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Grex Parenting Item 54: Jennifer Ireland Legal Fund
Entered by bnm on Tue Aug 9 01:26:30 UTC 1994:

I don't know if any of you have been following the recent
custody battle involving a U of M student with a child
in daycare.  The gist of it is that custody of a child
that has spent all of her life with her mother (I
forget the exact age of the child, but she's at least
a few years old) is being transfered to her biological
father pretty much solely on the basis that the child
is in daycare forty hours a week.  (The father's
mother is available during the day to watch the
child.)

If any of you would like to contribute to the cause
of the mother, the following address was obtained
from her attorney.  I know we'll be sending a few bucks.

Jennifer Ireland Legal Fund
Huntington Bank of Michigan - Chesterfield Division
P. O. Box 328
Mt. Clemens, MI
     48046-9906

7 responses total.

#1 of 7 by popcorn on Tue Aug 9 11:59:29 1994:

This response has been erased.

#2 of 7 by gracel on Wed Aug 10 14:58:37 1994:

See the Free Press of last Friday, August 5, for something about
the father's side of it.  (That section is under one of the
litter boxes at the moment, so I've seen it several times)  
It's not just day care, he says.

#3 of 7 by scg on Wed Aug 10 15:41:21 1994:

My reaction for about the first week I heard about this case was that it
was a case of sex discrimination, and that an assumption was being made by
the Ann Arbor News that, regardless of daycare, the mother was always the
better parent.  Finally, after several days of wondering what the huge
fuss was about, I found an article in the New York Times that gave a little
bit of background information.  According to The Times, the father had
almost no contact with the girl, and made no effort to have any contact
with the girl, until he was ordered to pay something like $12  per month
for child support.  At that point, when the girl was already over a year
old, he filed for custody, apparrently to get revenge.

#4 of 7 by mta on Sat Aug 20 09:31:02 1994:

The father is also appearing in court in an (unrelated) hearing for
violence against the child's mother.  For what it's worth.

#5 of 7 by becca on Mon Aug 29 02:26:01 1994:

that matches what I've heard, too - I may be a bit biased in favor of
mothers - but frankly he doesn't sound like much of a prize, and
at least she's trying to make something ov  of her life.

If he were also in school, or were working full time, rather than
living off his mother, I might have more sympathy for him.

In the Schnmidt/Deboer case, therewas right  - and wrong - on both 
sides, and it was a hard case for me to decide how I felt.  This one,
there's no problem, .

And,frankly, as a working mom,the implications of this can se scare
the hell out of me.

Fortunately, my kids go to an excellent day care - and would go al t least
part time even I I didn't work - we live out in the country, and both kids
need the socialization (based on their characters, and for different
reasons - not to be taken as a generic statement!).  And fortunatley,
their birth  o  mother agrees with me.  Otherwise, life
could be very sticky in deed.

#6 of 7 by elwood on Mon Aug 29 16:36:14 1994:

        I agree that this is a dangerous precedent to set with working 
mothers and could set back equal work time advancements fifty years. But make
sure this isn't just an isolated judge with a jones for Quayle-ish family 
values.
                                        .

#7 of 7 by kami on Mon Aug 29 19:15:08 1994:

yup.  that's what scares me the most about it.  I also choose to put y
kids in daycare because I thnk it's good for them.  I don't wayt that
diecision to come back to haunt me.

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