Court Opinion

ID: 9563776
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 18:46:54.686032+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:18:04.493091
License: Public Domain

BIRD, C. J., Concurring.
I write separately to underscore that the trial court’s ruling was an abuse of discretion not only in its failure to give due weight to the importance of continuity and stability in custody arrangements but in its assumption that there is a negative relation between a woman’s *542lack of wealth or her need or desire to work and the quality of her parenting. As this case so aptly demonstrates, outmoded notions such as these result in harsh judgments which unfairly penalize working mothers.
The trial court’s primary reason for awarding custody to William was that Ana worked and had to place her child in day care, while William could afford to have his new wife quit her job and stay home. The court’s other reason was William’s larger income. No other facts appear in the record to justify the court’s ruling. Today’s decision ought to make it crystal clear that neither of these reasons is a proper basis for an award of custody.
Read in light of the record, the court’s findings amount to “outmoded notions of a woman’s rule being near hearth and home.” (Gulyas v. Gulyas (1977) 75 Mich.App. 138 [254 N.W.2d 818, 823] (dis. opn. of Riley, J.).) In an era where over 50 percent of mothers1 and almost 80 percent of divorced mothers2 work, this stereotypical thinking cannot be sanctioned. When it is no longer the norm for children to have a mother at home all day, courts cannot indulge the notion that a working parent is ipso facto a less satisfactory parent. Such reasoning distracts attention from the real issues in a custody dispute and leads to arbitrary results.
The court’s reliance on the father’s greater income was equally inappropriate. The child’s best interests—especially when the child is very young— cannot be assessed in such materialistic terms. “[T]here is no basis for assuming a correlation between wealth and good parenting or wealth and happiness.” (Klaff, The Tender Years Doctrine: A Defense (1982) 70 Cal.L.Rev. 335, 350; see Dempsey v. Dempsey (1980) 96 Mich.App. 276 [292 N.W.2d 549, 554, mod. 409 Mich. 495 [296 N.W.2d 813].) In fact, common experience suggests that there is no such correlation.
Stability, continuity, and a loving relationship are the most important criteria for determining the best interests of the child. (Maj. opn., ante, at pp. 538, 541.) Implicit in this premise is the recognition that existing emotional bonds between parent and child are the first consideration in any best-interests determination.
This court acknowledged that fact when it recently held that a parent’s physical handicaps were irrelevant to “the heart of the parent-child rela*543tionship[] ... the ethical, emotional, and intellectual guidance the parent gives to the child throughout his formative years, and often beyond.” (In re Marriage of Carney (1979) 24 Cal.3d 725, 739 [157 Cal.Rptr. 383, 598 P.2d 36, 3 A.L.R.4th 1028].) A custody determination must be based on a true assessment of these emotional bonds. It must reflect a factual determination of how best to provide continuity of attention, nurturing, and care. It cannot be based on a presumption that a working mother does not or cannot provide such care.
When the record contains no evidence as to which parent does provide this care, clearly the “working mother” factor operates as a negative presumption. Even more clearly, this factor operates unfairly when the record indicates that the mother has in fact been the primary caregiver. The use of such a presumption as a basis for a custody award is of dubious constitutionality.3
Furthermore, the presumption is inappropriate because the relationship between maternal employment and the “presumed facts” about the child’s best interests is not supported by reason or experience. Typically, it is the mother who provides most day-to-day care, whether or not she works outside the home. (Neely, The Primary Caretaker Parent Rule: Child Custody and the Dynamics of Greed (1984) 3 Yale L. & Policy Rev. 168, 172; cf. Klaff, op. cit. supra, 70 Cal.L.Rev. at p. 344, fn. 56.) A presumption which ignores this fact is likely to lead to erroneous and unfair decisions.
Moreover, there is no accepted body of expert opinion that maternal employment per se has a detrimental effect on a child. On the contrary, one recent study on maternal employment and child development has concluded that “[mjaternal employment status had no negative relation to children’s development over a 5-year period. . . . Public policy needs to move in the direction of more flexible work arrangements for mothers, towards enhancing the quality of the environment provided for children, towards enhancing the personal satisfaction of careers for women, and towards promoting the view that maternal employment has no negative influence on children’s development.” (Gottfried et al., op. cit. supra.) Thus, the trial court’s presumption lacks any expert support.
*544The burden of the trial court’s reasoning would certainly fall most heavily on women. In those cases where the father contests custody,4 he is the parent likely to have superior economic resources. (Weitzman, The Economics of Divorce: Social and Economic Consequences of Property, Alimony and Child Support Awards (1981) 28 UCLA L.Rev. 1181, 1241.) This alone would give him an advantage under the trial court’s reasoning. Further, such resources may well include the ability to support a nonworking spouse. Conversely, the mother is likely to have no choice about working, particularly if she does not remarry. (Weitzman, op. cit. supra, at p. 1230, fn. 175.) In the 25 to 44 age range, the remarriage rate of divorced men is almost double that of divorced women. (Polikoff, op. cit. supra, 7 Women’s Rights L. Rep. at p. 241, fn. 51, citing Nat. Center for Health Statistics, U.S. Dept. of Health & Human Services, Pub. No. (PHS 80-1120), Vital Statistics Rep., Final Marriage Statistics, 1978 (Sept. 12, 1980) p. 6.)
Yet, under the trial court’s rationale, it is the mother—and not the father— who would be penalized for working out of the home. She and she alone would be placed in this Catch-22 situation. If she did not work, she could not possibly hope to compete with the father in providing material advantages for the child. She would risk losing custody to a father who could provide a larger home, a better neighborhood, or other material goods and benefits.5
*545If she did work, she would face the prejudicial view that a working mother is by definition inadequate, dissatisfied with her role, or more concerned with her own needs than with those of her child. This view rests on outmoded notions of a woman’s role in our society. Again, this presumption is seldom, if ever, applied even-handedly to fathers.6 The result—no one would take an unbiased look at the amount and quality of parental attention which the child was receiving from each parent.
The double standard appears again when, as here, the father is permitted to rely on the care which someone else will give to the child. It is not *546uncommon for courts to award custody to a father when care will actually be provided by a relative, second wife, or even a babysitter. (See, e.g., In re Marriage of Welbes (Iowa 1982) 327 N.W.2d 756, and dis. opn. of McCormick, J., id., at p. 759; Bruner v. Bruner (1982) 212 Neb. 473 [323 N.W.2d 104]; Atkinson, op. cit. supra, 18 Fam.L.Q. at p. 35.) However, the implicit assumption that such care is the equivalent of that which a nonworking mother would provide “comes dangerously close to implying that mothers are fungible—that one woman will do just as well as another in rearing any particular children.” (Polikoff, op. cit. supra, 7 Women’s Rights L. Rep. at p. 241; see also Klaff, op. cit. supra, 70 Cal.L.Rev. at p. 348, fn. 72.) This is scarcely consistent with any enlightened ideas of childrearing.
The reasons on which this trial court relied are discriminatory. They fall unequally on women and men. They penalize women for failing to conform to a 19th century role which is no longer possible or desirable for many. They imply that a woman who leaves her “proper sphere” to participate fully in modem life cannot be an adequate mother. Such a view denies full humanity to women. It cannot be tolerated in our courts.
To force women into the marketplace and then to penalize them for working would be cruel. It is time this outmoded practice was banished from our jurisprudence.

