Now it appears Ireland may have been too ambitious for her own good. On July 27, Macomb County circuit judge Raymond Cashen awarded custody of Maranda, now 3, to her father, Steve Smith, 20, who initially had only limited contact with his daughter. The judge's decision was based primarily on the fact that Ireland had placed Maranda in day care in order to attend class. "There is no way that a single parent attending an academic program at an institution as prestigious as the University of Michigan can do justice to their studies and the raising of an infant child," decreed Cashen, 69.
Smith, a junior at Macomb Community College, lives with his parents and works part-time cutting grass. He told the court that when he is away, Maranda would be cared for by his mother, home-maker Debbie Smith, 43. That arrangement, Cashen decreed, was preferable to having Maranda "supervised a great part of the time by strangers," though he found no fault with the daycare professional Ireland had picked: a mother of two small children who ran a licensed center in her home. "Under the future plans of the father," Cashen wrote, "the minor child will be raised and supervised by blood relatives."
Ireland, stunned by the ruling, filed an appeal, and last week the Michigan Court of Appeals delayed Maranda's transfer to her father until it could consider the case. "It's just not fair," Ireland says of Cashen's ruling. "It's a decision based on the 1950s." Many day-care advocates, legal experts and feminists agree. "Women across the country are frightened by this ruling," says Kim Gandy, executive vice president of the National Organization for Women. "I have a 2-year-old myself, and the idea that somebody could come and say that I'm a bad mother because she's in day care part-time is a very scan' thought."
For his part, Smith says he has nothing against day care. "I think it is good for people who need it, but there is a better alternative in this case," he says. "Maranda has a home here with everything she needs. People say she'll learn so much in day care and learn to cooperate. But there are kids in our neighborhood she can play with, and it's not like I can't teach her to paste and cut and color and read and all that other stuff. I'll be taking a full load of courses at college, but I'll be here as much as possible. I mean, I'm the father, and I know that I have that responsibility."
Sadly, both Smith and Ireland learned about responsibility the hard way. They met in school—he was a star football player; she was a cheerleader—and they became sexually intimate after dating for two months. "I thought I loved him," says Ireland. "Then again I was just 15, and I didn't know anything." When a home pregnancy test turned up positive, "I felt like this was just a dream and I was going to wake up and it was all going to go away," she recalls. "I was a straight-A student, never did anything wrong. This was not happening to me."
Smith too was stunned by the news. "I just couldn't believe it," he says. "We were both pretty scared and agreed that she would have an abortion." But, according to Ireland, Smith handled the situation like a perfect cad. Four days after she announced she was pregnant, Ireland says, "he sat me down and said he wanted to concentrate on football and didn't have time for a girlfriend. I started to cry, and he told me that everything would work out." Two months later, Ireland finally got up the courage to visit an abortion clinic and, as a Catholic, felt a sense of dread from the moment she walked in the front door. "I saw all these girls talking about it like it was no big deal," she says. "But I started thinking that I was going to burn in hell for even considering this. So I left."
Ireland says Smith avoided her throughout the pregnancy, even though it was common knowledge in school that he was the father-to-be. "He did come to see me in the hospital on my last day, but he refused to hold Maranda," Ireland says. Still unsure about whether she was ready to raise a child, Ireland placed Maranda in foster care for three weeks while she thought about adoption. But she finally decided she could raise Maranda herself, with the help of her mother Julie, 46, a divorcee who works as a professional nanny, and a younger sister, Emily, then 13. "When I called Steve to tell him, he was so mad," Ireland says. "He said he didn't want her and I shouldn't want her. He said I was doing the worst thing in the world."
Again, Ireland and Smith stopped communicating with each other. She says he refused to talk with her. Not so, counters Smith. He claims he and his parents—Craig, a Chrysler employee, and Debbie—wanted to see Maranda but were rebuffed by Jennifer and her mom. "Maranda was not quite 1 year old when Jenny finally did bring her over," Smith says. In the months that followed, Smith asked to see Maranda with increasing frequency but offered Ireland no financial support. After Ireland filed a formal request for child support in January 1993, he fought to have the payments reduced from $62 a week to $12 a week and countersued for custody.
Smith says he decided to seek custody because he had grown concerned about Ireland's fitness as a mother. He now declines to elaborate, saying, "I don't want to discredit Jenny in any way," but his attorney Sharon-Lee Edwards was merciless in her attacks during the custody hearing. "She dated many different boys, had sexual relations with most of them, went to parties, abused drugs and alcohol, and was never at home with her baby," Edwards claimed. Ireland was also accused by Edwards of cursing in front of Maranda and hitting her hard enough to leave bruises.
Ireland adamantly denies these claims. "It's a total lie," she says. In any case, Judge Cashen's ruling was not based on allegations that Ireland is an unfit mother. "The only thing he put in his opinion was that the mother was going to put the child in day care, and the father's mother was a homemaker who could take care of the child," says Henry Baskin, a state bar commissioner who helped draft Michigan's custody act. "It was unusual for the court to ignore a recommendation from two separate [state] agencies who concluded that the child should be with the mother."
Smith and his family are delighted about the prospect of welcoming Maranda into their home. "Steve's daughter is the most important part of his life," says his mother, Debbie. Meanwhile, the custody battle has forced Ireland to take a leave from college, and she and Maranda are staying with her mother.
Ireland says she is worried her daughter will feel abandoned if the custody ruling is upheld and her visitation rights are limited to alternate weekends and a few holidays. "Maranda doesn't know what is going on," says Ireland, tears welling up in her eyes. "And the most awful thing in the whole world is that my little girl is going to think that I don't care."
DAVID GROGAN
SHAWN D. LEWIS in Macomb County
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