To think 50/50 childcare split sounds terrible

Our 50:50 split was week about. It worked really well and, most importantly, the kids knew how it worked!

ETA: that was only with one child, the other chose to stay with us (her dad and I) full time.

He also won't take him to gymnastics or church on a Sunday so me having him 75 percent on weekends is probably better.

So we do 2,5 to mum
2,5 to mum
2,5 to mum
4,3 to dad
Not 50/50 but ex had little interest before he went to school and ex got partner. Glad I still have the majority although doing 90 percent in covid with a toddler and working was hard work.

I think it's a horrible arrangement for the child, as an adult I'd find it difficult to be living across two different homes. I know people will say it works for them and their children, but I'm afraid children of seperated parents become very good at telling both what they want to hear.

I think the three moves a week is very unsettling at this age, my DS was 3 when we split, and initially I had him all the time and dad would come over in the evenings, after around 8months we began a 3/4 split, with handover being on Saturday at 5pm ish.
by the time he was around 7, we then moved to a 5/2/2/5 arrangement, he is now almost 13, we talked about week in week off but nobody wanted such a long time between.

i agree that having set days each week with some varying means consistent activities, for example I always have Monday and Tuesday nights, dad always has Wednesday and Thursday night, the Friday-Monday is alternate.

it means I can sign him up for sport or music classes and know I can always take him, it also means my offfice days are consistent (less of an issue now he’s older)

Everyone here seems to assume that’s always the dad’s role. My DP has 50:50 with his ex and she is what you describe your partner as. My DP is the one doing all the SEND meetings for his son and paperwork and dentists appointments etc.

i know he’s not completely typical but it really frustrates me that societally (and school wise) people always assume his ex is the one doing all the hard graft parenting when actually she’s a Disney mom and palms the kids off on her own parents half the time she does have them. The kids would choose her house over ours because it’s Disney world with no rules and because she emotionally blackmails them (I.e. they said they wanted to see dad on Father’s Day until she talked them out of it). The truth is that my step-son would still be in nappies, not have had SLT or be able to read if he hadn’t had his dad to teach him all of those things whilst his mom lets him watch endless TV and never reads to him or gets him to read. Likewise my step-daughter has had loads of different clubs she’s tried, developed one as a hobby and has a maths tutor because dad has helped her do all of this when mom doesn’t.

Letting the kids choose would just mean they chose candy, unhealthy meals and no parenting boundaries whatsoever, but that absolutely isn’t what is in their best interest.

It really depends. Not all dads are deadbeats whose sole aim is to avoid paying cms. Some actually parent properly. 50/50 tends to work in those circumstances.

It does work if both parents are mature with their parental responsibilities and without squabbling with eachother trying to exert power or bitterness to the other and actually actively encourage the child to enjoy time with the other parent.

This is actually 2-2-5-5 though, which is what I recommended. 2-2-3 means alternating which parent you’re with on Monday-Tuesday depending on who has just had the weekend. So which parent you’re with on the weekdays swaps every week.

Well we don’t know as it’s a counterfactual. All we know really is what is.
Again some families/ relationships are different , but in the substantial majority of families it works one way and we shouldn’t be pretending otherwise.

As I said It's not " I built". It's just a case of what kids are used to. If dad has been main career from start then they'd likely want him

Most children are emotionally closer to their mothers. Most of the time the mother is the primary/ majority caregiver. Of course this is not always or inevitable- there are lots and lots od families that work differently, but please let’s stop pretending that it’s not the norm. It doesn’t help children and it doesn’t help women to deny these lived realities.

Why would kids automatically want to spend more time with their mother? I suspect it may be what they are used to. Depends on how the parenting was before a split. My dad was the one who brought me up after my parents split. Even when he remarried a few years later he did the parenting mainly - not my stepmom ( who is lovely by the way and we have a great relationship)

I never hankered to living with my mum.

My DS was a 50/50 child from the age of 4. Before that he still spent virtually equal time in both mins and his dad's houses ( we both used to be in each other's houses regularly) so the living arrangements weren't really any different to what he had all his life

How many adults would feel settled in that same routine? Never spending more than 3 nights in the same home sounds horrible.

I'm so, so glad my parents didn't split us 50-50. I do think in the majority of cases it's natural for a child to want to spend more time with thier mother. How many of these dads will actually be doing the childcare and not outsourcing it to the new girlfriend?

@Loveduppenguin My therapy wasn’t directly linked to my childhood, it was actually to deal with other things but my therapist kept tracing those feelings back to it and suddenly a lot of my personality traits and foibles make perfect sense.

OP asked for experiences and I’ve given mine. It sounds like your DC are having much better care taken of them that I had so I’m sure they’ll be fine.

My parents have been together all my life and I still needed therapy for my shit…parent based shit and I still think I had a good childhood. But we all have our issues I suppose…

I have my DS (8yrs) M, T, W night every week. Which means that I get to drop him and pick him up from school for the majority of the week. His Dad has him every Th and F night and alternate weekends. This works very very well for everyone. My DS knows that his Dad takes him to gardening club every thurs after school and when he's 11 and doing judo on a Thurs it will be his Dad that takes him and if he's 14 and doing hockey it will be his Dad etc etc etc. My DS knows where he is and this pattern has longevity.

