Trish Wilson on Shared Parenting

Trish Wilson's op-ed is in response to a column that Glenn Sacks and Mike McCormick had written about shared parenting.

Posted on Sun, Jul. 30, 2006

VIEWPOINT: Don't force 'shared parenting' on children
By Trish Wilson

BOSTON - Mike McCormick and Glenn Sacks have written a lot of misconceptions about shared parenting in their viewpoint, "Initiative helps children of divorce".

"Shared parenting" is a feel-good euphemism for joint physical custody. Shared parenting has been rejected in Maryland, Colorado, Tennessee, New York, Illinois, Nevada, California, the United Kingdom, New Zealand, Australia and Canada. A shared parenting bill has been shelved in Massachusetts; it is dead for the time being.

Custody should be determined on a case-by-case basis. One particular form of custody (such as shared parenting) should not be forced on parents when other forms of custody would be more appropriate for them and especially for their children.

Shared parenting already is an option for parents who choose to try it on their own. There does not need to be a presumption for it. Ninety percent of parents settle without the need for court intervention in deciding what form of custody is best for them and for their children.

Most parents do not choose shared parenting because they recognize how hard it would be on them and especially on their children. They also recognize that in most cases, the mother had been the primary caregiver of the children, and they believe she should continue in that capacity. That is why mothers most often get sole custody. It is not because of bias against dads in court.

When dads make an issue of custody, they get some form of it more than half the time.

Courts are not biased against fathers. Lynn Hecht Schafran found in "Gender Bias in Family Courts," published by the American Bar Association Family Advocate, that "despite the powerful stereotypes working against fathers, they are significantly more successful than is commonly believed. The Massachusetts (gender bias) task force, for example, reported that fathers get primary or joint custody in more than 70 percent of contested cases.

"The various gender bias commissions found that at the trial court level in contested custody cases, fathers won more than half the time." While shared parenting may work for parents who freely choose to try it, shared parenting has been shown to be detrimental to children who are exposed to conflict between their parents. When one parent wants shared parenting and the other doesn't, there will be conflict between those parents that shared parenting will not alleviate.

Shared parenting asks a lot of children. It is harmful to children who cannot handle the restrictive schedule. Many of them cannot handle the shunting back and forth between homes very well. They also must keep track of which home they are to be in on a given day, which is stressful for them.

They can lose track of their friends, and their extracurricular activities can suffer. They can miss birthday parties, sleepovers and evening school activities.

In the cases where shared parenting has worked, the families had these qualities in common: The parents had an amicable relationship, their divorce was amicable with little or no conflict, they had higher-than-average incomes, they had only one child, neither parent (especially the father) had remarried, they lived within close proximity of each other, they had flexible job schedules, the child could handle the shared parenting arrangement, the parents chose freely between themselves to try shared parenting - and they chose to make it work.

There should not be a presumption for shared parenting in North Dakota. It ignores the desires of most parents, who don't want shared parenting. It also ignores the contributions of the primary caregiving parent, most often the mother, and it ignores the needs of children. It ignores the child's development as the child ages.

Hopefully, North Dakota will reject a presumption for joint custody, as many states and countries have already done.

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Wilson is a member of the National Network On Family Law Policy and the Family Court Reform Coalition.