I do not think that Joanna Kramer should have received custody of her seven-year old son, Billy. Although I understand and empathize with the fact that she was unhappy in her marriage, I think it was an unacceptable and reckless choice to leave her son behind with no explanation or goodbye. A good mother always puts her child's needs in front of her own, and Joanna failed to live up to this ideal. The movie explained that she had left her family for over a year and a half. Suddenly, she arrives back in New York, and expects her family to welcome her with open arms. She had an idealistic view of the world that did not fit with reality. I don't think she was mentally stable enough to handle Billy, too. For example, throughout the movie she is always either crying, begging for change, or stalking her son. The movie portrays her as a poor wife who is trying to find herself. In order to find yourself, you can't take care of a child at the same time. If she needed to focus on rebuilding herself, she didn't deserve to bring Billy into the mix. Another factor of why I believe Joanna didn't deserve custody of her son is how great of a father Ted was. When Ted has to explain to Billy that he has to leave him and live with his mother, he is extremely distraught and upset. This shows how the relationship between Ted and Billy was much stronger than the relationship between Billy and Joanna. Overall, Joanna needed to focus on her own life before taking on the responsibility of raising a young man. She was not in any sort of condition where she was capable of raising Billy the way that Ted did in the movie.
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