Mom who lost custody of her kids because she had breast cancer dies at 38

In 2007, Alaina Giordano was diagnosed with stage 4 breast cancer. She and her husband separated in 2010. Her ex fought for custody of their two kids, and the court agreed with him, based in part on a psychologist's testimony that "Children want a normal childhood, and it is not normal with an ill parent" because of the "deteriorating condition of the mother's health." Giordano died this week, at age 38. Her children were able to spend time with her during her final days in hospice care. Here's a memorial video.

Boing Boing editor/partner and tech culture journalist Xeni Jardin hosts and produces Boing Boing's in-flight TV channel on Virgin America airlines (#10 on the dial), and writes about living with breast cancer. Diagnosed in 2011. @xeni on Twitter. email: xeni@boingboing.net.

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Ceteris paribus, of course the court was going to award custody to the non-terminally ill parent. The interests of the children would be best served by a parent not devoting most of their energies to fighting for life.

However, it seems that after the decision, everyone kept acting douchey, and that is a tragedy.
http://twitter.com/CaptainAssclown Captain Assclown

“Children want a normal childhood, and it is not normal with an ill parent” (!!!????) Well guess what mister psychologist, children living their childhood with a DEAD parent isn’t normal either, but that doesn’t mean the kids might not have wanted to spend time with that ailing parent before they died.

What. The. Fuck.
http://www.xeni.net/ Xeni Jardin

Yeah. Speaking as someone with breast cancer (Stage II, not stage IV like Ms. Giordano), I do understand the concern of adults in this situation who feared she would not be capable of performing all of the duties of motherhood in the same way she was capable before her diagnosis. Guess what: every mom with cancer fears this, too. People with cancer need help with the tasks of daily life.

But I do not understand taking away her kids. I truly do not understand this. It seems cruel and punitive. Who does this? To the mom, and the kids? It’s like saying that she was some kind of criminal because some of her cells started mutating and reproducing uncontrollably.
- Ashley Yakeley
  
  The judgement was for shared custody living primarily with the father. Given the distance, the kids are going to be taken away from one parent or the other. http://abcnews.go.com/Health/BreastCancerCenter/north-carolina-mom-breast-cancer-loses-custody/story?id=13546870
  - http://www.xeni.net/ Xeni Jardin
    
    Not exactly, if you read all of the court documents and news reports. She moved to Chicago, where her ex lives, to be closer to the kids and share custody. http://healthland.time.com/2012/05/07/dying-mom-with-cancer-makes-final-effort-to-stay-with-her-kids/
    - Ashley Yakeley
      
      So now they have shared custody in Chicago. This is ideal for the children, is it not?
      - http://mikeoshea.net/ somnambulist
        
        “Now” the mother is dead. I doubt the last year has been ideal for the children, no. Not at all.
        
        http://www.wral.com/asset/news/local/2011/06/01/9672149/custody_order.PDF
        
        I’m in the middle of reading the findings of fact. The whole thing is heart breaking. The inability for the husband to see the bigger picture and choose to move to Chicago, when he could have taken a similar job and moved to Jersey, where she and he both have family and where she had agreed to move, does make him the villain for me in this story more then the judge.
    - LogrusZed
      
      Just a guess, but the person with staqe IV cancer probably hasn’t got to worry about attending to a career at that point just access to treatment or possibly hospice. So moving for that person, while not ideal, was probably more viable than it would have been for the other parent.
      
      And as has been pointed out the kids were going to wind up primarily living with one parent or the other. Was there any indication that the father was unfit? I know you’re close to the subject, maybe that’s coloring your reaction?
      - francoisroux
        
        Uhm, yes, agreed. I say this with the greatest of respect to Xeni and anyone who has breast cancer, my mother in law being one of them, but this must be the first time I do not agree with the way the heading of the article portray the situation.
        
        If she was terminally ill from HIV or had some neuron disease that was terminal, I think the judgement should have been the same.
        
