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Paul Millar, The Best Interests of Children: An Evidence-Based Approach (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2009).
What variables influence Canadian courts when they grant custody orders? What variables should influence Canadian courts? Is there any empirical data that would inform the policy maker and the decision maker of the need for relevant principles to apply to the decision making process? Paul Millar was most recently a post-doctorate fellow in the department of community health sciences at Brock University. In his new book, The Best Interests of Children, Dr. Millar creatively and expertly makes sense of the available empirical data. The author presents a persuasive and well thought out analysis that explains child custody outcomes in Canada.
Proponents of equal shared parenting and their detractors alike revel in citing statistics. Each side of the debate can marshal statistics to support their respective positions. What distinguishes Dr. Millar's work is his expert use of two mega-sample databases, his statistical analysis of those databases, and his effortless explanation of what the data means in common sense language.
Dr. Millar applied to the Canadian Department of Justice, pursuant to Canada's Freedom of Information Act. He was able to obtain data from the Central Divorce Registry of the Centre for Justice Statistics (He also obtained additional data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Children and Youth ("NLSCY")). The data that he obtained from Justice Canada included over 2.5 million divorces in Canada between June 1, 1996 and the end of September, 2002. After he excluded some of the data on a variety of grounds, he was left with a sample of 673,450 children and 378,390 cases. He examined the outcome of custody cases according to three categories: no custody, joint custody, and sole custody. The data was further broken down according to multiple variables including the following:
* grounds for divorce;
* number of children;
* child's age at divorce;
* family position;
* region;
* marriage length;
* age difference between husband and wife;
* wife's age at marriage;
* wife's age at divorce;
* gender;
* who was petitioner and who was respondent; and
* whether a contested hearing was held.
Dr. Millar also provides us with a basic understanding of the importance of child support to...