As a separated parent you get focussed time with the kids and in the off week you get a good bunch of me/adult time.
Looking in it seems a great setup for mature ex’s.
If you can't commit to bringing up a kid together then don't have a kid.
I am so pissed off even writing this, I've just got to say it, fuck parents like you.
Reading some of the comments here, I'm reminded of a story I read about several couples renting a summer house, sending all the kids from all the families there for the summer and the parents taking turns spending their vacation there to supervise.
Some outsider was like "Oh, God, spending my two weeks of vacation tending to so many children sounds like a nightmare." And then someone pointed out that for the parents, the vacation was the other six weeks or whatever getting to live like a childless couple.
(Please don't aim your anger at me. I'm on your side here.)
I think the only criticism was along the lines of "Well, that's great for the kids. But the poor parents! What in earth were they thinking?!" not realizing that the parents got a different kind of break in addition to doing something wonderful for the children who all got to spend like eight whole weeks at a lake house instead of just two and got to do it with lots of built-in friends to play with, rather than being lonely on an adult vacation away from their friends.
I'm not saying it's bad. Just that the part that was good for the kids was different from the parts that were good for the parents.
People here saying "That sounds glorious" about 50/50 custody arrangements strike me as thinking about it from the point of view of how the parents experience it and not how the children are likely to experience that.
Everything I've read suggests that shuffling the kids back and forth like that ends up being distinctly negative for the children in most cases.
Hearing parents talk about how they went the extra mile to make things better for the kids after the divorce honestly strikes me about like John Wilkes Booth offering Lincoln some gauze for his head wound. Like, it's a nice gesture, but he'd probably have been better off if you hadn't shot him in the first place.
Even for married parents that have struggles and disagreements, the fact that they stay together serves as a rock-solid signal to a child that the family as a whole is important and that ultimately the parents care about the child even more than they care about themselves.
Except in cases of physical violence, I believe it's always better for the children if the parents stay together. And it's not close.
Also, while I'm certainly jealous of people raised in married households, I don't blame them in the slightest for not having much of a sense of how the other half lives. The only way to know is to live through it, and I wouldn't wish that on anyone.
As someone who spent their childhood wishing their parents would get a divorce already, I felt like I was in an upside down world reading your comment.
- I have never in my life gone to my parents for emotional support. They would come to me to tell me how horrible the other parent or my siblings were. And I was constantly tending to my siblings after they had been upset by my parents. Plus the normal things I heard them argue about, mostly my father stressed about losing his job and my mother spending too much money.
- I was constantly waiting for the other shoe to drop via 1) one of them directly blows up at me 2) blow up at each other and then take it out on me 3) blow up at my siblings, who would then take it out on me.
- We didn't take holidays, but even them driving together to the dentist was extremely stressful as they were guaranteed to start fighting over nothing (see above point).
- There were no logistical nightmares because we all lived in the same house. No argument there.
- I assumed they stayed together not because they cared about us, but for the same reason they treated us like burdens to kick when they were down: their culture taught them that a certain hierarchy and structure in life was more important than stupid American values like happiness, especially the happiness of children. Also my mother couldn't financially support herself without my father's income.
And, yes, there was almost no physical aspect to this unhappiness for me. My older sibling, who did suffer physical abuse, said that, both growing up and to this day, they preferred it to all the emotional injuries.
Much as you may idealise married households, perhaps I'm idealising divorced ones. If my parents had divorced, maybe I would have written your comment.
One thing I didn't mention is that as kids growing up in broken households, we often have no frame of reference so our lives feel "normal", and it's only later in life that we piece together the damage our narcissistic parents have wrought. It sounds like this may not have been the case for you and your siblings though - extremely curious as to how you see it and how your perspective has changed over time (if at all).
If divorce laws were written to put the welfare of children first, they’d make divorce easy for the first kind of family and difficult for the second. However, I don’t think children’s welfare is really a priority for most contemporary divorce laws.
> Except in cases of physical violence
This reminds me that my mom blames my dad for making her angry, and taking it out on me. Part of it was her being a Tiger Mom and I think she genuinely has some anger management issues, but I think there was some truth in this. If she had another partner, they probably have an easier time controlling her emotions.
