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7 J. Child Custody 1 (2010)

handle is hein.journals/wjcc7 and id is 1 raw text is: journal of Child Custody, 7:1-31, 2010 *)Routledge Copyright 0 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC Taylor&FrancisGroup ISSN: 1537-9418 print/1537-940X online DOI: 10.1080/15379410903554816 The Gender Paradigm in Family Court Processes: Re-balancing the Scales of Justice From Biased Social Science DONALD G. DUTTON University ofBritish Columbia, British Columbia, Canada JOHN HAMEL Private Practice, San Rafael, California JON AARONSON Private Practice, Madison, Wisconsin Because of a reliance on women's shelter samples extrapolated to community or custody samples, both Jaffe, Johnston, Crooks, and Bala (2008) andJ. B. Kelly andJohnson (2008) have developed a misleading evaluative framework for custody assessors, one that maintains a focus exclusively on males as perpetrators offamily violence to both their spouses and children. We present extensive research to challenge and contradict this genderparadigm frame- work. Since custody assessments typically involve conflicts between a male and a female, generic assumptions favoring either gender must be avoided ifjustice is to prevail. he gender paradigm sets aframeworkfor evaluation that is inconsistent with social science studies, many ofwhich are unreported by. B. Kelly &Johnson and byJaffe et al. he implications ofthe genderparadigmfor custody assessment are discussed and a more balanced view, consistent with the research literature, is proposed. KEYWORDS domestic violence, family court, genderparadigm Address correspondence to Donald G. Dutton, Ph.D., Department of Psychology, University of British Columbia, 2136 West Mall, Vancouver, BC V6J 1A7, Canada. E-mail: dondutton@shaw.ca