Can someone tell me when custody began to switch from father to mother, and just when was the earliest form of “child support” (or “child maintenance” in the UK), even if it wasn’t called that? Most I could find was all over the place.

EmirikolWoker · 2023-01-16T08:52:54+00:00

Look up the Tender Years Doctrine, 1839, pioneered by first wave feminist Caroline Norton. It reversed the legal standard of default father custody to default mother custody, while maintaining the father's responsibility for the upkeep and wellbeing of his children (rather than transferring that too).

Bojack35 · 2023-01-16T09:14:42+00:00

I dont know about child maintenance, but with respect to custody im just going to paste a comment I made I someone who was insisting that patriachy is why women get custody:

In the UK, custody used to default to the father under a patriachal line of reasoning that he could decide what happened to the children like all other family 'possessions'. This was codified into law in the Tenures Abolition Act 1660

The Custody of Infants Act 1839 gave women the right to custody of children under 7, and became the basis of the Tender Years Doctrine , in 1873 this assumption of maternal custody was extended to children under 16. It was only in the 1970s that the legal stance became gender neutral and about the best interests of the child, but the hangover of the tender years doctrine was still felt in custody cases for decades, if not still today.

So, unless you think the UK was more patriarchal between 1839 and 1970 than 1660, the bias was not due to patriarchy. Under patriarchy the father got custody. It was feminist legislation that tilted it in favour of mothers. It's now become theoretically neutral.

DavorOnrstovic · 2023-01-16T18:22:42+00:00

In a lot of global South countries, the men take the kids so the mum can remary.

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