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Journeys of Women Without Custody
From Ambivalence to a Renewed Sense of Self
Chapter Description
The present exploratory study is based on interviews with nine noncustodial mothers. Chapters I-III provide an expose' forming the following points:
(1) historically, women had no rights to custody since they were chattel (property);
(2) industrialization brought a severe bifurcation of sex roles and a sentimentalizing of the female role (keeper of the hearth, creator of perfect children) in middle-class America and Great Britain;
(3) in this construction, women were assumed to get custody of young children (backed by psychoanalytic theory) unless proven unfit or immoral;
(4) the women’s movement, arguing for equality, had the unintended consequence of opening the custody issue and giving fathers equal rights (Lee Salk became a hero for winning custody as “the parent most suited to raising the children);
(5) the influence of psychoanalysis remains, and the woman who does not win custody is assumed to be a “lesser woman.” She is assumed to have rejected her womanly nature to be mother, unable to provide her children ultimate care, and thus morally tainted. There is a double bind for women: They no longer get presumptive custody, yet they must continue to justify themselves as mothers and emotionally viable adult women.
Chapter IV briefly focuses on the method, procedures, and characteristics of the participants in the study. This chapter includes a discussion of the research design, interview process, text analysis, and procedures, and gives a detailed description of participants’ characteristics.
Chapter V is an account of five of the nine stories told by the noncustodial mothers. Specifically, various aspects of the marital and divorce experience are discussed, including circumstances surrounding the divorce, experiences with the legal system, interpersonal relationships with ex-husbands and children, and also, the participant’s reflections on the noncustodial situation. Each story is told by the participant and reflected/interpreted by the researcher.
Chapter VI extracts and formulates the themes of care, maternal ambivalence, bereavement, and sense of self into a process model based on parallels in contemporary feminist literature. This theoretical model is used to explain what it is like to be a noncustodial mother. I would describe the analysis in this chapter as emergent, interpretive, and phenomenological. I have tried not to overinterpret, but to reflect on themes and connections within the texts, rather than attempt to find instances that would fit a particular psychoanalytic viewpoint.
The emergent analysis is based on existing and parallel ideas in contemporary feminist literature. In this chapter I attempt to do justice to the noncustodial mother’s experience by presenting it in her own terms.
The concluding chapter (VII) summarizes the major findings of the study. Also included in this chapter is a discussion of the theoretical implications of the findings, followed by suggestions for future research.
An epilogue reflects on my internalized experiences as both mother and researcher.
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