Maternal bias in child custody awards: a constitutional rights issue

Abstract

We propose to understand the phenomenon of granting custody of Girls, Boys and Adolescents to the mother to the detriment of the father, or to the joint custody, as a factor menacing the healthy development of the child. In order to support this idea, this paper characterizes this problem as the bias of custody (SOC, in Spanish), identifying it as remnants of historical and cultural representations which gives preeminence to only one parent custody.  They represent the modern Ecuadorian family. This bias is demonstrated in the references to jurisprudence, in the Ecuadorian Organic Law on Childhood and Adolescence itself, and even in the pronouncement of the Constitutional Court, which places adverse conditions on the so-called "exercise of the fatherhood authority and, over all, the shared custody model.