Section 1 briefly discusses the history of divorce and custody laws in USA. Section 2 touches upon Joint Custody, which has become popular since 1980s. For children of divorced parents, Joint Custody is considered by legal experts and psychologists to be the healthiest custody arrangement. However, Joint Custody is practically viable only when both parents are cooperative, competent, mutually respectful and keep their children’s interests over and above personal conflict with each other. Section 3 discusses Sole Custody, which has been the traditional alternative to Joint Custody. Section 4 explores Implacable Hostility, a term that characterizes a Sole Custody situation where the custodial parent persistently denies the non-custodial parent any access to the children. Section 5 discusses the Parental Alienation Syndrome, which might result from Implacable Hostility. Section 6 touches upon the Medea Complex, which is the basis of psychological theories that explain development of the Parental Alienation Syndrome when the custodial parent is the mother and the child is a girl child.
1) History of Divorce and Custody Laws in USA
Divorce and custody laws in USA have changed remarkably in the last 60 years. A book that traces this history is From Father’s Property To Children’s Rights: A History of Child Custody (Amazon) (256 pages, 1996) by Mary Ann Mason who is a former lawyer and the first woman to be appointed Graduate Dean at U C Berkeley. A second book by the same author: The Custody Wars: Why Children Are Losing The Legal Battle–and What We Can Do About It (288 pages, 1999) weaves together legal, sociological and psychological literature to show how children are treated as ‘property’ instead of humans with feelings. An overview of the book provides the big picture:
As a society, we no longer agree on what is good for children. We are more focused instead on the political rights of parents. In my California family law teaching and practice I have witnessed the laws governing custody disputes swing wildly over the past two (nearly three) decades. None of these radical swings in the law was prompted by new research findings about what is good for children. Each emerged from a skirmish in the larger arena of gender politics.
At first the law favored mothers as custodians for young children, presuming that children of “tender years” were best cared for by their mothers. This rule, in place for more than a century, was swept away largely as a consequence of the feminist drive for equal treatment in the 1970s. Men and women, they believed, must be treated equally in this and all other matters before the law. Many feminists feared that the motherhood connection would restrict their opportunities for equal treatment in the workplace. Asking for special consideration for motherhood could shut the door to the male professions even tighter.
The next round was won by men. In the eighties, fathers’ rights groups pushed for and won laws favoring joint physical custody, replacing the tradition of a primary custodian and a single residence for the child. The California legislature determined that courts should favor joint custody, even when the parents didn’t. Fathers went on to win child support concessions based on a concept of shared custody According to this view, more time spent with the child lessened support obligations.
The current round is being fought with some success by women. Women’s advocacy groups argue that a parent with a history of domestic violence should not have custodial rights. Fathers protest that this offers an easy way for mothers to make false claims and withhold access.
Since 1990s, many mothers have filed false Domestic Violence allegations against fathers to get sole custody. Some mothers even file false sexual abuse allegations for the same purpose. The Institute for Psychological Therapies publishes list of books and a journal: Issues in Child Abuse Accusations (1997 onwards). An article that caricatures the personality of parents who accuse falsely: Personality Characteristics Of Falsely Accusing Parents In Custody Disputes, Hollida Wakefield and Ralph Underwager, Sixth Annual Symposium in Forensic Psychology, 1990. The accused parent has a harrowing time defending such allegations while the accuser faces little consequences: Defense of Child Molestation Charges by Joel Erik Thompson, and The Nuclear Option: False Child Sexual Abuse Allegations in Custody Disputes by Jake Morphonios, Feb 2008.
2) Joint Custody
Joint custody became popular in mid-80s as mothers joined the workforce, got less alimony after divorce and fathers participated more in child-care. Joint custody is a workable solution only if both parents are cooperative, mutually respectful and place their children’s welfare over and above their personal differences. Numerous studies show that Children are Likely to be Better Adjusted in Joint vs Sole Custody.
Mom’s House, Dad’s House: Making Two Homes for Your Child by Isolina Ricci (381 pages, 1997, 2nd Ed) is the classic guidebook for cooperative parents keen on making Joint Custody work. The first edition came out in 1980. The book Mom’s House, Dad’s House for Kids: Feeling at Home in One Home or Two by Isolina Ricci (272 pages, 2006) is for kids to understand their parents’ divorce.
The book Joint Custody and Shared Parenting by Jay Folberg (380 pages, 1991, 2nd Ed) is a collection of high quality scholarly articles shedding light on various aspects of joint custody arrangements at the confluence of law, sociology and psychology. The message of the book can be summarized in a single sentence:
Conflict between the parents is the single most important indicator of the children’s well-being.
The feasibility of joint custody is determined solely by the level of hostility between the spouses. Actually, it takes only one bitter or vengeful spouse to thwart attempts by the other spouse for joint custody. Basically, joint custody is possible when both spouses cooperate, and place their children over and above their personal conflict.
3) Sole Custody
Sole custody is a lose-lose situation for everybody: the child loses touch with the non-custodial parent (typically, the father), the custodial parent is over-burdened with job and child-care (typically, the mother), and the non-custodial parent writes child-support checks but plays almost no role in the child’s development. Still, many spouses (typically mothers) push for sole custody for lack of fortitude, or for financial and psychological reasons, to the detriment of everybody involved. Sole-custody related stats.
A severer form of sole custody arrangement is one in which the custodial parent denies the non-custodial parent any access to the children.
