Background: “The American Coalition for Fathers and Children’s North Dakota affiliate has brought back the North Dakota Shared Parenting Initiative. The highly controversial Initiative qualified for the November 2006 ballot but was defeated 57-43. The NDSPI has been refined and a major flaw has been removed, and it is getting good press coverage in North Dakota. The NDSPI’s goal is to have the Initiative on the November 2008 ballot.
The Initiative reads “It is the policy of this state that the courts shall award joint legal and physical custody in divorces and separations, when requested by either parent, if neither parent is found unfit or a danger to the children by clear and convincing evidence. The definition of joint physical custody (equal physical custody) shall be a rebuttable presumption of equal time with the children; or any written time-sharing agreement agreed upon by the parents.”
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One difference between the North Dakota Shared Parenting Initiative, 2007 and the 2006 effort is that the Committee of 25 signatories who presented the measure to the North Dakota to Secretary of State Al Jaeger last week is entirely composed of women. Opponents of the 2006 Initiative claimed that it would harm women. The ACFC/NDSPI are now demonstrating that shared parenting draws support from many women, too.
Last year, ACFC Executive Director Mike McCormick and I made the case for shared parenting for women in or co-authored column North Dakota Shared Parenting Initiative Helps Women, Too (Grand Forks Herald, 9/24/06). In it, we criticize the North Dakota Concerned Citizens for Children’s Rights Committee‘s oft-started opinion that shared parenting allows fathers to take advantage of mothers in divorce. The column appears below.
North Dakota Shared Parenting Initiative Helps Women, Too
By Mike McCormick and Glenn Sacks
Grand Forks Herald, 9/24/06
Jane is a successful career woman. She has moved up rapidly in a competitive field, and is advancing her career by attending business school at night. Bob works out of their home and does most of the childcare. If Bob decides he doesn’t want Jane anymore, should he be able to take her kids away and push her to the margins of their lives?
The opponents of the North Dakota Shared Parenting Initiative think he should.
Under the NDSPI, unless a parent is unfit, both parents in a divorce will have joint legal and physical custody of their children. By contrast, the North Dakota Concerned Citizens for Children’s Rights Committee and its allies support the current system of awarding sole custody to the children’s primary caregiver–that’s Bob–and oppose the NDSPI. They contend that family courts should not require custodial parents to allow noncustodial parents like Jane to spend substantial time with their children after divorce.
This is wrong–Jane’s children love her. Even though she was not the children’s primary caregiver during the marriage, it’s very harmful to take them away from her. It’s also wrong to punish Jane for pursuing a career and being her family’s primary breadwinner. Yet this is exactly what sometimes happens to working mothers–and very often happens to fathers–under the current system.
According to a study conducted by Penn, Schoen & Berland Associates and quoted in TIME magazine, today over one-fifth of fathers are their kids’ primary caregivers. While this is often a very beneficial arrangement for families, it leaves women increasingly vulnerable to losing custody and being pushed out of their children’s lives after divorce, just as so often happens to fathers. There’s a better way than the current win/lose custody systemâ€â€shared parenting.
Under shared parenting, children spend substantially equal time in each parent’s home. According to a meta-analysis published in the American Psychological Association‘s Journal of Family Psychology, children in shared custody settings have fewer behavioral and emotional problems, higher self-esteem, better family relations, and better school performance than children in sole custody arrangements. While many women’s advocates have taken a misguided stand against shared parenting, there is a significant, outspoken minority which recognizes its benefits for women. For example, feminist attorney Karen DeCrow, president of the National Organization for Women from 1974 to 1977, says: (more…)
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