>Anecdotally, women seem to be preferred in custody cases.
"Fathers who actively seek custody obtain either primary or joint physical custody over 70% of the time. Reports indicate, however, that in some cases perceptions of gender bias may discourage fathers from seeking custody and stereotypes about fathers may sometimes affect case outcomes. In general, our evidence suggests that the courts hold higher standards for mothers than fathers in custody determinations."
As I recall, fathers are discouraged from seeking primary custody without strong justification (by the advice their divorce lawyers give them, by not being able to afford a divorce lawyer at all, by the fear of losing all access to their kids if they kick up a fuss...) so the cases where they do seek custody are going to be biased towards ones where the mother's abusive or otherwise unfit. The study doesn't seem to investigate whether this is the case.
Also, I'd be interested to see actual methodological details. For instance, it talks about women being unable to get adjustments in payments to which they're entitled. Did they bother to investigate whether men have the same problem? They don't mention it if they do, and anecdotally they do seem to have difficulty getting their payments adjusted down if they lose their job and can no longer afford to pay as much. To be honest, I reckon this study is kind of biased in terms of what questions it actually asks.
1. It attempts to draw a comparison but only offers one number. If mothers who actively seek custody obtain either primary or joint physical custody over 95% of the time, there's still bias at work.
2. It lumps primary custody in with joint custody. There's a lot of room for disparity between those two numbers.
3. It doesn't show how men who fervently seek custody stack up against women who don't particularly go out of their way to get custody. If women have to do less to be awarded custody, that would weigh against their conclusion.
I'm not claiming any of these are the case (really, I have no clue), but this paper doesn't really show its work, which makes it hard to evaluate.
In 1990 a judiciary investigated itself and found no evidence of bias against men only women. Conveniently that was the socially correct opinion at the time.
Joint physical custody just means that there is regular visitation. So saying "primary or joint" covers all fathers that see their kids regularly.
That quote really says that 30% of fathers actively seeking regular time with their children were denied the right to parent their children. I wonder what percentage of mothers were denied regular parenting time?
"Fathers who actively seek custody obtain either primary or joint physical custody over 70% of the time. Reports indicate, however, that in some cases perceptions of gender bias may discourage fathers from seeking custody and stereotypes about fathers may sometimes affect case outcomes. In general, our evidence suggests that the courts hold higher standards for mothers than fathers in custody determinations."
http://www.amptoons.com/blog/files/Massachusetts_Gender_Bias...