Ideology and dysfunction in family law

In short, the great majority of the human population occupy the overlapping area in the middle of the distribution of any aptitude. [...] On the contrary, the vast preponderance of feminist writing supports the notion that men and women are inherently different when it comes to styles of intimacy and parenting, and that the female style is preferable.4 Feminists have busied themselves preserving the ideology of female superiority in the home, along with the privileges traditionally associated with that status. [...] The CDR dataset contains a wealth of information about the circumstances of the divorce, including which party initiated the action, the grounds pled (adultery, mental or physical cruelty, or separation for a year), whether or not there was a hearing to determine custody, the family size, the age and position of the child within the family, the age of each of the parents, the region of the country [...] What is of particular interest, however, is that the gender of the parent dramatically increases in significance when controlling for the above variables: Mothers were more than 27 times as likely as fathers to obtain sole custody, and over five times as likely to obtain joint custody, when the influence of the above circumstances of the divorce is controlled for. [...] The view that all negotiation takes place “in the shadow of the law” is invoked to explain why we should not expect the determinants of custody in cases of common-law or non-cohabiting parents, or in non-litigated cases, to be radically different from the determinants of custody revealed by an analysis of the cases in the CDR.