More On "Breaking The Silence" And Child Custody

Cathy Young has an article out in the Boston Globe about "Breaking The Silence: Children's Stories" and child custody. Here's part of what she had to say:

LAST NOVEMBER, I wrote about the controversy about the Public Broadcasting Service documentary, ''Breaking the Silence: Children's Stories," which claimed that male batterers and child abusers frequently gain custody of their children in divorce cases after the mothers' claims of abuse are disbelieved by the courts. The film caused an outcry from fathers' rights groups. In response to these protests, PBS announced a 30-day review to determine whether the film met the editorial guidelines for fairness and accuracy.

Unfortunately, it seems that the review amounted to little more than a whitewash.

On Dec. 21, PBS issued a statement acknowledging that the film ''would have benefited from more in-depth treatment of the complex issues," but also concluded that ''the producers approached the topic with the open-mindedness and commitment to fairness that we require of our journalists" and that the program's claims were supported by ''extensive" research.

It's no accident that she would use the word "whitewash" to describe PBS's final statement. She saw that term used by the fathers' rights group RADAR, which had issued an inflammatory alert after PBS released its final statement. RADAR entitled its alert "PBS Whitewashes Flawed Documentary." RADAR and other fathers' rights activists were livid when PBS in the end came out in support of "Breaking The Silence". It's very clear, especially with her use of the word "whitewash", that she is getting her information from fathers' rights web sites and alerts.

Cathy quoted a few points from the final statement, including the fact that PBS found the documentary to be open-minded and fair. Here is the statement in its entirety, for everyone's convenience:

PBS STATEMENT RE: BTS

Breaking The Silence: Children's Stories (BTS) chronicles the impact of domestic violence on children and the recurring failings of family courts across the country to protect them from their abusers. In stark and often poignant interviews, children and battered mothers tell their stories of abuse at home and continued trauma within the courts. The producers approached the topic with the open mindedness and commitment
to fairness that we require of our journalists. Their research was extensive and supports the conclusions drawn in the program. Funding from the Mary Kay Ash Charitable Foundation met PBS's underwriting
guidelines; the Foundation had no editorial influence on program content.

However, the program would have benefited from more in-depth treatment of the complex issues surrounding child custody and the role of family courts and most specifically the provocative topic of Parental Alienation Syndrome (PAS). Additionally, the documentary's "first-person story telling approach" did not allow the depth of the producers' research to be as evident to the viewer as it could have been.

PBS has received a substantial body of analysis and documentation from both supporters of the documentary and its critics.

It is clear to us that this complex and important issue would benefit from further examination. To that end, PBS will commission an hour-long documentary for that purpose. Plans call for the documentary to be produced and broadcast in Spring 2006. We expect that the hour-long treatment of the subject will allow ample opportunity for doctors, psychologists, judges, parent advocates and victims of abuse to have their perspectives shared, challenged and debated.

PBS had delayed making its final statement until it had time to digest a 20 page report by the Massachusetts fathers' rights group Fathers and Families. "Breaking The Silence" producer Dominique Lasseur and George Washington University Law Professor Joan Meier soon after provided their own rebuttal to that report. You may read their rebuttal on this page on my web site. I've included my own thoughts on that page. My link to the Lasseur/Meier report includes a link to the Fathers and Families report. The Lasseur/Meier report certainly isn't "shoddy and self-serving", as Young described it. The report by Fathers and Families was shoddy and self-serving. It made baseless attacks against the documentary, took valid research out of context and misrepresented it, and it made ad hominem attacks against persons connected to and not connected to the documentary.

What is important is that, in the end, PBS endorsed "Breaking The Silence". It was not swayed by a 20 page "report" from a fathers' rights group that was full of propaganda and ad hominem attacks. It wasn't swayed by thousands of angry e-mails from fathers' rights activists. The documentary has already been shown in several states to legislators and those who work on abuse issues. I know that it is scheduled to be shown around the country in the future.

Cathy Young had taken the custody-to-batterers figures stated in the documentary to task. Barry at Alas A Blog has addressed her claims, so I will quote what he wrote on his blog. He was responding to this, by Young:

Thus, the reports cite the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court's Gender Bias Study of 1989 as proof that fathers who seek custody receive it at least 70 percent of the time -- even though this study does not distinguish custody disputes from cases in which the father got custody by mutual agreement. Other sources used to support the claim of male advantage are even weaker: They include the Battered Mothers' Testimony Project from the Wellesley Center for Women, which used a sample of 40 women with grievances about the family courts. No mention is made of much larger, representative studies of divorcing couples (such as the one reported by Stanford University psychologist Eleanor Maccoby and Harvard law professor Robert Mnookin in the 1992 book ''Dividing the Child") showing that far fewer fathers than mothers get the custodial arrangements they want.

