Day Careless?

What is a single mother to do? Jennifer Ireland, 19, wanted to get on with her life. In high school in 1990 she became pregnant by her boyfriend, Steven Smith. She had a baby girl, Maranda. Unmarried but with help from her mother, she raised the child for three years, with little involvement by Steven, who last year began paying $12 a week in child support. Last year Ireland enrolled at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor on a scholarship. While in school, she put Maranda in day care. Wrong move.

Last week Judge Raymond Cashen of the Macomb County Circuit Court finalized his ruling, declaring that Maranda would be better off living with her 20- year-old father. Cashen indicated that day care was the deciding factor against the mother. "A child gains the feeling of security, a safe place by virtue of permanence," said Cashen, who expressed skepticism about the long- term impact of "strangers" on a child's emotional well-being. Smith, a part-time maintenance worker at a local park, lives with his parents and intends to have his mother, a full-time homemaker, look after the girl while he is at work. Judge Cashen is known for an unswerving devotion to "family values." In the late 1970s Cashen took away custody rights from a father who had placed his daughter in day care for several hours a day.

Working mothers took the ruling as a personal affront and besieged women's organizations with angry calls. But Ireland still has some legal maneuvers to pursue. Two days after winning custody of Maranda, Smith was arraigned on an assault charge against Ireland dating back to Christmas Eve 1992. Ireland claimed that Smith grabbed her shoulders, shook her and shoved her into a wall during an argument about visitation. Did Cashen take Smith's alleged domestic violence into his calculation of "family values"? When the issue came up in his court, Cashen said the charge was "not pertinent."