How common was EOW in the early 90s?

[boltt]

We used to stay at our dad's house EOW.

Picked up at 18:00 on Friday, and would leave his after Sunday lunch around 16:00. 45 min journey each way.

It's hardly a lot of time is it. Wondering how common this arrangement really was back then.

We were 80s onwards and saw Dad every weekend and most of the school holidays.

Pretty difficult for the child having to live across two houses and people all the time.

What time did your dad finish work? Ex couldn’t see our kids on weekdays because he got home so close to bedtime. I therefore suggested he take some school holidays off like half term and make his weekends longer but it took him 10 years to look at the school website and book a couple of extra days to make his weekend longer.

Yanbu to think it’s fuck all. My ex saw our kids EOW and one child is NC, one child is VLC and the third sees him about once every 6 weeks now. (They are all adults)

We did 11am Saturday to 9.30am Sunday every week and 2 weeks in the summer holidays

That wasn’t great but 50/50 would have been even worse and so unsettling

I did have 2 homes. We had a more unequal split of 5 days with my mum, 2 days with my dad. I don't see how a different split makes it any better. It's still going between two homes.

I think it depends how it is done.

The main options are half the week with each parent or alternating weeks.

Parents hate alternating weeks because they don't like the idea of not seeing their kids for 7 days at a time.

Kids hate half the week at each because it's like a yoyo and they don't feel like they belong at either house.

I saw my dad every other Saturday at that time. I didn't want more though and when I was old enough to drive and get myself there I didn't do it much. We don't have a good relationship but as some PP have said - that's not because of the little time spent together, it's because he is not capable of parenting. I never felt safe with him. In fact, I sometimes wonder why my mum let me go as he was abusive to her.

My ex has EOW and 6/13 weeks holidays. I pushed for him to have a Monday pick up and drop off as well so I have 1 full day every other week where I am not involved in the school run.

He also made noises about 50:50 when we split, funny that.

He's quite a workaholic so that was probably why. Plus he moved to a town 45 mins away 🤷‍♀️

@Bluebellsnowdrop for me 50/50 didn't work. Our son was only 3 at the time. He became incredibly anxious and as he is non verbal too it was difficult to understand why apart from the "house hopping" being too much for him.

We now do 9/14 with me and 5/14 with dad. This works well. Once he is older (he's now 5) 50/50 will be revisited. Hopefully he'll speak in the future and be able to give his own input too. I think it is a lot of little ones to try and understand. I was his primary carer and to be away from me without being able to understand (he's little and ASC), I think it was just too much for him. He still cries now going to daddy's and it breaks me.

We've an informal eow arrangement now. I have offered time in the week, so far not taken. I arranged a video call with DD recently at her request, have done similar for him. I offered the whole of Feb half term because we went away in October half term. He's taking Thur/Friday. I told him about parents evening/the Christmas show. He didn't come. He was supposed to have Christmas Eve but went away.
The journey is ~an hour. He picks up from school and I collect on a Sunday.
I have a very good example set by my own Dad siblings. We're all very close now. I want to make sure that, when inevitably the time comes, I can look my daughter in the eye and tell her that I have done everything in my power to maintain that contact.

I did this in the 90s and 00s too OP.

There wasn’t any discussion or thought of anything different. I don’t remember ever being at my dad’s on a school day. We would do a holiday a week a year.

What was a bit weird was that as result we had 0 belongings or any personal stuff at our dad’s house. Just took a carrier bag of clothes and tooth brush.

I think it's the lack of 'real life' contact that gets me.

No phone calls during the fortnight, so he only saw us on Saturdays. He never had to deal with us tired from school, stressed about homework, being fussy about food, being general pains in the arse. I never moaned to him about normal kid grievances. My poor Mum had to do all of that shit while he got to take us swimming/bowling/cinema.

50:50 wouldn't have worked either, he lived an hour away and had a new partner who definitely wouldn't have wanted that even if we did! We barely even visited their house.

Please do comment on the threads saying that they believe kids should have eow and 50/50 isn't fair on the dc ... I've seen the harm when dc didn't get contact with their dad

My kids had that arrangement. I worked full time, so it was one weekend for me, and one for their dad. I got the hard work and stress, they got consistency and a stable base for school etc, and he got to be the 'Happy Meal and fun' Dad.

DGC has 50/50, that seems to be the norm now but tbh I think spending half the week with one parent and then having to take all school stuff and clothes to the others halfway through the week to be in a totally different type of household is disruptive and unsettling, and I am concerned how the outcome will be. I think EOW was better for the children.

Isn’t it still the most common now? 50/50 is highly frowned upon on here and always said to be about reducing maintenance 🙄 I always felt like eow wasn’t enough time to really spend with your other parent sounds rubbish to me but most on here think it’s the ideal. I had no contact with my father growing up 90s

Any broken home arrangement causes harm

I don't know what the answer is.

Seems to me the adults make decisions based upon what's best for them 9 times out of 10.

My Ex only does eow. 6pm ISH Friday to 1pm ISH Sunday. It's all he wanted and he moved over an hour away so can't really do weekdays. I've asked if he wants more and he's said no. He might have them a couple of extra nights during school holidays but that's it.

The kids don't seem bothered thank god as he was never the most involved parent even when we were together.

not the topic but DH and I are still together but have gone through some rocky patches. He does very minimal parenting, will respond if he is in the room but doesn’t have a clue about what goes on with the kids, their school, friends or hobbies. He hasn’t even created a login for the school website that they have been attending for four years and therefore doesn’t read their reports or marks. If we split and he had them EOW it would drastically increase his time with them. I am sure we aren’t the only family where the dad wants the status of parent without actually doing the work.

My brother got divorced in early 2000s with 2 kids under 3. He did EOW and half the school holidays for their entire childhoods. Zero contact outside that time, never went to school events or parent teacher evenings. My mum used to bang on about what a great dad he was because so many just bugger off entirely. Talk about a low bar! Most of the kids my children go to school with do 50/50 or close to it provided the parents live close enough to make it work.

Definitely EOW with my friends with divorced parents in the 1990s.

To be honest in 2 of 3 cases the dads.had moved the mistress and her kids into his new house and my friends didn't have a bedroom anyway. One had 3 mixed sex kids on a futon and air mattress on his office.

When my Ex left they moved about 450 miles away. I made a lot of effort to ensure that DD stayed in contact with them, but the distance was always going to reduce the amount of contact time.

My stepdad was in the army so there were times that we lived abroad and I wouldn't see my Dad for 6 months at a time. Even when we were in the UK the distance meant that I only saw my Dad in the holidays. This was mid 80s. He rang me every Sunday without fail. He also sent me a letter every week. I then went to boarding school for secondary school. My Mum chose a school close to my Dad as they knew they would be abroad for the majority of the time. He came every Wednesday to take me out for dinner and collected me every weekend straight from work on Friday and dropped me back as late as he was allowed on the Sunday trying to make up for lost time.

Spent every other weekend at my Dad's when my parents first separated in the 70s, by the time I was a teenager it was more like every other Sunday because I didn't want to spend precious Friday and Saturday nights at his as it was too far from my friends.
My ex had his kids every other weekend and Wednesdays when we were first together and the kids were 7 and 9. Around the time we decided to live together his ex decided she'd had enough of dealing with the, now 12 yo, son's behavior so he came to live with us and his daughter carried on with the EOW and Wednesdays routine until she got sick of my stepson's music and refused to stay at all, so we just saw her occasionally at weekends.