        She didn’t loose custody because she has breast cancer, she lost it because she was terminally ill as said and the court thought it best that the father given the situation would have been able to provide a much more stable environment in the short term at least. In hindsight, which is always 20/20, were they not right?
        
        This of course goes beyond the fact that it seems everyone thinks mothers should always get custody of the children, but I digress.
- bonafidebob
  
  Would it somehow be more fair to take the kids away from their father because of this?
  
  The parents (both of them together) set up a situation where one was going to lose a lot of contact, and then they made the court decide which it would be.
- Moriarty
  
  It seems like the first paragraph of this post contradicts the second. Clearly the court had the same fears. It shouldn’t be about which parent “deserves” custody more, it should be about what’s best for the children, because children aren’t property. Are you saying one parent having a serious disability shouldn’t be a factor in the court’s decision?
- oasisob1
  
  Divorce sucks. People get nasty and they fight dirty. They hire lawyers who DGAF about the hearts and souls of those involved. This is what happens. Happy they got to spend some time together before she passed. Sad it had all the other BS attached.
- Martijn Vos
  
  You’re confusing the issue here, Xeni. Custody is not about punishing a parent, it’s about what’s best for the children. And I agree completely with the judge that a healthy parent is most likely better for the children than a terminally ill one. And if you do want to consider it punishment, then why should the healthy parent be punished?
  
  Of course the sensible thing here is some degree of shared custody where the children stay primarily with the healthy parent, but regularly visit the sick parent.
  
  But children are not property, and changing custody is not punishment.
  - http://twitter.com/Cola82 Cola Johnson
    
    I kind of agree. If the father was a fit parent, it’s at worst a neutral result. It sounds cruel, because they cited her illness as the basis for their decision, but if she hadn’t been ill, we wouldn’t be having this conversation, because on some level we know fathers can be perfectly good parents.
    
    I say this as a feminist: maternal custody shouldn’t be the default.
- http://twitter.com/tom_hiles Tom Hiles
  
  “It’s like saying that she was some kind of criminal because some of her cells started mutating and reproducing uncontrollably.”
  
  It really isn’t. I think that’s an egregious and hyperbolic comparison.
chgoliz

What’s better for children than living with their dying mother in her last few years? Losing her right away and knowing she’s dying alone.
- HahTse
  
  She did not die alone.
  
  And a oncological ward is not a good place to raise children. Believe me, I’ve been there.
  - chgoliz
    
    And I’ve watched children watch their mothers battle this, including the ones who didn’t make it. A few years of dying is still a few more years with your mom before you don’t have her anymore, ever.
    
    And by all I’ve read, this mother really was so attached to her children that not being able to have them with her made her feel “alone” despite the other loved ones in her life. I should have worded it better, but the point is valid.
    
    The right answer would have been for the father to suck it up and be the primary parent while enabling the mom to be there as much as possible for as long as possible. If that means living under one roof for extended periods of time, well, guess what….that’s what it means.
http://twitter.com/rvitelli Romeo Vitelli

According to the news story, neither side seemed blameless in this decision. All the negative publicity over the case is likely to be causing the most damage to those children.
LaylaSV

I rue the day that the court started accepting the testimony of psychologists and am genuinely frightened by the idea that a single person, with severely limited access to the individuals involved, is considered to have a relevant opinion on the matter at hand, let alone deemed qualified to weigh in on concepts like “normal.”

(puts down axe, stops grinding)
- bonafidebob
  
  Do you have a better alternative? The parents set up the situation, and then forced the court to decide between them.
  - LaylaSV
    
    No not at all.
    
