Favorable shared parenting article in MSM

Article here. Excerpt:

'Regarding the wellbeing of kids with divorced parents, the debate over what kind of custody arrangement is best rages on. But a new study, published Monday in the Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health, suggests that children fare better when they spend time living with both of their parents.

That goes against some current thinking that kids in shared-custody situations are exposed to more stress due to constantly moving around and the social upheaval that can come along with that. “Child experts and people in general assumed that these children should be more stressed,” says study author Malin Bergström, PhD, researcher at the Centre for Health Equity Studies in Stockholm, Sweden. “But this study opposes a major concern that this should not be good for children.”'

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As some know, I now live in Norway.

There is a proposal here before the government that when there is a divorce, both parents leave the house. Only the children stay in the family house. The parents rent or buy a second house and they take alternate months living in the house with the children.

When the father is in the house with the children, the mother stays in the second house for a month. Then the parents switch. The children stay.

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matt, I got that 'forbidden' message again, and all my words erased.

my question is just who gets to pay for this 3rd abode proposed by law? and when it can't be afforded and everybody suffers, will the old way of auto-custody for women be reinststed? think I know the answer already.

and just how is this extra expense in the best interests of anybody, especially the children.

doubling down on stupid seems to be catching.

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I support shared parenting, and I believe the article is truthful in their findings. However they leave out some details (and I am unable to access the actual study to see if these details might be mentioned.) Like how close the parents lived to each other and how big the study was, if parents were remarried, etc.

I think shared parenting should always be considered, but I don't think it would work for most and I don't think the majority of divorced parents are wanting or asking for it. Especially parents that live outside the school district from one another (that means the parent that lives out of district is going to get up an hour early each day to drive the kid to school; and if they have more than one kid at more than one school - it would be downright chaotic). Also in divorce, all parties lower their standard of living, If you tack on the extra cost and time of shared parenting, most cannot afford it.

Kids need to feel part of their community. Most kids have after school activities. This can only be achieved for divorced parents if they live in the same neighborhood - so only a very small percentage could make it work.

When I was in school I saw a great example of shared parenting. Each parent lived within walking distance of the school and they only had the one child together and the mother never remarried, and the father had a wife who was extremely helpful. I also have experienced a bad example of shared parenting. Each parent had the child for one week. I taught dance, and the child was in my dance class, but only showed up every other week. The mother told me that the father refused to drive the daughter to dance on his week. (she might have been being snarky. He may have had a good reason - I don't know).

Thomas bring up the 'shared house' idea which has been brought up before. IMO, not practical as homes are a financial investment and personal space. but if a couple can make it work - hey, more power to tthem.

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I suppose I should say that this country is in a special category like none other.

Norway is the size of Japan.
Japan has no resources and 125million people
Norway has oil - lots - and only 5 million people.

Last month, it rained a lot.
And the fjords catch the rain and generate water power.
Electricity was free for one week.

The gov't saves the money for its citizens.

When a woman gives birth, the family gets 12 months of fully paid leave (full salary paid): they can split it as they wish and it is usually 50/50. And the job is guaranteed and secured.

Last month I was told it was time to register for my six weeks vacation: I keep putting it off due to my work load. I was told I would be forced to take it. And when taking it, I get a check of 10percent of my yearly income for my vacation needs (not taxed).

Now... we also get paid 300 US dollars per month in addition to raise our kids. We get money to raise Norwegian children.

This all comes from the oil money. Norway is not like the other socialist countries: they have the oil money and they use it.

(I also know the US cannot do this... too many people.)

Their sovereign fund is the highest in the world.

So... back to the kids. If the family cannot manage the divorce: the government pays. (But remember, they are only still debating this.)

I know... bizarre. I suppose I should have said that. Nearby Sweden has problems, but not this country.

And university is free for my kids.

So again, all Americans should keep that in mind when discussing the Norwegian state. These people are rich.

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Thomas - I forgot how good Norwegians have it (I have relatives in Norway) and many people are supprised to learn how much oil Norway has.

Back to the article, I just want to say that even though I was not able to view the actual study, I did read the article for the second time and it does not indicate the children in the study were living in a 50/50 situation, which was my original assumption. Maybe I am the only one who often gets the term "shared parenting" confused, but I just want others to know that it does not always describe a 50/50 situation, and different jurisdictions use the term differently. However, it does always indicate that both parents are involved in legal decisions and the upbringing of the child which I fully support and agree it will have a positive outcome on the children.

Most all traditional parenting plans now days, including my own, use the legal term "shared parenting" but then might also indicate, like mine does, that one household will be the primary household where the kids spend the night.

http://www.divorcenet.com/states/ohio/ohfaq06

What is "shared parenting"?

"Shared parenting" is the term Ohio uses for what many other states refer to as "joint custody." The court may allocate the parental rights and responsibilities for the care of the children to both parents and issue a shared parenting order requiring the parents to share all or some of the aspects of the physical and legal care of the children. It does not necessarily mean an equal, 50/50 division of time with the children, child support, or any other issues.

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Pretty sure you know about not being able to use the word "h@ving" (i.e., that word with an 'a' in it and not a '@') as described at http://news.mensactivism.org/?q=node/25240. However there are other times when a post w/out that word spelled out as it ought to be gives you the "Forbidden" error. Googling "Drupal forbidden" will get you a lot of hits and from when I first went to look at how to mitigate or reduce this problem, I found very little advice except to inform commenters that the word(s) one finds trouble with simply should not be used, and one such word that sometimes causes trouble is "h@ving". No one seems to know why but I speculate it has to do with one of Drupal's stylesheets (these are used to format web pages like the one you're reading now consistently and easily) or possibly an issue with that word being falsely interpreted by the database Drupal uses to be part of a SQL (Structured Query Language) statement. (SQL is a limited kind of computer language used to get data back from databases such as Oracle, Microsoft SQL Server, etc.) You may already know all this depending on what you do for a living, but others may not. Anyway, seems this bug has been around for quite some time.

Safest thing to do is compose your comment in something like Notepad and then submit it after copy-and-pasting it. If you get the "Forbidden" message, you can navigate back to the comment page and try again after examining your comment looking for instances of "h@ving" (again, with the '@' being an 'a'), or if you have none, try removing hunks of the comment one at a time until the comment previews successfully. The last hunk of comment you removed has the culprit somewhere in it. From there, you do likewise on a smaller scale in the chunk of comment text until you identify the very word or number, etc., that is messing up the submission.

Tedious, and agreed, you shouldn't have to do all that to get a comment of any size published. Drupal could do better, but believe it or not, they are considered one of the better forum-enabling programs out there. And the price (free) is hard to beat. Still, if this issue is deterring people from posting and causing them to be discouraged and not re-visit the site, then that's a real problem for everyone.

If anyone out there has experience with a different forum package than Drupal that is easier to use and lacks these kinds of temperamental glitches, feel free to post about it or send me a note -- I'm ready to migrate us to something else. And thanks!

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