Every Six Custodial Parents example essay topic

The battle over child custody In the United States today more than one-half of all marriages end in divorce. The purpose of this paper is to examine the reason why women have typically received custody of the children far more often than the fathers. In order to better understand child custody one must first examine how fathers have often times been left out of the picture, and conversely why mothers have had such hard times raising children on their own. This paper will first examine the perspective of a father who has lost custody of his children. A Fathers Perspective According to many the custody of a child should be determined with the best interest of the child in mind. However, it is not easy for a judge to make such an important decision in such a short amount of time with limited information.

Smith (2004) stated that, the simple fact of being a mother does not indicate a willingness or capacity to render a quality of care different than that which a father can provide. Some might argue that what Reynolds (2004) calls deadbeat dads, or in other words fathers who refuse to pay their child support, are often times confused with Turnips, who are ex-spouses who can not afford to pay child support. One example of a turnip is a father who is in prison; he is obviously not making money while he is on the inside. Now an example of a deadbeat dad is when the father is enjoying all the finer things in life and he cannot reach far enough into his pocket to make sure that his children are taken care of. As Ber go (2004) has pointed out, the government has gotten much better at collecting from deadbeat parents through payroll deductions, and seizures of tax refunds, they were not very good at getting that money to those for whom it was intended. A Mothers Perspective Reynolds (2004) stated that five out of every six custodial parents are mothers, and he goes on to say that one out of three of those custodial parents receives a full payment averaging about five thousand dollars.

Often times a judge makes the decision to grant custody to the mother based on the idea that a mother has a closer relationship with the child because of giving birth. However, it is important to remember as Smith (2003) reminds us that fathers love their children just as much as mothers, and to call them non-custodial parents is offensive. Often times when parents get divorced the mother has been a stay at home mom and the father has been the primary bread winner so, when a mom is awarded custody as you can imagine it becomes very difficult for her to balance the children and the one (or more) jobs that she has to work in order to support the family. Conclusion The purpose of this paper was to give some insight into the vicious battles that take place over child custody. It is important to mention that raising children is difficult even with two parents, now when there is only one parent the difficultly increases by leaps and bounds. The idea of joint custody seems to sound like a good solution however, Smith (2003) stated that when parties asked for a 50/50 sharing of time, every one of them came back to change it.

Often times parents who get caught up in a large custody battle end up wondering why they went to court in the first place, they could have done the same thing for a lot less money and time if they had worked it out on their own. The most important idea that Smith (2003) touches upon is that parents and children who don't spend a great deal of time together, never become at ease with each other.

Bibliography

Bergo, S. (2004).
Parents trapped. Washington Monthly, 36, 14-15. Reynolds, C. (2004).
Reliable exes. American Demographics, Smith, C.W. (2003).