Since when do we ‘share’ children?

[PriamFarrl]

I was just reading an article talking about a man. It said that he ‘shares an 3 year old son and 2 year old twins with his wife’. I assumed that it meant they had separated. But it didn’t seem that way.

It struck me as an odd way of phrasing that a married couple had children together.

I thought that too. I assume they are separated based on that wording.

Once you've 'welcomed' a child, you then 'share' them, in DailyMailand.

I hate this phrase, I think it's just the latest in tabloid/celeb mag speak.

Often used when one or both partners have other children from previous relationship.

Ew. This was on BBC news though.
It just made me assume that the couple were separated. Sharing a child sounds like having joint custody.

It sounds better to say ‘he has 3 children with his wife of 15 years.’ or whatever.

That makes a little more sense I guess. So ‘Tom is father to Felix, 8, and he shares Ellie, 4, with his wife Sarah.’ But in this case I don’t think there any previous children.

It's something I've noticed gaining popularity in the last few years. It's always struck me as odd.

Considering the poor chap only has a few months to live , I don't think it really matters. His wife won't have anyone to share them with soon enough ☹️

As someone who has to write this kind of thing a lot, it’s actually really hard to find different ways of saying it.

“Welcomes” is awful, but useful when it’s the man who’s famous, as you can’t very well say he’s had the baby.

But why do you need lots of different ways of saying it? "Mary and John have three children together" is so much better than "Mary and John share three children". Which makes it sound as though the children are toys or objects.

It only needs saying once in an article, so no need to come up with variations.

@Lemevoir It’s useful if you’re writing about someone like Nick Cannon, who has children with multiple partners. You have to change things up a bit, otherwise you might as well just do a list with bullet points. (Tbf, an Excel spreadsheet would be handy for keeping track of the Cannon progeny.)

Mostly I just assume that Nick Cannon has fathered another child this week.

You won’t go far wrong with that, @SirMingeALot .

At no point did I mention who I was talking about. This thread isn’t about that person but the use of language.

Coming from a very blended family, I think it's useful shorthand for they are the biological parents of these children.

Parents in blended families will often say we have 7 children, when in fact it's 2 from partner 1's first marriage, 3 from partner 2's and 2 from their marriage together.

All their children are their children, some are shared with other parents, two are shared with each other.

I commented on this to my friends when I read it. We all thought it was odd. And presumed they'd split up.

I thought it was used in blended families to convey which children the couple have together as opposed to any children from the couple's previous relationships.

No. It wasn’t. But I’m not talking about this person am I? It’s possible to find something upsetting and notice this too.

It’s one of those nasty expressions that’s becoming popular. Like the Royal Mail scheme to “swap out” stamps. Grrr.

If it’s become compulsory to click links, I’m out of here.

And you can’t separate the content of an article from the use of language?