Talk:Tender years doctrine

Regarding the statement:

"Statistics such as those from the U.S. Census Bureau indicate that family courts still demonstrate an overwhelming preference to place children of divorce in the custody of their mothers,"

...statistics from the U.S. Census Bureau do not tell what trends are current in Family Court decisions. They only tell what percentage of children live with their mothers or their fathers. What this article does not take into account is that the vast majority of fathers never seek to petition the court for full custody (and responsibility) for their children. In general, mothers continue to bear the greatest responsibility for children, and most divorced or separated fathers do not offer to take on, let alone fight for, full or even equal custody of their children. Some sources (see below)indicate that when fathers DO sue for custody, courts tend to favor the father just because he presents himself as a father who wants to care for his children. Although the mother may have been taking care of the children all along, this is expected of a mother, so she is given little credit, while the fact that a father wants to care for his children is something the courts want to encourage so much that they actually give preference to the father just because he asks for it. That so few fathers ask for it (and so most children continue to live with their mothers, as census stats show) does not indicate that Family Courts favor the mother.

Sources include:

Child Custody by Marianne Takas Harper & Row 1987 "Most men do not seek custody, but if they do, they are actually more likely than the mother to get it. In a recent major study, 63 percent of all men who sought custody of their children at divorce time did succeed in getting it." (page 2)

The Divorce Revolution: The Unexpected Social and Economic Consequences for Women and Children in America by Lenore Weitzman The Free Press 1985

Mothers on Trial: The Battle for Children and Custody by Phyllis Chesler McGraw-Hill 1986

For an overview of child custody history and current trends, see "The Determination of Child Custody in the USA" by Joan B. Kelly, Ph.D. at:  http://www.stanford.edu/group/psylawseminar/Child%20Custody%20in%20the%20USA%20%28Page%201%20of%205%29.htm

DSK369 (talk) 07:53, 22 August 2011 (UTC)

Your stat, DSK369, is misleading for two reasons. It is only showing one state, and it is only showing when men apply for custody, not custody vs women. There are times when either sexes can be the one who solely apples for custody. So your claim that men get custody more often when they apply for it is false, why are you peddling feminist misinformation here?

Axleonder (talk) 15:33, 6 August 2020 (UTC)

I just wanted to add on to what user DSK369 said. Just saying that mothers are awarded custody in more than 80% of the cases is biased because it does not include the large number of uncontested custody cases. In contrast, when fathers actively pursue custody, the courts actually tend to find in their favor. Right now. this article is using both biased sources http://www.fact.on.ca/judiciary/spin.pdf (from a biased father's rights organization) and misleading statements that don't tell the whole story. The "high success rate" of custodial mothers has been widely quoted (and rarely questioned) as prima facie evidence of bias. If you don't bother to find out how many fathers even tried to get custody, the fact that 80 or so % of mothers *got* custody does nothing to establish a grossly unfair system.

Also, #cite note 6 goes to a website that is no longer in service http://www.monoparentalitate.ro/cgi-sys/suspendedpage.cgi

vraydar 03:15, 27 August 2014 (UTC)

vraydar, father's rights sources are deemed bias to you, yet somehow I doubt you would say the same for feminist sources. You are just trying to imply fathers abandon their children. Explain why NOW (National Organization for Women) lobbied to block equal shared parenting reform if it is fathers abandoning their children? Explain why it is women doing most of the divorcing.

Axleonder (talk) 15:48, 6 August 2020 (UTC)

Issues with the statistics.
So after reading the reply I can see two issues that haven't been addressed. 1) Prohibitive cost of court battle. Many times people settle out of court and the decision remains unattested due to the cost of legal bills. Many lower socioeconomic groups simply can't afford to take their dispute to court and therefore forfeit their rights to be a father, technically by choice on paper, but in actual fact it is more complex than simply desertion of responsibilities.

2)You mention that if males do do fight they often win. These cases could simply be put down to the fact that sometimes it is overwhelmingly clear that due to mental health or drug related issued that the father is in fact the best person to take up the carer position. In these cases the father would have enough increased confidence to put money towards a legal dispute that would fall in his favor.

To me the statistics could be read multiple ways and to me remain inconclusive.