Gottfried et al., Maternal Employment and Young Children’s Development: A Longitudinal Investigation, paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Psychological Association (Aug. 1985); Atkinson, Criteria for Deciding Child Custody in the Trial and Appellate Courts (1984) 18 Fam.L.Q. 1, 15.

Steinman, Joint Custody: What We Know, What We Have Yet to Learn, and the Judicial and Legislative Implications (1984) 16 U.C.Davis L.Rev. 739, 740.

Compare Jarrett v. Jarrett (1979) 78 Ill.2d 337 [400 N.E.2d 421], certiorari denied (1980) 449 U.S. 927 [66 L.Ed.2d 155, 101 S.Ct. 329]. Dissenting from denial of certiorari, Justices Brennan and Marshall severely criticized an award of custody to the father based on what was in effect a conclusive presumption that the mother’s cohabitation with a man to whom she was not married rendered her unfit. Such a presumption, the justices pointed out, violated the teaching of Stanley v. Illinois (1972) 405 U.S. 645 [31 L.Ed.2d 551, 92 S.Ct. 1208] that parental fitness must be determined on the facts of each case and not by application of conclusive presumptions. (449 U.S., at pp. 929-930 [66 L.Ed.2d at pp. 156-157].)

Though custody is awarded to mothers in 90 percent of the divorces with minor children, this appears to be due to the fact that fathers seldom request custody. (Polikoff, Why are Mothers Losing: A Brief Analysis of Criteria Used in Child Custody Determinations (1982) 7 Women’s Rights L. Rep. 235, 236; Klaff, op. cit. supra, 70 Cal.L.Rev. at p. 335, fn. 3; Lemon, Joint Custody as a Statutory Presumption: California’s New Civil Code Sections 4600 and 4600.5 (1981) 11 Golden Gate L.Rev. 485, 486, 529.) In the 15 to 20 percent of cases where fathers request custody, they are successful roughly half the time. (Polikoff, op. cit. supra, at p. 236; Atkinson, op. cit. supra, 18 Fam.L.Q. 1, 10-11.)

