Guardian article about custody and divorce

[GertrudeSteinway]

I read this article by Lara Feigel on her new book on divorce and custody— it looks really important and I thought others here who are unfortunate enough to be going through it might like to read. It’s really good that someone’s writing about this.
www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2026/jan/18/custody-the-secret-history-of-mothers-lara-feigel

I thought it was a terrible article written by someone who is clearly biased and with a bizarre agenda. I was incredulous that it was even published.

Given she presented her own case in her own words it is telling that immediate impression of her was of someone who did not put the needs of her children first. And couldn’t get her head around why the courts were putting the needs of children first. She was the reason her children were ripped apart. In a way that could be easily avoided. Most people avoid these types of shit shows. They do it by being cooperative and conciliatory. Which is easy if you think of the alternative for your children.

Her pretentious literary references were just ridiculous.

But don’t you think she is trying to make the point about manipulative court language and the different standards mothers are held up to?

I thought it was a very odd article too.

What a weird and ridiculous article.

I found it a strange article. It felt like i was being weirdly manipulated into thinking something that I wouldn’t think if all the facts were laid out properly ( a bit like when I was reading the Salt Path!)

she chose such strange examples and left out actual facts in her own cases, and seemed to use historic examples as a sleight of hand.

i am fully prepared to believe that women ( and children) get a raw deal deal in custody hearings, but this article doesn’t help that case.

Hyperbolic, self indulgent nonsense

I find it hard to call this journalism

I think it was an article seeking to illustrate the misogyny in the legal system and the higher standards to which women are expected to behave, but it failed to do that in any meaningful way.

I have attended many hearings in family courts during which I have been shocked at the disproportionate weight courts have given the men's evidence. How women are expected to behave when the system often fails to take into account mental, physical and sexual abuse and how that affects women, when they give evidence in custody hearings. And that it's a system that continues to perpetuate abuse from which women have struggled to recover.

I think it's a massive problem when women are forced to hand over children to a man who has abused the woman and I genuinely struggle to see how being with a father who has abused the mother historically, is in the children's best interests.

No she isn’t making that point. She isn’t even trying to make a case for that. She had cherrypicked a few cases for what she sees as dramatic effect. But they are poor examples which she presented badly. She was trying to provoke emotional responses from women who would identify with the distress. That isn’t debate it is emotional manipulation.

She made bad choices that created unnecessary conflict between her and the other parent. She was held to account for that by a parent who didn’t accept her high handedness. The court agreed with him and made an unprecedented or rare decision.

It was never about her - it was about the children. She is meant to act responsibly and in their interests. She didn’t and then she wouldn’t back down. Which resulted in a less than good outcome but the only one possible.

I’m left wondering why she felt it was acceptable to move her children ‘to the country’ away from their Father (she doesn’t allege abuse from what I have read) and presumably reduce his time with them as a result. The judgment in her case therefore seems fair (if unusual in that it splits the children up). The other examples used are…odd. And don’t support her argument very well.
Im a divorced mother and also the wife of a man who is divorced. One divorce has been amicable and co parenting is successful. The other is the exact opposite. This is entirely down to the personalties involved and the assumption that Mothers have some sort of greater right to children than Fathers do. Equal and equitable parenting should in my view be the starting point at family court where no abuse is evidenced. But all to often it is not, and there is seemingly so rhyme or reason to when this applied. The whole system is a mess that doesn’t serve anyone involved in it well.

I thought it was really shoddily written too, I understand what point she was trying to make, that she was shocked that they went for her character, but its quite astonishing that she doesnt seem to realise that of course character comes into it, and she literally describes it as 'I decided to move the kids to the country' not 'we' so why is she surprised she was accused of making unilateral decisions?? Or have I read it wrong?

Yep, I totally agree. It was just a rant from someone who didn’t get what they wanted.

‘I had moved to the countryside with the children for six months at the beginning of the pandemic and decided I wanted to stay.’

how is this not acting unilaterally? What did she think the court would say?!

Poor old Feigal
When things became legal
She tried like an Eagle
But came across like a seagull

Terrible and confusing article

Poor old Feigal
When things became legal
She thought she was an Eagle
But came accross like a seagull