A few years ago, I wrote Part 1 of this topic, and I fully intended to get to work on Part 2 right away, but we were called on to provide Foster care to some children in our county, and things got in the way. I'm back on the topic now, and ready to think through Part 2.
Daddies are important.
Unfortunately, though the world has changed such that Dads expect to be involved in their kids' lives, we pretend that change doesn't exist the minute the parents decide to separate. Upon separation, the working mother who saw their children NO MORE OFTEN than the working father, suddenly acts as though they have been the primary (or only) "REAL" parent in the family. Generally, the division of labor in the family had been organized so that Mom took care of what was important to Mom and Dad took care of what was important to Dad, and everything else either fell through the cracks (dusting the geegaws in the living room, perhaps) OR they joined together or outsourced it (such as sharing meal-making, or maybe getting takeout a majority of the time)...
When they split, Mom thinks that she should get the kids because SHE was the REAL parent, but what she doesn't understand is that Dad ALSO thought HE was doing important things for the kids.
Our courts, and frankly, our custody evaluators and other professionals in the system, are reluctant to catch up to the current reality, which is that if the parents split up, leaving the kids with Mommy for 90% of the time and making Daddy a visitor in his own kids' lives, is a big loss for Daddy (which no one really cares about, because it's all about what's best for the kids) AND it's a big loss for the kids! The therapists are so busy saying that a child needs a single home base to call their own, that moving is bad for the kids, etc... that they ignore certain realities...
In a family where the parents WANT to move, and handle it properly with the children, there are very few problems with moving from one location to another. Military families are notorious for moving regularly and also for raising wonderful, resilient children. JUST because something is disappointing to a child does not mean we should avoid it. It is through learning how to adjust to change, learning how to weather disappointment, that a child learns. The therapists will point to the losses of orphans and foster children as proof that children should not be moved if possible, but those analogies ignore the fact that in the case of foster children and orphans, the adults that they should be able to trust have become untrustworthy, and are NOT managing the changes in their own lives well.
In other words, if the adults in a child's life are positive about a change, and help the kids work through their concerns about it (where will my favorite chair be? How will Santa find us? How can I EVER find a new friend in a strange school?) the kids will be just fine. In many cases, children of divorce or separation are not helped to weather the changes in a positive light, but instead are prepared for it as if the parents are preparing for the world to come to an end. And you can be SURE that if the parents feel their world is coming to an end, the kids will feel that way also.
If parents are not taking a move well, then the kids will also not take it well. Look at parents who are losing jobs, getting evicted, or separating/divorcing. We see them explaining the move to the child in terms of "don't worry, we'll SURVIVE... somehow, as long as you stick with ME", it is a whole lot different than, "Daddy just got a great job and we're moving to a bigger town where there will be a bigger house and a playground right across the street, and the school has computers for every kid to use in the classrooms and a great soccer team"... The trick on handling a separation/divorce, and the required moves with a kid, is to help them understand that this change will be better. "Mommy & Daddy won't argue so much, but we'll be in different houses. Daddy will have a house with rooms for you kids, and Mommy will have a house with rooms for you kids, and you'll have two times as many rooms, two times as many birthday parties, two times as many visits from Santa!!! Instead of going camping as a family for 2 weeks in the summer, you'll spend 2 weeks camping with me and ANOTHER two weeks camping with Daddy, or maybe instead of camping, you'll go skiing in the winter, or to Disney... it'll be GREAT... and when we're not always arguing, it'll be a lot happier too!" A WHOLE lot better than "Dad is leaving us, we'll get by, don't worry, the judge will force him to pay child support and if he doesn't they'll send him to jail"... (yes, some parents DO say this to their children... it's awful, and it doesn't usually come all in the same sentence, but they say it in tiny little bits, until the children put it altogether and realize that this is AWFUL... Daddy doesn't love us, walked out on us, won't pay for our needs, might go to jail, we'll never see him again & Mommy & Us might starve!!!...)
Unfortunately, many people treat Daddy like an ATM... and the ability to have children as if it's a career choice... a money-earner. And when the courts support this vision of how Daddies are, the men in these children's lives will slowly disappear. They will become marginalized... they become Disney Dads who show up on the rare occasion when mom & the judge allow them to see the kids. And the kids start to feel a bit of awkwardness... feeling like a guest in what should be their own home...
