualities required for membership.

The ominous trend of disregarding, overcoming, and altering Nature has continued to grow in society. If we move to a point where the mother/child bond is no longer considered sacred, and we create laws that pretend that everything is equal in spite of the fact that Nature determines otherwise, we will have lost our way well beyond what we ever could have imagined.

There needs to be a complete overhaul of custody laws and the treatment of divorced fathers, but it shouldn't be at the expense of the mother/child bond.

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