Custody Battles

There have been several cases in the news lately regarding the custody of minor children and they all bring out some very interesting points.

In Missouri, a blind couple recently gave birth to a daughter. While in the hospital, nurses noticed that the mother’s breast tissue was covering up the baby’s nose when she was nursing. They reported the incident and child social services removed the baby from the parents’ custody for more than two months! This is utterly outrageous. All the nurses had to do was to tell the mother “This is what’s happening when you nurse her” and teach her how to make sure the baby’s breathing! She’s a first time mother. Her lack of ability to see has nothing to do with her mental acuity or her ability to take care of her child.

In the second case, a New Jersey couple— enamored with Adolf Hitler to the point of naming one of their children after him, a second after Heinrich Himmler and a third after a white supremacist group— lost custody of their children in a ruling handed down last week. Court documents show that the children were in danger of being abused because of a history of domestic violence in the home. The oldest child, a 4-year-old boy named Adolf Hitler Campbell, often threatens to kill people and calls his foster mother and court appointed psychologist a bitch when he doesn’t get his way. He’s also threatened his sisters with violence.

The child’s father has been married before and none of his ex-wives have anything nice to say about him and revealed how he taught his children to say racist things to non-whites. He allegedly punished one of his children to his ex-wife so drastically that every time the child’s mother turns on the vacuum cleaner, the child screams in terror. One of his ex-wives has a restraining order against him. Yet despite all these signs that the man is a violent and unfit father, DYFS (Division of Youth and Family Services) never got involved until a grocery store in another state refused to write “Happy Birthday Adolf Hitler” on the boy’s third birthday cake. Then the story made news and DYFS stepped in.

The first story illustrates the extremes to which this society has gone: anyone different is not good enough. Any time a child is in danger (which the baby certainly was if it couldn’t breath and was turning blue), it’s neglect or abuse. And the immediate response is to remove the child from the home.

The second story illustrates the way it used to be: a man’s home is his castle and what went on inside that home was his business and child welfare didn’t get involved unless called to the scene and they only took the kids if there was an abundance of clear evidence of neglect or abuse that simply could not be ignored. While officials state that taking the children from the home had nothing to do with the children’s names, well, let’s just say I have a hard time believing that given the timing of the whole thing. It seems to me that the kids were taken because of the public outcry over their names and then they were kept away because of the abuse.

Somewhere in between these two extremes is the best interests of the child. And that has to be paramount in deciding any custody cases. In Pennsylvania, the goal is not set as the best interest of the child but of reuniting blood families. But “blood ties” mean absolutely nothing when it comes to parenting abilities. A mom or dad is the one who was always there for you, not the one who necessarily gave birth to you or sired you. Giving birth and impregnating a woman takes no skill, no patience, no love. Being a parent does. And courts should always put kids with their parents, which is not always the biolgical donors of egg and sperm.

And so we come to our third story. In a recent study of custody cases it was seen that courts are awarding custody to the most smothering of the parents. Parents who are so involved in their kids lives that their kids are hardly ever on their own. And kids no their own is what allows kids to grow up and mature and turn into responsible adults. But society has decided that the smothering parent is the role model of good parenting and so the courts are following suit. I guess I’m not a good parent then because by the age of ten, both my boys could clean the house from top to bottom (well, they couldn’t wash walls, but then neither did I!), cook a meal (including cutting up vegetables or meat with sharp knives and using the stove!) , mend their own clothes (using sharp needles!), do their own laundry, iron (using a hot iron!) and mow the grass (oh, the sharp blades!). AND…they walked to school even in the winter! And if they chose to wear shorts in the middle of December, I LET THEM! How I ever got custody, I don’t know. (Actually, I do. Their father never tried to get custody from me. Stating a simple fact: not making a judgment about his lack of effort. In fact, given that by then he knew I was bisexual his lack of attempt to get custody was showing that he knew that the kids would be better off with me because I had been their emotional support since they’d been born. He put the best interests of the boys ahead of his own ego and he should get credit for that.)

We already have a generation of kids who feel entitled to things like new Mercedes Benz SUVs for their 16th birthday and who feel they have to compete for who had the biggest and baddest birthday party. Now we’re going to add emotional crippling to the next generation. God’dess help us all!