When this happens, kids only get the part of parenting that the Moms took on. Dads stop parenting the kids and spend their precious little time with the kids, just trying to maintain the connection, entertaining the kids and hoping that they enjoy the relationship enough that they'll come to Dad if they ever have a need to do so. Unfortunately, they rarely do. This parenting schedule that our society has fallen into... a schedule that was more appropriate 50 years ago when Daddies did all the work and Mommies always stayed home... the every-other-holiday, every-other-weekend and one dinner a week... it's a schedule that encourages Disney Dad syndrome. If the parents have one designated as a primary residential parent, and the other as the "visitor", who is involved only during play time (every other weekend, holiday, etc), we can be sure that the primary residential parent will be the one burdened with 100% of the homework, 100% of the carpooling to & from school, 100% of the organizing of extracurriculars and play dates, 100% of the whiny wake-up moments and quick breakfasts before school, 100% of the chore-making... all while losing 50% of the vacations, holidays, weekends and fun times with the kids.
Most parents will not call this a "burden", but whatever they choose to call it, they become the disciplinarian, the organizer, the person who has to spend 100% on the kids and who has lost the partner who used to help out.... even if that partner was only helping pay the bills, clean the house, and do the carpooling when you instructed, this partner carried an important part of the burden of the household. And there are bad side-effects for the adult who is suddenly 100% in charge of children, with no partner present to take any part of that burden. First, this adult loses the opportunity to fully participate in their career, to be at the office without the likelihood of getting a call from the school that a child is sick... The absence of a second parent to call on for those duties, makes it impossible for this primary parent to fully participate in the workplace without the possibility of a child-related interruption. The primary parent also has more difficulty creating an adult social life for themselves. While the "visiting" parent can develop adult friendships in a normal fashion, outside of the influence of the children until the parent is sure the relationship is viable, the primary parent loses this opportunity. For the primary parent, a casual flirtation cannot turn into a coffee date, an invitation to happy hour cannot be fulfilled, because child care issues will nearly always be present. And any relationship that gets past the coffee date stage will necessarily start to unfold in the presence of the children, whose needs and opinions will intrude.
As a result, the opportunity for the primary parent to process the loss of the romantic relationship and replace it in their lives is curtailed and altered. If we want a surefire way to jump from marriage/mistake #1 into marriage/mistake #2, we could not create a better formula for making it happen. After the sudden loss of #1, don't give the primary parent the opportunity to mourn the loss or learn the relationship lessons, don't give them the chance to figure out what they did wrong and how they want to do it better next time, don't give them time to explore relationships in private. Instead, make sure this person has no opportunity for adult companionship unless it's mostly in the presence of the children. Instead of recovering, this person will be rebounding, and with no free time left to process what is going on, they are being reactive rather than pro-active. It will not work. It's no surprise that second marriages have a higher failure rater than first marriages, especially if children from the first marriage are involved!
I can promise everyone here that if a parent is reading this who is the primary residential parent and the children's mother, that she will be saying to herself, "I'm the MOTHER, I am the one with the INSTINCTS, and I am willing to make the sacrifice for MY KIDS". Unfortunately, this sacrifice does not do the best for the kids.
The kids lose the good homework help in the subjects that Dad is better at than Mom is. Girls lose the strength of the relationship with the one man in their lives who will always find them beautiful, who will CREDIBLY (Mom can't be credible on this issue) tell them that a boy does not deserve this much attention... the boys lose the strength of the relationship with the one man in their lives who can CREDIBLY tell them what a REAL MAN does, who was the first and most reliable example of what they wanted to be. The kids lose an example of how to live life in the way he chooses to live, so that when they grow up, they have a more balanced vision of how to get by in this world on their own.
Once upon a time, not too long ago, we would say "it takes a village to raise a child", meaning that having more examples of adulthood around, to pick up pieces of the load and help the children see how to live and cooperate in this world, is a good thing... yet when a separation occurs, we suddenly stop believing this, deciding that it's an OK thing to totally cut out one of the two most important people in the child's life. As a rule, we are making a big mistake if we think it's OK to cut out or marginalize the influence of either parent.
