Family or Finance

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Recommended: Comparing and contrasting single mothers and single fathers

Family or Finance,
Which Should Come First?

When looking at custody cases in America today, one must wonder what the courts find more important when deciding the fate of these children, family or finance? The issue has been raised that the majority of the time, the mother gets custody of the children. Should this be so? Should we at this time, a time where we are trying to break through the molds of the mother being the only caregiver, automatically assume that the mother should gain custody of the children? Or, should we begin to look at the merits of allowing fathers to gain custody of the children? When looking at these cases, cases where both the mother and father desire custody of the children, how do you decide who should win? Should money be the primary factor? Should family be the primary factor? Or should the kids’ desires be the primary factor?
All these question have been raised, and the courts answer is very simple. When deciding who should gain custody of the children the primary factor is “What is in the best interest of the child?” The problem to this answer is that it is too vague and doesn’t effectively answer any of the questions above. So lets look at what the courts feel is in the best interest of the children.
Based on statistics from 1994, single mothers made up 6.6% of all families, while single fathers made up only 1.2%. So it would appear that mothers are more likely to end up with the children than fathers. Of course we must take into consideration the fact that not all the fathers want the children, and they go to the mother by default, and then there are the fathers that are in prison. There are also cases of the women not wanting the children as well. But we do not want to focus on these people, we are looking strictly at cases where both parents desire custody of the children. The fact is there are more single mothers than fathers, and when it comes to cases where both parents want the child, the mothers are more likely to win custody than the father. So we must determine why this is.
When looking at recent statistics you can see that 52% of single mothers are below the poverty level, where only a little over 20% of single fathers fall below the level.

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