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Mothers on Trial: The Battle for Children and Custody
Completely updated and revised for the twenty-first century, Mothers on Trial remains the bible for all women facing a custody battle, as well as the lawyers, psychologists, and others who support them. This landmark book was the first to break the false stereotype about mothers getting preferential treatment over fathers when it comes to custody. In this new edition, Chesler shows that, with few exceptions, the news has only gotten worse: when both the father and the mother want custody, the father usually gets it. The highly praised Mothers on Trial is essential reading for anyone concerned personally or professionally with custody rights and the well-being of our children.
512 pages, Paperback
First published December 1, 1985
About the author
Phyllis Chesler
36 books401 followersPhyllis Chesler is an Emerita Professor of Psychology and Women's Studies at City University of New York. She is a best- selling author, a legendary feminist leader, a psychotherapist and an expert courtroom witness. Dr. Chesler has published thousands of articles and, most recently, studies, about honor-related violence including honor killings. She is the author of 20 books, including Women and Madness and An American Bride in Kabul. Her forthcoming book is titled Requiem for a Female Serial Killer, about serial killer Aileen Wuornos.
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
September 17, 2011
Not since slavery in the USA were mothers punished by having their children taken away from them. Yet, in family courts all across America, judges and quasi-judicial officers of the court do just that: children who are abused or molested by their fathers are removed from their primary-care good mothers and are placed in the hands of their molesting fathers.
How this scandal can go on for decades with hardly any change, without any public outcry, and without any protest from human rights' activists is due to the fact that outsiders to the gutter of our family courts' justice simply refuse to believe it.
In her revised and updated milestone fact-filled book, "Mothers on Trial," Phyllis Chesler fights to save thousands of children from becoming yet another generation of victims of a court system that betrays them time and again. She points out that while adult women often recount childhood sexual molestation at home by close relatives--and these women's stories are believed--people tend to disbelieve when actually facing such cases as they happen in real time, right in front of them.
It is a documented fact that when fathers fight for custody, 70% of the time they obtain full or partial custody. People often assume that the reason these men who, in most part, have not been fully involved in their children's lives--sometimes have been absent for months or even years--now gain custody is because the mothers are unfit. The naked truth is that in most of these cases, the father is emotionally and verbally abusive or outright violent. The mother, often the product of an abusive home, often abused for years in her marriage to the father of her children, now faces battle for which she is woefully unequipped to wage. Distraught, terrified, isolated, alienated in a system that scrutinizes her with the same critical and belittling attitude she's encountered in her private lives, panicked over the fate of her sexually molested children, she seems "emotional" "unreasonable" and "difficult." Her refusal to share parenting or give access to a man who sexually molest her children is viewed as her being "rigid" and "uncooperative."
Furthermore, with limited or no financial resources, she comes to court either unrepresented by an attorney, or by an incompetent lawyer with little interest in the complexity of such a case. Or, as is often the case, she does not have the funds to keep the protracted legal battle a high-conflict custody case requires. Filing fees, transcripts, payments to evaluators and her lawyer's hourly rate quickly rise to thousands of dollars.
In the 1990s I stumbled upon the phenomenon of protective mothers losing these battles in drove, researched it for a few years, and finally published a novel about one such fictional mother in 2002. (Puppet Child.) Since then, I became an activist, trying to find ways to save thousands of children each year from family court's "justice." What amazes me is how little has changed in the over decade in which I've witnessed more mothers enter the nightmare of family court, where they are discredited, disenfranchised and disbelieved.
Dr. Chesler has been at it a lot longer. Twenty-five years ago she published "Mothers on Trial," a book that starts with the history of men's ownership of their families and the lingering feudal notion of male supremacy as the head of the household. She pointed then--and continues to do so now in this excellent revised edition--that society and court hold men to much lower parenting standards than they do women. Mothers fail at every single check list (Does the divorced mother have sex? Is she overwrought with anxiety? Is she poor?) while men can be cold, disinterested, dysfunctional or even violent and they will be excused. In fact, fathers are given new chances time and again to foster their relationships with their children regardless of their abhorrent personal histories, while mothers' contact with their children are not only curtailed or cut down to expensive supervised visitations, but all too often are severed completely.
If a father poisons a child's mind against the mother, it does not enter into the question of his parenting skills. But all too often, a child's fear of an abusive father is regarded as the mother's brainwashing the child, rather than the father's own doing. A judge will then chastise the mother for not encouraging enough the relationship with the father--and actually transfer custody to that abusive father. The notion of the best interest of the child and how much the child stands to suffer from cutting the bond with the primary caretaking mother while shuttling into a new life with a man the child fears, does not enter into the equation.
