New Salvo in Custody Wars : Courts: How much can a single parent rely on day care? How important is care from a family member? A Michigan case raises fears--and hackles.

Just about the only thing the parties in Ireland vs. Smith agree upon is that the case was never intended to be an indictment of day care. What they were arguing about, Jennifer Ireland and Steven Smith say through their lawyers, was child support and custody--nothing more.

But in ruling that 3-year-old Maranda Kate Ireland-Smith would be more likely to find “security . . . a safe place . . . (and) permanency” in the home of her father and paternal grandparents than in the day-care facility where she was sent by her college student mother, a Michigan judge has unleashed a full-force tempest.

Suddenly, the issues of single mothers who pursue their educations, children who are not “raised and supervised by blood relatives” and “child-parents”--unwed mothers and fathers who bring offspring into the world before they are themselves of majority age--were under a microscope.

“The mother’s academic pursuits, although laudable, are demanding, and in order to complete her program it necessitates the leaving of the child for a considerable portion of its life in the care of strangers,” Macomb County Circuit Court Judge Raymond Cashen wrote in explaining his decision to place Maranda in the custody of her 20-year-old father and his parents.

Cashen’s conclusions followed nine days of hearings initiated when Ireland sought child support payments of $12 per week. Smith countersued, demanding custody of Maranda. It was the first appearance in court for Ireland and Smith, who are not married and who grew up in Mount Clemens, Mich., a working-class community not far from Detroit.

In an opinion released last week, the judge riled representatives from women’s groups and child advocacy organizations when he added: “There is no way that a single parent, attending an academic program at an institution as prestigious as the University of Michigan, can do justice to their studies and to the raising of an infant child.” Legal experts also expressed reservations about the ruling.

Kim Gandy, executive vice president of the National Organization for Women, called the decision shocking, adding: “It puts women who are doing the very best they can do for their children into a lose-lose-lose situation.”

Leslie de Pietro, a counselor at the Family Resources Center at the University of Michigan, was equally appalled, asserting, “To me the biggest irony in this case is that the judge is essentially saying to single mothers, ‘stay at home, go on welfare, let the taxpayers support you and be that kind of role model.’ ”

And Scott A. Altman, a family law professor at the University of Southern California, branded Cashen’s action as “just simple, plain, old-fashioned gender discrimination,” where the prevailing view is that “women should not be pursuing their education, and if they do, they should be punished.”

With 15 days before the ruling was to take effect, 19-year-old Jennifer Ireland was in seclusion. Through her attorneys, who filed an emergency motion Monday, asking the Michigan Court of Appeals to block the judge’s order, she declined interview requests.

But Smith, who lives with his parents while working part time in the local parks department and attending a community college, said he was overjoyed by the decision.

His only disappointment, Smith said by telephone from Mount Clemens, was that the wording of Cashen’s opinion “makes it sound like a day-care issue, and it’s not. There are many more facets to this case than just day care.”

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The “moral fitness” of both parties was, for example, an area that Cashen dwelt on heavily in his ruling. The judge described Ireland as “sexually indiscriminate as a young girl.” Smith, Cashen said, “wasn’t much better”--adding that both parties “had a great fetish for partying” and that neither parent deserved “medals for their youthful activities.”

Cashen also examined the consistency of Maranda’s care to date, concluding that “the maternal grandparent was the staying force in the early raising of the child.” He also credited Ireland’s mother with having provided the bulk of Maranda’s financial support since birth.

He failed, however, to pay credence to allegations of domestic violence raised by Ireland against Smith. “The parties in their youthful way apparently crashed or mauled one another,” Cashen wrote. “It is all superfluous.”

But while Cashen, who declined interview requests because he has jurisdiction over the case until Maranda is 18, dismissed the domestic violence issue as “not pertinent,” Ireland’s attorneys said the matter would figure prominently in the appeal.

No one disputed the basic facts of the case. Ireland was a 15-year-old high school sophomore when she became pregnant. Smith, then a 16-year-old student at the same parochial school, acknowledged paternity. They considered abortion, adoption and briefly had the child in foster care. Marriage was never an option.

While her mother served as Maranda’s primary caregiver, Ireland finished high school as a cheerleader with a 4.0 grade point average. She earned a scholarship to the University of Michigan and moved to Ann Arbor. In Ireland’s freshman year as a liberal arts major, Maranda spent about 35 hours per week in the care of Annette Johnson, a licensed child-care provider near the university campus.

“She’s a sweet little girl,” Johnson said of the child. “She’s clean, she’s neat, she’s very cute--and she’s happy.”

As for the suggestion that Maranda might somehow have suffered from being shuffled between home care at Johnson’s house and weekends and evenings with the Ireland or Smith families, Johnson said: “That child is as far from neglected as I am from L.A.”

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But Cashen apparently thought otherwise. The 69-year-old judge called the day-care issue pivotal to his decision to award physical custody of Maranda to her father.

“Parents do raise children in a college setting,” Cashen conceded, “but it is hoped that the cooperation and the efforts of both parents negate parental neglect. The plaintiff’s situation is entirely different, however, (because) she must rely upon other people to take care of this child while she is in class, and it is pretty clear that the demands of academia are such that her time for her youngster would be circumscribed.”

Julie Field, an attorney at the University of Michigan’s Women and the Law Clinic, who is leading the legal team representing Ireland’s appeal, said the “real problem” is that “the judge misunderstands what ‘stability’ is and what ‘the home’ is.” To the judge, Field said, “the home means you are in the same bedroom until you are 18. To most people, home is an emotional attachment, and the people you are with, not a place.”

Although Cashen’s opinion makes repeated reference to the value of permanence and “a regular home,” Smith’s attorney, Sharon Lee Edwards of Detroit, maintains that the case really centers around which parent is fit to care for Maranda. She called Smith “a young man who changed,” rising to the demands of single fatherhood when many young men would rather be out partying.

“Who gives a hoot about day care?” Edwards said. Her client has arranged his college schedule so that he takes classes just two days a week, Edwards said, and his parents have provided Maranda with a frilly pink-and-white bedroom. When Smith is in school or at work, Edwards said, his mother will look after Maranda.

What happens if Smith marries or moves out of the family home is anybody’s guess, Julie Field said. Visitation by her client was also left unresolved in Cashen’s opinion, as was the prospect that Ireland might be asked to pay child support.

Field declined to speculate on her client’s chances for success on appeal, a process that could stretch out indefinitely. Edwards thought her opponents did stand a chance of winning a stay of Cashen’s custody order, but expressed confidence that her side would prevail on appeal.

“The case will be done on the evidence,” said Edwards, who hailed the decision as the latest hallmark in the small but growing wave of men seeking physical custody of their children. “There is no question of our losing the case.”

While Smith and his attorney described themselves as ecstatic over the decision, Field said Ireland is “alternately stoic and devastated.” Ireland, who says she hopes to be an international lawyer, is “frustrated, and she’s incredulous,” Field said, “but not really angry.”

Field said the case could serve as a precedent, helping to crystallize views about single mothers “who are attacked when they attempt to better themselves--and accordingly, their children.”

When the case goes to appeal, Field said, “it certainly will be an opportunity for the court to review day care, and the realities of life in 1994.”