"Why are we rewarding parents for stunting their kids?"

The real stunting takes place when these nincompoops divorce and start fighting for custody in the first place. If they stopped doing that, the rest of this nonsense would disappear on its own.

Parents forget that they are supposed to be raising their kids to replace them, to make themselves obsolete. Kids should be generally able to function on their own by the time they're 15. (I don't mean financially. Our country isn't set up for that.) But they should be able to cook, do laundry, hold down a paying job, do grocery shopping, etc. That stuff doesn't happen overnight.

Is it any wonder with so many kids being constanly monitered and not allowed to do anything for themselves that so many are being diagnosed as 'autistic'?

I started walking to school when I was 5. Half a mile, each way that first year. The next 6? different school, one mile, each way. In a town in Arizona nestled in the mountains, so it was downhill in the morning, and up hill in the afternoon.

Rain, sleet, snow, cold, hot, didn't matter, if school was on we walked. Usually with other kids in the neighborhood. Sometimes we'd take the "shortcuts" on dirt trails on the side of the hills, sometimes we'd work up thru the "ditch" which was a 25 foot wide, 15 to 20 foot deep storm water path. In retrospect, that wasn't the best plan but we were young and foolish.

And did I mention? we had fun doing this.

you don't get to divorce and ruin your children's lives because your sex life got ho-hum

You should also tell them that if they put as much effort into their sex life as they do fighting each other, they'd probably have a pretty awesome sex life.

Just sayin' is all.

What's disturbing is us, for acquiescing to letting these unelected judges run our lives. The whole world is laughing at our infantized society.

Hey Loojy- what do you think of this mom?

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/02/business/02kids.html?src=busln

Juliana, I think that doctor took her for a ride, I what I think. I have ADHD, even now in my 50's so I know what hell that can impose on a mother - because I heard plenty about it in later years! So I can recognize what those tantrums are. This woman didn't have the benefit of that knowledge, so she trusted her doctor. Big mistake, but an honest one. She is doing well not to shoot him in both legs and leave him by the side of the road somewhere.

Yes, the doctor in that article is an absolute crook, but let's not let the mother off the hook either, Jim. She has a kid at 22 (without a father around, as she just recently "found a man"), admits to being, "unprepared for parenthood at age 22, living in difficult circumstances, sometimes distracted", and then proceeds to have another kid which leads to her neglecting Kyle even more.

"A good parent is one who drives his kids to school every day"

So a good parent is one who tries to make sure that his kids die young from obesity & juvenile diabetes. OK.

MarkD - In some states those judges are elected. Doesn't change much, but ...

And being drivin to school? Missing the social interaction of the bus ride?

"A good parent is one who drives his kids to school every day"

So no blind person is a good parent?

let's not get too far away from the point of all this in our attempt to understand parenting, yes?

For a lot of kids, neighborhood school is no longer the reality, they have been closing those and consilidating for years based on demo shifts... so the schools that existed for boomers or cuspies like me [45] are starting to go away, which means a lot more than a mile to school. This is a maximization that was kind of undreamed of 50 years ago. Right choice? yeah, who knows. But a lot of kids need the drive to school for various reasons, and NOT just because some parents can't let them go.

Helicopter parenting on the other hand, especially when used as a weapon, well that is a whole other thing. The biggest problem is that the field is already tilted towards the mother, this just makes it worse. It is already assumed that she will interact more with the kids, and she will, because of the differeing nature of the interactions between mothers and fathers. I do stuff with my kids, but I don't hover. I don't need to call and talk to them constantly. My ex calls #1son about 6 times a day to see how he is doing in school. He's 16. But, what am I s'posed to say? 'Leave the kid alone?'

That there will be helicopter parents is a given, and it only seems worse because we now have the instant communications that we didn't have before. This favors the helicopter. That she could then show what a better parent she is based on contact, to the court? What're you going to do about that? This is the same bias that already makes it the standard that the kid stays with the mother, even if it's the father that has the ability to provide for the kid.

Based on our biology and the natural division of labor in a family, I'm not sure it's worth trying to change all that.