Barry pointed out that "it's true that Dividing the Child found that "far fewer fathers than mothers get the custody arrangements they want," but by putting it that way, Cathy fails to distinguish between custody disputes which reached an out-of-court settlement - what you might call "custody by mutual agreement" - and custody disputes in which the court made the decision."

He had also quoted directly from Dividing the Child, while initially misunderstanding that the quote about "fathers who conceded custody at lower levels of the conflict pyramid" means that those fathers had initially contested custody, but lost, and decided to not appeal. They didn't get what they wanted. So, Young is right in the sense that some fathers who contest custody do not necessarily get what they want. However, Maccoby and Mnookin do differentiate between cases that must be decided by a judge and cases where the parents decide on their own by mutual agreement.

We have found that although mothers receive sole physical custody in the vast majority of cases, the proportion of joint or father custody outcomes approaches 50 percent for high-conflict families. At first blush, this finding would appear to disprove allegations that the California divorce process reflects and perpetuates gender bias. Why, after all, shouldn’t a 50-50 distribution of outcomes suggest gender neutrality?

Both advocates for women’s rights and advocates for fathers' rights would probably reject this reading of our findings, and in fact the presence or absence of gender bias in the legal process is not so simple to establish. A fathers' rights group might well argue that since the overall gender ratio in cases where there are conflicting requests is 2 to 1, the law in action still reflects a maternal presumption. Why, after all, would fathers who conceded custody at lower levels of the conflict pyramid have settled for less than they wanted if they believed they had a 50 percent chance? Advocates for women, on the other hand, would counter that our findings demonstrate that escalation of legal conflict over custody clearly operates to the benefit of fathers. As we demonstrated in Chapter 3 before divorce mothers are the primary caretakers of children far more often than men. Thus, a 50-50 distribution of outcomes should be considered neither fair nor neutral. Rather, a "fair" distribution of outcomes should reflect differences in the care-taking base rate for mothers and fathers.

Alternatively, suppose that, on the merits, custody claims of mothers were, on the average, no stronger than the claims of fathers. (Imagine a judge going into her chambers and flipping a coin in all contested cases.) The outcome ratios might still vary by conflict level if most mothers simply cared more about the custodial outcomes than most fathers, and were therefore more prepared to escalate the conflict to a higher level rather than settle for less than their preferred custodial alternative. Because it takes time and energy to work one's way up the conflict pyramid, this would imply that only in a small minority of families would the father be prepared to pay the price, even though those who did so might have a 50 percent chance of prevailing.

But one thing does seem reasonably clear: our finding that the gender ratio of custody decrees at the top approaches 50-50 even though the overall ratio among conflicted cases is closer to 2 to 1 in favor of mothers demonstrates neither the presence nor the absence of gender bias.

Maccoby and Mnookin left out one important point. It not only takes time and energy to move up the conflict pyramid, it takes money. Lots of it. Contested custody cases can cost in the six figures. More men have that kind of money at their disposal than women. Sometimes fathers are able to win custody because they were able to outspend the mother in court.

I do agree that the fact that when fathers make an issue of custody, they get some form of it in at least half of the cases at the top that must go before a judge. There are many reasons why a father who gave up in the lower rungs of the conflict ladder may have lost. He might have run out of money. He might not have presented himself well in court. It may have been clear to the judge that the mother was the primary caregiver of the children, and that was why in the end the judge ruled in her favor. The fact that a father has the ability to be a good parent for the children alone is not a good reason for custody to be given to him. Other factors must be looked at, such as past parenting patterns. The only way to determine what kind of parenting a parent will do is to look at the past - what has already been done? Who had done it? What did that person give up in order to do it?

In addition, Maccoby and Mnookin identified those particular cases as "high-conflict". Abusers, ne'er do wells, control freaks, people with power issues, alcoholics and drug addicts, passive aggressive jerks, people with psychological problems, and other serious "issues" are over-represented in contested custody cases. People with serious issues make up "high-conflict" cases. Ann White wrote for the Florida Bar Journal that "abusive fathers are more likely than non-abusive parents to contest custody, not pay child support, and kidnap their children." Also, a father in a high-conflict case who wins custody may not necessarily have been the children's primary caregiver. I believe there is a problem of bias in these kinds of cases when a mother's established primary caregiver status and the career, salary, opportunity, and life costs she has incurred and will continue to incur in her capacity as the children's primary are ignored and denigrated when awarding some form of custody to a non-primary caregiving father who has "issues".

