Child Custody and Divorce: The Law in Social Context

The number of divorces that involve custody orders for children rose constantly in the 1980s. It is against this background that Susan Maidment wrote the thought-provoking Child Custody and Divorce (originally published in 1984). It is the author’s contention that the nature of custody decision-making can only be understood when the legal structure is firmly located in its social context.

Society’s inability to create a terminology to cope with the break-up of the old, traditional family ideals led to the Courts being called upon to create the rules and make the decisions which encapsulated the social consequences of the divorcing process. The author not only makes incisive observations about the exact social context of the law in these cases, but also describes the legal processes involved, both in terms of procedure and substantive law. She investigates the rules and interpretations of the child’s welfare principle (which are for the most part made by judges) in a social science context, seeking to illuminate the sociological underpinning of the child custody law and its implications in terms of child psychology and development. It is this interdisciplinary approach to the ever-increasing problem of the welfare of children, in the situation of divorce, that enables the author to widen perspective we have of the problem and question assumptions concerning it.

This book will be of interest to students and researchers of law and sociology.