The Swede's are doing some interesting stuff, where they are forcing the change, but it is working mostly because they are a small country, and individually they are willing to allow the government to mandate and enforce some laws that we wouldn't really stomach here. The upshot is that they are forcing both women and men to be equal parents, where they both take the same amount of family leave, and then they both go back to work. It's a tradeoff system, where I think in general, the wife takes off the first part where the kid is small, because she has to heal herself but also feed the kid... and then? She goes back to work, and the father takes leave for some months, and takes care of the kid. The total leave for both is 18mo. I think.

On margin I think it may work because both parents eventually work, there aren't as many SAHM. There is a lot more gender equality in raising the kid, and the divorce rate is down for that. Because when you divorce, you split everything in half, including time with the kid. So there is no perverse incentive to divorce.

'Course that is an idealized POV, I don't live there. Perhaps someone else that does could pipe up with how it's been working.

The question is, in an enforced equality like that, are people equally miserable? Or equally happy? There was just a big write up about this in slate, but I had heard it before from others. Naturally it mostly works because they have such a high tax structure, and are willing to do such social engineering.

What I find most interesting is how the enforcement causes a leveling of expectations. Guys are expected to take care of the kid, just like the mom, and it will seem really strange IF SHE PREVENTS HIM FROM IT. For a helicopter mom, this would be a problem. She isn't going to be able to hide behind the St. Mom fascade. And for the father, he isn't going to be able to hide behind the "woman's work" excuse. It's been going on there for some years and I will be curious to see how it shakes out.

That is interesting SwissArmyD. In Canada we have one year parental leave. The mother automatically gets the first several weeks, after which the father has the option of being the stay at home parent. I know many families where the father stayed home for half the year. I think it is great for the family, not only do both parents learn what is involved in caring full-time for an infant but both parents have the opportunity to make a deep connection with their baby.

As for the article, it is unbelievable that the court would recognize photos of text messages as proof of good parenting when it is so clearly a ploy to gain custody.

Canadian family law now automatically gives parents joint custody. This way both parents have equal involvement in their child's life. The old law that gave one parent primary custody was heartbreakingly unjust.

A friend of mine, who lives in Detroit, faught for custody of his son for the child's entire childhood. He raised his son the first few years on his own then the mother decided she wanted the kid, because she is the mother the court granted her custody. The mother actually abondoned the son several times over the years but she always came back to fight for and win custody. Throughout those years the boy pleaded with the court to let him live with his father. My friend even had to pay her child support for the years the child lived with him. That case just shows how unbalanced family law can be in some jurisdictions.

I wonder how many of the worlds problems would dissapear if contraceptives were infused into every alcoholic beverage

lujip, how about this:

"I wonder how many of the worlds problems would dissapear if [MALE] contraceptives were infused into every alcoholic beverage"

Heh, if there was such a thing, I'd drink it... but it doesn't really matter who it is that can't procreate when drunk as long as it doesn't happen.

On the other hand, can you imagine the rise in STD's if people were even LESS worried about it than now? OI.

Probably one of the biggest reasons for primary custody is that kids need to be in one school system. Even if the parents agree to live in the same school district, equal custody could be really hard on the kids if it shuffles them back and forth on a daily/weekly/monthly basis. So even though primary custody isn't technically fair, it's probably the fairest for the kids, who are of course the innocent party in the situation. And if mom's been staying home taking care of the kids while dad works, it makes most sense to grant mom primary custody-rather than have the dad paying for a stranger to watch his kids.

The most interesting divorce case I've ever seen was a young divorced dad that I babysat for one summer. He had 3 daughters age 5, 3, and 18 months-and had been divorced for 19 months. My state requires a one year seperation period before divorce, which means that he and his wife would have seperated when the oldest two were 3 and 1-and conceived the baby during the seperation. It definitely wasn't an amicable divorce-his wife would screw around with dropoff times and etc to make his life difficult, and I had instructions not to let her in the house if she ever came by when I was there. My parents and I speculated endlessly over what would compel a couple to divorce when the kids were so young-I knew the guy had a girlfriend and we were always curious as to when exactly he started dating her.