Parents aren't "equally situated" regarding their parenting. Mothers do tend to take on the primary caregiver role, and fathers follow their lead. They are certainly not equally situated, and they are not on equal footing regarding parenting upon divorce. It's no accident that mothers most often get custody of the children in those cases where both parents make the decision themselves. Those mothers had taken on the bulk of the childrearing from day one, as well as the costs that go with taking on the primary caregiving role. This does not negate the fathers' role. His role is important. It must be recognized that moms and dads are not equally situated in their established parenting patterns. One is a primary caregiver and the other is not.

These excerpts are from the paper "Co Parenting, A Review Of The Literature," by Terry Arendell, from the National Center On Fathers And Families. At least no one here can accuse the National Center On Fathers And Families of being a feminist organization that hates dads. ;)

"What is evident in the extant body of research is that fathers, in general, do far less parenting work than mothers, and most men view their parenting involvement as discretionary. Highly involved fathers are an anomaly. For the most part, father participation in child caretaking is greatest among married men and lowest among unwed young fathers."

"Father Involvement in Married Families
The term co-parenting or shared parenting among married couples typically refers to arrangements in which fathers' participation is more or less equal to mothers'. Such involvement remains relatively rare, despite the increased rhetorical attention given to the "new father" in recent years."

"Parenting and the Conventional Gendered Division of Labor
Men's primary family role across the twentieth century has been predominantly that of income-providing. The good provider role is a major component of the norms and conventions of masculinity: a man's status and worth are linked closely to his occupational achievements and earnings levels. Although offering men, who are able to meet the success ethic, prestige and an array of domestic power and privileges, the good provider role carries costs as well, particularly in curtailing men's expressivity, intimacy, and nurturing activities (Bernard, 1981; Goode, 1982; Weiss, 1990; 1987; 1985)."

"Not only men but also women expect men to be income providers and measure their worth by their earnings and occupational status (Faludi, 1991). At the same time, the good provider role is being challenged, with demands being levied against men to be more expressive, affectionate, and disclosing, and far more involved in the numerous facets of daily family life. Some men actively reject the narrow provider role and choose to be fuller family participants."

"Traditionally, caring for others, including children, has been a gendered activity, defined as women's work and done predominately by women (e.g., Tronto, 1989; Cowan and Cowan, 1988; Cox et al., 1989; Tiedje and Darling-Fisher, 1993; Perry-Jenkins and Folk, 1994; Chodorow, 1978; Pleck, 1987). Few men have increased their household and childcaretaking efforts significantly, even though women now couple their traditional domestic and parenting roles with those of income earning, sharing the provider role (e.g., Blair and Johnson, 1992). Men remain preoccupied predominately with activities outside the home (e.g., Hochschild, 1989; Pleck, 1985; Douthitt, 1988; Seidler, 1992), and mothers carry primary responsibility for child care, regardless of their employment status (Tiedje and Darling-Fisher, 1993). Thus, women's employment has not led to clear-cut changes in family roles (e.g., Fish et al., 1992; Hochschild, 1989)."

I agree with Arendell that the dad as provider role needs to change. It would be good for men to have a more well-rounded life that includes more involvement with their children, not just "helping" but taking on the same opportunity costs that mothers take on when they take on the primary caregiver role. Not enough men do that. If fathers want to "share parenting" upon divorce, they need to "share parenting" properly while they are married. They need to take on the same career, salary, opportunity, and life costs that primary caregiving mothers take on. Those costs cannot be regained, and primary caregiving mothers continue to make those sacrifices throughout all the years they raise their children. Those costs will affect them for the rest of their lives. Non-primary caregiving fathers do not take on those kinds of losses. Courts need to recognize the sacrifices made by primary caregiving moms, and not be tempted by the "equally situated" rhetoric promoted by "shared parenting" advocates.

Barry has pointed out an interesting comment by Young. She wrote, "In the same vein, Lasseur's report is supplemented by a letter signed by "98 professionals" who support the film's conclusions — but a number of those "professionals" are feminist activists, including National Organization for Women President Kim Gandy." I agree with him when he wrote, "[b]ut I find it odd that a self-identified feminist has so much contempt for feminism that if any feminist activists (many of whom have spent years or decades involved with abuse issues) sign a letter, that is in Cathy's analysis ipso facto reason to dismiss the entire letter. Maybe next time Cathy should take a moment to examine her own idealogical biases."

Barry had also discussed Young's misleading description of the Massachusetts Gender Bias Report in an update.

My last point is an important one. "Breaking The Silence" was not about mothers or fathers. It was about abused children speaking out about the abuse the had experienced coming from their abusive fathers. The documentary does not malign all fathers. It is very specifically about children speaking out about abuse from their abusive fathers. Fathers' rights activists have demanded "equal time" to air "the other side". What would the other side of a documentary about abused children speaking about their abusive fathers be? A documentary supporting abusive fathers who seek custody of their children? Hopefully, PBS has enough sense to not promote such a documentary.