Child custody laws, stigmas against parents based on gender, and how the process of deciding custody has undergone much reform over the years leading to its current form. Such a complicated issue creates many obstacles for judges to come to a conclusion on a custody case. Kramer vs Kramer gives an inside perspective on the challenges that both family involved, and the court must face. Kramer vs. Kramer throws the audience into an emotion filled journey to grant custody to the most capable parent after the Kramers undergo a divorce. The film demonstrates how stigmas against parents, and the unlawful ness of prior custody laws did not put the child's welfare at the forefront, something that is the primary element in custody laws.
To start, the film demonstrates two different types of separation that married
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For Mr.Kramer, he faced the challenge of proving himself worthy, and capable of being the primary care taker of his child. One of the contributing problems he faced may have been what is called the “tender years doctrine”; which deems mothers are needed more during a child's younger years to ensure proper development of the child. Obviously, in current time this has been been abandoned by the courts, and now they look at who is the more fit parent, as the child's welfare is the most important element in making a final decision. This prior stigma that men were less valuable in their child's development would actually hurt the child's wellbeing in some instances. Lawful reform to avoid adhering to the tender years doctrine has undoubtably helped place children under the care of more suitable parents. Additionally, even if a single parent is granted primary custody, the court will try to give strong visitations rights to that parent without sole custody, unless other implications prevent
In the United States today more than one-half of all marriages end in divorce. The purpose of this paper is to examine the reason why women have typically received custody of the children far more often than the fathers. In order to better understand child custody one must first examine how fathers have often times been left out of the picture, and conversely why mothers have had such hard times raising children on their own. This paper will first examine the perspective of a father who has lost custody of his children.
In Wade F. Horn’s article “Promoting Marriage as a Means of Promoting Fatherhood,” Horn discusses how having a child and being married is better for children because the father is more involved in the child’s life. Kathryn Edin and Maria Kefalas’s “Unmarried with Children,” on the other hand, takes the reader through Jen’s story about getting pregnant at a young age and deciding not to marry the father of her son. While both sources make appeals to emotion, reason, and character, Edin and Kefalas’s article makes more successful appeals and thus is the stronger argument.
For instance, in 2008 there were 147,848 marriages and a staggering 70,266 divorces (Statistics Canada, 2013). Thus, this illustrates that almost half of all marriages end in divorce. There are many reasons that a couple may choose to divorce including but not limited to economic issues, unrealistic expectations, and the weakening societal view of marriage. The implantation of the no-fault divorce grounds in 1968 have resulted in an easily attainable divorce (Riedman et al, 2003). In the film, many characters have been affected by divorce. First, we observe Duncan’s mother, Pam and Trent who have both been divorced in the past. Next, friends of Trent, a couple that also vacations during the summer are evidently heading for divorce as their marriage is filled with infidelity and
In this first paragraph, the author battles with a commonly held belief that children are the “property” of their parents for a certain amount of time in their lives. The author constructs upon the topic slowly by disclosing his problem with the idea of children as property, only to bring his own life experiences into count by explaining his adolescence with a dysfunctional family. By bringing in his personal experiences, the author is in some sense considered an authority figure on the topic of a child’s life with a dysfunctional family. He compares the concept of parental custody with apprenticeship, and he puts it all together by creating a practical solution to the problem. His true thesis sentence is seen in the last paragraph where he says, “We have invested far too heavily in the unproved “equity” called the nuclear family; that stock is about to crash and we ought to being finding escape options” (p 196). By gradually giving the reader background info on the problems of the modern dysfunctional family, and then stating the thesis at the end, he very clearly gets his argument across.
Parents, no matter their profession, are eternally in the business of raising their children. From their earliest ages, kids are told who they can play with, what they can eat, where they can go, and even when they have to go to bed. But is there a point where parents go too far? In other words, is there a time when in raising a child, a parent interjects in a child’s life so much that those actions become detrimental to the child’s development? This is the physically moral dilemma that comes out of the Ashley Treatment. The procedure that has opened up society’s view on human development brings with it an incredible amount of controversy.
With the increase of divorce and the number of children being born out of wedlock, parental alienation continues to grow. With custody laws changing, allowing for equal opportunities for both parents to raise their children, and fathers beginning to fight for their right to be involved, not just every other weekend fathers, custody battles have become increasingly fierce. Another factor contributing to this is the fact that many courts consider who will be more willing to encourage the child to have a heathly and continuing relationship with the other parent.
