UNDERSTANDING WHY MOTHERS CAN LOSE CHILD CUSTODY IN MALAYSIA

Custody decisions are tailored to the circumstances of each case based on related principles with protection of child welfare as courts’ paramount consideration. This paper seeks to understand custody issue from quantitative viewpoint through a conceptual model and examines how child custody principles have influenced loss decisions for mothers. The methodology used was content analysis and Chi-Square correlation, with usable data provided by 47 cases decided in Malaysia between 1987 and 2017 based on Act 303. Coding instrument and conceptual framework were developed with items covering presumption of maternal custody, custodian qualification and loss of rights, child’s and mother’s wishes. The findings revealed that mothers were less likely to lose custody cases and when they did their defeats were strongly influenced by factors relating to children’s preference and status quo arrangement. The results contribute to an understanding of how mothers can lose custody of their children and clarify whether some of the independent variables are used more regularly and are more predictive of the loss decisions than the others.

Dialectic of Ijtihad

In recent years, the problem of gender-based custody allocation has sparked intense mobilization across the Middle East. In Lebanon, Sunni and Shi‘i citizens led two parallel campaigns to modify the sharia-derived norms enforced in custody disputes. Their efforts produced perplexing results: while Sunnis extended the duration of maternal custody, the Shi‘a failed to bring about even a modicum of change to judiciary practice. This essay argues that understanding this difference in outcomes requires shifting the analytical focus away from religious doctrines and codification issues and toward the political apparatuses in which Islamic jurisprudences are embedded. Drawing on ethnographic research, Landry asks how the secular state helps construct the religious laws applied in its family courts. In pursuing this question, he shows that under current conditions, judges' practice of ijtihad (scripture-based reasoning) often hinders legal change instead of facilitating it.

Is joint physical custody in the best interests of the child? Parent–child relationships and custodial arrangements

When thinking about custodial arrangements after a divorce, there has been a shift from sole custody (mainly by mothers) to joint physical custody after a divorce. In certain countries, joint physical custody has even become the primary, legal custodial arrangement. Joint physical custody, whether implemented in legislation or not, is believed to be in the best interests of the child, as children can shape a postdivorce relationship with both their mother and father. Nevertheless, many studies on joint physical custody focus only on child outcomes. This study aims to investigate (1) whether custodial arrangements matter in addition to the parental divorce for parent–child relationships and (2) whether joint physical custody provides a better framework for parent–child relationships than sole custody arrangements. The study adds to the existing literature by including both the mother–child relationship and the father–child relationship. Moreover, joint physical custody is not only compared to sole maternal custody, but also to sole paternal custody. Using a dyadic subsample of Belgian parents and children from the Divorce in Flanders data set ( N = 623), we compare two indicators of the parent–child relationship (parent–child communication and parenting) for children with married parents, with children in joint physical custody, sole maternal custody, and sole paternal custody. The results indicate that (1) the custodial arrangements after divorce affect parent–child relationships, in addition to the divorce, with regard to both open and problematic father–child communications and the support and control of children by mothers and fathers; and (2) joint physical custody, compared with sole custody (either by the mother or father), provides a better framework to shape a postdivorce parent–child relationship with both parents in terms of open communications and support.

Raising “Our Girls”

This chapter addresses Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s feminist views on maternal custody and parenting. She advocated granting legal rights of child custody to mothers in the event of separation or divorce. Stanton challenged the separate spheres ideology and argued for women to work in paid employment as well as to have pecuniary and social power in the home. To bring about this transformation of gender roles, Stanton articulated feminist parenting ideals of reconstructing gender by raising the next generation of boys and girls in equal moral, educational, and social ways. She took this message to the populace in speeches on the Lyceum tour over eleven years. Ultimately, as this chapter concludes, Stanton argued that religious doctrine must be reformed in order to transform the gendered social roles of women and men, as she articulated in the feminist theology of her Woman’s Bible.