To say 50/50 shared custody is selfish and horrible for children

[5050hell]

I spent my childhood doing 2/2/3. I have begged my partner should we end up divorcing that we never do this to our children. We are actually very happy together, this is only a worry of mine due to how much I hated it as a child.

Never spending more than 5 consecutive nights anywhere. Constantly packing a bag and having to drag it to school (as that was when switches happened, leave one house and go back to another). As I got older never having the clothes I wanted, or even the book I was planning on reading next. Trying to make plans with friends, then turning up at the other parents house only to be told that my Saturday was spoken for. Parents being difficult about sleepovers at friends as would be missing 'their' night. No flexibility, parents acting hurt if I didn't want to stick to the schedule. Not to mention my dad did not pay maintenance due to this arrangement, and certain things were supposed to be done turn by turn (ie. Dinner money, bus pass school trips) often spent so long arguing I never got them!

It's mainly my father I resent, as this set up was arranged for him to avoid maintenance payments. I do resent my mother for not trying harder to fight it. We've spoken about it since, she says she thought it was the right thing.

I am extremely adverse to staying anywhere other than my own home as an adult, and feel like I always need a routine and schedule and worry about planning etc.

I haven't thought about this for many years until the stage of life now becoming a parent myself.

Perhaps I was an overly sensitive kid? Maybe it's easier now with phones etc.

I can't help but think that for a child it's far better to have a main home, and visits to the other parent. AIBU?

if its 50/50 there should be 2 make ups , 2 game consoles.

2 primary residences, 2 sets of things, sure the odd book or preferable a kindle to save on carrying.

but if you want 50/50 you should be limiting the packing of items for you child and facilitating them having an easy time of it.

they're not staying somewhere else they're at their 2 homes.

This.
If parents were putting their children's interests first, they'd do the moving in and out themselves.

This is why nesting is best for kids.

I know someone who split with their partner when their baby was very young. Currently seven months old being shipped back and forth one week on, one week off. I can’t fathom how that will Support secure attachment. I know most don’t do shared care this young but I can’t think of how this is not in the best interest of the child.

Maybe it’s cos mine are teenagers, but they have all their toiletries in both, clothes in both, books in both, and all they really need otherwise is their phone. It isn’t any drama whatsoever.

This is it, unless you have two happy parents then the reality is you’re not going to be happy with how things worked out.

EOW dad - lost relationship, deadbeat dad, Disney dad

50/50 - turmoil, unsettled, no base

Stepparents/New family - feeling like an outsider in your own family

Unhappy parents - miserable childhood, arguments

Single parent - get the blame for the breakdown in society

No contact with one parent - abandonment

I always think this is bonkers as kids are expensive, to keep on a day to day basis, clothes, meals, snacks, energy costs before you even think about activities and driving them around. I switched to 50/ 50 and was able to go full time and make more money and my costs fell a fair bit as he started funding half the food/ clothes and holidays.

Their should be, but often relationships end because of an uneven power dynamic. With all the will in.the world I can't magically turn my ex into a decent co parent

That’s just completely unrealistic though isn’t it.

”oh thanks for the PlayStation for Christmas, ill let mum know I need another one for her house”

“hi dad I just spent £100 on make up, so you need to buy the same items to keep at yours”.

The cost would be ridiculous. And who would pay when you announced you’d just spent all your birthday money on a pair of £200 jeans and so now needed a second pair for the other house?

Come on now.

I experienced it the same as you op, especially as I got into my teens and I needed my mum more, I felt that my dad took that away from me.
Nowhere ever felt like home and as much as I liked to see my dad I really just needed my mum at that age.
It’s definitely affected my relationship with him as an adult because I sacrificed half my childhood for him which I wasn’t happy to do.

....or, to put that more prosaically, 'anecdote'. In fact, the poster tells us that it is.

If that's permitted as the basis for such a statement, then presumably so is mine. which would be very different.

So where would that get anyone?

Most parents do divorce or are separated because they don't communicate well and don't co-parent well, that's why they aren't together, so saying that in an ideal world, they would do 50/50% well and with great team-work is lovely but not the case for, I would guess, most parents.

My parents divorced as an adult, but I much prefer one parent who is a better parent and if I'd been forced to spent 50% of my time with the other one, I would have been deeply unhappy. It's hard enough maintaining a very minimal visiting arrangement as a grown adult.

It also changes over the years as children grow up- that ability to just slot in wherever as a small child (and not all small children are like this) goes away and teenagers want their familiar room, friends and set-up.

I think aiming for 50/50 but including longer times in holidays and having more stability in term-time is probably better, just as we would prefer to go to somewhere for two weeks on holiday and can't settle properly for two days.

There is no ideal solution, though and I think it's mean to say that it's just parents putting themselves first- they aren't, as giving up 50% of your time to the other parent, especially if they aren't a great parent, is a very hard thing to do and often an act of sacrifice to stop them staying in a worse situation.

I think if you were willing to be the parent that only saw their kids EOW then ok YANBU but actually what you probably mean is that you have the kids full time and their father wouldn't see them much.

I'm sorry your childhood was like that but it probably had more to do with your parents trying to score points and get back at each other rather than the 50/50.

