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  But Really—Surely You Don't Feel Sorry for Clark Rockefeller?!

  Posted Wednesday, August 06, 2008 1:53 PM | By E.J. Graff

  Meghan, I guess I just can't let this bone go. I do understand sympathy for fathers who feel shut out of relationships with their children—and actually, for anyone (man or woman) who ends up in family court, waiting for a judge to decide the fate of the family based on who knows what prejudices. It's a horrible and nailbiting experience. But Clark Rockefeller? He didn't just kidnap his daughter from the social worker; first he hit the social worker with his SUV!! And now the Boston Globe reports that the reason he didn't get custody of any sort was that he refused to document his identity. For the same reason, he never obtained a real marriage license; he lied to his wife (and presumably whoever performed the wedding) about getting one. He was a liar living under a series of fake identities; he's telling police he "doesn't remember" where he was born or to whom! Sorry, whether or not he's also a murderer, this dude doesn't deserve joint custody.

  But I do agree with you that women shouldn't be entitled to the presumption of primary parental status merely because they are female. I know fathers who are more maternal than the child's mother. I know co-mothers who should get primary or equal parenting status with the biomoms. Some women think that women are by nature better parents. I'm not essentialist enough to sign up for that belief. (By the way, the parenting research hasn't been able to find any constant difference by sex that holds across cultures. "Mothers" differ from other mothers as much as they do from "fathers." The research is fascinating.)

  A note: I profoundly admire some folks I know who share custody by letting the children stay in the house while the parents move in and out, in turn. (These are real people, honest.) Now that's putting the children first.

  Filed under: divorce, motherhood, custody, fathers

About E.J. Graff

• E.J. Graff is senior researcher at Brandeis University's Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism, where she directs the Gender & Justice Project. She is a resident scholar at the Brandeis Women's Studies Research Center. As a journalist and author, her work has appeared in such venues as The New York Times Magazine, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, The Los Angeles Times, Columbia Journalism Review, Good Housekeeping, The Nation, The New Republic, and in more than a dozen anthologies. She collaborated on former Massachusetts Lt. Governor Evelyn Murphy's book Getting Even: Why Women Don't Get Paid Like Men--and What To Do About It (Simon & Schuster, 2005). Her first book, What Is Marriage For? The Strange Social History of Our Most Intimate Institution, has been widely cited in legal journals, reprinted for academic use, entered as courtroom exhibits, and quoted by government policymaking bodies.

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