Monday, December 18, 2017

Many states considering shared parenting

The Bezos Wash. Post reports:
Now lawmakers are accelerating this trend toward co-parenting, with legislatures in more than 20 states this year considering bills that would encourage shared parenting or make it a legal presumption — even when parents disagree. ...

The legal push for custody arrangements follows years of lobbying by fathers’ rights advocates who say men feel alienated from their children and overburdened by child-support obligations. This movement is gaining new traction with support from across the political spectrum, as more lawmakers respond to this appeal for gender equality and, among some conservatives, the frustration of a newly emboldened constituency of men who say they are being shortchanged.

Critics of the bills ... say that stricter laws will ... take discretion away from judges who are tasked with deciding what is in the best interest of children.
There are many arguments for shared parenting, but I don't think that the best are either fathers' rights or gender equality.

The most convincing arguments are the studies that overwhelmingly show that shared parenting works best, especially when the parents have conflict or disagree.

I think that the best argument is the negation of the last one from the critics. We should take discretion away from judges who are tasked with deciding what is in the best interest of children. We want children reared by their parents, not micro-managed by judges.

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