The comic strip Mr. Boffo occasionally features “People Unclear on the Concept”-folks who make cosmically boneheaded decisions with comically predictable results. The odds-on favorite for grand champion in this category has just put in an appearance, only it isn’t in the funny papers and the result is far from humorous.
A Michigan Circuit Court judge has ruled that a young single mother who was awarded a scholarship to the University of Michigan should lose custody of her 3-year-old daughter because in order to attend classes, she is planning to put the child in day care.
Judge Raymond Cashen did not find fault with the child’s upbringing, nor did he find the mother (with whom the little girl has lived all her life) unfit. But he awarded custody to her father because, due to the mother’s continuing education, the child would be “raised . . . by strangers.”
Never mind that the suit arose not because the father was seeking custody of his child but because the mother was seeking paternal child support-he had paid none until this year, when he was ordered to pay $12 a week.
Never mind that a warrant had been issued for the father’s arrest on charges of assault and battery against the mother.
Never mind that the father also attends school and would be no more available than the mother to look after his child.
According to Judge Cashen, the child would be better off in the home of her paternal grandmother, where the father lives, because the older woman “is a housewife.” The judge ruled “there is no way a single parent” can attend college and properly raise a child.
What is truly stunning about this decision is the message it conveys, which flies in the face of all that is being done to try to salvage a generation-two generations, really-of young people.
The message to single mothers is: If you continue your schooling, if you try to better yourself, if you get a job, you may lose your children. The alternative, of course, is welfare.
The further implication of Cashen’s decision-that what even he characterized as “appropriate day care” is so terrible a fate that a child and mother should be separated as a result-is unconscionable. For millions of working parents, well-chosen day care is a necessary part of life, and numerous studies show that children can thrive in such an environment.
Americans have become aware, slowly but surely, that the plight of unwed teenage mothers is greatly exacerbated when they are unable or unwilling to continue in school, get job training and look for a way up and out.
Rather than penalizing a young woman who, after becoming pregnant at 15, managed to keep and adequately care for her baby (largely with the support of her mother), stay off welfare, finish high school and attend college, we should be making that road as smooth as possible. The kind of thinking exhibited by Judge Cashen does more than put up roadblocks-it turns it into a dead end.
