Divorce: The Battle Over “Good Parenthood”

Running head: DIVORCE1
Divorce: The Battle Over “Good Parenthood”
Student Name
College/University Affiliation
DIVORCE

2

Divorce: The Battle Over “Good Parenthood”
I. Introduction
Family is central to society. Throughout human experience, parenthood has informed family formation and development. Just as central, offsprings inform family creation, development and, more, expansion. For millennia, parenting style has come to shape how children are born, raised and cared for. In modern days, parenting, increasingly a shared responsibility as opposed to a conventional stay-at-home mom role, has come to offer completely different challenges for parents – and children. Essentially, parents, fathers and mothers, are now working professionals whose collaboration at home is critical to make life go on. Integral to such collaboration is child care. By “child care” is meant, broadly, all responsibilities a married couple is expected to have and do in order to ensure children’s interests are maintained in most optimum possible ways. This “unity” a household provides for all family members in a “stable marriage” gives way, however, to escalating differences once disagreements harden into irreconcilable disputes. Quickly, harmony and peace give way to disruption and disorder and, in a good many cases, result in divorce. The once “good family” – and, by extension, “good parenthood” example – comes down, in short, to a systematic, aggressive accentuation of differences – and, more importantly, negative stereotypes – each parent has (or not) during a “lasting relationship” now unraveling.
Largely, (mis)informed by wider gender stereotypes, each party in a defunct marriage competes over children as “properties” each party is most entitled to owing to earlier “good parenting” history. The court order for child custody is, accordingly, a solid evidence of good parenthood made more stereotyped by wider (mis)conceptions of, ironically, family courts – and,
DIVORCE

3

in particular, “experts” – about a mother’s and a father’s parenthood (good) style prior to and after divorce. The current state of affairs at family courts exhibit, as shown in current report, a largely stereotyped conception in making child custody decisions. More specifically, in considering a wide range of factors, family court judges make child custody decisions informed less by complex situations at play after divorce and more by historically (stereotyped) understandings of mother’s and father’s rights and, more importantly, child’s best interest. In making a decision about primary, let alone shared, child custody, family courts continue to confirm conventional stereotypes men and women play as married couples and, after divorce, as primary child care providers. This approach to child custody is predominantly framed in a good vs. bad parent narrative in order to make a decision satisfactory.
To put matters into perspective, a closer examination of child custody informed by a gendered understanding of parenting style after divorce is required. The gendered stereotypes about a divorced couple’s parenting style is, for current purposes, of central interest. The question of what makes “good” vs. “bad” parent is, more specifically, as considered by family courts in Australia is a fundamental question current research project aims to answer. Conceptually, current research project puts forward a hypothesis I strongly believe holds valid, and is examined, for gendered child custody cases at Australian family courts:
Hypothesis: Current child custody decision-making practices at Australian family courts are influenced by stereotyped characterizations of mother’s and father’s gendered parenting styles prior to and after divorce.
II. Methods
DIVORCE

4

In opting for one or more research methods, I weigh different advantages and resource access and availability. Theoretically, multiple methods are apt to provide a more reliable and accurate picture, if not an answer, to a given research question as well as a hypothetical situation. Triangulation, as is multiple research method use is commonly referred to, is, for one, a much desired approach to perform a research project of satisfying outcomes. In practice, however, a number of limitations might made such approach unfeasible, if not possible. Specifically, primary sources, important as is in research projects involving detailed personal and legal accounts such as in current one, might be inaccessible for many reasons. Technically, I am not a lawyer, a journalist or an (established) researcher per se. This makes any request to solicit information, let alone personal information, from divorced couples, should I choose to do a survey or gain access to lawsuits and court proceedings, practically impossible, if not illegal. Similarly, seeking to collection information by means of interviewing methods, a primary source to conduct research, is not likely to result in any meaningful outcomes. This is not to mention issues of credentials and confidentiality I am not, legally speaking, entitled to. In fact, I have contemplated at some point of my data gathering process to interview a number of divorced couples over child custody. Having in mind coding interviews into clustered data sets I use later to interpret collected data and examine my hypothesis, my invitations for interviews have been (politely) declined. This has left, accordingly, increasingly fewer options to carry out my research. Ultimately, I have come to settle on literature review as most optimum, feasible and available option. This report is, essentially, a literature review of extant research findings about gendered stereotypes of child custody among divorced couples at family courts, particularly in Australia.
DIVORCE

