In 2014, America failed. “The national average is a 1.63 GPA,” concluded a report by the National Parents Organization on the degree to which states’ child custody statutes favor shared parenting between divorced/separated parents. This abysmal score is a result of the incredible degree to which family courts are biased against fathers.

There are plenty of wild stories of the terrible treatment of males in family court. Men have been jailed for missing child support payments immediately upon returning home from being held hostage for months. They have been forced to pay child support to lesbian couples to whom they donated sperm. They have been ordered to pay support for children proven not to be their own through DNA testing, even when the child was conceived through marital infidelity. They have been forced to provide child support to mothers when the mother is not the custodial parent. They have even found themselves responsible for child support in situations where pregnancy resulted from clear deception, such as when a woman saved a man’s sperm from oral sex and used it to inseminate herself.

Such ridiculous cases are not limited to the United States. This is a problem generally in the West. Here are just a few examples from Canada, Australia, and Germany.

Although these are extreme examples, the judgments given in these cases are par for the course. This is true even for the most outrageous cases. Take the case of County of San Luis Obispo v. Nathaniel J., in which a male victim of statutory rape was ordered to pay child support to his rapist. Even that was typical. In a 2012 paper, law professor Michael Higdon writes, “indeed, every court to consider the issue of whether a male victim of statutory rape is liable for child support has reached the same conclusion, using the same reasoning” (p. 425).

Obviously, an 18-year term of indentured servitude is a bad deal. But the bias in family court is not all about the money. Though shared custody rulings have become more common since the 80s, a disproportionate number of divorce proceedings involving children still end with mothers receiving sole custody (Meyer, Cancian, & Cook, 2017).

“In the child’s best interest”

The tender years doctrine has been largely abandoned by family court judges in favor of the ‘best interest of the child’ guiding principle. Unfortunately, the decisions judges make very often mirror the dictates of the tender years doctrine, and are generally not reflective of what would most benefit children. Härkönen, Bernardi, and Boertien (2017) give a brilliant overview of the problems that plague children of separated families; these issues include deficits in psychological well-being, worse academic performance, reduced social relationship quality, and earlier onset of sexual behavior. Those in shared parenting arrangements (with the exception of children in high-conflict homes with married parents) fare much better. According to a review by Linda Nielsen (2011):

First and foremost, most of these children [living in shared parenting arrangements] fare as well or better than those in maternal residence— especially in terms of the quality and endurance of their relationships with their fathers. Second, parents do not have to be exceptionally cooperative, without conflict, wealthy, and well educated, or mutually enthusiastic about sharing the residential parenting for the children to benefit. Third, young adults who have lived in these families say this arrangement was in their best interest—in contrast to those who lived with their mothers after their parents’ divorce.

Looking beyond the deleterious effects of parental separation generally, judges who attempt to apply the child’s-best-interest principle by awarding mothers sole custody may often be placing children into more dangerous environments. Mothers are more likely than fathers to use corporal punishment (Lansford et al., 2010). The use of corporal punishment is associated with a greater likelihood of child abuse by a parent (Zolotor, Theodore, Chang, Berkoff, & Runyan, 2010), and with an increase in children’s aggression (Lee, Atschul, & Gershoff, 2015). Of course, this is indirect evidence, merely suggesting that mothers may be more abusive towards children than fathers.

More directly, a report from the Children’s Bureau (an office within the US Department of Health and Human Services), reveals that a higher proportion of child maltreatment occurs at the hands of women than of men (see Table 5-3; this report does not include data comparing mothers/fathers in terms of child maltreatment, merely reporting perpetration by sex). In this report, maltreatment is defined as, “any recent act or failure to act on the part of a parent or caretaker which results in death, serious physical or emotional harm, sexual abuse or exploitation; or an act or failure to act, which presents an imminent risk of serious harm.” What’s more, the report found that the greatest proportion of child murders were perpetrated by mothers (see Table 4-5). Of children murdered in 2016, 27% were murdered by their mothers alone and 10.7% were murdered by mothers and a non-parent (a total of 37.7%). In contrast, 16.8% of murdered children were killed by their fathers alone, and 1.9% by their fathers and a non-parent (18.7% total, less than half the perpetration rate of mothers in total). These findings are consistent with those of the Fourth National Incidence Study of Child Abuse and Neglect (NIS-4).

What’s more, investigations into sole-custody vs. shared-custody arrangements have revealed that single motherhood elevates the risk of child neglect, while father involvement serves to moderate (or decrease) such effects (Schneider, 2017). There is also evidence to suggest that the presence of the father in a child’s life serves as a protective factor against other forms of child maltreatment and abuse (Guterman, Lee, Lee, Waldfogel, & Rathouz, 2009).

Obviously, these data don’t present a full picture. Mean differences in behavior are not extremely useful for predicting the behavior of individuals out of context. However, this information does suffice to counter the pervasive notion that fathers are the parents most likely to abuse their children, and makes it clear that children are not necessarily safest under their mothers’ care. That – combined with the myriad of negative outcomes associated with single-parent homes – provides ample reason to support shared parenting measures.

What do we do about all of this?

First, we should look to the vanguard of family court justice. In 2013, Arizona implemented legislative reforms for adjudicating family court proceedings, emphasizing a maximization of children’s time with both parents. In effect, this has resulted in a default presumption of shared parenting that has worked much to the benefit of children and fathers alike (Aaron, Akins, Assini, McElroy, & Fabricius, 2018). We should seek to emulate those reforms wherever possible. We should also organize to repeal the Bradley Amendment, which has helped turn the child support system into a pipeline for debtor’s prisons.

Folks who have neither the time nor the wherewithal to work directly on issues surrounding divorce and custody can support organizations (for example, the National Parents Organization and Leading Women for Shared Parenting) working to promote shared parenting in the law and in the courts. Conversely, anyone who believes the evidence for shared parenting should be aware that groups like the National Coalition for Women actively lobby against shared parenting bills. Members of such groups should consider working to change the platform from within or divesting.