Using Marriage and Fatherhood Ideology to Promote Joint Custody

A new study by joint custody proponent Constance Ahrons purports to show that children are not unduly harmed by divorce. Her claim caught my attention because more credible researchers have stated the same thing. Mavis Hetherington, a professor emeritus in the department of psychology at the University of Virginia, found that 75 - 80% of children of divorce are "coping reasonably well and functioning in the normal range." The 2002 report "Trends in the Wellbeing of American Children and Youth. [Section 1: Population, Family, & Neighborhood] found what most researchers already know, that "the great majority of children brought up in single-parent families do well. In particular, differences in well-being between children from divorced and those from intact families tend, on average, to be moderate to small." So much about welfare reform blames single mother homes for social pathology. Single-mother homes are at risk for problems, but this report shows that most of these families do well.

David Blankenhorn took issue with Ahrons on the Family Scholars Blog. He wrote:

CHILDREN OF DIVORCE: In USA Today, Karen Peterson has a story on the new book by Constance Ahrons on the adult children of divorce:

How children fare after their parents divorce is one of the nation's most emotionally charged family issues. The latest research finds that in retrospect -- 20 years later -- most of the now-adult children have adapted to their parents' divorce and function successfully, and 79 percent feel their parents' decision to split was a good one. The findings sit well with some noted researchers, but others are not applauding.

I've read Ahron's earlier stuff, and have debated her on TV a couple of times, and I really see her as not intellectually serious. Her whole goal, her whole philosophy, is to normalize and justify divorce. For her, the data aren't the issue. Even Andrew Cherlin, who typically goes out of his way to distance himself from anyone (including yours truly)who could be viewed as anti-divorce, admits in this article that Ahrons always tries to give divorce "a rosier cast."

I and my colleagues see Ahrons as a pop-sociologist who has tried to spin the "children need both parents" ideology held by fatherhood movement supporters like Blankenhorn towards favoring joint custody. There is good reason for her to seek to normalize and justify divorce - there is a group of people who favor joint custody that are making a lot of money from contested divorces. This is a harmful trend that may have escaped notice by Blankenhorn and his colleagues. The recent LaMusga moveaway decision is part of that trend.

I caught Ahron's joint custody language in her latest "findings" here:

"That's not saying they're amicable," Ahrons said. "It's saying that, bottom line, they're civil, and they can cooperate most of the time around the kids. Both parents are continuing to parent, and the family continues to be a family. ... They have to be civil with one another, they have to put their kids before their own anger, they have to love their kids more than they hate their ex, they have to be able to cooperate when the children are young, they have to be able to cooperate sufficiently well to make plans for the children so that both parents can continue to parent, and when the children are older, they have to cooperate sufficiently well not to put the kids in the middle of a loyalty conflict."

She described parallel parenting, something that is often promoted by joint custody supporters. The idea is that two people can hate each others guts yet supposedly the children will not notice how antagonistic their parents are towards each other when they (the parents) are "civil" with one another when it comes to dealing with their children. These are people who can barely keep from spitting at each other, yet they are believed by joint custody supporters to have the ability to turn on and off that animosity and lack of courtesy and respect like a spigot. The children supposedly live in a Wonderland where they have no idea that their parents actually despise each other because they "work together for their children's sake." All of the available joint custody research has shown that children do not thrive when exposed to parental conflict, especially the simmering or outright blatant animosity characteristic of "parallel parenting."

I had wondered if Ahrons was describing her own experience with joint custody. She described some dreadful problems following her own divorce in her book "The Good Divorce," a book in which she rationalizes away the problems with joint custody by referring to joint custody as "co-parenting:" "I was the one who left, and for two miserable years my husband and I battled constantly over custody, visitation, and child support. There were private detectives, a kidnapping, several lawyers, and two years of legal fees that took me the next ten years to pay off. That painful time of my life was almost thirty years ago, and even today it is hard to write about." I've noticed that some of joint custody's biggest supporters have serious "issues" with their ex's that no pretense of parallel parenting or "co-parenting" will ever make go away. The children are going to notice and when they get to be old enough and big enough they will have something to say about it. And it won't be nice.

Joint custody supporters often bring up how "children need both parents," so they insist that the best way to bring them "both parents" is to force "shared parenting" on them. "Shared parenting" is yet another euphemism for joint custody. Joint custody, "co-parenting," "shared parenting" or whatever you choose to call it will in no way ever come close to replicating an intact, healthy two-parent family. When the parents cannot or will not cooperate, the courts step in. Usually, it's mom who balks at seeing her established parenting authority overthrown by people who make their money from joint custody ideology. Fathers' rights activists feed right into this without understanding that their support of "shared parenting" is one of the main things that has lead to the "divorce industry" that they complain so much about. If mom balks, she is slapped with an accusation of being "uncooperative" via "friendly parent" provisions, and the GALs, parenting coordinators, psychological and custody evaluators, and other "experts" dive in like wolves. Both parents must pay for all of these extras, and they are expensive. These extras are why contested divorces these days can cost in the six figures. These people make a great deal of money from contentious divorces by hijacking the "children need both parents" ideology favored by fatherhood and pro-marriage ideologues. As I wrote in my previous post, if someone believes in marriage and supports the idea that children need both parents, I don't have a problem with that as long as should a divorce become necessary and there is no saving the marriage that the primary caregiver be given custody. The joint custody and "divorce industry" crowd have latched onto fatherhood and marriage supporters ideology and have turned it into a big money-making business. Granted, I have my own disagreements about the role of the father and marriage, but I seriously doubt that the joint custody/divorce industry trends are what Blankenhorn and his colleagues have in mind when they support fatherhood and marriage.