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.

but if the 50/50 split was regular i.e monday - thurs with mums, fri, sat n sun with dads wouldnt this be 'routine'? i can understand that if every week it changed then yeh its not good for young children as it wouldnt be routine.

I dont see how spending a weekend every fortnight with the fathers n the rest of the time with the mothers would be 'better' for the child? More confusing if you ask me.

'When I knew dh was at home I worked late and played out, and he did the same'

one of my big bugbears is I never got to do this. I worked at home and/or looked after the kids (was p/t for quite a while). He knew I was already at home therefore took advantage to stay out. Suddenly when we divorce, everything has to be 'equal' when it never was before. I think that yes, he suddenly realised that care of the dcs was more important but also he needed that fiction of 'equality' to feel 'equal' to me as carer, now that I had become an 'enemy'.

Another problem I have is that I finish work far earlier than he does even on days when I am working so on 'his' days the kids are in childcare 8-7. So I am sitting alone for evenings half the week while his nanny looks after my kids. That doesn't seem like 'equal' parenting to me but in the name of 'equality' it is what me and the kids have to put up with.

(btw I have now made sure the nanny is not with them from 5-7 when I could be, by moving back into the family home, but that is a whole other story)

Women may do more of the mothering. But that doesn't mean men can't and shouldn't be allowed to if the situation changed. My dad had to become my full-time parent. He hadn't been before, he was a traditional go out to work dad. But my mum left and my dad had to step up (she didn't apply for custody).

And he did it. He started cooking, did the cleaning, dealt with our teenage tantrums, gave relationship advice, and did it bloody well. If my mum had gone for custody damn bloody right my dad should have got a 50/50 custody deal. He loves us every bit as much as she did and was every bit as capable of doing the main care giving role when required of him.

I absolutely hate the idea that kids are somehow 'more' their mother's than their father's. And that father's might be ok not seeing their kids very often. My dad would have been destroyed. My brother is very much a 50/50 parent with my sister-in-law. If something went wrong in their relationship why should he automatically be given less rights than her?

Obviously different in cases where the man is violent or abusive. But in the vast majority of cases this isn't an issue, and parents should be treated exactly the same.

Theshriekingharpy - actually when women do try to be assertive and ask for a salary increase, they are more likely to be regarded as troublesome and demanding. While a man gets respect for arguing his case.

Sadly the OP is right that we are very, very far from gender equality.

pinky, in your example, the mother would only ever see her children on schooldays!

Shared residency is harder because the parents have to cooperate and agree on the same rules and boundries.Something they should be able to do if they put the DCs first. They should be going from home to home and fit it like a glove.

'"Putting your child's best interests before your own is the true act of love, whatever residency arrangements that means."

It goes back to this, that someone wrote earlier. It is sad that people can't do it.

I'm not convinced that children need only one set of rules. For example, the rules my children are expected to follow at home aren't identical to the ones they're expected to follow at school. Plus when I was doing 50:50 for a while, the occasional "But mummy lets us..." type thing was very quickly resolved with "Do I look like mummy?" It was a very minor issue.

Anyway, even in a non-50:50 situation, both parents are likely to have at least mildly different ideas of what is important and what isn't.

It is vitally important that neither parent actively undermines the other, though.

I agree with snorbs, and also as an addendum, if one parent puts in place a punishment, the other parent needs to back it up, even if they disagree with the puishment or the reason for the punishment. I used to get the 'but daddy lets me', but that fades away by 6yo, they understand that dad's house=dad's rules, mum's house=mum's rules, school=school rules.

Actually the reason prostate cancer screening is problematic is entirely down to medical science, not anything to do with discrimination. There just isn't a good enough test that can distinguish between aggressive prostate cancer and benign, with a low enough level of false positives and negatives. Most researchers in this area are men, btw, they aren't engaged in some conspiracy against their own gender.

Being born white and male still gives you, in general, significant advantages over everyone else.

As for working class male jobs, afraid they are still being paid more than working class female jobs. Councils have finally been held to account for paying cleaners and dinner ladies far less than caretakers and bin men - and are whinging and whining and doing everything they can to avoid paying what the courts have found they owe women who have been discriminated against for decades.

It is plain ludicrous for men to claim they are victims of discrimination to anything like the same extent as women. Just as it would be ridiculous for white people to claim racism is as bad for them as it is for black people. There may be some race hate crimes committed against white people, but it doesn't even begin to equate to the scale and depth of suffering caused by racism against ethnic minorities.

Women-only swimming sessions are to provide a space free from being perved on, among other reasons. Women have been surveyed repeatedly by councils as to why they don't use the leisure facilities as much as men, and apart from external factors due to lack of childcare, self-consciousness in front of men is a key factor. So women-only sessions are a result of sexism, not a cause of it.

""Putting your child's best interests before your own is the true act of love, whatever residency arrangements that means."

Beautifully put, as was the rest of your post. I agree 100%."

Exactly, the only problem is for a couple to get to agree what are those best interests for the children. Every person has different standards and ideas of what is good for the kids. You don't need to get divorced to realise the conflict potential those different opinions have.

My ex is all about quality time, me too. For him it means play; for me it means play + dealing with the school, medical problems, homework, upbringing, education, buying him clothes, take him to classes, etc etc. (Please note that this is no gender specific).

In the early days of our separation I thought we were parenting as equals, soon I realised ex had specialised in play (back then, now his back to his old ways), which was lovely and great for DS but the responsibility to bring DS up, care and provide for his needs, and all the other not exactly fun stuff part of parenthood is on my shoulders perhaps because it always was anyway, and the fact that we had split, and wanted to do things right, wasn't going to change that in the long term.

The other reason for women only sessions in council run sports centres is to encourage women from communities were men and women do not mix at all outside of the home, so where they would be effectively excluded if all sessions were mixed. However private gyms also run women only sessions, and I've never seen a male only session advertised (dh used to check out and then frequent gyms on a regular basis). So there probably isn't a great demand for men only sessions. dh says that's because all men think they are supermen and so are not worried about how they are perceived by women . In any case my experience of gyms is that they are predominantly filled with men (I've often been the only woman in the weights room).

Whilst discrimination cases are regularly brought by women, pay is less, there are fewer getting bonuses etc etc I think it is foolish to think that discrimination is "so 70s". There is plenty of evidence to show that being a white middle class/educated man is the most advantageous position in UK society.

Screening is a very contentious area, and quite political too, with big pressure groups (which I agree appear to be dominated by the "pink" ones). Prostate screening has been debated for years. I used to work in Screening QA, and they were looking to improve tests for prostate cancer 15 years ago, with lots of research since, but the min testing tool just picks up way too many false positives to be implemented.

As for public health efforts aimed at men, there have indeed been some of these - but they aren't aimed at gym membership, the most successful ones have been delivered in pubs, because men are traditionally reluctant to visit doctors (hence getting late diagnosis for things that could have been treated better early).

More men in danger related physical labour roles having a high rate of work related accidents is in my mind only relevant to this debate if you could show that women in the same jobs (and there are very few of them so this woudl be difficult I imagine) had fewer accidents. Otherwise it is about poor health and safety in those environments, which of course should be addressed. Higher pay in return for risk is a well established factor, however I don't think that caretakers are at any more risk than school cooks or cleaners.

Womens Hour, femail etc are in my mind vestiges (well alive and kicking really) of sexism against women, but there are plenty of programs/magazines etc aimed at men too. I do however totally agree on the advertising that makes out all men to be crap/stupid etc (although the fact that this is frequently related to housework, is again pretty chauvinist in my mind). I hate stereotyping either way.

I thought what he said has mildly amusing, which is why I posted it, but my point was that private gyms which are permanently scrambling for business do not put on male only sessions, and if there was a perceived demand for them then you bet they would. Actually I wondered if one of the reasons they didn't was that some men might think that such sessions would be dominated by gay men, and thus avoid them. But that's just conjecture.

Actually I totally agree that discrimination against anyone is bad, and I don't think there should be any hierarchy when it comes to individual cases or that discrimination against men should be swept under the table. But the fact is that you are much much less likely to be discriminated against if you are a part of the group that holds the most power in society, and that is still educated white men, and I think it is foolish to suggest that is not the case (and is likely to be the case for some while yet sadly). I don't think that anyone suggested or insinuated that discrimination against men was trivial did they?

Re women working in traditionally male unskilled physical roles, yes there are considerable barriers to entry for women. I don't think it is because men are seen as expendable, but that women are seen as weak, unreliable and a liability. Women aren't allowed on the front line because it's felt that the guys would feel they had to protect them and that would be bad for discipline (very similar arguments were made against homosexuals too). I think that's crap, and that if a job requires physical abilities then it should be open to those with those abilities. That may well be predominantly men, but it should never be exclusively so.

Re screening you can choose not to look into why screening tests aren't yet available for prostate cancer, but bear in mind that there are in fact very very few effective population screening tools, because there are a number of tests that are used to determine whether to run such a program, and they are quite stringent. Screening may well save lives, but it is also hugely expensive and disruptive, and with a poor test may cause far more harm than good. There is indeed a lot of debate as to whether breast screening brings more benefits than costs (because of the numbers of women who have probably unnecessary treatment), and some groups of doctors think it should be withdrawn. Here are the tests used to consider whether to introduce screening: www.cancerscreening.nhs.uk/prostate/index.html

I doubt theshriekingharpy wants to know why prostate cancer screening is difficult, tbh, they are just seizing on any lame excuse to claim poor old ickle men are the real victims of discrimination.

But hey, apparently thousands of years of oppression and suffering count for nothing. Women and ethnic minorities have been completely overlooking the very real problems of the richest, most powerful group in society.

(and tbh I suspect any shy men with body image problems would be VERY reluctant to go to men-only gym sessions.)

yep, the 'male victim' thing just disappears when you look at any set of statistics on the concentration of wealth, power in political and corporate terms, etc. It's bollocks plain and simple. Interesting to hear it from a woman though, I have mostly heard it from middle aged men whining about how their wives nag them about going to the pub too often.