CLICK HERE FOR RESEARCH: Elkin states that Joint Custody is the child’s right upon separation, contradicting many who claim such arrangements ‘place the rights of parents (or fathers) above the rights of children.'
Dr Elkin writes for the (American) National Association of Social Workers, and supports joint custody arrangements in 1987; two years before the judicial interpretation of the 1989 Children Act translated to a general suppression of shared residence arrangements in the UK
Dr Elkin lists the following ‘fallacious assumptions underlying sole custody determinations’:
- There is a mother hood instinct that makes women better and more qualified than men to rear children
- The nuclear family is best suited to rear children
- A parent who has a paramour is not fit parent
- If parents are unable to agree during marriage, they will agree after divorce
- Divorce is bad for children
- Younger children are more affected than older children by divorce
- Children need a mother more than a father
- Fathers stop seeing their because these fathers are irresponsible and do not care
- A child reared by a homosexual will become a homosexual; so a homosexual should be denied custody
- People do not change
- Divorced persons are incapable of developing a decent relationship with each other
- Fathers request joint custody as part of a strategy to obtain sole custody eventually
- If parents really cared about their children, they would not get a divorce
- Judges and attorneys know what is best for children
- Mental health professionals, as well as judges and attorneys, can predict human behaviour
- There is no evidence that joint custody works
- Sole custody gives the child continuity and stability
- Two homes do not provide continuity and stability
- Joint custody makes it easier for the children to be used as pawns
- Joint custody forces parents to see each other
- Joint custody means a 50/50 arrangement with children
- The adversarial system is the best approach to determining custody
