They may be touched by an occasional tinge of anxiety and guilt when they drop off their children.
But few parents of the 71 children attending Park View Montessori School on the North Side would believe their choice of care arrangements makes them unfit.
Yet that’s what a Michigan judge concluded earlier this week in revoking a mother’s custody because she wanted to put her 3-year-old daughter in day care while returning to classes at the University of Michigan.
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Macomb Circuit Judge Raymond Cashen ruled that the father would be better suited to care for the girl because he lived at home with his parents.
“I don’t think the judge gave much thought in what he said,” George Petkovich, owner and administrator of Park View, said Wednesday.
Cashen has maintained that his ruling was misunderstood. Because the woman planned to live in campus housing and put the girl in day care, the father’s living arrangement presented a more stable environment for the child, according to the judge.
Still, in Michigan and across the country, Cashen is being derided.
“It appears the judge is using a very outdated patriarchal point of view,” said Elsie Mills, director of the YMCA’s child-care resource and referral service in Glen Ellyn.
Illinois experts say they’re unaware of any similar rulings here. In fact, day care is so common that it’s rarely an issue.
All other things being equal, day care may factor into a judge’s decision about parental custody, said Cook County Domestic Relations Judge Susan Snow. But most custody cases are much more complex, she said.
One factor that does come into play in custody cases is parental availability, said divorce lawyer Stuart Litwin. If the custody choice is between a parent who is readily available to care for the child and one who must place the child in day care, the child should stay with the parent who can be home, Litwin said.
But what has made the Michigan case so unusual is the mother, 19-year-old Jennifer Ireland, had been raising the girl.
In Illinois, once a parent has custody, it’s difficult to revoke. State law says that, for the first two years, the arrangement can’t be changed unless the child’s physical, mental, moral or emotional health is in danger.
Legal and child-care experts say putting a child in day care may be preferable to other arrangements. In day care, the child can socialize with other children.
“What I look at in making a (custody) decision is, is the child thriving?” said Cook County Domestic Relations Judge Carole Bellows. “If she is thriving, she stays where she is.”