Disputes over custody of children

This breeds a lot of bad blood and the children are left bewildered by being literally torn apart.In many cases, may be to punish the woman, the father would demand that his children should be brought back to him, no matter how little.But in Islam, a mother has the custody of children until they reach […]

This breeds a lot of bad blood and the children are left bewildered by being literally torn apart.
In many cases, may be to punish the woman, the father would demand that his children should be brought back to him, no matter how little.
But in Islam, a mother has the custody of children until they reach a certain age, to take care of themselves.
However, this is hardly practiced and people behave as they like, besides, even where the mother takes the custody of the children, the father doesn’t usually provide for their upkeep as it should be.
Rather, she would be left with the responsibility, and then she may on her own want to return the children to the father, especially if she doesn’t have the financial means to take care of them.
For some couples it takes years in this tug of war over children as if they don’t have anything else to do.
Some fathers would take the children for some time and then the mothers would collect them before the fathers take them again.
But it is the extreme of such case that a 43-year-old  Rabi’u Yusuf  in Bauchi State chained   his ten-year-old son for ten days  to prevent him from going back to his mother, and the boy eventually died.
The man was   paraded at the police headquarters with other suspects over various crimes, where he admitted that he was responsible for the death of his son, Aliyu Rab’iu, but said he didn’t know that the boy would die in chains, according to reports.
“I divorced his mother and married another woman so Aliyu followed his mother to her new home but I did not accept that arrangement. I called him home several times because I wanted him to be in my custody but he refused, so I went to the mother’s place with annoyance and brought him back home. Back in my house, I chained him and locked him up in a room so that he wouldn’t escape but unfortunately, he died.”
If the father had not taken the  fatal decision, with time the boy might have gone back to him. This is because in some cases, boys tend to go back to their fathers’ houses, seeing it as where they really belong.
In  one such case the boy had all the care in the world living with his mother and her  parents, but when he was in secondary school and returned to his father’s house on holidays, he  refused to go back. The mother wept but there was nothing she could do, she respected the wish of the child.
In any event, if Rabi’u Yusuf wanted his son to go back to him, he could win him over with small gifts and kind words, but not with high handedness and threats, where   the boy would believe that he would suffer without his mother.
However, some parents due to anger of leaving the children with the other partner would never look back, it is as if they consider the children have died.
One woman in such a case went back to her village and never ever looked back at the five-year -old daughter she left behind.
Even when the girl was getting married the mother was informed but she refused to have anything to do with it.This is the same with some men, that if the wives take the children, they would have nothing to do with them, thereby writing them off.
But how can a parent decide to write off his children, I wonder, when the time may come when he would need them?  And some children may also choose to neglect the parent, because he didn’t care for them.
Parents should not act in anger and be involve3d in a power tussle; they should consider what is best for their children, since that is essentially what it is all about.
Grandparents and community leaders should step in and mediate before things get out of hand and children’s life and safety put at risk just for the sake of ego.