To say 50/50 isn't ideal for many children?

Anna Whitehouse (“Mother Pukka” Instagram twat) tried this. Here’s and article on it. It didn’t end well and she’s a bit of a car crash now, was engaged and pregnant within 3 month of meeting a new bloke. And they were well off and privileged, so if they couldn’t make it work, I’m not sure how others would, especially the run in costs of 3 homes.

If you can get through her awful work waffle, this article talks about it.

.Insufferably smug article

@Petching I’m sorry if you’ve already said or if I’m bringing up bad memories but are you able to elaborate on why you think the 50:50 caused the breakdown in your relationship? We parent 50:50 and it seems (so far over the past 7 years) to be building strong bonds with both me and ex DH. I’d be devastated if my children went NC when older because of what we are trying to do for the best (for me personally it would be far easier to have them 100% of the time). Thank you

As a child I lived with my.mother and saw my fathers every 3rd weekend (and my brother saw our mother every 3rd weekend so bro and I saw each other 2 weekends a month) when I was age 12 dad stopped this weekend visit and took me out for dinner once a month.

I would have claimed I wanted a base and would hate to not have a home as a child and a teenager. However as an adult I can see and understand how damaging to our relationships with the non resident parent this was. Our mother died 10 years ago this year. Bro says outright he doesn't miss her..she was not a big part of his life (he was 3 when they divorced)
Dad is still around sister (7 years older so was 12 when they divorced and stayed with dad almost permanently) doesn't get why I am not in more regular contact with our dad. I speak with him once every 2 weeks similar amount of time he gave me as a child.

I'm not close to my dad I love him he is my father I know he loves me. However the divorce and the distance meant we did not have that parent bond. The opposite was true for my brother.

Yet I can tell you outright that as a child/teen I would.not have wanted 50/50. As an adult I understand why this would have benefitted my relationship with both parents.

I will here say I had 2 parents that wanted to parent their children. If you have an x who is not so interested it will give different results.

However it is not as simple as saying 50/50 is bad. Many things are not ideal sometimes we just have to make the best of the situation we find ourself in.

That's a heartbreaking story. However, I don't think you were unhappy because your parents split custody 50/50. I think you were unhappy because your father was a bitter, disengaged parent who put hurting your mother above supporting your best interests. Regardless of if they'd have been forced to stay together, or split custody any other way, you'd still have had a shit father who would have made your childhood miserable.

I had a job where I had to live in 2 different places for a while. It fucking SUCKED. You'd forgot what was where, need two of lots of things, had to keep carting things from one place to another.
Why would this be any fun for children?

Divorce is SHIT for kids. My parents both married 3 times so I feel well versed to say that it ruins children in a massive way, and this would just compound it. Don't ever try to kid yourself the kids are fine with it all. They aren't and they'll never tell you otherwise as they don't want to upset you. Better off in one place with the odd weekend with the other parent, but either way, it's shit for them.

I know someone who stayed with dad Mon-Fri and mum who'd moved away on weekends but as a teen chose to go and live with mum.. has great relationship with both. It can work.

As a fully functional, neurotypical adult, I would find it really hard to switch between houses every week. I imagine I would have struggled with it a lot as a child.
I think the ideal option for the children, if you can afford it, is for them to stay in the family home and the parents to switch between that house and a flat nearby on alternate weeks. It does involve really good communication and significant sacrifice for the adults and probably makes it much less likely you'll be able to start another family with a new partner though.

Are you still living in the former marital home, OP? If you are, that would also explain why they see it as home more than your ex's place.

But even if you aren't, then only spending 20% of the time there means they won't see it as home and they won't have the same relationship with Dad as with you. I think that's really sad for them, unless he was abusive.

Yes he did and I have lasting memories of my 7 month old BF brother sobbing for my mum all night.

I never said they did.

totally unaffordable for vast majority

Are they usually the sort of men that take their children overnight from infancy though? Is that what your dad actually did or was it just spite and bluster? Lots of inadequate men claim to want 50:50 then disappear just like the morning mist when it actually comes to it, the ones that gothrough with it seem to be the dads that really do want to be involved.

I think the adults should try it tbh. How would you feel spending half your week in a different house? Could you feel they were equally home or would you be spending half the week not fully relaxed? Could you cope with remembering to either have two sets of everything or to cart your stuff around like youre permanently traveling?
I think the only kind way ro do it is to have one family home where the kids stay and then two separate flats the adults go to alternately.

That would involve 3 houses? Running two is hard enough

@Petching I have never seen a court award 50/50 to the father of a breastfeeding baby.

I know someone who's nesting, but they are lucky as they have somewhere to stay with family on their non days. I also know a couple with teenagers who have continued to live in the same home with strict rules and boundaries and this is working surprisingly well. They're only a year in. They can't afford two homes.

This is exactly the reason 50/50 specifically is pushed for by otherwise useless and uncaring men

I think I would have hated 50:50. Maybe if it was all I’d known from a young age it would have been OK and I can only speak from my own experience. My parents didn’t separate until I was 12.5, so I’d had a substantial chunk of childhood in one house. It was bad enough having divorcing parents, even relatively amicable ones, without having to then live in two different houses. They were perhaps unusual in not really doing the EOW thing as they didn’t want things to be set in stone. We went to our dad’s most weekends, but only from Saturday afternoon.

I always regarded my mum’s house as “home”and my secure base (although I didn’t particularly like the area) and my dad’s house was just somewhere I went to spend time with him at the weekend. I kept a minimum of stuff there. He often came to our house as well, for example during the school holidays (he got the holidays off but my mum didn’t). His house wasn’t that great but it was all he could afford after moving out.

I also don’t see how 50:50 would have been practical, as his house was about 5 miles from my school and not easy to get to by bus, and both my parents worked full-time outside the home some distance away. He would have had to drop us off well before school started and it would have been difficult to get from school to his house. My mum’s house was 10 minutes’ walk from school.

You are right, I've just Googled it. I was told by an ex-friend it was about the lead singer's stepsister dying of cancer. The ex-friend is an ex-friend because you can't trust a word he says. I should have remembered that before taking his word on this subject.

I've taught children in 50:50 set ups and from the outside looking in, for those children I knew, it wasn't best for them. One in particular comes into my mind as she was the first I'd know in that situation - going back maybe 15years. She was always tired and teary and so often had to explain something to her friends from the point of view of which parent she was with at that moment. They weren't living far apart. Emotions were always running high and that was 4 years after initial separation.

TBH I always thought 50/50 was devised to reduce problems with maintenance payments/calculations, ie if you do 50/50 there's usually no maintenance? And I agree it probably suits parents better than children.

I suspect the reason it's not more common is because when adults now were kids, 50/50 wasn't very common.

Give it another 20 years and see what happens.

Those are usually the kinds of men who demand overnights with young babies in order to spite the mother, having previously done sweet FA to parent.

My own Dad was like that. Didn't actually give a shit about us, only wanted us in order to hurt my mother.