A chapter on Fathers' Supremacist Movement, reports that fathers' rights groups have also gathered steam in recent decades and have organized themselves in ways that mothers have failed to do. Some leaders in fathers' groups have a recorded history of battering their wives or girlfriends, or are convicted pedophiles. Others may have a legitimate concern about shared parenting, but have been expressing strong misogynistic opinions. Common to both ends of the spectrum is the way fathers have been presenting themselves: as persecuted victims. They have been receiving media attention and courtroom sympathy with bogus theories (foremost is Parental Alienation Syndrome that is used almost exclusively against mothers,) and have been successful in passing legislation, due in part to Federal funding under the uncritical assumption that children need equal contact with both parents. Mothers do not have access to equal Federal funding.
In this revised edition, after editing out six chapters and adding eight more while updating the available research, Dr. Chesler examines closely many such cases of outright injustice that defy anything people know and believe possible in our society.
Phyllis Chesler's book is a must read for every judge, court evaluation, guardian ad litem, social worker, psychologist and lawyer. But more importantly, it should be read by anyone who cares about human rights or about children, because it is time we raise our collective indignation to stop and reverse the life sentence without parole our courts inflict upon children placed in the hands of their molesters.
How this scandal can go on for decades with hardly any change, without any public outcry, and without any protest from human rights' activists is due to the fact that outsiders to the gutter of our family courts' justice simply refuse to believe it.
In her revised and updated milestone fact-filled book, "Mothers on Trial," Phyllis Chesler fights to save thousands of children from becoming yet another generation of victims of a court system that betrays them time and again. She points out that while adult women often recount childhood sexual molestation at home by close relatives--and these women's stories are believed--people tend to disbelieve when actually facing such cases as they happen in real time, right in front of them.
It is a documented fact that when fathers fight for custody, 70% of the time they obtain full or partial custody. People often assume that the reason these men who, in most part, have not been fully involved in their children's lives--sometimes have been absent for months or even years--now gain custody is because the mothers are unfit. The naked truth is that in most of these cases, the father is emotionally and verbally abusive or outright violent. The mother, often the product of an abusive home, often abused for years in her marriage to the father of her children, now faces battle for which she is woefully unequipped to wage. Distraught, terrified, isolated, alienated in a system that scrutinizes her with the same critical and belittling attitude she's encountered in her private lives, panicked over the fate of her sexually molested children, she seems "emotional" "unreasonable" and "difficult." Her refusal to share parenting or give access to a man who sexually molest her children is viewed as her being "rigid" and "uncooperative."
Furthermore, with limited or no financial resources, she comes to court either unrepresented by an attorney, or by an incompetent lawyer with little interest in the complexity of such a case. Or, as is often the case, she does not have the funds to keep the protracted legal battle a high-conflict custody case requires. Filing fees, transcripts, payments to evaluators and her lawyer's hourly rate quickly rise to thousands of dollars.
In the 1990s I stumbled upon the phenomenon of protective mothers losing these battles in drove, researched it for a few years, and finally published a novel about one such fictional mother in 2002. (Puppet Child.) Since then, I became an activist, trying to find ways to save thousands of children each year from family court's "justice." What amazes me is how little has changed in the over decade in which I've witnessed more mothers enter the nightmare of family court, where they are discredited, disenfranchised and disbelieved.
Dr. Chesler has been at it a lot longer. Twenty-five years ago she published "Mothers on Trial," a book that starts with the history of men's ownership of their families and the lingering feudal notion of male supremacy as the head of the household. She pointed then--and continues to do so now in this excellent revised edition--that society and court hold men to much lower parenting standards than they do women. Mothers fail at every single check list (Does the divorced mother have sex? Is she overwrought with anxiety? Is she poor?) while men can be cold, disinterested, dysfunctional or even violent and they will be excused. In fact, fathers are given new chances time and again to foster their relationships with their children regardless of their abhorrent personal histories, while mothers' contact with their children are not only curtailed or cut down to expensive supervised visitations, but all too often are severed completely.
If a father poisons a child's mind against the mother, it does not enter into the question of his parenting skills. But all too often, a child's fear of an abusive father is regarded as the mother's brainwashing the child, rather than the father's own doing. A judge will then chastise the mother for not encouraging enough the relationship with the father--and actually transfer custody to that abusive father. The notion of the best interest of the child and how much the child stands to suffer from cutting the bond with the primary caretaking mother while shuttling into a new life with a man the child fears, does not enter into the equation.
