Interesting study on joint custody
http://time.com/3836627/divorced-parents-joint-custody/
The article seems to say that kids do better going back and forth between parents a couple times a week. I wish I could see the original study, but the link the article doesn't work! DH had EOWE, and I TOTALLY believe the kids would have been better off spending more time with him. (Not sure *I* would have been better off. They need to do a study on THAT. What is the effect of 50/50 physical custody on second marriages?)
- AllySkoo's blog
- Log in or register to post comments
Comments
I think they've already done
I think they've already done that study... It shows a 70+% divorce rate in second marriages!
Seriously, though, I think it
Seriously, though, I think it depends totally on the kids. Bio DD couldn't handle it, but she's been with me her whole life, with Dad minimally participating, even when we were married.
Skids probably would be better off, but their mother's too much of a peach. She fought DH tooth and nail to get 35% custody. Thousands of dollars later, I wish he'd just left it alone...
My ex and I do 50/50 and no
My ex and I do 50/50 and no one gets child support. I get half the week and he gets half the week. WE live on the same street though and the kids can ride their bikes from one house to the other all day long if they so choose. It works great for us. We dont' fight. We coparent. My kids are very well adjusted.
SO and his ex do every other weekend except they cancel most of his weekends and then just call at random times and say come take me shopping or take me to dinner right NOW! and he does it. He pays $1000 plus a month and his ex wife tells him nothing about grades or health or anything.
To me, you and your exes
To me, you and your exes arrangement is the ideal thing for children after divorce. At least healthy, stable, good natured kids.
We exchange multiple times a
We exchange multiple times a week. I imagine a SM would hate our schedule! lol But it's worked since the kid was 18 months old. Ex and I only have to see each other for 5 minutes a week. BS likes it because he sees both parents 4 days a week, waking up with one parent and getting picked up from school by the other. He was horrified when I told him that some kids only get EOWE with parents. I just wonder how long this arrangement will last.
I can't help but think of my
I can't help but think of my sister (I blogged about that a few days ago, probably getting divorced soon). Her H has been coming to the house daily to see the kids, and her BS5 is perfectly fine. BD4 a little less so, though. I do hope her H continues to see the kids so often. He always seemed pretty disinterested, when he was living there. (My mother was going to babysit one day, for example. H blew off his plans, but instead of cancelling the babysitting and spending time with his kids, he stayed in his room playing x-box or something. My sister was mortified when she got home and found out our mom babysat because H couldn't be bothered.)
I really think it depends on
I really think it depends on the bio-parents and even the step-parents involved. If everyone can be a grownup then I think it can really work.
BM was too controlling and bitter for it too work in our situation.
Interesting. They only
Interesting. They only studied if the kids had symptoms such as nightmares or headaches. They didn't look at grades, social success, or whether the kid was a decent kid.
My SD would pass this study with flying colors and could be their poster child. She doesn't have "symptoms." She spends half the week here, half the week at BM's. But she is NOT thriving. Failing at least 3 classes on any given day. Only discovering friends at the age of 15 and has managed to find the 3 or 4 misfits doing as poorly as she is, so social skills and emotional skills failure. Lies. Gets called in to the principal's office. Truancy. Has been violent at times.
Oh, but she's never had a headache or a nightmare so everything is peachy in 50/50 land.
No. It's not. I feel she'd be better off, waaaaaay better off, if her dad had 95% custody and BM showed up for a couple Saturday nights a month and no more. All the back and forthing hasn't created a "suitcase kid." It has created a kid adept at playing one parent off the other; a kid deeply influenced by her mother's resentments and failures; a kid who has learned to coast along the top because the other house is always just a day or two away.
I feel most of the research on divorce and COD is deeply, deeply flawed. The kids in that study who only had the one parent may have actually fared worse if they had frequent custody with some nightmare parent. Why don't the researchers account for those variables? Maybe those kids do the worst because they are simply the child of a nightmare person (possibly a BM who PASes and runs off the dad, etc) or of a deeply selfish one (a dad who doesn't care). A change in custody may not help those kids one little bit.