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I am so grateful to happen upon these stories and this blog. I am in the midst of a divorce and am considering letting the kids stay with their dad. I struggle with this decision hourly. Some moments I feel perfectly content in my decision to explore employment opportunities back in the field I worked in before kids. The snag is the jobs are in Los Angeles and we currently live in Chicagoland. There is such a huge part of me that craves to be the person I used to be. Working, contributing and loving life. I adore my children, but being a stay at home mom, which I have been for over 10 years, has been a constant challenge for me. I have felt many times that I should’ve stayed working and mapped things out that way. We have moved a few times so it really wasn’t possible. Now with the pending divorce I feel that I have been given another chance to be me again. Don’t misunderstand, I would love my kids to be with me, but I don’t know if that is what is best for them, at least in the short term. We have family in LA and visit frequently, the kids are familiar with LA and love it and California. Our school here is very good, excellent really, their friends are all here as is their home. I feel that staying here is truly best for them, even though it isn’t for me. I am really unhappy here and would really love to go back to work doing what I do. My hope is that after 1 or 2 years the kids will want to live with me and my ex-husband will allow it. It is a huge gamble, I know, but I also know that staying here, either in the marriage or not, is also a big gamble. I hardly recognize myself most days. It is such a relief to find strong women who have made the right decision for themselves. I hope I can emulate your strength. Thank you for sharing your stories.

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I am so grateful to happen upon these stories and this blog. I am in the midst of a divorce and am considering letting the kids stay with dad. i struggle with this decision hourly. Some moments I fell perfectly content in my decision to explore employment opportunities back in the field I worked in before kids. The snag is the jobs are in Los Angeles and we currently live in Chicagoland. There is such a huge part of me that craves to be the person I used to be. Working, contributing and loving life. I adore my children, but being a stay at home mom, which I have been for over 10 years, has been a constant challenge for me. I have felt many times that I should’ve stayed working and mapped things out that way. We have moved a few times so it really wasn’t possible. Now with the pending divorce I feel that I have been given another chance to be me again. Don’t misunderstand, I would love my kids to be with me, but I don’t know if that is what is best for them, at least in the short term. We have family in LA and visit frequently, the kids are familiar with LA and love it and California. Our school here is very good, excellent really, their friends are all here as is their home. I feel that staying here is truly best for them, even though it isn’t for me. I am really unhappy here and would really love to go back to work doing what I do. My hope is that after 1 or 2 years the kids will want to live with me and my ex-husband will allow it. It is a huge gamble, I know, but I also know that staying here, either in the marriage or not, is also a big gamble. I hardly recognize myself most days. It is such a relief to find strong women who have made the right decision for themselves. I hope I can emulate your strength. Thank you for sharing your stories.

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I cannot tell you what it means to me to find someone in a similar situation. Although my custody arrangements were somewhat less of a choice, I still am a mother who has given custody to my children’s father. I understand where Maria is coming from and I am sympathetic to her choices. Do you have any other references for woman without custody??

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If my daughter relinquishes her rights to me does that mean I have full custody of my grandchildren? Is it like adopting them? I am so confused! Thanks.
Maria

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There have always been women who have chosen to leave their children with a trusted grandmother aunt or other family member to raise so they could walk a different path. That said the biggest issue right now around custody is for the thousands of women trying to protect themselves and their children by leaving their abusers and being made helpless when the family courts toss the children back into the same place their mother was trying to protect them from. And taking custody AWAY from the mother’s who are trying to protect the children. IT IS EPIDEMIC ! Let’s not fool ourselves about how many men in our population do not treat women and children well.

Mother’s need to be able to protect their children period.

Please have a look at ‘Center for Judicial Excellence’ videos and ‘Battered Women’s Custody Conference’.

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Rebekah Spicuglia Reply:
July 26th, 2009 at 11:45 am

@Rebekah Collins, thanks for making these points — I often say that custody is often about power. And there are many, many noncustodial moms who did not choose that path but were vulnerable to someone with greater power than they had at the time.

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I’m torn. While I believe that the feminist movement was fought so that women could have choices (even though many feminists I run into deplore my choice of being a traditionalist), and I think each family has to find out what works for them…I STILL cringe at the thought of a mother giving up her children. Intellectually I know they are not ‘giving them up’ really, but watching over them in a different fashion. I could never do it, it wouldn’t work for me. I hunger too much to be a part of my child’s day..everyday. Giving in to the personal desire to place my own needs over their needs is not why I had children. I had them so that for the next 20 some odd years I could make them a priority and my own growth through them a priority. I think sometimes we don’t focus on true priorities often enough and we run after solutions like more variety, greater excitement, more glamour. It is my privilege and challenge to find a way to grow personally while sometimes serving in menial household tasks, to develop artistry through crafts or baking, to find the sublime in the everyday.

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Rebekah Reply:
July 17th, 2009 at 10:44 am

@Mary Zea, thanks so much for your thoughtful read! I really appreciate your response. You might also find Maria Housden’s response illuminating (she was one of the mothers highlighted in the Marie Claire piece). She highlights the double-standards and speaks to how much fathers love their children too and often want custody.

Best,
Rebekah

MARIA HOUSDEN:
Every time I speak about my decision to give primary custody of my children to their father after our divorce, people seem to filter what I say through their own experience, seeing it through their own lens. This is understandable as the factors that contributed to the choices my ex-husband and I made are complex and perhaps unique to our situation. Even UNRAVELED, the book I wrote about the experience, couldn’t explain everything. The fact is, I didn’t ‘leave’ my children. I simply chose to do what divorcing fathers are expected to do every day in this country; I moved out and became the every-other-weekend parent. I did it because I love my children, because I know that their father loves them too, and because we felt it was the best, right decision for our family. Why, then, do some people bristle when they hear this? Perhaps it’s because women physically give birth to a child that we assume mothers have a greater degree of responsibility to keep them physically close. Or maybe it’s because a father’s role in a child’s life is still being defined and refined in our culture. The number of stay-at-home dads and divorced fathers with primary physical custody is growing, but it’s not the norm. When people condemn a woman’s decision to relinquish primary physical custody of her children to their father, they marginalize a father’s ability to lovingly and responsibly parent a child. The particulars of my story or anyone else’s may be interesting, but they distract us from the real issue which is why the double standard? If both parents love a child, why should a mother’s love automatically take precedence over a father’s? And if this arrangement works for a family, why do others feel a need to judge it so harshly? In light of the sobering state of the economy, many people are being forced to make decisions they may not have considered otherwise, and this includes divorcing families. My hope is that our willingness to share our stories will encourage other families to do what is best and right for them and not worry about what others might think.

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