Yes - I agree with most of what you said here. I have done the research myself and asked the question to provoke thought in people who repeat the “courts” statement.

Wouldn’t a more accurate statement be that “US society favors the mother”?

There is heavy implication in saying “US courts heavily favor the mother” … Yet the majority of custody decisions are decided without court rulings? But one could argue that fathers don’t try because they’ve heard that courts heavily favors mothers. Perhaps this is indicative of how the average person does not understand how the legal process works.

Maybe the statement should be “the courts favor the primary caretaker”? This is also a misleading oversimplification as most courts favor both parents being involved in a child’s life.

Some people would say that it’s just words - but all word choices have implications and most people involved in society, whether they admit it or not, pick up on those implications.

For example: the troll below saying that men are second class citizens. Or the OP coming to the conclusion that mothers are more abusive based off of raw data without interpretation. The wording of their data certainly implies this. I argue that the only useful conclusions from this data set is that : child abuse sadly still exists & child abuse is commonly committed by those with opportunity. Neither of these conclusions are ground-breaking.

I’ve enjoyed your objective responses. Thank you for the discussion.

P.S. - I would love to see a Water Bear Disco. Please link video.