that 50-50 res is AWFUL for kids & mothers and women should fight back?

[rageagainstthe50res]

OK, hands up, i name-changed, because this is so emotionally charged and I don't want to be alienated from my usual threads.

BUT, AIBU to think that actually 50-50 parenting is fucking awful for kids? I mean, can you imagine living your life between two houses? Just how disorientating and unsettling it would be?

And AIBU to think that women have given away too many of their own rights in the name of 'fathers' rights?' I LOVE my father, and my DS loves hers, even though we're not together but in 99% of all parenting cases I know it is the woman who does the laundry, the packed lunches, the kiss it betters, the costumes for the nativity.

We don't have gender equality in this country - salary discrepancies, violence against women, flagrant misogyny in the media etc. Yet the few rights we do hold - that we should be the primary parent because we grow our children inside us and feed them from our own bodies, we now glibly throw away to 'fathers'. I AM NOT SAYING FATHERS SHOULD BE DENIED ACCESS TO THEIR CHILDREN. But I do think 50-50 is too much. And you're telling me that women don't HATE having their kids only 50% of the time? I'm sure most of them are absolutely miserable. A weekend off, great, but 50-50 just sounds heinous.
REally, I'm not being an arse, I'm just massively curious.

hi justabout, it's snowed here so don't know if I can get out of London in time for us to meet up but I'll certainly try, will be in touch xx

"So by your standards, then, women who have affairs shouldn't regard themselves as good mothers? And you'd so readily describe them as "thinking with their fanjos", yes?"

Absolutely. You hit the nail on the head.

surely having an affair isn't the be all and end all of a 'bad parent' ?

I think it is agingoth. It is in my opinion. Parents in this country need to focus a lot less on sex and getting with the next hottie who comes along and more on their kids. Just my 2p.

sorry, but I think you can be a good parent and yet have a bad marriage and/or make a mistake. It just isn't that black and white.

Agree though if you're running around shagging constantly you're unlikely to be giving your all to your children but that's different from someone who either makes one mistake or is in a desperately bad marriage.

Also, what if someone has an affair then regrets it and tries really hard to change? Are they then still a 'bad parent'?

"Also, what if someone has an affair then regrets it and tries really hard to change? Are they then still a 'bad parent'?"

They were at the time of the affair. But a person can always improve and change.

Bad marriages do NOT equal bad parenting nor do bad marriages force a person to cheat.

It is how you deal with the bad relationship that makes a bad parent IMHO. You can get out of a bad marriage/situation without being a whore or a pig. My opinion is that a person should not need a relationship at all times or sex to be happy. Or they should at least be able to go without it for awhile after a divorce to ensure that their kids are settling into their new life. To many people jump too quickly into affairs and new relationships because they are pathetic and desperate.

Just in case it needs to be clarified, shoddy care for the children is not limited to the realm of the fathers. Women or men can do it, although if dealing with all these things has been normally left to the woman during the marriage. It is likely that the woman continues to be the expert on this while the dad has lots to learn.

I have also seen it the other way around, when the father is the main child care provider and rants at how careless the mum can be.

It is not gender exclusive to be a twunt. But hopefully the children can get to spend most time with the parent that is, ahem, less of a twunt?

OK, so you reckon that as some fathers have affairs and "think with their dicks", it's unreasonable for those fathers to demand equal "rights" to their children.

So as mothers also have affairs (and so are bad mothers by your definition) you'd see that such mothers should have fewer rights to their children, yes?

I believe I read a BNP article about how mothers who have affairs should be forced to hand over their children to the father. I think some implementations of Sharia law advocates that too. It's all rather knee-jerky and extreme for my tastes though. I think real life is more complex than that. I'm not defending those who have affairs - I never have and never will; I'm just not wired that way. But I think there's more to working out how to share parenting between ex-partners than who shagged whom.

I wouldn't judge LTC. Nobody but the couple involved knows how nad things have become.

