I'm feeling a little better this week about all these high-profile custody disputes being fought on the battleground of kids. The news reports of the arguments before the U.S. Supreme Court regarding the Seattle grandparents' suit for visitation rights with their dead son's daughters suggest that the jurists are asking the right questions. But even if they decide against the grandparents when they hand down their decision in June, and side with the girls' mother and adoptive father, the fact that this case got all the way to the Supreme Court is still scary and ominous for the future of the nuclear family.
I am certainly not without compassion for the grandparents, obviously in pain over the loss of their son, who committed suicide and who was never married to the girls' mother. And I can easily understand how important these two girls are to them.
But causing disruption in the girls' new family is not a good way to deal with their pain. These issues can and should be resolved by adults, working together in the best interests of the children involved, and not by the courts. It is clearly in the best interest of these children to be thoroughly integrated into their new family of six brothers and sisters, to get to know their new dad, who has assumed responsibility for them, and to maintain a relationship with their bio-dad's parents.
Can it really be so difficult to work out that the adults have to litigate these private, personal and intimate family matters all the way up to the U.S. Supreme Court? I don't think so.
Especially since this lawsuit apparently opens the door to virtually anyone who can effectively argue that he or she has a right to visitation with someone else's children. Last week, I wrote about one such case, where two boys' father has to grant visitation rights to his dead wife's boyfriend.
From what I read, the grandparents are asking for an awful lot: Visitation every other weekend and for parts of the Christmas, Easter and summer vacations could be very burdensome for their granddaughters' parents. I don't blame them for resisting those requests.
And really, grandparents don't have any "right" to see their grandchildren. If we're talking about "rights," it's the parents who have a constitutional right to raise their children without state interference, as long as they are not abusing them.
But how did this family allow this disagreement to progress to this impasse? What is wrong with sitting down with open hearts, with a shared concern about the welfare of the children and working it out — the grandparents getting a little less than they want, the parents giving a little more? The grandparents should be delighted that the children have a father and a big family in which to grow up.
Obviously, this serves their best interest. And the girls' mother and father should be sensitive to the grandparents' pain and loss and value what they can bring to the lives of the children.
But no, they have taken their fight to the highest court in the land, thereby opening Pandora's box to the potential detriment of children throughout the country.
I said on the air, only half facetiously, that I'm going to have to have a talk with my son when he wants to get married — not only about the woman he chooses, but also about the country he wants to get married in. I am very concerned that the United States is becoming very unsafe for families. And the courts are only part of the problem.
Schools insist they have the right to do all kinds of things to and for students, with or without parental consent — educate elementary schoolchildren about straight and gay sex, distribute condoms and treat kids in school-based clinics for reproductive and psychiatric problems.
Libraries refuse to protect kids from Internet porn on publicly funded computers in the name of the American Library Association's bill of rights, which forbids discriminating against access to information regardless of age. (Pornography is now information?)
One formerly reputable American Psychological Association journal published an article concluding that not all adult-child sex is harmful to children and advocating "value-neutral" terminology to describe child sexual abuse. Another publishes a "study" that "shows" that fathers are not at all necessary to the well-being of children. And the media spread this junk science far and wide, tacitly endorsing this dangerous and damaging propaganda masquerading as reputable research.
One of the hallmarks of an advanced society, it is often said, is the way children are protected and treated. What in the world has happened to ours?
Please send correspondence to Dr. Laura in care of Universal Press Syndicate, 4520 Main St., Kansas City, MO 64111. © 1999 Dr. Laura Schlessinger, Dist. by Universal Press Syndicate