Making Divorce more Humane for Children

Shared parenting means that parents find a way to co-parent after divorce.
This goes further than what traditional laws call joint custody. In joint custody (i.e. joint legal custody), both parents have a say in the major decisions of a child’s life – e.g. religion, schooling… In practice, the mother usually has physical custody of the child, and the father has very little say over most of what happens in the child’s life – among other things, he has to give the mother child support and has no say in how it is spent.

Shared parenting involves both legal and physical custody. There are no pre-set roles where the woman is the nurturer and decision-maker, and the man the money provider. Children may spend equal time with both parents. Regarding money, parents jointly budget for the children’s expenses, and each pay equitably for these expenses. A mother, Merinda M., describes her shared parenting arrangement in the following manner: I am a sharing parent; my 10 year old son shares equal time with his father as he does with me. We live 2000 miles apart, but the communication is always there. We agreed when we divorced that we would never withhold from our son the time that he would have normally received. It was both of us who created him, and it will be both of us to play an active role in who he becomes.