I do not say there are not exceptions to the rule... We MAY need to cut out the baby daddy who is a raging alcoholic, or addict... or who is dangerously violent. But more often than not, we find that the mother who, just last week, was quite willing to leave her children alone with this guy for hours on end, entire weekends while she was out with the girls, away for work, or visiting her mother... all of a sudden, upon separation, she acts as though his faults are so extreme that he does not deserve time with the children any more... or that his time should be severely limited. Suddenly, a woman who has been married nearly 2 decades where her only complaint was that he did not earn enough money, SUDDENLY she is accusing him of violence and telling judges that the children need to be protected from him most of the time. In these cases, we need to double-check the likelihood that these accusations are true. There are too many incentives for an exaggeration or lie to take place at the time of separation. Too many reasons for a person freshly angry over a split, to suddenly forget their own part in the problems of the marriage and bring every disagreement to light in an effort to crush the other parent.
Unfortunately, while recriminations or lingering angry feelings are no problem for childless couples who can separate and never have to see each other again, this does not work for separating couples who have children together. It is not good for people who must continue to co-parent, to have opportunities to bash each other. Accusations go both ways, this is why the couple is no longer together. The courts understand that there are usually two sides to any story, but instead of encouraging the parties to put aside their anger, the court system, which is adversarial by nature, encourages both sides to have equal opportunity to vent.
Perhaps one reason that mothers are often winners in the initial custody battles is that fathers are less articulate about emotional issues such as this. Unless a daddy takes on the significant burden of very high legal expenses required for a very difficult and protracted custody battle (and unless the daddy is willing to put his children through such a battle), the woman will usually win, just by virtue of being better at holding onto their grudges against the ex and being better able to articulate their grudges.)
Some parents with very strong parental instincts manage to put the anger behind them. And generally, they figure out an amicable arrangement of parenting time. Usually, these days, the arrangement is something close to equal time... he gets a week, then she gets a week... something like that.
Such a schedule gives her time to go grocery shopping on her off weeks, without little hands reaching for every piece of candy in the checkout line... it makes it possible for her to have HALF of her work days ENTIRELY available to stay late at the office if the boss needs it... making it possible for her to do the kind of office politics/networking that will help her break through whatever glass ceiling her mommy-track might have held for her...
Generally, such a schedule also causes her a LOT of worry at first. The kids' hair won't be brushed right, or they will be fed on McDonalds fries and sodas... they'll be allowed to stay up all night and will be late to school... Dad will forget to take the Tuba to school for band practice. If she calms down and lets him do this stuff without her interference or nagging, she will probably find that he can manage these things just fine. If he's JUST as incompetent as I described, he will find out the frst time they're up all night, bouncing around because of the sugar & caffeine high of the McDonalds' colas, that this might not be such a great idea for dinner... he will figure out how to put the kids' hari in a pony tail and the KID will come home crying that her hair was a mess all day and her friends made fun of it, so he will figure out how to get it done correctly, even maybe helping her learn how to do it himself if he feels that incompetent about it. And the first time he has to re-organize his work schedule to go pick up the stupid tuba from the house and bring it to the school in time for Band... he'll remember not to let the kid forget it again.
More likely, he'll feed the kid a more balanced meal from a healthier fast food place, will have learned how to brush his own daughter's hair after watching you do it for years, and will be JUST FINE. And in some instances, Mom will have to enforce the parenting time issues, such as refusing to take over when the kid is sick on his watch... Dad needs to step up and do the whole job, just like Mom now has the opportunity to step up and do Her whole job as far as breadwinning goes.
And the kids will get the Daddy who can help them with their math, who takes them to see a really cool workplace on "bring your kids to work day", who talks to them about budget and career and what boys really think like and how a real man handles his responsibilities, who takes them on more physically challenging activities on weekends than Mommy might usually schedule.
And Daddy might have a Wii at his house, while Mommy has a Playstation... daddy has scooters while Mommy has bikes. Daddy has a dog who catches Frisbees while Mom's dog has learned to roll over and play dead.
Pushing daddy away gives the child half a life. It should be reserved for very rare, dire circumstances... which do not exist in most separations or divorces!
Daddies are REALLY important for this... they provide a balance in the kid's life.
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