How does equal shared parenting work?

Equal shared parenting is becoming common these days. We are thankful to have Ann Douglas with us, who provides us with a strategic approach to deal with information related to family law that covers equal shared parenting. Ann Douglas has written a lot about the issues arising during equal shared parenting and their respective solutions. To provide you with a better idea of how equally shared parenting works, this guide will help you a lot.

Before we dive into the details let us first see what equal shared parenting is. Equal shared parenting is a practice in which both the mother and the father equally bring up their child collectively even after they get divorced.

Making the right custody decision is really important when it comes to parental custody. Equal shared parenting offers both parents an equal opportunity to raise their children to avoid parental alienation. This way a child’s brought up is influenced by both his parent’s decisions rather than having an influence of a single parent brought up.

What does equal shared parenting count?

Some important things considered in equal shared parenting are:

• Spending equal time with both the parents.
• Considering both parent’s homes, residential homes.
• Equal distribution of power between the mother and the father.
• Sharing finances equally

What are the advantages of equal shared parenting?

Equal shared parenting is beneficial in certain ways, let’s see how.

• Both the parents become equal parts of a child’s life.
• The unjust gender dominance of parenting is eliminated.
• Children have improved confidence and performance.
• Encourages coordination between both the parents and creates a healthy environment.

What are the disadvantages of equal shared parenting?

There also are some disadvantages of equal shared parenting, which are:

• It can stress a child’s mental health if the parents fail to communicate and coordinate effectively.
• It becomes difficult for the child to make decisions.
• It is disturbing and inconvenient for a child to keep changing his residence between both his parent’s homes.

What to consider?

What we need to understand is that every family is different. This means that the child-and-parent interaction is not the same throughout the world. So, every child-and-parent relationship has its own specific requirements.

So, it won’t be wrong to say that equal shared parenting doesn’t work for all families: it can help some families but not all. In extreme situations, children end up choosing one of their parents and decide to live with one parent only.

Moreover, even if you think that families are flexible enough to adjust to equal shared parenting, there is no definite rule that the general equal shared parenting techniques would work. You might need to change the equal shared parenting strategies as per the family’s situation and demands.

Conclusion

The best solution to a successful equal shared parenting is to create a parenting plan that is suitable and convenient for all the people involved: including both the parents and the child himself.  This reduces any chances of the clash between the parents themselves or their clash with the children ultimately ending up in creating a healthy and stable living environment.