Conference quark::mennotes

211.0. "LEGAL CHILD ABUSE" by RANGER::GOBLE () Mon Mar 04 1996 14:21

from The Wall Steet Journal -- Letters to the Editor
CUSTODY LAW: LEGAL CHILD ABUSE

    Rather than taking a giant step backward by
repealing "no-fault" divorce (page one, Jan 5)
the Michigan legislature should take a progressive
step and enact a "no-fault" custody law to preserve
family life after divorce by encouraging and
ensuring continuing involvement of both parents
with their chilidren with mandatory shared
custody arrangements.

    Unfortunately, the acrimony associated with
divorce prior to the enactmant of "no-fault"
divorce laws has simply transferred itself to the
arena of child custody battles spurred on by an
adversary legal system and a lucrative custody
industry.  Divorce, in essence, is the severance
of a contractural union between a man and a
woman only.  The courts then should restrict
their role to ensuring an equitable financial
settlement of a broken contract.  Instead, a highly
intrusive custody industry has arisen in this
country devoted to ravaging families totally,
to destroying completely the ties between parents
and children far beyond what divorce between adults
subsumes, separating children from one or the other
parent (almost always the father), and generating
unspekable amounts of "child support" dollars that
can never replace the love and support children
require from both parents after divorce.

    The custody industry is sustained by a
surpassingly disinterested judiciary, venal
hired-gun lawyers with a take-no-prisoners mentality,
and by a host of ethically insensitive psychologists
and psychiatrists who depend upon the courts for
case handouts and remuneration because they cannot
make a living on their own.  The emotional and
financial toll on the parents, the children, and,
inevitably, on society is devastating.

    Divorce itself is hardly a sociatal disaster,
although it surely is more convenient, if not more
rewarding, to raise children in a two-parent
household.  Divorce is not the end of family life,
either.  Two parents, each raising children, but
separately, are still a family, or two families.  The
"anxiety and depression" affecting children derives
mainly from the present adjudication and presecution
process surrounding divorce that invariably threatens
the children's ties to one or the other parent,
usually the father.  Those adults who "are now free
to make choices that harm children" are not the
victimized parents, but are the agents and collaborators
of the custody industry.

    The authorities in the U.S. do not yet investigate
gratuitously the quality of the ties between parents
and children in two-parent households, married or not.
By what logic do we scrutinize mercilessly the ties
between divorcing parents and their children merely
because the parents wish no longer to be united under
one roof?  Children need both parents whether the
parents remain married or not. The wildly exaggerated
figures suggesting widespread abuse of spouses and
children and the brutishness of men are in large
measure false accusations arising out of custody
adjudications and society's ill-considered and
mistaken demonization of men and fathers.

    The Michagan legislature should take the lead and
provide an example to the country by enacting measures
to strengthen the ties between parents and children
following divorce, ceasing to reward vengeful spouses
for false accusations of abuse, gettng the judiciary
and govenrment out of family life, and closing down
the custody industry -- the only child abuse legally
sanctioned in the United States.

			Michael L. Nieland, M.D.
Pittsburgh