[Indexed as: Cassidy, Robert, “Men and Divorce, Part 3: What Happens to Divorced Fathers,” syndicated (Field Enterprises), Feb. 8, 1977]

***

What happens to divorced fathers who don’t win custody of their children? And why is it that 95 per cent of them don’t, even when clearly qualified? In this third of a four-part series, author-editor Robert Cassidy, drawing from his own experience as a divorced father, paints the displaced father as a second-class citizen.

***

The men hurt most in divorce are fathers. The divorce works to split them from their children, usually an extremely painful experience. “I’m glad I’m divorced,” complains one Chicago man, “but I never wanted to be divorced from my child.”

Our society has traditionally downplayed the role of the father in the family. The home was looked upon as the woman’s domain; the children, her responsibility. The man’s place was in the outside world of business and public affairs.

The consequence of this narrow view Is that men are treated as second-class members of the family, especially when the family is broken by divorce. In the nearly 700,000
divorces each year involving families with children, men obtain custody only 5 per cent of the time.

A few states Alabama, Louisiana and Pennsylvania still adhere to the “tender-years” doctrine, which declares that the “child at tender age is entitled to have such care, love and discipline as only a good and devoted mother can usually give.” However, most stales now require that custody be determined on the basis of the “best interests of the child,” without regard to the parents’ sex.

But this is a vague prescription, leaving judges wide latitude in which to decide individual cases. No other state goes so far as Michigan, for example, in requiring judges to evaluate 10 specific criteria before making a custody decision: among these, the parents’ “moral fitness,” the mental and physical health of each, the love and care each parent is able to give the child, the child’s educational needs, the stability of the home each parent can provide, and — if the child is of “sufficient age” — his preference in the matter. More often, the judge in a custody situation is all-powerful.

So, the man is in a quandary. If he lives in a “tender years” state and his children are young, they will almost surely be awarded to their mother. If he lives in a state honoring the “best-interest” doctrine, he is still pilled against years of ingrained prejudice against paternal custody.” To fight for custody could cost him thousands of dollars in legal fees — and possibly his sanity. No wonder most men give up without trying.

The irony is that the law in most states “explicitly says that neither parent shall have the prima facie right to custody,” points out Doris L. Sassower, a New York City lawyer known for her work in sex-bias cases. “But the judicial interpretation is such that, in the vast majority of cases, the father starts out behind the eight ball, and the child eventually suffers the effects of paternal deprivation.”

Just how much divorce hurts children is hard to determine. Two California researchers, Judith Wallerstein on the staff of the University of California a Berkeley, and Joan B. Kelly, have studied 131 children of divorce from Marin County since 1971. Their findings indicate that such children have a wide range of reactions.

Some 2- and 3-year-olds, for example, regressed to an earlier behavior, welting the bed or sucking their thumbs. Older preschoolers were “painfully bewildered” by the loss of their fathers. Some school-age children snowed tremendous sadness about the divorce and had no way to release their painful emotions. Others were fearful of being abandoned. Some teenagers worried about money; others turned to drinking, drugs and sex. Children of all ages hoped to reconcile their parents and dreamed or fantasized about the day when mommy and daddy would be together again.

Most children eventually adjust, although some are seriously hurt by the divorce. In cases where (here are serious problems, professional help should be obtained.

What is most important for fathers without custody to understand is the child’s view of divorce. A youngster’s bedwetting may be his way of saying, “Daddy, I miss you.”

What happens to fathers who don’t get custody? Judges grant them “reasonable visitation.” They are permitted to see their children during certain hours, at certain times of the week, at the discretion of the court — and at the whim of their ex-wives.

Many women use the children lo get back at their husbands for some perceived grievance. If. for example, a woman decides her husband should not see the children, she can simply send them lo a neighbor’s before he arrives. Or, she can impose ridiculous constraints on the man’s visits — permitting him to see the children only at her parents’ home, for instance. One man had to pick up his 5 year-old daughter in a parking lot because his ex-wife wouldn’t tell him where she lives. And a Phoenix man reports, “Every time I want to see my daughter, my wife has an excuse.”

Some men light back by withholding their support checks. Judges lend to act quickly in such situations — threatening the man with garnishment of his pay, seizure of his property, even jail.

“They’ll put a guy in jail for nonsupport, but there’s not one case we’ve been able to find in Massachusetts where a woman has been jailed for violation of visitation rights,” says Frank Renlin, a member of Fathers United for Equal Justice (FUEJ) in Boston. “If we talk about equality, then women should be made lo keep their side of the bargain, too.”

Increasingly, men are taking action to elevate divorced fathers to first-class status in the family. In a celebrated New York case, child-development specialist, Dr. Lee Salk won custody of his children by proving that he was more fit than his wife to care for them, even though she was competent. “He was best suited to guide them along in their future,” The judge in the case stated, “he is a very loving parent.”

Fathers who don’t have nearly the credentials of a Dr. Salk are also fighting for custody, using innovative approaches to win their cases. Daniel Molinoff, another New Yorker, has perhaps the ultimate arrangement. He shares “joint custody” of his two sons with his ex-wife and has equal time with them. Both Molinoff and his ex-wife maintain residences in New Rochelle, a New York City suburb. The two boys live with him four days one week and three days the next. They live nearby with their mother the rest of the time. The boys attend one school, have kept their friends and, in effect, both parents.

Divorced men are also working collectively to gain reforms. In Boston, FUEJ is pushing a bill in the Massachusetts legislature providing for “joint custody” in virtually every divorce Involving children. Custody, suggests FUEJ president Robert LeClair, should be “a shared commitment. As it stands now, women feel they’ll automatically be given custody of the children, and a father is reduced to being a visitor. (This) bill will provide each parent with a block of custody time.”

In Los Angeles, another group, Fathers Demanding Equal Justice, has launched a campaign to assure fathers of their visitation rights. Vert Vergon, the group’s president, notes that many men are denied visitation because their ex-wives hide the children when the man comes to pick them up.

Vergon’s group learned that this is a crime in California. So, they started stalking local police precincts, asking the officers to enforce men’s visitation rights. Mostly, the police ignored them. But when Vergon and company took a Newsweek Films camera crew along to record one such instance, the police suddenly decided to take action. Such breakthroughs offer hope that, in the near future, divorce will signal the end of a marriage but not, as it so often does now, the end of a viable bond between a father and his children.

***

Part 1: “Do Divorce Laws Favor Women?” Feb. 6, 1977

Part 2: “Divorce Triggers Emotional Reaction,” Feb. 7, 1977

Part 3: “What Happens to Divorced Fathers,” Feb. 8, 1977

Part 4: Divorce Can Lead to Personal Growth,” Feb. 9, 1977

NOTE

Dates of publication and titles vary from paper to paper.