Double Standards of Divorce and Co-Parenting

Divorced Parents on All of Us

I often watch the television show, All of Us, produced by Will and Jada Pinkett-Smith and is loosely based on their own lives. It’s about a divorced couple who is working together to raise their son. The ex-husband has a live in girlfriend, but the ex-wife does not.

If you watch the show, you will immediately pick up on the obvious double standards that exist in their co-parenting relationship. For example, the ex-wife is allowed to freely enter her ex-husband’s house, using their son’s key, whenever she likes; but, her ex-husband has to knock when he goes over to her place.  The ex-wife demands to be told what’s going on in his relationship with his long-term girlfriend (when they are getting married, when she could move in, etc), but when he asks what’s going on with her new boyfriend, she tells him that her personal life is none of his business. On another episode, the ex-wife demanded to be part of the birthday planning that her ex-husband and his girlfriend was planning for their son, but she had already had a birthday party for him, and neither her ex-husband nor his girlfriend were invited.

I realize that everything on television is not real, but Will and Jada Smith have admitted that the show is loosely based on their own stepfamily. Loosely based means that although some concepts may be exaggerated to a certain extent, something similar has happened in their own lives. Not to mention, that I’ve spoken with several divorced dads and stepmoms who also frequently complain about the double standards that exists within their stepfamilies as well.  For example,  ex-wife wants to know everything that’s going on in ex-husband’s house and relationship, but doesn’t offer and even refuses to share, information regarding her own relationship or household. Ex-wife demands to be invited to any and everything regarding the child, but doesn’t even tell ex-husband about the activities that she plans for the child. Ex-wife is adamant about having unlimited access to the child while he or she is in her ex-husband’s care, but dad’s access is very limited and strictly based on the ex-wife’s rules alone. Additionally, according to author, trailblazing researcher and psychologist, E. Mavis Hetherington, ex-wives tend to be more intrusive and remain bitter and angry for much longer than their ex-husbands, post-divorce.

All of the above information supports the claims that double standards, more often than not, exist between the ex-wife and the ex-husband. What I, along with many others, can’t understand is why they exist.  More importantly, why are these double standards continually accepted by society? Why do mothers think they have more rights than fathers who are just as involved (or at least want to be) in their child’s life?  Why does society view ex-wives who exhibit this behavior, as victims who are just in pain, or the protective mama bears who are just trying to protect their children? Why does society convince us to believe that the children need protection from a father who is fighting to be with his children?

What’s even more important than why is how? How do we change our perception of how co-parenting relationships should operate? I’ve always been an advocate of and highly encouraged healthy boundaries from the very beginning of the divorce. Having a child gives neither parent an all access pass into each others’ lives after the divorce. Neither parent needs detail regarding what’s going on in their ex-spouse’s relationships or marriage or household (unless of course it is harming the child). Furthermore, when the child is in your house, the parent caring for him or her at that time is in charge of the child. Both parents are in charge of their respective households and allowing overlap only leads to the double standards mentioned above.

Overall, it’s important to realize that you can have a great co-parenting relationship without being totally engulfed in each others’ lives.  And, fathers need to realize that they aren’t doing a disservice to their children by setting healthy boundaries for their ex-wives.  Ex-wife should not be allowed to have each foot in both her and her ex-husband’s household and vice versa. Doing so, only increases chances of resentment, conflict, miscommunication and all out war.

Love Stories: Is Marriage Necessary?

One of our favorite writers and fellow stepmom, author of Stepmonster, Wednesday Martin, wrote an insightful article on Psychology Today about the necessity of marriage. This article provoked some stimulating conversation between my husband and I and we’d love to hear what you think regarding the question -  Is Marriage Necessary? Check out the article below and let us know what you think.

Just in time for Valentine’s Day, some recent, highly-publicized non-fiction debuts are sure to get you in the mood for romance. Staying True, by Jenny Sanford, chronicles the very public breakdown of her marriage to South Carolina governor Mark Sanford, who wasn’t hiking on the Appalachian Trail after all. Marry Him by Lori Gottlieb (the subtitle of which–the Case for Settling for Mr. Good Enough, says it all) accuses you of being too picky and urges you to snap up that guy who’s an 8 rather than waiting for the 10. And The Politician, Andrew Young’s new, explosive tell-all about John Edwards, details his infidelity and exposes, for our lurid delectation, the operatic fights and the second family he started while his wife was struggling with cancer.

Granted, these books don’t describe the experiences of most of us. Hopefully our relationships are not all colored by messianic narcissism, bigamy, and profound cynicism about pairing off “before it’s too late.”Bottom of Form

But in their own dramatic and overblown ways, these books speak a quieter, less dramatic truth: marriage isn’t what we think it is, and it isn’t easy. Plenty of marriages aren’t doing well. While divorce rates for first marriages have settled from a high in the 1980s of around 50% to 43% according to the most recent Census, 43% is no cause for dancing in the streets. Especially when you consider that in remarriages with children, divorce rates divorce rates may be as high as 72%, according to E. Mavis Hetherington, the respected psychologist, family researcher, and author of the lauded 30-year Virginia Longitudinal Study.

Why? Much ink has been spilled and much breath has been spent and many workshop fees have been forked over in the interest of what’s wrong with marriages, and how to improve them, to make them more satisfying, equitable, sexually exciting, emotionally healthy, nurturing, and harmonious. Saving marriages is a multi-million dollar industry, and we know from first-hand experience, many of us, that it can work. Marriages, some of them, can be saved.

But Marriage probably cannot.

While marital and couples therapists tell us how to save our marriages, sociology, anthropology, and human behavioral ecology suggest that it isn’t so much married couples as Marriage itself, the institution, that’s in trouble. The problem with marriages is really the fundamental problem with Marriage: marriages are falling apart in large part because Marriage is no longer necessary. At least, not in the way it once was.

Sociologists and historians of marriage tell us that marriage was originally a business transaction of sorts, rather than an undertaking hinging on the attraction and love between two individuals. Historically in western culture, people from wealthy families were directed to marry in order to create bonds, alliances, and mutual obligations with other powerful families-or even between nations, in the case of royals. For the lower classes, marriage was a question of creating a labor force to run a farm or small business. Households were production-centered economies in which men’s and women’s labor were complementary, and kids they had together or brought together from previous unions (maternal mortality rates were high until the late 19^th century) pitched in. Marriage was necessary. And remarriage with children after the death of a spouse-a common occurrence until relatively recently-was considered the most civic-minded thing a man or woman could do. The household and by extension all of society depended on it, after all.

But by the early 20^th century, marriage historian Stephanie Coontz points out, with the notions of the individual, liberty, and equality well-established by the Enlightenment and French and American revolutions, and the subsequent rise of the love match, marriage had become a different animal entirely. Marriage morphed from institutional, in the famous formulation of sociologist Ernest Burgess, to companionate and now, something more individualistic. Marriage is now expected to nurture, satisfy and support the members of the couple in a dizzyingly comprehensive variety of ways-emotionally, sexually, psychologically.

Click here to read the rest of this story.