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The fallacies and steretypes in your post are legion. ---I don't know why people believe that only mothers get custody. It's simply not true.

It's true in 85-90% of cases, by every relliable statistical measure. Just change "only" to "in vast majority part".

---If the mother has done all the child-rearing, and then gets a support order, and then all of a sudden the man wants custody, it's going to look like he just wants out of child support.

One of the most anti-father myths is that when a father files for custody, he just wants out of child support. Most fathers are not so heartless. They love their kids, and want to raise them.

---On the other hand, if the father acted like Mr. Mom before the two split up, he's got a very good shot at custody, split custody, or shared custody.

It's sexist to use the appelation "Mr. Mom". There are two million stay at home fathers. They are not imiation mothers; they are primary caregiver fathers.

---Most men are satisfied with visitation, at most.

Type in the phrase "father's rights", including quotation marks, at http://www.google.com or visit http://www.fathermag.com or http://www.glennjsacks.com of http://www.dadi.org or a thousand thousand other father's rights websites, all of which strongly dispute your contention that "most men are satisfied" with being reduced to being visitors in the lives of their own children.

I have had interactions with fathers rights groups. My perception is that they perceive the deck is stacked against them, when it isn't.

The worst thing that men-as-potential-custodians suffer from, in my opinion, is lack of credibilty. There are so many men who are trying to game the system to avoid paying child support that they make it look bad for everyone else.

The dirty secret that bothers me, as a woman, is that women are MORE unwilling to pay child support than men. This drives me nuts.

I think I have probably seen it all, but I know for a fact that family court judges have seen it all. All the horrible things that people do to one another, they've seen.

You and I probably can't even imagine the things they have seen.

So, without going into the gory details, it's no surprise that they become a bit cynical. When a man who has always worked 60 hour weeks and socialized during his time off with his buddies all of a sudden decides to argue that he's really an equal caretaker, it kind of makes the judge feel a bit cynical.