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I think the "absentee father" issue would be easy to address: have the courts stop favoring mothers as custodial parents in divorces. Of the divorced couples I

by dpifke 3y ago

I think the "absentee father" issue would be easy to address: have the courts stop favoring mothers as custodial parents in divorces. Of the divorced couples I know with children, the mothers were awarded custody in every single case, often over the strenuous objections of the fathers and other family members like grandparents (and in one case, even in the face of documented abuse by the mother). I feel like studies on the effect of children who grow up with a missing parent need to somehow control for couples who split because of mental health issues. Otherwise, it's studying not the effect of the absent parent, but the effect of the behaviors of the parent who was granted custody, and some of those behaviors may strongly correlate with not being able to maintain a marriage or other partnership.

dpifke 3y ago
Too late to edit my comment, but I want to clarify the first sentence of the above: I'm not arguing the courts should automatically favor fathers, either. I meant to say blindly assuming one gender is more suited to raising children than the other is a bad policy, and it should be reformed. (And I do believe some family court jurisdictions have gotten better about this than when I had friends going through it 10-20 years ago.)
abracadaniel 3y ago
In the US it depends heavily on the state, but as I understand it, the stats on the mothers getting custody are misleading. Overwhelmingly, the fathers are giving up custody and not fighting for it. When they do, it is roughly equal, though some studies suggest bias one way or the other. I’m not finding great primary sources, but here’s some articles on it https://legaljobs.io/blog/child-custody-statistics/ https://legaljobs.io/blog/child-custody-statistics/ https://www.liveabout.com/child-custody-there-is-no-gender-bias-during-custody-decisions-3974050 https://www.liveabout.com/child-custody-there-is-no-gender-b...
- tbrownaw 3y ago
  So was parent commenter's experience just that non-representative or is something screwy going on with how the data gets recorded?
  - fbdab103 3y ago
    Unless GP is a marriage counselor or family-court judge, I am wondering how many anecdotal child custody cases they would have witnessed.
  - lucubratory 3y ago
    I think it's probably just very, very unlikely that any individual person individually knows a representative sample of divorced couples, and within what sample there is the original commenter noted that the father contesting custody was a subset. I think people also maybe aren't primed to think of this in terms of "What percentage of people who contest custody receive custody, by gender?" They're just thinking to themselves "Of the couples I know who are divorced, in what percentage does the woman have custody?", and that is going to be very large because a very small percentage of men contest custody. Anecdotally, almost every divorced couple I know has had child custody with the woman (I am in Australia, for the record). The much smaller subset of "divorced couples where I know the father contested custody" are two father's with custody and one mother. Obviously, those are also the only divorced couples I know where the man has custody - no court is going to give custody for a child to someone who doesn't want it, ideally. I also know a lesbian couple who've gone through a custody dispute but I don't believe that really has any impact here.
  - abracadaniel 3y ago
    From what I’ve read so far, there’s a lot of variation between states. The law used to explicitly prefer the mother, and that may still be the case in some states. Beyond that, n=2 isn’t a great sample, but there’s definitely going to be bias when it’s a friend sharing only their side of the story. Like how anytime someone you know gets into a car accident, it was definitely the other guy’s fault.
- legostormtroopr 3y ago
  > Overwhelmingly, the fathers are giving up custody and not fighting for it. Couldn't that be confirmation bias - if you don't think you are going to win, and it will cost lots of money - why fight? Which is why when fathers fight for custody they may win more - because they have a stronger case.
  - dumpsterdiver 3y ago
    > Couldn't that be confirmation bias - if you don't think you are going to win, and it will cost lots of money - why fight? Confirmation bias is defined as "the tendency to interpret new evidence as confirmation of one's existing beliefs or theories." What you're describing is not confirmation bias, because there is no "new evidence" which one could interpret as confirmation of their existing beliefs or theories. If the father doesn't even try to obtain custody then they haven't discovered anything new that would reinforce their existing beliefs.
    - BigRedDog1669 3y ago
      It's not confirmation bias for the men, it's more for the researchers: Selecting data on who contests custody as a proxy for who wants custody. If there is a gender bias in the courts, that might not be accurate.

by dpifke 3y ago

dpifke 3y ago

Too late to edit my comment, but I want to clarify the first sentence of the above: I'm not arguing the courts should automatically favor fathers, either. I meant to say blindly assuming one gender is more suited to raising children than the other is a bad policy, and it should be reformed. (And I do believe some family court jurisdictions have gotten better about this than when I had friends going through it 10-20 years ago.)

abracadaniel 3y ago

In the US it depends heavily on the state, but as I understand it, the stats on the mothers getting custody are misleading. Overwhelmingly, the fathers are giving up custody and not fighting for it. When they do, it is roughly equal, though some studies suggest bias one way or the other. I’m not finding great primary sources, but here’s some articles on it https://legaljobs.io/blog/child-custody-statistics/ https://legaljobs.io/blog/child-custody-statistics/ https://www.liveabout.com/child-custody-there-is-no-gender-bias-during-custody-decisions-3974050 https://www.liveabout.com/child-custody-there-is-no-gender-b...

tbrownaw 3y ago
So was parent commenter's experience just that non-representative or is something screwy going on with how the data gets recorded?
- fbdab103 3y ago
  Unless GP is a marriage counselor or family-court judge, I am wondering how many anecdotal child custody cases they would have witnessed.
- lucubratory 3y ago
  I think it's probably just very, very unlikely that any individual person individually knows a representative sample of divorced couples, and within what sample there is the original commenter noted that the father contesting custody was a subset. I think people also maybe aren't primed to think of this in terms of "What percentage of people who contest custody receive custody, by gender?" They're just thinking to themselves "Of the couples I know who are divorced, in what percentage does the woman have custody?", and that is going to be very large because a very small percentage of men contest custody. Anecdotally, almost every divorced couple I know has had child custody with the woman (I am in Australia, for the record). The much smaller subset of "divorced couples where I know the father contested custody" are two father's with custody and one mother. Obviously, those are also the only divorced couples I know where the man has custody - no court is going to give custody for a child to someone who doesn't want it, ideally. I also know a lesbian couple who've gone through a custody dispute but I don't believe that really has any impact here.
- abracadaniel 3y ago
  From what I’ve read so far, there’s a lot of variation between states. The law used to explicitly prefer the mother, and that may still be the case in some states. Beyond that, n=2 isn’t a great sample, but there’s definitely going to be bias when it’s a friend sharing only their side of the story. Like how anytime someone you know gets into a car accident, it was definitely the other guy’s fault.
legostormtroopr 3y ago
> Overwhelmingly, the fathers are giving up custody and not fighting for it. Couldn't that be confirmation bias - if you don't think you are going to win, and it will cost lots of money - why fight? Which is why when fathers fight for custody they may win more - because they have a stronger case.
- dumpsterdiver 3y ago
  > Couldn't that be confirmation bias - if you don't think you are going to win, and it will cost lots of money - why fight? Confirmation bias is defined as "the tendency to interpret new evidence as confirmation of one's existing beliefs or theories." What you're describing is not confirmation bias, because there is no "new evidence" which one could interpret as confirmation of their existing beliefs or theories. If the father doesn't even try to obtain custody then they haven't discovered anything new that would reinforce their existing beliefs.
  - BigRedDog1669 3y ago
    It's not confirmation bias for the men, it's more for the researchers: Selecting data on who contests custody as a proxy for who wants custody. If there is a gender bias in the courts, that might not be accurate.