Effects of joint custody on children.

An ancient Buddhist story I tells of a young mother who took her baby son to the pond of the sage Mahosadha to bathe him. A ghoul, watching from a distance, assumed the form of a woman and approached the mother and son, asking if she might play with the child. The ghoul took the child in her arms, singing softly to it. All of a sudden the ghoul ran off with the child, while the mother pursued, screaming, "Where are you going with my son?" "Your son?! He is my son!" shrieked the ghoul, as the mother snatched her son back. Mahosadha heard them quarreling and asked what the argument was about; he saw by her eyes that one of the women was a ghoul. "Come with me," he said, "you will abide by my judgment." Whereupon he drew a line on the ground before his assembled students and placed the child on the line. He instructed the ghoul to grab the hands and the mother the feet, saying, "He is the son of the woman who pulls the child to her side of the line." As they pulled harder and harder, the child began to feel great pain and began crying. At the sound of his cries, the true mother's heart felt as though it were breaking and she released her hold on the child and stood weeping. "Whose heart is it that softens for her child?" Mahosadha asked the crowd. "The mother's heart, learned one," came the reply. "And the other?" "We don't know, learned one." "The other is a ghoul who seized the child to devour it." "How do you know, learned one?" "From the unwavering steadiness and redness of her eyes, from the absence of her shadow, and from her urgency and ruthlessness." This tale is familiar to most of us in the West as the biblical story of King Solomon. Although the tale operates on many levels (cultural, psychological, and entertainment), its meaning within the context of contemporary custody disputes is apparent. The sage Mahosadha arranged this teaching situation to provoke perceptions in his students, in addition to exposing the fraud and returning the child to its rightful mother. In modem custody litigation, we may not have the appearance of a ghoul to make decisions easier, but we frequently find a child being pulled in two opposite directions. It is common to find a desire for custody arising, at least in part, from perceived parental needs and not from the child's physical and