In retrospect, joint custody causes children to obtain the best childhood possible and also provides stability within the mental and physical aspects of a child’s family
Just as girls are pushed into societal standards, a newly invented standard has been introduced for males in society, known as the “child-man” ethic. “Child Man in the Promised Land”, written by Kay S. Hymowitz, is an argument in which the author states that the “child-man” ethic is prevalent and harmful to society. Hymowitz explains this ethic using a variety of supporting evidences, and explains both the implications of the “child-man” ethic, as well as its effects on the next generation. The “child-man” ethic has many social and cultural implications, since this ethic has changed social implications from just 20-30 years ago. Back then, in a man’s late 20s, he was “married… met your wife in high school…you’ve already got one kid, with another
It states that “unless there were extenuating circumstances” the “children of a young age and all female children” were to be placed with their mothers (Costanzo & Kraus, 2012). So child custody went until the mid- 1900’s when the fathers started to push for “their rights” (Costanzo & Kraus, 2012). The tender years doctrine was finally terminated. The “primary caretaker rule” then went into effect.
Divorce is becoming a worldwide phenomenon, significantly affecting children’s well-being. It radically changes their future, causing detrimental effects. According to (Julio Cáceres-Delpiano and Eugenio Giolito, 2008) nearly 50% of marriages end with divorce. 90% of children who lived in the USA in the 1960s stayed with their own biological parents, whereas today it makes up only 40% (Hetherington, E. Mavis, and Margaret Stanley-Hagan, 1999). Such an unfavorable problem has been increasing, because in 1969, the California State Legislature changed the divorce laws, where spouses could leave without providing cause (Child Study Center, 2001).
However, this type of thinking began to change in the late 1800's. Our society began to change its opinion on child welfare. More fathers were leaving the home areas to seek work, and the mothers were left at home with the children as their primary caretakers. On the other hand, the fathers became the wage earners. This then changed the thinking of child custody and the way it was viewed. In addition, there was what was called the Tender Years Doctrine. This legal doctrine which has been part of the family law-common law since the late nineteenth century pertains to children age of four and younger are better off with their mothers. By the 1920's the maternal custody preference started to become more of the norm. Because mothers were considered to be better at nurturing then the fathers were. In the 1930's, Sigmund Freud, an Austrian neuropsychologist; founder of psychoanalysis developed a theory called the psychoanalytic theory that focused on the mother-child relationship and ignored the fathers role in the developmental growth of the child. This theory gave a boost to the assumption that mothers were better parents. (Joan B. Kelly, 2014)
Child custody evaluations cover multiple issues such as custody, maintenance, support, valuation, visitation, relocation, and termination of parental rights. There are multiple forms of custody that can result from a child custody evaluation. First is physical custody which is defined as “how much time a child spends with each parent, if the parents share physical custody” (Costanzo & Krauss, 2012). Another form of custody is legal custody, which gives a parent the authority to decide certain influential factors in the child’s life (Costanzo & Krauss, 2012). Joint legal custody is also an option. Another form of custody is sole custody which is defined as “one parent has legal and physical custody while the other typically has agreed upon some rights to visit the child at regular intervals” (Costanzo & Krauss, 2012). “Most custody decisions – about 90% - are made without resorting to litigation” (Costanzo & Krauss, 2012). “Estimates of actual custody arrangements in...
Timing Effects on Divorce: 20th Century Experience in the United States. " Journal of Marriage and Family 68 (2006): 749-58. Coltrane, Scott, and Michele Adams. " The Social Construction of the Divorce "Problem": Morality, Child Victims, and the Politics of Gender.
...” (271). Hester had effectively raised a youngster to become something that was not expected. Despite being shunned upon on, Hester found a way to positively show Pearl moral lessons with the scarlet letter. Even when the townspeople wanted to take Pearl away from her mother, they were not triumphant to do so. The mother’s life was solely about Pearl; to keep her protected, warm, fed, clothed and loved. My conclusion, which is that based on the success of Pearl’s life, is that a single mother can raise a child. A single parent has the capability to nurture and love a son or daughter just as two parents can. A single parent sometimes is the best choice of who the minor can be with. A single parent may have challenges, but they can overcome them just to keep the child they love alive and well. Is it time now to realize what a single parent can truly accomplish?
The Adoption and Foster Care Analysis and Reporting System Report there were about 423,773 children in foster care in the United States only a couple of years ago (Watson). Each foster child in the system should have a chance at adoption so to deny gay couples the right to adopt is not only heartbreaking for both the child and the gay couple but also unconstitutional. A requirement of being a parent shouldn’t focus on a person’s sexual orientation; it’s not an aspect that should matter. The main things to look for when evaluating a person’s worth as a parent should be whether the person is caring, devoted, and stable. An example is Jon Campbell and Danny Stewart, found a recently-born baby on a subway and adopted the baby, thinking that it might be their only chance in adopting a child. Another example of how much gay couples value having children is shown by Bircher, a 44-year-old hair salon owner, when he said, "Our prisons are full of people who were in foster care, and those people were in, quote unquote, straight family homes, if I can provide a loving, stable home for my little boy, that 's the goal" (Watson). These articles show how much gay couples value having children and it shows that they could great parents, despite irrational arguments against them