A chapter on Fathers' Supremacist Movement, reports that fathers' rights groups have also gathered steam in recent decades and have organized themselves in ways that mothers have failed to do. Some leaders in fathers' groups have a recorded history of battering their wives or girlfriends, or are convicted pedophiles. Others may have a legitimate concern about shared parenting, but have been expressing strong misogynistic opinions. Common to both ends of the spectrum is the way fathers have been presenting themselves: as persecuted victims. They have been receiving media attention and courtroom sympathy with bogus theories (foremost is Parental Alienation Syndrome that is used almost exclusively against mothers,) and have been successful in passing legislation, due in part to Federal funding under the uncritical assumption that children need equal contact with both parents. Mothers do not have access to equal Federal funding.
In this revised edition, after editing out six chapters and adding eight more while updating the available research, Dr. Chesler examines closely many such cases of outright injustice that defy anything people know and believe possible in our society.
Phyllis Chesler's book is a must read for every judge, court evaluation, guardian ad litem, social worker, psychologist and lawyer. But more importantly, it should be read by anyone who cares about human rights or about children, because it is time we raise our collective indignation to stop and reverse the life sentence without parole our courts inflict upon children placed in the hands of their molesters.
January 22, 2015
Helpful and insightful.....I was not alone.....I am not crazy!
December 29, 2015
A must read...!
This was very hard to read... but it is a must read for everyone; especially women. I was shocked by the many injustices outlined in this book, but at the same time I am glad to be enlightened. I studied law in the UK and now I work at a law firm in the Caribbean; and I must say I was impressed by Phyllis's exposition of the history of this area of the law.
This was very hard to read... but it is a must read for everyone; especially women. I was shocked by the many injustices outlined in this book, but at the same time I am glad to be enlightened. I studied law in the UK and now I work at a law firm in the Caribbean; and I must say I was impressed by Phyllis's exposition of the history of this area of the law.
October 5, 2011
I'm reading and reviewing the 2011 edition of this book for the award-winning web site Viva La Feminista!
July 10, 2022
The author re-did the prologue and I was hooked from the start. It is startling how old, male-dominated ways have prevailed and women still struggle in a man's world.
January 24, 2026
I needed this book: read while on sabbatical. It’s an honest to God heartfelt, tear-jerker! Typically, I read a 300-page book within a week’s timespan. However, this one’s an exception. It cannot be read in one sitting. Why? The case studies are too numbing and thought provoking at the same time. They test human boundaries and perceptions. It also paralyzes one to rethink status quo norms, e.g., traditional roles, etc.
In this book, there’s a Greek reference to modern-day Madea (Medea) left me livid about how women are still to this day marginalized and stereotyped as maneaters. Madea is essentially an angry, bitter female figurehead (archetype) who's ostracized and criminalized for being too headstrong. Madea’s portrayed as a threat in each of her respective communities after she begins butting heads (divorce, separation) with her intimate partner irrespective of socioeconomic status (poor, rich, middle class) with whom she’s more likely than not opted to: 1) pro-create (naturally, in vitro fertilization, etc.) with or 2) adopt offsprings with.
Caveat: There are rape case studies (adults, under age minors) in this book. They are treated no different than the archetype of Madea. It’s her fault, no matter what.
Furthermore, this book challenged my nominal belief about what it takes to be a human, woman, feminist, wife, mother, divorcee and individual.
Lastly, this should be a required read for high schoolers and college students. It should be catalogued with parenting books such as Dr. Spock series, Dr. Kevin Leeman’s The Birth Order, Have a New Kid by Friday.
In this book, there’s a Greek reference to modern-day Madea (Medea) left me livid about how women are still to this day marginalized and stereotyped as maneaters. Madea is essentially an angry, bitter female figurehead (archetype) who's ostracized and criminalized for being too headstrong. Madea’s portrayed as a threat in each of her respective communities after she begins butting heads (divorce, separation) with her intimate partner irrespective of socioeconomic status (poor, rich, middle class) with whom she’s more likely than not opted to: 1) pro-create (naturally, in vitro fertilization, etc.) with or 2) adopt offsprings with.
Caveat: There are rape case studies (adults, under age minors) in this book. They are treated no different than the archetype of Madea. It’s her fault, no matter what.
Furthermore, this book challenged my nominal belief about what it takes to be a human, woman, feminist, wife, mother, divorcee and individual.
Lastly, this should be a required read for high schoolers and college students. It should be catalogued with parenting books such as Dr. Spock series, Dr. Kevin Leeman’s The Birth Order, Have a New Kid by Friday.
July 23, 2019
Amazes me that back in the 19th and early 20th century fathers were given custody of their children regardless of the mothers wellbeing. Also fathers would take everything away from the mother!
November 21, 2025
Good Book
Although this book's subject was a sad one, it was very informative. I learned a lot about the justice system and how it affects mothers and fathers.
Although this book's subject was a sad one, it was very informative. I learned a lot about the justice system and how it affects mothers and fathers.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews