Hello mumsnetters. I'm new here, so greetings to you all, & I wonder if you could share your thoughts...
What do we think about parental responsibility? My partner & I split up 2.5 years ago; dd is 4 & a half. He was pretty vile initially, but I have bombarded him with niceness and reasonableness over time, he's realised that it's pointless to hate me & we now have something approaching equilibrium. He & his new wife, & baby daughter (born on dd's birthday last year, bizarrely)have dd to stay for one night most weekends - everyone seems happy with this: he & dd have the good relationship that I've always strived for (& it wouldn't have happened without my persistence), she likes new wife, is v. happy about baby sister & I get to have a social life - yippee!
Dd recently had an accident while staying at their house (that's another story that I won't bother going into now for fear of you all chewing your own legs off by the time you get to end of this) resulting in her being taken to A & E. At this point, ex partner brought up the subject of parental responsibility.
Now, I suggested that we sort this out at the point we split up, but he clearly didn't have a clue what I was talking about then & didn't bother finding out. As I'm going to be going on holiday to Asia in a few weeks time, he quite sensibly mentioned that someone would need to be able to make decisions re. medical treatment etc in my absence.
While he's absolutely right, I'm not sure whether I feel comfortable about giving him more "rights" - I don't consider him to be particularly intelligent, he's very easily influenced & led by others, I'm not always happy about his parenting of dd (lots of presents, sweets, sitting in front of the TV at their house) & most of all, I don't want to get into a situation in the future where I have to fight him for what I consider dd's best interests.
But notwithstanding all that, does he have a 'moral' right to parental responsibility, & is it fair on dd for me to restrict it? Am thinking about giving it to my mum or sil instead - am I allowed to that? & is it worth antagonising the ex when I've worked so hard to get where we are now? Sorry about lengthy rambling.