Get To Know How Deal with Child Custody

by Dennis Gac

Bitter couples battling over the possession has always been a common sight, and in the recent times when divorce statistics have gone up ten-fold, it is an even more familiar sight. A battle concerning child custody is an intensely traumatic ordeal for all the parties, including the children involved. Conflicts usually center on who shall the children stay with and how much of visiting time the other parent gets. Sadly, the latter usually becomes more like a visitor in the life of his own children. Inevitably, one parent gets to pay the price for separation by being confined to the sidelines, as a peripheral guardian figure. Over time however, the concept of child custody has undergone many changes, in the historical context, so to speak.

As with most other issues, even the concept of child custody had a patriarchal bias till about the middle of the nineteenth century. Fathers were universally regarded as the sole parent figure who could take proper care of their children. This was probably because women were yet to emerge fully into the field of being "single mothers". However, with the increasing intensity of the female emancipation movements, things took a different turn around the early years of the 2oth century. By then, mothers slowly began to be recognized as the more responsible and caring parent, as the fathers spent more and more time outside the household, working for their livelihoods. However, things took a negative turn once again.

This has a different effect as well. Soon the fathers began to protest against this maternal bias and believed that they were being unnecessarily being excluded from the lives of their own children, through no fault of their own. They wanted custody of their own children as well. They argued that it was unfair to idealize the maternal love as all powerful and all encompassing. It was generally felt that custody should not be awarded on the basis of gender, but the intrinsic attributes of an individual, like his/her sense of responsibility, duty and so on.

In the later years of the 20th century, the legislative issues of child custody underwent a change. Post -world war, there were changes in legislation in case of marriages and divorces. The conception of joint child custody arrived, that is to say, both the parents had equal rights with regard to their children's growth and development. No more was child custody solely based on gender. Two kinds of child custody emerged-one of physical custody in which the parent had the sole authority of deciding where the children would live, and; the other of legal custody, which means that the parent was to take all decisions integral to the growth and development of the child.

Now, for obvious reasons of convenience, judicial records have attached more importance to shared legal child custody over physical custody. However, it is important to realize that these matters are indicative of a general trend which has undergone a change. In matters of child custody, fathers ultimately are receiving the short end of the straw as of now. Unfortunately, women still get the lion's share when it comes to it. As a result, men are now resorting to various legal and other socio-political measures that will enable this bias to be destroyed for once and for all.

About the Author
Dennis Gac represents Father Rights Organization which helps fathers to regain their children's back into their custody. If you wish to know more about father rights just visit the website http://www.fathershelphotonline.com and more information about father rights.