IN TOLSTOY’S famous novel about female betrayal, the title character, Anna Karenina, is forced to abandon her young child in order to live with her lover. The tension between maternal love for her son and sexual passion is a running theme throughout the book and ultimately contributes to her death, wherein the beautiful Anna throws herself under the wheels of a train, a woman destroyed by her impulsive nature.

The end is extreme but this was once the only choice for a woman leaving her husband: her lover or her children. In colonial America, as well as nineteenth century Russia, a father had presumptive custody of his children. Divorce was rare and was not even recognized in most of the colonies or early states. However, a woman had no legal claim to her own children, who were considered the charges of fathers.

Today, in an age when mothers are overwhelmingly favored for legal custody of children, this seems unimaginable. But given the vast system of abuses perpetrated by family courts, the epidemic of female abandonment of husbands, the arrests and restraining orders against fathers, and the general decline of marriage, the old way more and more makes urgent sense. Children, when in dispute, should automatically go with their fathers, not their mothers, as is commonly assumed. A father, as head of the household, should have the right to award custody to a mother. But no court should usurp his powers and authority over his own children.

Some of the greatest injustices in the modern world are committed against fathers. Their basic rights must be restored. State-imposed destruction of the institution of fatherhood is nothing less than tyrannical and benefits women not at all.

                                                                                              — Comments —

Robin writes:

I certainly agree in theory. My husband was one of four children raised by his single father after their mother chose her career (which included flirtation, if not infidelity) over her husband. He never asked for “child support” from her, and succeeded in sacrificially rearing these children to the best of his abilities, never surrendering them to her because it would have been easier for him. 

However, what is to be done in cases of unrepentant infidelity on the part of the husband? What is to be done in cases of severe physical abuse on the part of the husband? There are two women that come to mind right now: the first was expected to tolerate her husband coming home from dates with his mistress when their child was but six weeks old. She tried counseling; he would not give up his mistress. He emotionally and physically abused his wife when she tried to speak to him about his affair. She moved out with their child when the child was sixteen months old, (as he threw items at her father in the driveway), and he lay in wait for the opportunity to take advantage of her in court and take this tender child from his mother. He paid a paltry $700 in child support before he succeeded in getting a “men’s rights” judge and a lawyer of the same mindset to see his plight: he made the money, so he deserved the child. He created false witnesses who spoke of her non-existent drug abuse in court, and he won. The second woman fled to another state after leaving her physically abusive husband, and he was awarded custody for this reason. Had she gone through the “proper channels” in the government system, she would have likely been killed before she could make her escape (he threatened to place her dead body in a wood chipper after placing his booted foot in her pregnant belly, causing preterm labor). 

Now, I am certainly not suggesting that these women’s cases are the norm, nor am I a feminist by any stretch of the imagination. I simply do not think this blanket approach will work any more than the blanket approach currently in place to award custody to mothers. There are many fathers today who would use this to control and manipulate the divorced woman for the rest of her life, in the name of “equality”. The two women that I mentioned earlier have suffered the effects financially that most divorced MEN are suffering today. They lose one-fifth of their income to child support which is paid to men who are earning six figures and homeowners, remarried and feel “entitled” to this money from the evil women that got away from them; the ones they could not control. These women have spent tens of thousands of dollars in the “family” court system trying to regain custody. 

I just wonder if this would work today, in an era of bitter men who are angry at feminists, even if their wives were NOT of the feminist mindset. Perhaps presumptive custody of fathers would work if there were a mandate that there would be no child support owed in either direction. 

What are your thoughts in these types of scenarios?

Laura writes:

It seems that in cases of a proven pattern of infidelity, abandonment or insanity, custody should then automatically go to the mother. But the presumption should be that the father is fit to oversee his children’s care unless proven otherwise. Remember, men who are inclined toward infidelity or desertion are less likely to want custody of the children to begin with. A man who wants to abandon his wife typically does not want the children. But, a woman who wants to abandon her husband does want her children too. Needless to say, whatever standards exist for marital dissolution, perfect justice is not possible.  

Jesse Powell writes:

I believe the shift away from presumptive father custody started with the Tender Years Doctrine that began around 1850. From the middle of the nineteenth century, to the 1950s, and to a lesser extent up to the modern day it is women who are assumed to be the best ones to receive primary custody of the child, given their usual role as the primary caretaker of the children. It should be remembered, before the 1850s, premature death of the marriage partner was more common than divorce, and the literal survival of a child into adulthood was in question. 

In the modern environment the concerns are very different. Families are not broken up due to the death of a spouse but due to divorce, the parents splitting, or the parents never getting married in the first place. After a marriage is established, it is the woman who usually initiates the divorce. I don’t know if this is because the woman has less to lose financially and emotionally then the man, or if it is due to women not being able to think long term and abstractly about the full consequences of what divorce will really mean, or if it is due to sex role differences in which sex is more likely to initiate a break up, or if women are just more inclined to pull the the trigger and officially end a marriage that both parties know is in trouble. 

Overall, in modern society, men are most definitely the ones who are marginalized and pushed out of, or choose to abandon, family life. 

I would like to know what the rationale behind presumptive father custody was before the 1850s and what changed in the middle of the 19th century to shift the presumption of child custody to the mother. Are the current problems with family life more analogous to the time before the 1850s when father custody was the norm? Mother custody was around a long time before feminism showed up. Is the best approach to bringing men back into family life really a radical increase in the powers given to men in regards to child custody? 

Presumptive father custody is certainly a radical idea. Would it work? Would it improve things? Is the idea that men should have presumptive custody in an ideal social environment or is the idea that changing the custody presumption to favor the man will force men to take responsibility and force women to go along with a new more benevolent patriarchal order?

Laura writes:

You say, Mother custody was around a long time before feminism showed up.

Actually, the shift to maternal custody perfectly parallels the influence of feminist ideas. Feminism is not a creature of the twentieth century, but of egalitarianism forged in the Enlightenment and already very apparent by the late eighteenth century. The breakdown of patriarchy, in essence a revolt against all authority and hierarchy, would have heavily influenced the trend away from paternal authority in the family in the nineteenth century and encouraged the view of family as purely an emotional unit serving the individual, rather than as a small political and hereditary commonwealth.

Would it improve things? Men do not marry simply because it feels good. They marry to assume their natural role as the head of their families, as leaders. We are doomed unless this role is restored. If men were to impose this as a condition of marriage,women would go along with it. But our current government would not go along with it. It would require some break from state control of marriage. In early America, the government had nothing to do with divorce or marital dissolution and it has since usurped the authority of fathers. This freedom is our heritage, not tyrannical family courts which are not motivated by the best interests of families. 

Peter S. writes:

Are you familiar with the writings of Daniel Amneus, which address this matter in some considerable detail: The Garbage Generation, The Case for Father Custody, The War Against Patriarchy?  Of these, the first is perhaps the best.  A brief biography and remembrance of Amneus may be found here.  He may be counted as a leading theoretician of these issues.

Laura writes:

Thank you for the links. I have not read his work.

Brendan writes:

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