A SEPARATE PEACE: MOTHERS WITHOUT CUSTODY

LAST WEEK, Mary Jane Baumgarten got a call from the sheriff. He had a summons to serve. It seems the lady had been remiss in paying her child support, and her ex-husband wanted her back in court.

It’s been three years since Mary Jane lost custody of her three children-two daughters, ages 12 and 14, and a son, 11. After the divorce in 1976, she was the one who got the kids. She thought they had a tightly knit, happy little family. Then, out of the blue, her ex-husband sued for custody. He had remarried, and he and his wife wanted a family. “I guess the only one available was mine,” she says.

Mary Jane gave in with more of a whimper than a cry. She had talked to the kids, and they were intrigued with the idea of living with Dad. “You know how kids are at that age: The grass is always greener.” The parents agreed that their children would stay in the same schools, the same neighborhood, the same church. Scarcely three months later, they were gone, miles away in another town.

In the aftermath of her despair, Mary Jane founded a Dallas arm of an organization called Mothers Without Custody. Theirs is a peculiarly painful plight. They live with the loss of their children while facing an agonizingly hostile world-a world that views them as two-time losers, as outcasts, as unfit: “It used to be that only a prostitute lost custody of her kids.” Today, says Mary Jane, some women make the choice out of real need-and out of love. “When it comes to a custody fight, you’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t. If you don’t fight for your kids, everybody thinks you don’t love them. If you do, they get hurt.”

Mothers Without Custody is a support group that offers education, a coffee-klatch brand of therapy and lots of “crisis intervention.” “We try to teach each other that it’s okay not to be a single parent. It’s okay for a father to take care of his kids. We want women to look at a divorce situation and see that his taking custody is one option open to them.

“But I guess hope springs eternal in all of us that one day our children will come back.”