The Anti-Parent Project
For years I’ve heard the screams of structure and stability from the mouths of custodial parents when faced with conflicting ideas surrounding custody orders. “A child needs structure and”, “a well-adjusted schedule with set times is what’s best”. So, what happens when that same child gets a surprise trip to the mall during everyday life? Or a last-minute sleepover with friends? Are those same situations worthy of the hardline stability rules? Or is it only when these fun spontaneous events occur outside of the custodial parenting hours that we see issues? A last-minute sleepover at grandma’s because you want to go out, or a late ball game maybe. These normal parenting happenings seem to only apply to the primary parent and their will and approval.
The surprise ice cream after dinner or bike ride with my dad still make up some of the best memories from my childhood. Staying up well past my bedtime on a Saturday because an event ran late, or even a not-so-planned day trip to Niagara Falls are moments parents can’t buy. As a child, I never understood why these joyful things happened, I just remember smiling and laughing the whole time. As a parent, I fully grasp the meaning behind them. The internal joy of seeing your child light up when you hit them with a fun surprise or a day trip they didn’t know about. Smiles are worth a million dollars, and you cannot replace those raw pure emotions with pre-planned itineraries.
Merely a method to reduce the bonds between children and non-custodial parents (disproportionately Fathers).
According to Custody Xchange, separated or divorced Fathers receive about 30% of the overall parenting time (https://www.custodyxchange.com/topics/research/dads-custody-time-2018.php) that’s 109.5 days of parenting time, with the majority of schedule planned out to the standard every other weekend and one dinner visits per week. This leaves little to no room for that fun after-school mall trip with your daughter, or even an ice cream after a high school football game. Of course, in healthy co-parenting environments, parents place the best interest of that child first and will work with each other to allow for such a positive parent-child relationship. With the scales of justice being as unbalanced as we’ve seen in New York State custody cases, the custodial parents take on the lion’s share of 255.5 days of parenting time. Not only does this allow for care-free weekends, but more importantly it provides endless opportunities for weekday adventures, those which the non-custodial parent is restricted from. Why is this? Is it because one parent is superior at planning events, or managing day-to-day operations of parenting? No, of course, not- this is merely a method to reduce the bonds between children and non-custodial parents (disproportionately Fathers).
Survey polled New Yorkers, from the National Parents Organization
My 15 teen year old stepson recently had a conversation with his father on how he views his father’s household. The boy wasn’t feeling good and didn’t want to come over for his weekend (also Father’s Day weekend). My husband asked him a simple question, “What do you do when your sick at home? Leave?” His response was to justify the current parental standing the family court assigned to his dad by saying, “No, I don’t leave, I live there, I just visit your house”. The inner psychology of my stepson has already been molded to the acceptance of having a part-time visiting father, one that he could easily, reschedule, deny, or remove at his convenience. Every other weekend parents get 96 hours a month to parent and explore their children. Every detail must be planned perfectly, right down to the meals being cooked. Because after all, you had better serve food the kids like every meal, or your short weekend of parenting just turned into a bizarre food war. The movie night that you’ve been saving for 2 weeks, just for them to say they already saw it last Thursday when grandma took them to the movies after school. You plan the events and pray that they start before 6 pm so you don’t have to beg to drop the kids off late. Every organic parenting method is reduced to overthinking psyops.
In a perfect society, this would be avoided by simply not getting divorced. I know, as well as accept that divorce is an ugly reality of failed relationships, and sometimes nothing you can do to prevent it. However, when we stop to think about how we wish to parent, or how we want our children to behave, not in a million years will all this ideology fit within a certain time block. It’s unimaginable to reduce any effective parenting to a 36-hour visit.
My stepson is right, this is not parenting, it’s visiting.
The ones that scream stability should be making the argument against the standard every other weekend custody schedule. The lack of consistently coming from a short visit twice a month with the other parents is troubling. Think about it, every other weekend, kids’ schedules are thrown into this party mode of interactions attempting to bridge large amounts of time lost. No normal household with two loving parents operates like this. Married households don’t go to the movies every weekend, attend events, go shopping, eat out all weekend, go on trips, and allow for late nights and pizza for dinner every night. So why do we push children into accepting this lifestyle? The “What’s next” generation of children. Also making every other weekend a moot point is the disregard for the rules. Extra screen time, poor diets, no bedtimes, possibly no church service, possibly missing family events, birthdays, etc... all because of what? Because we’ve been told that this provides stability to children? Does all that which I just described sound stable? Family court forces chaos inside our homes, they’ve turned parenting into a performance for the attention and approval of CHILDREN!
Wouldn’t the better lifestyle be one that adjusted to the needs of the whole family? After school pick-ups, homework time, family meals during the week, doctors’ appointments, after-dinner walks, and a trip to the local park on a Tuesday. The idea that children cannot adjust to which parent is in play day to day is just lazy reasoning. A more whole-child approach, reducing weekend anxiety and stress to perform? Children thrive when they witness both parents playing head-of-household roles and allowing them to build pure relationships while practicing the daily art we call parenting.
As I write this, my 10-year-old stepdaughter has been home from school for about an hour. Her mother will be at work until around 5:30 pm and her brother is a teen, so God only knows where or what he’s doing. She sits there, alone, with her phone. Her only supervision is from a live-in boyfriend who works from home. Meanwhile. Because it’s Monday, her father cannot pick her up after school (we live 20 minutes away from her school) He’s currently home keeping himself busy to avoid thinking about his daughter sitting with another man all afternoon. She’ll drink her soda, eat her noodles and start her 5-hour long gaming session, while her father is told it’s not healthy for her to be picked up after school because she needs stability. This family situation is the gold standard of New York State custody laws.
There’s more to raising children than a custody order. The day-to-day of parenting is the truest form of learning. It’s here were sparkling moments are witnessed, where spontaneous memories are written and where valuable life lessons are given. These principles cannot be forced upon a family. There’s no timeline dictating when and how kids grow up. Once those moments are gone, they’re gone forever. First missing tooth, first and last day of school, big projects, spending time with pets, goodnight kisses and good morning hugs. These are intangible actions never to be experienced by a non-custodial parent but within the context of set visiting hours directed by a Judge and the will of a failed relationship. Shame on society for allowing this to go on so long!
Summer Johnson is a public affairs/policy professional, family law paralegal, co-founder of New York Families for Tomorrow, Corp. and Town Supervisor. She has two biological children and two step-children. She and her husband have been in and out of family court since 2018. Her passion for fairness allows for good advocacy and relationship-building within the shared parenting community.
