Shared Physical Custody : A Feminist Analysis of Regime Change in Family Institutions

In practically all known societies, childcare work have been entrusted to women. Diverse family mythologies have maintained this sexual segregation within a range of socio-economic conditions. Shared physical custody is increasingly being presented today in Western societies as the ideal model for post-separation custody of childen in heterosexual families. It is also being exported to areas of the world where gender symmetry is not part of the fabric of the family. Such is the case of Brazil, where compulsory shared physical custody in conflictual cases has become law. In this society of highly segregated parental roles, shared physical custody has become a new patriarchal regulatory tool opening the door for divorced fathers to delegate childcare to their female family members and new spouses, while maintaining control over their ex-spouses. Of course, this is not always the case: voluntary shared custody in non conflictual situations is quite different. Based upon two decades of empirical research on shared custody (Côté 2000, 2002, 2006, 2012, 2015, 2016), this paper will analyze how a new mythology of shared custody sets the stage for new gender regimes regardin g family policy. Based on a principle of gender symmetry, it paradoxically paves the way for new forms of individual and collective violence against women while incorporating flexibility of gender roles, diversity and mobility of marital and family experiences. Re-reading Walby’s analysis on the varieties of gender regimes (2004), this paper will examine how imposing shared custody by law or via the courts has generated for women new types of constraints and inequalities while responding the the demands of fathers’ rights groups to « provide remedies » to maternal custody. These new legal regulations are constructed on political discourses framed by the notions of equal and human rights but constitute a pushback to feminist politics.