The Working Mom and Custody Issues
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The Working Mom and Custody Issues
| Mon, 11-30-2009 - 8:24pm |
There was an article in this month's Working mother magazine about wrking mom's losing custody to SAHD's.

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I'm not sure if you are agreeing with me or disagreeing...
PumpkinAngel
<<IME parenting isn't about first and second place.
PumpkinAngel
That's why I said that I don't think there is a benefit here in the kids knowing that one parent has a primary role and the other doesn't.
PumpkinAngel
The kids see it however they see it, nobody is telling what to know about their own parents, or wanting them to know something different than they already do know. That's not the issue. In the OP, the kids "know" dad was AH all day and mom worked, the kids "know" they live with dad more than mom after the divorce, without any terms or words for it at all. No part of calling the dad a primary caregiver changes what the kids know.
The question is whether there is a benefit continuing the same roles post-divorce, that the parents had while they were together. Or the case where the parents were never together, if there is a benefit to having one parent take a primary caregiver role vs. sharing that role equally.
Malcolm Gladwell Blink
We leave dd1 home unsupervised at times, but we don't leave both of them together yet, and we're not ready to leave them unsupervised after school together or with their friends. That's pretty typical among the parents we know of younger teens/tweens.
We must have a different understanding of "spending time" with our kids since to me that doesn't mean being in the same house with them. My definition of parenting definitely involves interaction--that's why I don't consider myself to be parenting when I'm not actually with them.
I personally would feel weird saying I'm parenting my kids when I'm not with them, but my definition of parenting is probably just different from yours.
There are 100s of things that I consider parenting that don't involve physical care of children: the place we live, the schools we choose, the church we worship, the food we buy, the car we drive, the investments we make, the health care we choose, the books we read, the insurance we have, the entertainment we choose, even the friends with whom we socialize..., etc.
We would make far different choices if we didn't have children. I consider that all part of being a parent, therefore, parenting.
Most of those things are covered by legal custody in a divorce. So parents who generally of sound mind, no matter who was the primary caregiver, get equal legal custody. Meaning both have equal rights to make legal, educational, medical, social, religious and any other major decisions for the children. In that sense, the parents are treated equally no matter who is doing the majority day to day caring for the children at any point.
It's usually only the physical custody that can be impacted by who was the primary caregiver during the marriage. Which makes some sense, since both the concept of primary caregiver and primary custodial parent relate to split of time each parent is physically with the children.
Malcolm Gladwell Blink
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Some of our choices would be different if we didn't have kids, but I don't think it would be nearly as dramatic for us as it is for you.
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