To be fair, my situation was unique because they had barely known each other before they had gotten married, and I think they were simply fundamentally incompatible with each other, like oil and water. I'm completely baffled about why they decided to get married in the first place, but thinking about this more, it might have been a shotgun marriage.
I also think their marriage can seem strange, but given where they come from I just don't think marriages based on love were common. Heck it's basically a modern convention. It's nice that we have the(some of us anyways), but it's by no means the norm for humanity. Even today many people get married to people they don't know well. For a lot of people staying single and just feelings things out isn't doable.
It seems more stable, but only from the outside.
Incidentally: both of my kids were quite pleased that we divorced; most of their friends were from "blended" families of one kind or another, and once we divorced, they felt that they fitted-in better.
Although, sometimes situations like that make you perversely stronger/more flexible/more mature. Adversity is a forge, in the right doses.
You may not feel you owe divorced parents better, but you owe this community better if you're participating in it.
We don't really know the situation and everyone's is different.
This 60/40 aka 80/20 situation is the good outcome for most fathers. It really only gets worse from there. If you give the judge attitude, they will have no problem putting you on supervised visitation indefinitely.
This is incredibly sad.
Edit:
I was curious and I shouldn't have been: https://www.custodyxchange.com/topics/research/dads-custody-...
Does anybody know if these things are fact or fiction? If either or both of those are true, it seems like you can't really blame "the system" for these results.
This data is also further simplified:
> The percentages in the study reflect cases in which both parents want custody and no complicating circumstances exist ― such as criminal convictions or long-distance separation. It demonstrates the most commonly awarded visitation schedules given to a noncustodial parent by state.
So, they didn't study actual custody awards, but lawyers opinions about what was “most common”.
So, it's not really a study of what the reality of custody time is, but a study of expert opinion is of what that actual study of the ground truth would find if someone bothered to do it.
I didn't notice that bit, so good find. I was bummed to see that most studies don't actually try to ascertain who usually wins when both parents want custody and there are no extenuating circumstances. That seems like an obvious metric to track the health of custody laws.
This is the only government data I found: https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publicatio...
The problem is that if there is a custody dispute, then probably at least one, and usually both, sides will be pleading circumstances which pull one way or the other. And any court is likely to issue fact findings that lean the same direction as the custody order. So, if you are going to find what bias exists in the court system you can't look at just custody orders and legally determined facts, you've got to separately readjudicate the fact disputes with an unbiased process. Which is...problematic.
That said, instead of changing individual decisions you can punish the state for outcomes whether they be intended or unintended. Disparate impact (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disparate_impact) is one such tool the courts are already familiar with. There's more nuance to that which can't be ignored - a person can sue an entity for disparate impact but disparate impact is also calculated regularly with respect to lending. The same could be done for custody.
No, I mean the study would have to readjudicate the cases (not change the legal outcome, but redivining the actual facts from the trial record) to identify differing treatment in different factual circumstances between states.
There was definitely no court bias for the mother, which was a surprise given that this is the popular culture stereotype. And child support was purely formula based.
The most annoying thing was domiciliary parent designation, even with 50/50 joint custody, as the domiciliary parent had more decision power which allowed for unnecessary drama.
One thing to note is that all of this is state (and country) specific and states might vary significantly.
I think most parents fully expect to be parents 100% of the time once they have kids.
I don’t want, don’t need, don’t enjoy the “me/adult” time at all. I just want to make dinner for my kids, help with homework, watch a show together, take them to practice, play games, watch them grow, have conversations, hear their voices.
I coach everything just so I can see them on my off weeks. I am president of the pta so I can see them more often too.
It’s awful in every way for me. I can’t stand it when they are gone.
EDIT: Add in my ex bringing boyfriends around which makes me physically ill. I don’t sleep or eat. I feel miserable. I just hope my kids are getting through this okay, but it’s so hard to tell. I don’t want to ask if they feel bad because then they might think they are supposed to be feeling bad. So I just do what I can to make them feel happy and loved.
Are there particular ages where it's especially disruptive (eg teen years where being physically distant from friends houses is more of a problem)?
Not so glorious for kids who are constantly having to pack their bags and move between houses, never able to feel at home.
This way children get stable home while parents get rest and adult space for themselves and have a chance of missing their kids.
The kids lose a family unit and now float between two where their place isn’t even certain.
I’ve met many adult fucked up by that experience as a kid.