Manufacturing Bad Mothers

Abstract

This chapter examines the field of psychology that intersects with child-custody determination. It discusses the incorporation of psychological discourses in the standards applied to determine custody and the actual involvement of psychologists and therapists as mediators or as custody evaluators that render an expert opinion on a given case. It also highlights contemporary Western psychological frameworks that rest on and support neoliberal ideas about individualism, individual responsibility, and privatization. The chapter cites individual, psychological-based interventions in the form of psychotherapy that represent neoliberal answers to social problems. It emphasizes how therapeutic approaches are founded on promoting individual accommodation or adjustment to existing circumstances rather than challenging social structures that create traumatic or troubling social milieus.