For example, in Porter v. Porter (N.D. 1979) 274 N.W.2d 235, the reviewing court affirmed a custody award to a working father because “he is in a position to lend more stability and guidance to nurturing the development of the children during those periods of time in which he would not be actually pursuing his employment . . . .” (Id., at p. 241.) As the wife had forsaken a career during marriage to care for the children, the husband’s earning capacity was substantially greater than hers. It was this greater earning capacity which apparently was the source of his “stability and guidance.” (Id., at pp. 241-242.)
Conversely, in Dempsey v. Dempsey, supra, 292 N.W.2d 549, the reviewing court emphatically reversed a trial court’s custody award to a father which had been based on his superior earnings. The mother had cared full time for three small children, one of whom was epileptic and required special care. She had also done all the housework, chauffeuring, and parent-teacher activities during the marriage. As a result, her earning ability was low. She had sought a divorce on the ground that the father did not spend any of his leisure time with the family. The trial court nonetheless awarded the father most of the joint property as well as custody of the children. It suggested that in light of the father’s uncertain child care arrangements the mother could provide day care as a form of in-kind child support. (Id., at pp. 550-551.)
Reversing, the reviewing court held that “it can be argued that economic circumstances never should be conclusively determinative. The reason is plain. In most cases the mother *545will be disadvantaged, although with changing life patterns this is not always so. It is not merely a question of prejudicial effect upon mothers; the danger in placing undue reliance on economic circumstances is its potential prejudicial effect upon the child’s best interests. The party with the more modest economic resources should not be excluded from equal consideration as the custodial parent. If the parties are substantially different as to economic circumstances, the court has ample power through its orders, if it be in the best interests of the child or children, to equalize those circumstances.” (Id., at p. 554.)

For example, in In re Marriage of Levin (1980) 102 Cal.App.3d 981, 983, footnote 1 [162 Cal.Rptr. 757], the Court of Appeal dismissed the notion that the father’s performance as an “excellent custodial parent” was impaired by placing the child in nursery school at the minimum age of two years on a nearly full-time basis.
See also In re Marriage of Estelle (Mo.App. 1979) 592 S.W.2d 277, in which the court affirmed a custody award to a working father, not remarried, as against an equally fit working mother. The reviewing court made no negative comments about the child’s placement in day care, but rather emphasized that the father often prepared the child’s breakfast and dinner and picked her up from the day care center himself. (Id., at p. 278.) It is difficult to imagine a mother’s performance of these chores even attracting notice, much less commendable comment.
Other examples of the double standard include Gulyas v. Gulyas, supra, 254 N.W.2d 818, which affirmed a trial court’s award to a father who worked a standard 40-hour week. The mother, a regional manager for H. & R. Block, worked 40 to 50 hours a week during tax season, but only 10 to 30 hours the rest of the year. She had greater flexibility in her work hours, she was at home when the child left for school and she picked the child up at a neighbor’s home one or two hours after school. (See Note, Family Law—Child Custody-Mother’s Career May Determine Custody Award to Father (1978) 24 Wayne L.Rev. 1159, 1165, fn. 44.) The father had recently undergone surgery for a brain tumor. (Gulyas, supra, 254 N.W.2d at p. 822 (dis. opn. of Riley, J.).)
In its award to the father, the trial court “repeatedly emphasized [the mother’s] employment” (ibid.) and “noted that [the mother’s] ‘career and need for obtaining a better livelihood has diminished her manifested ability to care for the child other than in Day Care homes.’ ” (Ibid.) The trial court “did not remark upon [the father’s] inability personally to care for the child during his working hours.” (Ibid., italics added.) The court concluded that “the husband [was] more inclined towards the old fashioned virtues,” that “the mother of the child is an energetic and ambitious career woman . . . and that the father of the child is perhaps less ambitious than the mother, but is more of a homebody.” (Ibid.) These moralizing conclusions, supported only by the facts recited above, were sufficient to support an award of custody to the father. (Id., at pp. 822-823.)
See also Masek v. Masek (1975) 89 S.D. 62 [228 N.W.2d 334], in which a mother who taught music part time lost custody to a father who worked full time. The trial court noted that the mother slept until 9 a.m. on Saturdays, failed to prepare breakfast for her husband who left for work at 7 a.m., and on occasion had run out of jam and cookies. (Id., at p. 338, dis. opn. of Wallman, J.) It concluded from these facts that she was unfit for custody because her “primary interests are in her musical career and outside of the house and family. ” (Id., at p. 337.)