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Gender Bias in Family Court

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Gender Bias in Family Court
Who says that just because a mother gave birth to her child she should have more say in decisions than the father through family court? In most cases, when a father and mother go into family court for whatever reason it is, the mother is favored due to the stereotype that they can provide a better life for their children. From experience, I know that a father is just as “nurturing” as a mother. A father may not be able to play mom, but he has just as much capability to take care of his children just as much as a mother. Judges in family court should pay more attention to whether or not they’re being more lenient to the mother than the father.

According to Aaron Larson, previous to the twentieth century, children were often treated as property of the father by common law jurisdictions. This means, if a child’s mother and father were to get a divorce, the child would be handed over to the father’s custody rather than the mothers. In the 1960’s, women put on a fight to pass laws that would protect them from domestic violence. After a timely effort, domestic violence, stalking, and sexual harassment laws were passed. Women now use these laws to their advantage to make men look like unfit parents and completely remove their children’s fathers from their lives.(Pearl Harbour) In the 1970’s, a number of divorced men organized a group commonly known as the Fathers’ Rights Group because of fathers not being treated equally in child custody litigation.(Pam Chamberlain)

Stated by the US Census Bureau, in the year 2002, around 13.4 million parents had custody of 21.5 million children under the age of 21 year and in a separate living space as the other parent. Additionally, the Census declared that around 84.4 percent of custodial parents were mothers and 15.6 percent were fathers. That means five of every six custodial parents were mothers. These proportions have been statistically unchanged since 1994. Fathers are being treated as if their worth is just the same as a

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