From "The Neutered MOther"
"The fathers'-rights movement picked up the banner of gender neutrality and turned it to their rhetorical advantage in the custody area. They effectively criticized child-custody rules and decision making for manifesting what they perceived to be a "pro-mother" bias."
Their attacks seemed all the more forceful because of the equality reforms that were being implemented in response to the economic consequences of divorce. Male backlash to family law reforms, and the liberal feminist gender-neutral rhetoric it appropriated, helped to set the stage for challenges to custody rules and processes of decision making that relied on the positive aspects of Mother
Most state statutes now specifically provide that both parents are "equal," thus forbidding consideration of gender in custody cases.
Both the liberal feminists and the fathers'-rights groups undermined the earlier acceptance of MOther as being something distinct from, separate, and perhaps, superior to the generic term "parent." In place of the maternal presumption, custody arrangements that formally equated parents, such as joint custody, were proposed and defended on the grounds of furthering equality between the sexes.
"Shared parenting" was the objective, and custody and visitation rules were manipulated to facilitate this ideal. SOme commentators went so far as to assert that gender neutrality required that considerations of "typically MOtherly" characteristics I presume means giving up your career, getting up in the night and soothing children be eliminated from judicial consideration. Others extended the equality goal to its most extreme limits in the suggestion that custody disputes be resolved by a toss of the dice "
What has resulted is a legal system that empowers fathers....Joint and legal custody gives rights and responsibilites to mothers, but it gives rights without responsibilites to fathers"
As someone whose career took a nosedive the second I conceived, who carried and birthed!!!! babies in agony, I find this line of thought stomach-churning. To me, it epitomizes the notion that women are to be seen as baby machines and nothing more.
I really feel that society must respect the biological contribution that women have made, not devalue it by pretending that fathers and mothers have an equal stake in children. It doesn't necessarily make a mother a better parent than a father, but it must be taken into consideration.