Well in an ideal world, this should be evaluated on a case by case basis based on what's best for the children and the abilities and availability of both the parents. There would be no assumption that a female parent has been and will continue to be responsible for all the boring day to day care giving and emotional needs of the child(ren) and no assumption that a male parent is good only for paying the bills and the odd outing. Not holding my breath on arriving at an ideal world though.

I would agree that the majority of men don't seem to want to be the primary caregiver in case of a divorce. In the odd case where they do, I believe the courts make a determination as to who should get primary custody. I believe there is currently (in the US) a bias wherein most times primary custody is granted to the mother. All other things being equal, i don't think mothers should necessarily be prioritized over fathers. Either way, it's unfortunate and I don't think anyone really "wins".

I think each custody case has to be examined and settled case by case. There really is no one size fits all, in my opinion. Every family, parent, and child is different. The most important thing is that the good of the child comes first and foremost.

However, we know that statistically in heterosexual households with children, even if both parents work full time, the woman will be preforming the majority of the childcare duties. So if we examine a family before a split, the mother is already raising the child most of the time. Why should a judge look at that and say, “alright [father], you haven’t been doing 50% of the childcare duties for a single day of this child’s life thus far, but now that you’ve split from your spouse, I believe you when you say you want to do 50% or more of them now.” In my opinion, given that we know mothers do the majority of the childcare before a split, why should most fathers get half or majority custody? They weren’t doing half or a majority of the child rearing when they were physically in the home with the child. It doesn’t seem to me that that would be in the best interest of the child, and would in fact, be a change in the lifestyle of the child.

Despite all the moaning you hear from men, to me it makes sense that (most) mothers would get full or majority custody of the child/ren in a split. That was the lifestyle of the family before the split. Of course, there are plenty of exceptions to this rule and plenty of fathers who deserve majority or full custody of their children. It’s just not the overwhelming majority of fathers.

Additionally, there is a huge huge issue of domestic violence offenders who, because they have children with their victim, continue to have access to their victim (women). If a father doesn’t abuse the children, a judge is unlikely to deny him access to the kids. Many offenders use this access to continue to stalk and terrorise their exes, who are forced to remain in their lives through court ordered custody agreements. This creates a huge problem in the way we protect domestic violence victims, and the law should change to close this gap in victim protection, even if it means taking children away from fathers who have never abused them, but have abused their mothers. Just my opinion though.

Edit: Also, despite claims regularly made by men, family courts have shown time and again that they encourage contact with both parents and are not actually very biased toward mothers and haven’t been for many many years. See links below.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/commentisfree/2020/mar/05/family-courts-biased-men-dangerous-fallacy-abuse

https://slate.com/human-interest/2014/05/mens-rights-recognized-the-pro-father-evolution-of-divorce-and-paternity-law.html

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/dispelling-the-myth-of-ge_b_1617115

I'd suggest advocating for men to take more responsibility for childcare and challenging the ridiculous masculine notions that they can't/shouldn't.

If childcare was more expected of men, and facilitated by policy and context changes, i.e. baby changing in men's toilets, more parental leave (not taking from women's), better housing access rights in 50/50 custody cases, shorter working hours etc... Some positive change may be seen.

Radical feminism should be, well radical in what it asks for and this seems more in alignment with that.

Other changes would be needed as well, as obviously a lot of these issues are interconnected. I.e. male violence can't be ignored.

Currently the divorce courts are biased "towards women" in a way that actually negatively impacts women and children. It makes it so women get the brunt of the child work while the father's might just get weekends of visitations regardless of ability to raise his kids. The kids would then only see the dad on special occasions and therefore only really have fun/good memories of their dads when their moms have to discipline them. Not to mention it's all on the mom to do everything, she may as well be a single mom and no amount of alimony payments gives you more time in the day. Pickup and drop-off at school, feeding and cooking for them, homework, clubs/entertainment, making sure they're doing ok in life, etc. The issue however is that because taking care of the children tends to be the "mom's job", you see so many clueless fathers who wind up being useless parents once there's a divorce meaning there's usually no good option when it comes to dividing the work and the kids suffer when with their dads. Then that's used as fuel to give mom's automatic and larger custody, leading to stats that show moms are the better housekeepers/child rearers, and it's a vicious cycle that continues. Basically, if the dad didn't equally share the work before, he's likely not going to share the work post divorce either and that's a problem we need solved in both divorced couples and current couples. Men need to pull their damn weight around the house normally, help raise their kids and actually be productive members of the household, then that can be applied to post-divorced families too without him waiting to get a new wife to mother his kids

Many will disagree with me, but I believe that any involvement by the father or other man in child raising should be solely at the mother's discretion. If the mother is unfit, unable, or unwilling to raise the child, someone who is proven to have the child's best interest in mind. Ideally, children would be brought up by a group of adults, mostly women, because it's a job really made for more than one person.

Also, ideally there would be no divorce because there would be no marriage.

Partly because men don't have nearly as much involvement with childbirth and child raising as they think they do, but mainly because a child is much more likely to have a better life with a single mother than with a single father.

The moaning from men is just to garner sympathy. Men get custody most of the time when they ask for it in court.

Problem is, they hardly ever ask!

The nuclear family shouldn't exist in the first place. Humans naturally live communally.