Does Shared Custody Mess Kids Up?

Just in time for the holiday guilt all divorced parents fall prey to — nothing says "Merry Christmas" like an enforced transition on Christmas Eve and a day spent alone but for the bottle of Kahlua, tin-full of shortbread, or whatever your choice of single-parent pain-duller — comes an article proclaiming post-divorce shared custody a disaster for the children involved. Granted, this is an article from the Courier Mail, chockfull of quotes from disgruntled parents but not based on any kind of study, but still, as a divorced parent who has shared custody since my now-teenager was four years old, it stings. 

 Kate, a parent quoted in the article, says, "They'll realise (50-50 parenting orders)
are a mistake in about 10 years time – and that they've screwed up a
generation." She talks about her worries for her daughter: 

"I've seen her compartmentalising her life. And I worry about that.
Will these kids have romantic relationships where they can settle down
in one life?

"I wonder how they will ever go about making relationships for themselves that are permanent."

This is a hot topic here ever since the passage of the Family Law Amendment (Shared Parental Responsiblity) Act of 2006, which enacted the presumption for all family court judges that it's in the best interests of children for parents to have "equal shared parental responsibility." 

Now, I know plenty of single mothers who would point out that this is a good problem to have — far too many fathers pull a disappearing act post-divorce. Still, co-parenting can be one of those "be careful what you wish for" situations; you get all the loneliness and angst of single-parenting, yet none of the autonomy or control of being the family's sole "decider." And being forced to cooperate with someone you couldn't stand being married to is a tough one for nearly all divorced parents, a high-wire act we only take on out of deep devotion to our kids. 

Eleven years on, my own family's shared-parenting experiment seems to be working. Do I often wonder whether it would have been better for my teenager to have one primary home and limited contact with one of her parents? Sure — so long as I was the primary parent. But knowing that she has a deep, loving relationship with each of us, and hearing her talk about her gratitude for that, makes it feel like we made the right choice, if not for us, then at least for her. 

As for anyone else's family, I can't imagine judging. Trying to figure out what's best for your children when you're struggling with the anguish of divorce is among life's most unforgiving tests. And what works for one kid won't be the best thing for another, even in the same family. Factor in the difficulty many divorced parents have evenn speaking civilly to one another, and you're facing a high degree of difficulty just keeping your kid in matching socks, let alone mentally and emotionally healthy. 

Trend pieces like this may help us understand the difficulty judges and legislators have in balancing everybody's competing needs, but I think the poet Philip Larkin, in the opening lines of his "This Be the Verse," put it best, in terms every parent and even very young children can understand:

They f**k you up, your mum and dad.

They may not mean to, but they do.