Difference between revisions of "Parenting Apart"

Children need their parents to continue to contribute to their care and upbringing after separation.  Further, children have the right to expect their parents and caregivers to work together, whenever possible, to ensure the child’s needs are met.   

Many families can continue to parent by way of week on/week off schedules or other shared parenting. However, the family law in British Columbia rejects the notion that parents should have the right to have or expect, absent agreement between the parties, an equal, or near-equal, amount of time with their children before or after separation.

Not all parents can separate in a civil manner, and not all parents share an equal interest in participating in the lives and parenting of their children. Some people may be quite content to walk away and start a new life; others are painfully torn by the conflict between their former partner and their role as a parent. However, in the absence of some serious problem (such as abusiveness, alcoholism, or pedophilia) that renders a parent unfit to play a meaningful role in his or her child's life, the practical reality of parenting after separation is this: it is almost always in a child's best interests to grow up with two parents, with as strong a bond with both parents as possible, and to spend as much time with both parents as possible.

Divorce doesn't mess kids up—conflict does. The [http://www.ementalhealth.ca/index.php?m=record&ID=9687 Ottawa Centre for Mediation], formerly the Ottawa Centre for Family and Community Mediation, offers the following parenting dos and don'ts.