A person who falls in love with the wrong person doesn't necessarily is a bad parent. And to be honest, a relationship is normally quite dead by the time affairs start. I never bought that thing of we were perfectly happy when this XYZ started flirting with the husband (or the wife). If the husband (or wife) considered reciprocating was because there was something wrong going on in their marriages already. People in happy marriages are not inclined to have affairs.

nad=bad

yep, agree anyone has to be given another chance, we can all be 'bad parents' on any given day, god knows I have been and regretted it terribly- it's a lifelong process isn't it?

don't like the word 'whore' though at all hve to say and applying that to anyone m or f who has an affair, having sex does not make you filthy, it may be selfish and a mistake etc I agree but women are not 'whores' (and neither imho are prostitutes who may be in the sex trade for any number of good reasons)

i just think words like that are nasty and misogynist and used to make people feel better about themselves rather than out of any concern for children and famliies. How is it helpful for children who have suffered a breakup and whose mother is perhaps having another relationship to call those mothers 'whores'?

People on here are just too harsh and black-and-white imho.

I think it's very bad parenting to use access to DC to punish your XP for having preferred someone else to you. If you're dumped, you're dumped and you need to get over it, you don't have an auotmatic right to a couple-relationship with a person who no longer wants to be with you.

god, all these accusations of sexism make me fucking laugh.

some women seem to think that rape is obsolete and the entire planet has abolished war and is completely demilitarised.

It's sexist to say that women have inherent nurturing qualities, and actually may be better than men at something?

You may all have lovely DHs, but men are still responsible for 99% of violence on the planet. Why don't you stick up for your gender for once and just acknowledge that our hormonal make up makes us life-givers and nurturers, and if power were distributed more fairly between the sexes, then perhaps we'd be living in a safer, fairer world? Or is that 'sexist'?

Is that an unfounded, outrageous generalisation? Seen many women heading up systematic rape camps? Ethnically cleansing?

Thought not. But it's outrageously sexist to suggest that women have superior nurturing qualities.

Pls bear in mind I'm not saying 'all men are violent and therefore must never see their children.'

I'm saying there are few areas where women have more power. Parenting used to be one of them.

You seem to see parenting as a power struggle, is that healthy?

"I'm saying there are few areas where women have more power. Parenting used to be one of them."

Well firstly, not for long (historically) and not in many cultures. Historically women have rarely had any power over their children or any access rights on divorce. This continues to be the case in many cultures. So your argument that we are moving away from a golden age into a scary new future is wide of the mark.

Secondly, we (by which I mean women) are very loud about demanding equality in areas where WE want it. I absolutely believe equality to be my RIGHT in terms of pay, political representation, legal status, employment rights, property ownership.

How can women have any credibility in demanding equality in some areas, while refusing to accede an inch in others?

The assumption that women are automatically the nurturing sex is inextricably linked to the mindset that forced women to give up their jobs on marriage, denied them equal pay and access to education (because why would they need it when they are just going to become mothers?) and allowed men to buy their way out of parenthood scot free, because if they were handing over a wodge of cash once a month society felt they were fulfilling their half of the bargain.

Do you REALLY want to return to those days? We can't just change some aspects of society you know - equality means just that for BOTH sexes.

Surely it should be based on the childcare arrangements before the divorce? If the childcare was 50/50, then it remains so. If there was a primary carer, then they remain so.

rageagainstthe50res/LovestheChaos - I am confused.

Do you want men to be supportive parents involved in the upbringing of their children or just banished to the end of the universe?

theyoungvisiter - I agree with what you said @ 20:10:39.

Some of the posts on equality in this thread have been just plain weird thinking behind them.

Equality seems fine for some women when they are getting something out of it but not fine at all when they have to give something up.

"Thought not. "

DOn't 'think not' until someone has had a chance to reply. Rude and passive aggresive.

If you insist that mothers are better parents by default you are letting men off the hook in terms of being good parents. Why should they try when women are so much better simply by having breasts and a fanjo. Sexist nonsense.

If you want sexism to disspear changes have to happen on both sides.

No, Abetadad, they musn't disappear to the ends of the universe unless they leave a standing order to pay the mortgage and utility bills first.