Very acrimonious break and my solicitor recommended that I had a position that I went in with ie 1 night a week and every other weekend and one that I was prepared to fall back to. She said that the worst is when you don't have a fall back pattern and the judge just picks one at random. My ex was pushing for 1 week on and 1 week off which wouldn't have suited anyone apart from him. With current pattern my son still gets a lot of predictability and all the days stay the same, he is ASD and so this was important for us. The term time pattern isn't perfectly 50/50 as 8/14 nights my son is with me, but we agreed to split the holidays in half with lost days given to him during holiday time (so he has slightly over half of each holiday), so the overall pattern is exactly 50/50 which suits a father trying to avoid paying child maintenance.

Feel free for your friend to DM me if any questions.

Ohhh @SquashedSquashess are you me? I'm having therapy at the moment and these feeling are coming up a lot - always being a burden (although I'm aware my parents loved me very much), always being shunted back and forth, never having a proper base. Even just the 'code switching' of going from one household to the other was exhausting - getting back into sync with what is/isn't allowed, chores, catching up with step siblings etc.

I have gone so far the other way with my DD and probably overparent her, but I've been so determined to create a stable, consistent home life.

This isn't said to try and make anyone co-parenting feel bad by the way; just some things to think about. It's nice to hear from parents putting lots of effort into making sure it works for their DC and they have everything they need ❤

In an ideal world parents would stay together, that’s what is best for the child. Back in the real world parents split up and seeing both parents equally is as valid an arrangement as any other. Many kids have this and it suits them fine. What really does help children most of all is if the parents can be civil and respectful to each other, a bit flexible and actually talk putting the dc first - I’m not saying it’s easy but every young person I know who has grown up with parents at war has ended up screwed up whether those with divorced parents who cooperate have better outcomes, anecdotally speaking of course. I don’t know these parents of course or the circumstances but I do know that only talking through solicitors won’t help their child

Except (and I speak solely for my dc) they don’t have to pick up any stuff and move it to the other parents house because they have pretty much double of everything. And anything they need to transfer, I make that my priority to do/facilitate. Mine literally get ready for school and take a school bag with them like any other child and a parent collect them at the end of the day. The only difference is it’s a different parent on a Monday and a Tuesday than it is on a Wednesday and a Thursday and they go to a different house. But they have a bedroom in both houses they have clothes in both house, they have everything they need in both houses.

I think the point is they get two consistent parents who are always there for them, like people whose parents live together, rather than one parent and someone who takes them out for the day on a Saturday

I agree with this, it depends how parenting is currently done.

I'm the same as you, I have the same days each week that I do school drop off /pick up and activities, and other days my husband does it so the kids are very used to 1 parent picking them up for something. We also both have our own evenings our the house so again, kids have 1 different parent putting them to bed depending on the day

The truth is as much as we hope the choices we've made or are making now will lead to good outcomes for our children we're not going to know for sure until they're adults. There will be kids that are faking it and struggling who's parents think their doing OK as some PPs said was their experience growing up. In a decade we'll start to get a better idea if the change in parenting arrangements to one's where on average dads have more time is leading to better outcomes or not. The data and any generalisations from it will be applicable at population level and still won't tell us what is best for our specific children. And some of us will still be stuck with very few options and trying to get our kids through it with the least harm. Outcomes in divorce are better on average for children who's parents can coparent well, I doubt that will ever change no matter what parenting arrangements are common.

ExH and I have done this with DS but he was 6 (to my detriment, staying longer so he’d be older when we split) so a lot better able to understand what was going on re which day/whose house. He did express that he’d prefer longer at each house but was very clear that he missed me after a couple of days, so with ExH insisting on 50/50 and no substantial reasons to fight this, it was the best we could make of it.

A friend does week on, week off with her ex, and it seems to take her son longer to settle. She said it felt like the first three days were kicking off (different behaviour and rules at his dad’s) then he’d settle down and be ok by day 4/5, only to repeat every other week. Her ex didn’t seem to have this problem… she assumes it’s because he’s a lot more lax, so the reverse effect (better behaviour at the start of his week) wasn’t a problem for him.

In reality, my exH probably has him about 40% of the year - I take DS with me on holidays, whereas ExH asks me to take DS so he can go on holiday… we are both flexible about covering for the odd night, so it does work for us on the whole, and as he gets older, DS is seeing the benefits of two homes. Sometimes it’s a faff with certain belongings, but on the whole it works out ok. It’s also great being able to say ‘no, you can do that at Dad’s’ about some things!

Routine here since DD was 2 and DS was 6 months

Sunday night, Monday night children with Mummy.
Mummy takes children to school on Tuesday.
Daddy picks up from school Tuesday and children stay with Daddy overnight.
Daddy takes to school on Wednesday.
Mummy picks up from school on Wednesday and has a couple of hours before dropping children at Daddy’s when he has finished work. Stay with Daddy overnight.
Daddy takes to school on Thursday.

Mummy picks up from school Thursday and stay with Mummy overnight.
Each weekend children either with daddy Friday- Saturday or daddy Saturday-Sunday alternating. This is flexible if either wants to take the children away for the weekend / wants to go away themselves etc.

This way Mummy (who did not instigate separation etc) sees the children every day. Daddy has them overnight 3 nights a week. Children have two homes, both are valued and equally important with their own clothes / books / toys etc in both. Extra curricular activities happen when they’re in both homes. Relationships with wider family on both sides are strong.

The children do not see it as ‘chopping and changing’. They know where they are each day. They know that a parent who loves them will always be there to pick them up from school and read them a bedtime story. This, however, works because both parents communicate, are polite and considerate of one another.

Happy to answer any questions