    But on behalf of homeschoolers, vegans, kids with ADD, gay parents, gay children, mix raced couples, couples with great income disparity, commune dwellers and the like, I worry about choosing the better parent, or evaluating the quality of a childhood, based on one person’s view of what is normal or, more fundamentally, the idea that normal is the same as good.
- senorglory
  
  testimony of a psychologist is just one piece of evidence that a court may consider, and the court could in some cases give the testimony no weight at all, or give other evidence more weight.
Outtacontext

Of course children want a “normal” childhood. But what should be deemed normal? That’s the point. I grew up with a sick mother. It was my normal. But I also turned out the way I did, in part, because of my normal childhood. And that wasn’t half bad. Just different.
$16228947

Illness and death are as much a part of life as life, itself. There are healthy and helpful ways to teach children how to cope with loss and change, and so doing could benefit them later in their lives. Nothing is permanent.
simonbarsinister

I deal with a lot of divorces in my job, and believe me, none of this could happen without one or both spouses stopping at nothing to hurt the other. It costs a ton of time and a fortune in legal expenses to get to the point where the court decides who gets the kids.

Normal people compromise and make these decisions themselves with the best interest of the kids at heart. When that fails they get a mediator who helps them reach an agreement. When that fails they get lawyers who fight it out and reach a settlement both sides can live with. When that fails they go to trial and the lawyers fight it out in court in front of a judge who tries to force them to reach a settlement. Only when all that finally fails, the court (Judge) decides for them. The court’s decision will be admittedly imperfect since the Judge doesn’t know these people intimately and hasn’t lived with them for all of their lives, but there is nothing else to be done at that point.
awjt

I don’t get along that great with the ex, but if she had stage IV anything, I’d let her be with the kids as much as she wanted. I’d probably try to help with some of the care, if she wanted that too. I mean, it’s not that hard of a concept to grasp that someone’s hurting and wants a little love and caring even if you’re at odds with that person.
- blueelm
  
  Same. Things fall apart, they go wrong, people have sides that didn’t come out until later, or they change/don’t change, a million things. Being angry and hurt is one thing, but losing all compassion to the point where you can not even try to put yourself in the shoes of your own kid and think of the impact on them is so extreme. Then again, some people gun down their exes, kids, and entire families… so I guess one has to consider just how deep the rabbit hole of human cruelty goes.
blueelm

I’ll never understand custody battles and all the cruelty surrounding them. Know too many people who lost their kids this way (and I mean lost in the sense that neither parent has any relationship with the child anymore because the minute they became old enough to leave they left the whole mess behind them to move on). It’s so… pointless.
Cowicide

I’m socially “conservative” when it comes to staying married after having children. I think too many people get divorces after they have kids and that’s wrong. If you’re not sure about somebody, then don’t have kids with them for fuck’s sake. Unless there’s abuse going on, work problems out for the sake of the kids. People can be so selfish.
- awjt
  
  All I can say is that it sure was complicated.
  - Cowicide
    
    I’ll take that as a compliment. ^-^
- http://pulse.yahoo.com/_FKEQIJOZZZ6RSQ6RIKCGLIN6PQ visitken
  
  I’m socially liberal and I still agree with you that couples should figure out a way to stay together until the kids are off to college. Once you have kids, they take priority over your own selfish interests.
  - Cowicide
    
    I put “conservative” in quotes because I’m not really a social conservative. Especially considering what evil the label “conservative” has deservedly become in this day and age. Come to think of it, I probably should have left the first sentence out entirely. ^-^
- millie fink
  
  Unless there’s abuse going on, work problems out for the sake of the kids. People can be so selfish.
  
  I wonder what you think qualifies as abuse. Does one of the most common reasons for divorce — one partner having an affair — constitute abuse? Or are you instead saying that people who’ve suffered that in a marriage should just grit their teeth and stay married?
  
  Also, there’s a lot to be said about how harmful it is for kids to be stuck in a family with extremely unhappy parents who are only together, ironically enough, “for the sake of the kids.”
  - Cowicide
    
    there’s a lot to be said about how harmful it is for kids to be stuck in a family with extremely unhappy parents who are only together, ironically enough, “for the sake of the kids.”
    
    My point is that more people should try to make it work for the sake of the kids.
    
    People give up too easily out of laziness and selfishness. And, this same societal laziness and selfishness is why we have so many other dire issues that are hurting future generations.
    
