Parenting After Divorce

Divorce has become commonplace and affects many children today. Either their parents are divorced or they have friends whose parents are divorced, making it a very rare occurrence when a child doesn’t know someone who’s divorced.

There’s been a shift in the manner of how divorce affects children and parents. It used to be that when parents divorced, the mother was almost always given custody of the children.

Courts believed that children needed their mothers more than their fathers.

It didn’t seem to matter how old the children were, nor did it matter what gender the children were.
Barring some extreme circumstances, it was quite unusual for children to be placed in the custody of their fathers.

Fathers were expected to continue to support their children, but often had little interaction with them otherwise. They might have seen them on weekends, over a holiday, or even during the summer, but fathers were generally part-time parents.

This isn’t necessarily the case anymore. Fathers are much more involved in their children’s lives than they were a generation or two ago. Many fathers attend school activities from the time their children are young and interact with their children on a daily basis.

So what happens when a couple divorces and both parents are extremely active, loving, and giving with their children?

One of the best things parents who are either divorced or are contemplating a divorce can do is remember that the divorce is about and between the adults.
At the same time, the children are greatly affected by the divorce.
This doesn’t mean that no one should go through with the process. There may be very good reasons for a couple to split up. Some couples try to stay together for the children, but this rarely works out well. Children are very sensitive to the vibrations in a home and will most likely be affected in one way or another.

You may not fight in front of your kids, but that doesn’t mean they won’t feel your animosity towards one another. Or if you stop fighting because you just don’t care enough, but choose to stay together, your kids may grow up to think that your relationship was a healthy and happy one.

They might then seek to model their own relationships on what they experienced growing up.

It’s good to remember that parents who no longer love each other still love their children. Whenever possible, keep that in mind. You may not be married to your children’s biological mother or father, but they’re still part of your children’s lives and are still parents.

You got into this together and hopefully you can work together as adults to raise your children to be happy and healthy adults.

This isn’t always easy. Beyond the arguments and disagreements, there may be trust or control issues that you might need to consider resolving in order to successfully co-parent after divorce.

Custody can also be much more complicated than in the past. Shared custody is quite common today. Working out the details can be challenging, especially if you and your ex-husband or wife no longer live in the same school district, if one parent remarries, or if a parent travels a lot for business.

It might help to think about parenting after divorce like a business negotiation where you both have a common end goal. You might not agree on every step in the process, but when you consider the needs of your children first, you have a much better chance of charting out a mutually acceptable plan.