4) Implacable Hostility
The term Implacable hostility (wikipedia) characterizes the behavior of a parent, typically the mother, who denies the other parent access to their children following a divorce. Excerpts from the wikipedia article:
Various theories have been put forward to explain the prevalence of implacable hostility:
* Control theory: Whichever parent has residence of the children may exercise power over the other parent. This may be done in pursuit of an unresolved grievance, for revenge, punishment or mere vindictiveness.
* Financial theory: Financial resources follow the residence of the children. The accommodation, child support, child social security benefits etc. provide an incentive for one parent to fight to retain residence of care and control over the children.
* Psychological theory: One version of this holds that the powerful maternal instinct overrides even the claims of the father especially in circumstances where the mother feels threatened that she may lose control of the child, or is concerned lest the child become attached to the man whom she now doesn’t love.
Further excerpts from the wikipedia article:
The typical outcome of situations of implacable hostility is that the parent to whom implacable hostility is directed becomes excluded from the life of their child(ren). There are two ways in which this exclusion arises.
Firstly, the excluded parent, having exhausted all the avenues available for resolving the situation, finally gives up the effort. This may be done in the belief that the option of withdrawal is best interests of the child(ren) given the stress that inevitably arises from repeated applications for access/contact.
Secondly, the child(ren) may become parentally alienated — they deny that they want to see the excluded parent. Once a child has become alienated from the excluded parent, the originating implacable hostility becomes subsidiary. From this point, the formerly implacably hostile parent often claims that they are supportive of access/contact but they have to respect the wishes of the child. Family courts are usually unwilling to force children to see one of their parents against their expressed wishes – and often fail to examine the cause of such statements.
When the custodial parent persistently denies the other parent access to children, parental alienation might set in.
5) Parental Alienation
The Parental Alienation Syndrome, so named by Dr. Richard Gardner, is a distinctive family response to divorce in which the child becomes aligned with one parent and preoccupied with unjustified and/or exaggerated denigration of the other target parent. In severe cases, the child’s once love-bonded relationship with rejected/target parent is destroyed. PAS Stories. Some scholarly articles on the subject:
Parental Alienation Syndrome: How to Detect It and What to Do About It by J. Michael Bone and Michael R. Walsh, THE FLORIDA BAR JOURNAL, VOL. 73, No. 3, MARCH 1999, p 44-48. The article is also available here: it that explains parental alienation in simple words.
The Spectrum of Parental Alienation Syndrome (Part I) by Deirdre Conway Rand, PhD, Forensic Psychologist, AMERICAN JOURNAL OF FORENSIC PSYCHOLOGY, VOLUME 15, NUMBER 3, 1997.
The Spectrum of Parental Alienation Syndrome (Part II) by Deirdre Conway Rand, PhD, Forensic Psychologist, AMERICAN JOURNAL OF FORENSIC PSYCHOLOGY, VOLUME 15, NUMBER 3, 1997.
Parental Alienation Syndrome: An Age-Old Custody Problem by Michael R. Walsh and J. Michael Bone, THE FLORIDA BAR JOURNAL, JUNE 1997.
Preventing Parentectomy Following Divorce by Frank S. Williams M.D., Keynote Address, Fifth Annual Conference National Council for Children’s Rights, Washington DC, October 20 1990.
6) Medea Complex
Researchers have found psychological explanations for the mother’s behavior resulting in Parental Alienation, especially when the child involved is a girl child.
The Medea Complex and the Parental Alienation Syndrome: When Mothers Damage Their Daughter’s Ability to Love a Man by R M Gordon, 1998.
A short article on Medea Complex by Split N Two.
Enforcing Contact contains summaries of court judgments passed in cases where children resumed or continued contact with the non-custodial parent in difficult custody situations.
List of Books
Divorce Poison: Protecting the Parent-Child Bond from a Vindictive Ex by Richard Warshak (320 pages, 2003) contains guidelines for parents to prevent parental alienation.
A Promise to Ourselves: A Journey Through Fatherhood and Divorce (240 pages, 2008) by Alec Baldwin narrates the story of his highly acrimonious custody battle with Kim Bassinger. Alec discusses his personal experience as a father who is on the receiving end of the Parental Alienation Syndrome.
Mom’s House, Dad’s House: Making Two Homes for Your Child by Isolina Ricci (381 pages, 1997, 2nd Ed) is the classic guidebook for cooperative parents keen on making Joint Custody work.
Mom’s House, Dad’s House for Kids: Feeling at Home in One Home or Two by Isolina Ricci (272 pages, 2006) is for kids to understand their parents’ divorce.
From Father’s Property to Children’s Rights (256 pages, 1996) by Mary Ann Mason traces the history of divorce in US society over the last hundred years.
The Custody Wars: Why Children Are Losing The Legal Battle–and What We Can Do About It (288 pages, 1999) by Mary Ann Mason reflects upon sociological, legal and psychological aspects of custody disputes where children are no longer treated as human beings with feelings.
Summary
Children suffer in divorce. Any spouse who fails to keep children’s welfare over and above personal conflict with the other spouse, does a great disservice to the children involved. It takes only one hostile spouse for a child to lose a parent. When both spouses are cooperative, competent, mutually respectful and place their children’s welfare over and above their personal conflict, Joint Custody is a viable arrangement. In some cases, one parent (typically, the mother) pushes for Sole Custody. Such an arrangement is detrimental for everybody involved. A severer form of Sole Custody arrangement is one in which the custodial parent (typically, the mother) persistently denies access to the other parent. Such behavior can result in development of Parental Alienation Syndrome among children. The psychological basis for such behavior by mothers, especially when the child is a girl child, has been termed the Medea Complex.