Hey shannon, I have a problem with your statement above: "And if mom's been staying home taking care of the kids while dad works, it makes most sense to grant mom primary custody-rather than have the dad paying for a stranger to watch his kids." So, when the Mom gets primary custody but Dad is then not paying all the bills, just who do you think is going to be working to support those kids? Or do you think Mom is going to stay at home all day, take care of kids, and not work? She is going to work and pay for a stranger to watch the kids.

There was a case many moons back where the couple were two professionals that made nice money, had a fairly large house and neither would give in on custody. One lived in one school district and the kids were in another.

The way the judge finally solved it was to order that the kids were to stay in the family home. The parents were then ordered to week on/week off in the home. Each had a separate bedroom they lived in when they were there and the other bedroom was locked.

The kids had a home. The parents had to move. That was a most elegant solution.

I love the idea of the parents having to move each time!

Sinbad (the comedian) said if you have kids and get divorced, you should get a house that is at the back of your ex's house so it's easy to deal with the custody issue.

@Shannon says, "Even if the parents agree to live in the same school district, equal custody could be really hard on the kids if it shuffles them back and forth on a daily/weekly/monthly basis. So even though primary custody isn't technically fair, it's probably the fairest for the kids, who are of course the innocent party in the situation."

Shannon, primary custody punishes one parent and those innocent kids.

"Shuffling" as you put it, might mean a 10 minute drive between houses, twice a week. Why should this be hard on a child any more than the shuffling that parents do 5-10 times a week already as kids are shuffled to soccer, baseball, piano lessons, dance class, scouts, to the supermarket, to the pediatricians, to the mall.

I'm in a situation where my kids live with me 1/2 of the week, and with Mom the other 1/2 of the week. My kids were younger when we divorced and are now teens. The kids always looked forward to making the trip to the other parents house because after 3-4 days, they missed their other parent.

It works fine as long as the parents work to make it fine. We live 10 mins apart, close to the schools, and each kid has what they need at each house. Each house is very much a "home" for the children.

One of my kids came home from school appalled one day, because another student made the comment that "Mom is the more important parent." My kids don't believe that any one parent is more important than the other. Primary custody tells kids that one parent is indeed a more important parent. That's a horrible thing to do to a kid, and to a parent who loves their kids as much as the other parent, and sometimes, maybe even more than the other parent. It's wrong for courts to give primary custody to one parent in a lot of cases. If there are problems that put the kids in some kind of danger -- abuse, alcoholism, bad environment -- then the court may have to. But in the case of two loving, responsible parents, who are willing to make joint physical custody work, then it will work just fine. In my case, the kids absolutely prefer it and think it is fair for them.

In the end, "home is where the heart is", and if both parents share a loving bond with their kids, then 50/50 joint physical custody should be the preferred way.

Amy,
I seem to recall mentioning joint custody in Canada in another post and you responding that you have heard stories from fathers fighting for access, so I thought you might like me to explain.

In family law, if the separating parents cannot come to a satisfactory agreement on custody (most cases I am familiar with the parents automatically assumed joint custody - one week with one parent next week with the other) then the parents must go through mandatory mediation with a court appointed mediator.

Our Family Law Reform Act stipulates (s.20) 'Except as otherwise provided in the Part, the father and mother of a child are equally entitled to custody of the child.' Some circumstances being situations where one parent must move to a different jurisdiction (it must be proven that the parent needs to move not just chooses to move otherwise the moving parent gives up their joint custody), if one parent is abusive or incompetant, or one parent voluntarily gives up their right to joint custody.

If the parents simply cannot agree on terms, even after mediation the court will step in and determine what is in the best interest of the child. While the court acknowledges that equal access is in the best interest of the child, there are some parents who's relationship is simply so toxic that it is not possible, in which case the court has to determine which scenerio will be in the best interest of the child. It reflects poorly on a parent if they simply refuse workable options and it will be held against them in the court's decision.

When a man complains that he is not being treated fairly in the judicial system you should question his behaviour, lifestyle and actions and not the decision of the court. Our legislation clearly states that both parents have the right to equal access and for one parent to lose equal access there must be a reason - definitive proof not just speculation or heresay on the part of the other parent.

Damn, now that I have sent my post I realize that my last statement about the father is unjust. If a man complains about his custody/access it is not necessarily because of his behaviour... but on the circumstances and behaviour of both parents.

Jim P, that sounds awesome.