《Custody》以拉拉·费格尔的视角把离婚与监护描绘为重大的社会变迁，法庭成为主战场，而孩子常被视作伤害最重的“附带代价”：在美国，几乎每三名儿童中就有一人将在18岁前目睹父母离婚，而在离异家庭中抚养孩子的单亲比例几乎是1960年的五倍。英国近四分之一儿童生活在单亲家庭中，尽管离婚率较低，但婚前先有子女的情况更常见，说明家庭结构差异并未减轻法律与情感冲突的代价。
作者通过八位女性（文本中列举七位人物，再加上费格尔本人）勾勒了一个漫长弧线：从孩子在法理上被视为“父亲财产”的制度，到卡罗琳·诺顿推动的1839年《未成年子女监护法》给母亲争取首次诉请抚养权的权利。后续案例包括乔治·桑1836年三次取胜拿回两个孩子、伊丽莎白·帕卡德在1860年代推动女性监护与精神病定性改革，以及爱丽丝·沃克与前夫之间“每两年轮换居住”的特殊抚养安排；20世纪70年代“父亲权利”运动推动法官更强调“儿童最佳利益”，尽管对“越轨/不贞”母亲仍有道德惩罚。
近年的案件中，“父母疏离”指控越来越常见，书中引述研究显示：当父亲提出该指控时，法院几乎有四倍更可能不采纳母亲关于虐待的说法。费格尔认为监护纠纷本质上是“代代相传的悲剧”；她本人也在官司中未能打破孩子“50-50”分居安排，只获幼子监护权，而次子主要由前夫照料，书中的案例一再显示儿童在冲突下出现疾病、悲伤乃至死亡风险。美国研究还强调离婚往往压低家庭收入，且与其子女成年后教育与收入前景受损、以及监禁、青少年早孕和死亡率上升相关。
Lara Feigel’s *Custody* frames divorce and custody as a major social transformation, with the courtroom as the battleground and children often treated as the prime casualties: in the United States nearly one in three children will see their parents divorce before age 18, and the share in single-parent divorced households is almost five times what it was in 1960. In Britain nearly one-quarter of children live with single parents, and though adult divorce is less prevalent than in the U.S., premarital childbearing is more common, showing that family structure differs while legal and emotional stakes remain high.
Feigel traces a long arc across seven historical figures, plus her own case, making eight women in total, from laws that once treated children as the father’s legal property to the 1839 Custody of Infants Act won through Caroline Norton, which created the first maternal right to petition for custody. The sequence includes George Sand’s 1836 triple court victories, Elizabeth Packard’s 1860s guardianship reform campaign, and Alice Walker’s biennial alternating-homes arrangement, while the 1970s fathers’ rights movement pushed judges toward “best interests of the child” against entrenched moral penalties against transgressive mothers.
Recent custody disputes increasingly turn on “parental alienation” claims, and one study cited shows courts are nearly four times more likely to disbelieve a mother’s abuse allegation when a father raises that claim. Feigel argues custody is effectively a recurring tragedy, with her own litigation reduced from a 50-50 split to losing custody of her older child and retaining only the toddler, while the book repeatedly links childhood conflict to measurable harms: American studies associate divorce with lower household income, weakened education and earnings prospects, and higher rates of incarceration, teen births, and mortality.
Source: Everyone knows divorce is costly. But children pay most dearly
Subtitle: A new book analyses social history through the lens of divorce law
Dateline: 3月 26, 2026 05:40 上午 | PARIS