Let us start with the tale of two old friends of mine, that I sometimes look to as godparents, and turn to for advice when my biological family falls short on answers.
Ben and Melissa raised their family during the hippy years on what we would today consider a commune or even a cult. The community had a large tract of land, with many houses; they tended the fields, and ran their businesses communally, and co-operated on child minding and rearing as well, they even had their own school.
As many couples do today, Ben and Melissa did not experience an entirely smooth mariage; a few years after the birth of their second child, they nearly split up. Had they been anywhere else, they may have split up.
As their relationship deteriorated, the community found them a big long house, in which they could each live out of their own end of the house, with the children in the middle. The communal childminding aspects of the community served as a bridge between the two parents during a period when they would barely talk. They spent months without interacting with one another, living on opposite ends of the same house; yet co-operated wordlessly on raising their children.
As years passed, the anger and frustrations subsided, and the parents regained direct communication, and were able to rationally discuss what was best for their children, while maintaining their independence.
They maintained an independant, yet shared and cooperative parenting style for most of their children’s childhoods, raising healthy and well rounded children; until one day, a perchance sharing of art supplies led to a rekindling of their love.
This is not a love story. This is the story of two children who managed to keep two full-fledged parents when they spit up, and of two parents who traveled separate paths, and yet, were both equal full time parents.
I am not about to counsel that parents should get back together with their ex-partners, or remain in an abusive scenario for the sake of their children. In fact, quite the opposite. We are all individuals, and of individuals; there is no possession. Duties and responsibilities are something that can easily be fulfilled through cooperation, and less so by force.
Neither am I about to advocate communism, or withdrawing to agrarian communal living; but are current family services so different from the communal child rearing described above? Society provides substantial credits for childrearing, daycare, family supports, yet while lip service to supporting parental involvement, courts and family services demand the selection of one parent to receive these services, and continue to attempt to recoup costs from the other parent.
Parental separation trends continue to rise in the western world, and to a lesser extent overall. The US leads the developed world with nearly only half of children making it to adulthood with an intact family; and asside from the exceptions of ________________, the rest of the western world is not far behind.
In most cases of separation, an informal division of parental responsibilities occurs very rapidly, and in a manner that once initiated, can be very difficult to change.
Parents who do not decide to co-operate immediately, or who have difficulty doing so due to their inter-personal affairs, are swept up by lawyers and authoritative social work bodies and fed into courts that induce a power imbalance and reward greedy/manipulative behavior.
Parents who do cooperate, who make it past personal differences in the interests of their children raise successful children much like intact families, so much so that they do not interface with social services; and though co-parenting has existed for 20-30 years, and is pushed by family many frontline family services as the ultimate solution for children in cases of separation; there is no research or data on the effectiveness of co-parenting in regards to a child’s best interest.
Parents who have trouble cooperating during the crucial time following separation suffer from rapid evolution of any imbalances that may have existed, and soon, even the participation of one parent in their child’s life becomes dependent on the whims of the other parent.
It would seem that preserving and fortifying parental bonds at the time of separation is key to the child’s maintaining of healthy bonds with both parents.
How do we provide support to both parents, as Ben and Melissa’s community did for them. How do we support a child’s family so that if separation does occur, that the child does not lose half their family.
Parents may not want to get along for some time after separation, and will strive for independence. They will not want to be particularly identified with their co-parent.
Splitting or Maintaining separate homes for a child can be difficult financially for parents, and confusing to children immediately following separation, or to a young child.
The current solution to this dilemma is to give the child to one parent and the other parent is forced to help the government support the primary parent.
This has created an imbalance rife for abuse as society shifts from a single parent to a co-parent model, and willful loving parents frequently find themselves alienated from their children.
What if the government were able to help both parents maintain a home for their child?
What if the parents could cooperate on a home for their child that still met all of their criteria?
We spend large amounts of money on social housing. complexes are built to serve young families with children with daycares built in. Developers are required to include low-income and family housing, even community centers in their proposals in order to get permission for large projects.
In The Child’s Best Interest:
Might it be worth investing in special housing for co-parents..?
Might it be worth a pilot project somewhere… instead of authority and enforcement, to try something positive for families?
Might it be worth doing a single study somewhere to see if officially encouraging and supporting a child’s connection to both their parents creates desirable outcomes for the children?
It would be incredibly simple in today’s urban jungles of low-rise/high-rise/town-house neighbourhoods, to create a development with certain suites sharing children’s bedrooms, but remaining self-contained, and featuring separate entrances, perhaps on separate avenues or hallways. Insert sketch
Buildings are regularly built to fulfill one use for several years, and then converted to another use altogether and sold to wealthy buyers, once their preferred (tax or other) status has been earned.
It is not lack of cooperation from developers, but a lack of inspiration and forward thought within a family services sector caught up in a battle to justify its authority.
Family services need to abandon the tropes of institutionalised parental alienation, and to cease seeing parents as adversaries.
Society is advancing, social services need to stop fighting for single parentry and start advancing positive ideas for children and families such as co-parent housing.