5

The advantages current research project gain, however, from a literature review approach are numerous. First, earlier research provides a solid background to develop a wider and deeper basis to examine proposed hypotheses. In current case, I use extant literature on child custody to make a case for a gendered stereotyping of child custody at family courts and, by extension, examine current project’s hypothesis. Second, a literature review involves, among many issues, a systematic examination of findings made not only by means of yet another process of literature surveying but, more importantly, by means of critically examining surveys and documents used to perform a specific research project. As such, extant literature, albeit secondary in nature, still provides invaluable insights into areas and issues largely inaccessible to many research efforts, including current one. Third, literature reviews are, by definition, broad in nature. This makes literature reviews, particularly ones involving long spans and/or performed across diverse and vast participant samples, indispensable to identify patterns usually hard to detect by means of underfunded research or by researchers having limited access to sensitive and/or highly confidential data pools.
Conversely, a literature review, as in current research project, is limited in nature in many ways. First, a literature review is, after all, secondary in nature. That is, findings in earlier research, albeit generally reliable, are limited in value such as to generalize for cases not specifically examined. In current research project, for example, despite invaluable insights derived from extant literature, many questions remain an answered, questions answers to which could, one strongly believes, be obtained by means of direct engagement of participant actors namely, divorced couples (and, if possible, children), using surveying and interviewing methods. Second, findings in one or more research projects might not be applicable, let alone
DIVORCE

6

generalizable, to different data sets in different contexts. This is particularly so in literature on gendered stereotyping of child custody at family courts. Specifically, whilst findings, say, in child custody cases in Australia might hold well for examined cases twenty ago, such findings might be invalid, if not completely misleading, in more recent years given new laws and, not least, changes in social and cultural attitudes. This is not to mention, of course, understandable (or not) cultural differences should examined cases are among divorced couples outside Australia. Third, current research project adopts a qualitative approach to project’s central hypothesis. The value judgment of good vs. bad parenting style is, accordingly, inherently subjective in nature. As such, findings in extant research might only be accepted cautiously in order to avoid any confirmation bias.
The decision to choose literature review as a research method is, in balance, a one of
last resort given above mentioned limitations.
III. Literature Review
The family system is a platform for affection and conflict. In a situation of dispute, such as in child custody case, parents compete over children to make a case for legitimacy and, more importantly, goodness. The current family court system, initially designed to negotiate and hopefully end familial conflicts out of court, is anchored in a gendered discourse of good vs. bad parenting style. The shift in recent years, more specifically, to a shared custody approach from a, primarily, conventional mother custody has set in place a principle of in child’s best interest. Initially, sidelining parents – and, by extension, parental rights – and emphasizing child’s best interest might appear ideal. Taking a deeper look, however, uncovers layers of subjectivity to judge who is a good parent under an outward facade of an objective principle. Notably, Family
DIVORCE

7

Law Amendment (Shared Parental Responsibility) Act 2006 assumes, by definition, a shared parental responsibility. The caveat, however, is evident in a child’s right to benefit from a “meaningful relationship” from both parents and, more importantly, a right to be protected from all forms of abuse including, mainly, “physical, psychological, emotional and sexual harm” (“Mother’s rights after separation,” n.d.). In practice, however, one parent, mainly mother, is identified as a “good parent.” This is not only owing to legal precedence yet, more importantly, to a systematic (and gendered) approach to mothers as more likely to experience domestic violence and, as such, more eligible for protection and child custody – an understanding expressed clearly in Australian parenting orders (“If you can’t agree,” 2016). The question of joint versus sole physical custody is, moreover, well documented in literature. Considering for family income and parental conflict, Nielsen (2018), surveying extant literature on joint versus sole physical custody, finds that joint physical custody is generally linked to better outcomes for children. The study accounts, interestingly, for behavioral, emotional, physical, and academic well-being and relationships with parents and grandparents. These findings are well aligned to extant laws, as noted, and current practices of primary child custody. Then again, “showing” shared custody is “good” for a child – or, in common parlance, “in child&rsqu...