Tuesday, August 05, 2008 - Posts
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E.J., you ask (quite sanely!) whether I "seriously" feel any sympathy for Clark Rockefeller, who, after all, stole his daughter from a social worker in broad daylight, as it were. Alas, the answer is yes, possibly. I don't honestly know. I think the guy deserves his day in court and till more is known about the situation I'll reserve making any judgments. Con men can love their children, too, after all. Anyway, my point in that first post wasn't so much any profound sympathy I felt for him—kidnapping a child, even with the best intentions, is traumatic for that child!—but that Rockefeller's amazing story made me think more about how as a culture we make decisions about custody and whether there's room for improvement with some concerted effort from all parties. You're totally right, I think, to take me to task for implying that feminism caused this; the history you cite is fascinating evidence that it didn't. (I just needed a good headline.) But I can say that I have encountered many parity-minded women who are content, in a sense, to turn a blind eye to lack of parity when it comes to divorce and child-rearing. Sure, the problem may be largely intractable; as Dahlia points out, there is often no good way to solve the problem of joint custody when you have two working parents, one of whom might need to move for work. However, I do feel that an honest and open discussion about custody and fathers' roles might lead to some interesting adjustments in how custody law works; certainly, the burgeoning dads' rights movement that Dahlia mentioned would like to see that happen. Meanwhile, I'm struck by just how many fathers out there I've talked to who feel themselves to be stuck in a position of having to accommodate past the letter of the law, in part because of fears that the laws are so much more sympathetic to mothers than fathers. They'd rather lose a lot than end up losing everything.
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Meghan,
Dahlia has noted the painful fact that there is simply no good way for divorced families to accommodate two working parents (a product of a changed economy more than of feminism, I would argue, but that's for another day). So let me take issue with blaming feminism for Clark Rockefeller's kidnapping his daughter—or rather, for treating men 's claims to fatherhood unfairly after a divorce.
A brief history of custody law: Until 1851, men were childrens' presumptive guardians and custodians. In that year, a lone American judge first broke with precedent to articulate a new custody standard—"the best interest of the child"—which he used to justify giving custody of the child to a mother. It signalled the beginning of the end of a world in which children were family laborers—either a source of income who could be contracted out to other families, or part of the family's earnings unit. With that first mother-custody decision came a series of outraged diatribes about the imminent downfall of civilization if fathers were no longer in charge of the family. But the judge was articulating a new standard of child custody that fit the Victorian era's new ideology of woman-as-nurturer, as caregiver, as naturally domestic and giving and good. It also drew on a new vision of children as malleable angels in need of love, rather than as wild beasties in need of discipline. (I've got a chapter on this shift from father- to mother-custody in my book What Is Marriage For?)
For the next century, the radical idea that women not only could have custody of the children but should presumptively have custody gradually took over. I've waited a day to post on this as I try to find the stats, but my impression has been that feminism stopped that trend. With the idea of gender parity in child-rearing has come the idea that men should and could have custody as well. Family lawyers and observers of family law have told me that the trend has gone the other way, and that when men sue for custody they have an equal chance at getting it. The stats are hard to find, since they're state by state, and even court by court, rather than nationwide; if I can find a source I will post it here.
But the deeper problem here is one I discovered in reporting on custody battles about a decade ago: Emotionally healthy parents who are putting the children first do not end up fighting over custody in court. When there's a custody battle, it's often because the family dynamics were already ugly and messy and volatile. The family is then disposed according to an individual judge's view of what children need. It's a wildly dysfunctional and distressing system, and I have no idea how it could be done better.
Meanwhile, Meghan, do you seriously feel any sympathy for a man who attacked a social worker with his SUV and kidnapped his daughter, and who appears to be a con man who lied about his identity?? I realize that news reports can be unreliable—flash! Jon-Benet's parents are NOT guilty!—but unless Rockefeller had evidence that the mother is physically abusive to the child (and I haven't heard any claims that she was), how can he possibly justify such behavior? That sure wasn't in the best interest of the child.
EJ
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Meghan, the Clark Rockefeller story really is deeply weird, and getting weirder by the day. Now we hear allegations that he’s tied to some murder in California. Jump back Lifetime. You can’t make this stuff up. You’re also right that there is something disturbing about the lingering preference for mothers in disputed custody cases, and also right that there is a bubbling, hissing fathers’ rights movement that contends fathers routinely get screwed in custody cases. But it seems to me that the other thing at work here—far more unfair than general sexism in the family court system—is the patent absurdity of family court oversight when one parent needs to move out of town. Suddenly, everything that is already nuts about family court gets exponentially worse, as judges are forced to make decisions that have the noncustodial parent relegated to a handful of visits a year and small kids consigned to a lifetime of trans-Atlantic flights. These “move” cases are invariably lose-lose-lose propositions for everyone, especially the kids, but they are also a byproduct of second-wave feminism. Because now moms need to work. And dads need to work. And after the divorce, the odds are decent that someone will therefore have to relocate to someplace far away in order to do that. Suddenly the noncustodial parent—having done nothing wrong whatsoever—goes from seeing the kids every other weekend to seeing them for a week at Christmas. Even the worst child abusers don't suffer that fate. I’d be bitter, too.
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