Last Updated on April 29, 2026 by Distance Parent
Nothing in this article constitutes legal advice. For guidance specific to your situation, consult a qualified family law attorney.
A longtime Distance Parent community member shares this perspective:
During almost two decades of gathering community around long-distance parenting, a lot of things stand out regarding divorce, child custody, noncustodial parents, and parental alienation. One thing that stands out consistently is how gender biased the conversation typically is regarding child custody.
I Lost Custody Because I’m a Man. No — a Woman. What?
Before digging into the current experience of long-distance parenting, it would be remiss not to address history. Traditionally, custody has skewed in favor of mothers over fathers.
Most human societies have cultural gender norms. Cultural gender norms are not based on fact or valid science. They are traditions passed down through generations and are considered valid only within that culture. Females as caregivers and males as breadwinners are common cultural gender norms. Laws are, in part, based upon the cultural beliefs of the nation that creates them. Where parenting and gender collide with law, we have custody law. Custody law has historically been skewed to give custody to mothers, which was neither correct nor right.
Many legal systems are addressing this through changes to law. Progress is slow because we are fighting against deeply held cultural beliefs.
A man fighting for custody will often chalk the struggle up to being male. However, this argument is inaccurate and dismisses an entire population of noncustodial mothers.
No, Really. It’s Moms That Lose Custody Too.
Moms lose custody, too. And when they do, a mother often appeals to historic gender inequalities in her reasoning as well.
Men have historically been better educated and paid better than their female counterparts. Women who stay home as caregivers take years or decades away from the workforce, which absolutely affects their job prospects later. More women than men carry this gap in their career history because of caregiving.
Some families try to look beyond gender and make a pragmatic decision about who stays home based on which income they can afford to lose. In a two-income home where wage earners are different genders, the woman will statistically earn less. The result is that the man is more likely to be able to care for the children financially and to afford better legal representation in a custody fight. When a mom loses custody, it is often reasonable to trace that outcome back to gender bias embedded in economic systems.
Who Gets to Blame Gender Bias?
Both moms and dads can make a reasonable argument. But in this community’s experience, neither argument is particularly helpful. Both moms and dads have it hard in one way or another. Comparing who has it harder loses focus on what actually matters — how each parent can be the best parent possible given their circumstances.
Gender Is to Blame for Ill Behavior. Right?
Often, when a custodial parent acts inappropriately, the noncustodial parent blames the gender rather than the behavior of their specific co-parent. Dads blame moms. Moms blame dads.
Parental Alienation Syndrome has nothing to do with gender. It is a product of spiteful, irresponsible parents who feel entitled to have power over their child’s relationship with the other parent. Sometimes mental illness is a factor. Sometimes it is unresolved wounds from the relationship. Whatever the cause, blaming it on gender short-circuits any effort to address the actual root cause. For as long as gender takes the blame, the opportunity to fix what is actually broken gets missed.
The Stigma Is Worse for Dads. No — Moms!
The argument that being a long-distance father is more difficult than being a long-distance mother, or vice versa, comes up regularly. Based on nearly two decades of community experience, this argument does not hold up. A man or a woman struggles differently but not more or less simply because of their gender.
Both sides of the “moms are the natural parent” prejudice carry real stigma. Noncustodial dads are automatically perceived as deadbeats. Noncustodial moms are automatically seen as some kind of aberration. Both moms and dads have written entire books about the experience:
- A Mother Apart – Navigating guilt and rebuilding a sense of self while living apart from your child.
- The Long-Distance Dad – How you can be there for your child whether divorced, deployed, or on the road.
- Mothers Who Leave – Addressing the stigma faced by mothers.
- Dad from a Distance – How noncustodial fathers can remain genuinely present in their child’s life.
- Weekend Father – The experience of forced noncustodial parenthood.
- Journeys of Women Without Custody: From Ambivalence to Renewed Sense of Self
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Focusing on Gender Is Not Helping Anyone
Not every woman is your ex-wife, and not every man is your ex-husband. Let’s stop painting the collective face of a gender over anger and frustration at a specific person and start building some bridges.
Long-distance parents are already marginalized. Focusing too much on experience as a marginalized mom or dad means missing out on powerful support as a distance parent. If there were less gender bias among those fighting for parental rights and relationships, the argument on behalf of children would be significantly stronger. The common ground is not gender. It is the shared fight to have a relationship with a child. That is where the energy belongs.
For support from parents across the full spectrum of long-distance parenting experience, see the Support and Community page and the Distance Parent Facebook group.