Some people have different budgets to you @MidnightPatrol. It’s allowed.
some kids don’t want or have play stations in either house.

I was quite selfish on this when I met my partner, I'll admit. He was welcome to stay at mine but I hardly ever stayed at his, unless I had several days booked off work. I just really couldn't stand bouncing around.

Luckily I had a whole house and lived alone. He had a flat share. So was always very happy to come here (he then moved in).

Everyone I know when they had a partner who they didn't live with complained about the perpetual moving between of homes as adults.

The thing with this duplicate stuff everyone is saying - again, maybe this is better now. We didn't used to have PC games that you would play online with an account. Every game was on a physical PC (like the Sims). We couldn't play our saved game at the other house, even if both houses had a PC (which they did not - only my dad had a PC). I guess that would be different now on Xbox you just log in as your account, everything is there. You don't have CD, DVDs and a kindle would have been a godsend for me!

But beyond that, as a teenage girl, you want to be able to choose what to wear. Not be limited to a handful of clothes you've bought with you. We had no handover with parents present - it was just take stuff to school and go back to the other parents. So you could never take large quantities of clothes, always limited. This was a massive pain as a teenage girl.

I spoke to my DW about this, would consider it if we ever divorced. But if we were to break up then things must have gone drastically wrong and who knows how much we’d hate each other and how likely it would be that we’d be able to maintain a good enough relationship to do that

I've no experience of it but I have wondered myself if 50/50 is good for school age children. It's good for children to have a main base, especially school age so there is somewhere all the essentials for school are. I'd hate to live between 2 houses, I'm sure most adults would, but it's forced upon children of separated parents to meet the needs of the parents.

See my DS spent virtually his whole life as a "50/50 child. Yet i dont recognise much of the stuff the OP is talking about. There was never carrying a holdall to schoolwork or such like. As for being older and not having book you want to read or clothes you want to wear is just bad organisation ( if you want something then you take it with you)

Money wise we both paid for stuff including topping up dinner money account etc.

It was very flexible so if ds had something on at a weekend he'd stay with the most " convienent' parent. Especially if it was football matches lol

Suppose it helped that ex and i had no issues and were ( still are) pretty good friends and dont live too far apart

Even if you had unlimited funds, having to buy duplicates of every item your teenagers owned so they could have a version in each house is unrealisticly expensive (and wasteful).

I don’t believe for a minute this is actually happening - it’s probably more ‘you have a clean set of uniform here, and a few spare sets of clothes - and there is shampoo and hair product in the bathroom, so it’s fine’

Rather than actually duplicating the child’s possessions at each home.

As often happens first post sums it up

Yabu to unilaterally decide something "doesn't work" just because it didn't work for you in your very specific circumstances. Sounds like most of your issue was your parents not being flexible and your dad not paying for things which might not be duplicated in other families.

I think looking for a "perfect" solution for everyone is never going to happen, even more so when you're talking about separation.

I do think generally parents should be a bit more prepared to listen to what their children want once they get to a stage where they're old enough to know and express themselves but that's easier said than done - can you honestly say, for example, that if you and your partner did split up and your dc said they wanted to live with their father full time and only see you overnight once a fortnight, you'd be happy with it?

You're saying you wouldn't want your dc to (hypothetically) have completely joint custody but the only realistic alternative to that is for one parent to see them significantly less, and if your dp is a good dad there is no reason that should automatically be him...

What have I just read 🤣🤦‍♀️

How is she being unreasonable for not enjoying the set up?

Your right. What works for some families might not work for others and OP has literally told us it didn't work for her 🤔

Hopefully you would love your kids enough to put them first.

“See my DS spent virtually his whole life as a "50/50 child. Yet i dont recognise much of the stuff the OP is talking about. There was never carrying a holdall to schoolwork or such like. As for being older and not having book you want to read or clothes you want to wear is just bad organisation ( if you want something then you take it with you)”

This sentence is contradictory.

There was never carrying things back and forth… but if he didn’t have the clothes he wanted or book he was reading that was down to his bad organisation?

That sounds to me rather a lot like he was taking belongings between homes…

And yet it happens. Quite a lot, actually.

Generally speaking I do agree with you and think that children need a “main” home. That will usually be with the parent who did the majority of the parenting prior to the divorce, unless they are in some way the problem.

I suspect that 50:50 can be done a lot better than your parents seem to have done it, and can sometimes work, especially for teens/ older children. I think the first pre requisite is that the parents should live near each other! Also I suspect it doesn’t work if they both have new parents and more children, as the children will feel like part-timers wherever they go.

I think the parents need to be a lot more flexible and less self centred that yours were for any shared care arrangement to work. I have my two children (17 and 11) with me 11/14 - same dad but slightly different routines - always including eow with their dad but the 17 yo does Friday - Tuesday eow with Dad as a block and 11 yo does every Thursday night and eow Fri - Sunday.

But we both have to accept that the kids will have sleepovers, plans with friends, school trips, scout camps etc over our weekends from time to time and that’s life! Smart phones and shared online calendars of course help with this. We live two streets from one another and the kids have keys to both houses so can collect anything they like.

And I’m sure we could do it much better than we do!