    And, once again, my most important point is that if someone isn’t right for you… don’t fucking breed with them and drag children into your mess.
    
    There’s many Christians that don’t even live with someone before marrying them (no living in sin!) and then find out who they are AFTER having children and then get divorced. Fuck that.
    
    I wonder what you think qualifies as abuse.
    
    Mental or physical abuse is abuse. I’m not really interested in getting into a semantic argument over the definition of abuse.
    
    My point is that many “extremely unhappy” parents are lazy, selfish assholes who either should get off their asses and get counseling “for the sake of the children” or really should have gotten to know each other in the first place before breeding like blind, horny idiots.
    - millie fink
      
      I agree with most of that. Okay, you’re talking about a lot of divorces, not all of them. Maybe not even most of them. Right on, people certainly should be more careful and less selfish.
      
      This part still rankles:
      
      And, once again, my most important point is that if someone isn’t right for you… don’t fucking breed with them and drag children into your mess.
      
      Makes sense, but it’s often easier said than done. A lot can come out of the woodwork much later in a relationship that one or both people didn’t realize was there. Your advice could help some people, but sometimes, it can take a really long time to realize that you didn’t know some things about the person that you’ve been with for such a long time. It can also take a long time to realize some things about yourself that severely hinder a relationship with this other person. Realizing either, and letting that lead to divorce, might be “selfish.” But again, staying together for the sake of the kids, despite the growing misery that can arise from such realizations, is surely worse than the parents going their separate ways and as a result, being happier, and more available and capable emotionally for their kids.
      - Cowicide
        
        staying together for the sake of the kids, despite the growing misery that can arise from such realizations, is surely worse than the parents going their separate ways
        
        I think there’s another path and that’s getting intensive marriage counseling. If the first counselor isn’t the right fit, then try at least a couple more (no pun intended).
        
        I mean, people do this with consumer products all the time (managing money to keep houses, cars, etc.), but they just can’t seem to put the same amount of effort into keeping a relationship with dependent children alive.
        
        I certainly agree with you that there’s always anomalies where no matter how hard two people try to make it work for the children, they can’t. But, I think you see what I’m saying is that too many people don’t make a truly concerted effort in first place (out of laziness and selfishness).
        
        Ok, what I’m really saying is… Millie! Come back to me! Our children are in agony without us together! I’m sorry I cheated with that goat! The goat meant nothing! ;D
      - millie fink
        
        Yes, I see what you’re saying, and I think we’ve reached a limit here in terms of how complex we can get on a comments thread. Thanks for the civil engagement. ;)
        
        We’ve left aside, for instance, the whole issue of the problems in the first place with the idea of getting married on the founding basis of romantic love, and with social norms that still insist that people who don’t spend decades locked in monogamy are deviants, and that two people should basically be the be all and end all and jack of all trades for each another. Overall, Western notions of marriage are like a trap, requiring all kinds of suppression and resentment so that the relationship and the family can just carry along as if all is fine, when, for most people I know who have been married for a long time, it clearly isn’t. Yes, the kids’ welfare should be paramount, but I think we should also consider whether other options besides this rigid, relatively recent notion of the (rarely happy) nuclear family might produce not only happier adults, but also happier kids.
      - Antinous / Moderator
        
        If people would consider those issues before spawning, there wouldn’t be much of a problem.
      - awjt
        
        I’m late to the party. What isn’t being mentioned is that people grow. Sometimes together, sometimes apart. But sentient people are always growing. That’s what happened with me and my ex – there was a time, it was over, we tried mightily for years to put Humpty back together, and then we split for the good of all, the children included. Everyone is happier and we have achieved a healthy system now. So I totally disagree that people need to just stay together. People *don’t* need to just stay together. People need to remain focused on the important stuff: achieving a healthy system, both internally with the self, together as a couple, and together as a family. By whatever means necessary, since people can be so different. Staying together is just a symptom. The real root is the health of all the relationships one maintains. THAT’S what needs addressing. And I also caveat this by saying it can take time to understand this, and many people never will.