125.239.126.3 (talk) 02:49, 10 November 2017 (UTC)

Post-Divorce/Separation v. from Birth of Child
I would recommend that this article clarify that the fathers who take equal personal responsibility for the child from birth are regarded differently by courts, understandably, than fathers who want this after divorce or separation. Equal personal responsibility from birth means (a) taking one year per child as primarily responsible parent for meeting the child's dependency and developmental needs and (b) carrying half the responsibility at other times in coordination with the mother carrying her half. (One year roughly matches the time the mother is primarily responsible parent during late pregnancy, delivery, early lactation.) If the father's half of the child care is outsourced by the father instead of his doing this work personally, he pays for that child care and supervises it.

Insanely important topic
So happens I am in court doing just this and am (exceedingly) surprised to find out this (over time) has been a reversal of patriarchal bias in precisely the ways you don't want to do anything: conflict and bias. It just extends the problem, which I am feeling right now.

Years before my son was born, I looked this over with the assumption that "tender years" is just another ploy to keep women out of the workplace by burdening them with the child or children. (I come from the highly-feminist neighborhood of the Upper West Side (in NYC) and cut my political teeth in the revolutionary neighborhood of the Lower East Side.)

Gender equality
I personally believe that men and women along with the mix of gender identity and preferences are essentially the same outside of the obvious differences.

I think that my assumption that tender years doctrine hurts women in the workplace is correct - it can't not be! As much as I don't want to see significant differences between genders, I am increasingly accepting that society (such as it is) programs people into roles primarily for the benefit of capital (as a long-standing financial culture).

Experiencial sources for my views of the effects of "tender years" on women's rights
I am essentially observation and experiential following humanistic psychology and constructivist and constructionist sociology. I believe that cognition is the (roughly-Marxist) refreshment of dialecticalism and is designed to deconstruct what we (as humanistics) think of as human conception, or concepts that include self-esteem and related agency and efficacy (for exploitational benefit). In short, "they" tell you that what you saw is not what happened - a topic in itself!

Going to court in Canada
Seeing I am going to court in Canada, I am using Justice.gc.ca articles. They are unusually good, and the recent changes to family law are, well like, exceptional (in a good way). This coming from someone who hyperventilates just looking at a legal document. Nobody I talked to had a grip on the new law least of all the expensive lawyer I fired. I stumbled on Dicken's Bleak House (BBC, 1990s) whose chancellery precisely describes court as I see it here. Every bit of language (affidavits, applications, respondents and the whole point: endless delays with lawyers getting all the money in the end). I had already committed to self-representation, but my strategy has further changed. Reading this article (and the talk), it is changing again. Question is, how do I present Canada's recent commitment to a court that likely knows nothing about it!

Canada's new family law (which is very good)
Bing's (chatGPT) summarizes this very well: In Canada, the term “custody” has been replaced with “decision-making responsibility” and “access” has been replaced with “parenting time” as of March 1, 2021123. This change in terminology is part of an effort to reduce conflict between parents and encourage a more child-focused approach to family law.

“Decision-making responsibility” refers to the responsibility for making significant decisions about a child’s well-being, covering a wide range of decisions, including the health of the child, the education of the child, culture, language, religion and spirituality of a child, and significant extra-curricular activities.

Most important
A justice.gc.ca documents include the phrase "Parenting time refers to the time that children spend in the care of one of their parents, whether or not the child is physically with the parent". ChatGPT (as Bing) summarizes this as: "the time that "encompasses the moments when a parent actively engages in parenting responsibilities, such as providing emotional support, guidance, and supervision" ot show that "parenting extends beyond mere physical presence and involves nurturing, bonding, and fostering a healthy relationship between parents and their children".

ChatGPT gets caught up in the phrase "time that children spend in the care of one of their parents when the ideal is that children spend time with both, from the way the previous text reads. Bias creeps in (form Canadian internet information) because the vast majority of child time is still spent with female parents because the (possibly unintended) bias as a outcome of Tender years doctrine has a long way to give into its biased nature.

The NIH offers this text: "many fathers who face a bitter relationship with their former partner simply drop out of their children’s lives. If that happens, children may suffer the double disadvantages of the psychological loss of a parent, and the loss of financial support."

My situation was so conflictive that (at a point) my advisers said I should simply let go and move away effectively abandoning the child because of danger to myself from my ex. I didn't.