In Ontario, Equally Shared Parenting Gets a Boost

Article here. Excerpt:

'From Tennessee we go now to Canada on the continuing topic of equally shared parenting. In both the state and the nation, there are bills pending before the legislatures that would establish the presumption of equally shared parenting. And in both, the presumption could be rebutted by a showing that one parent was violent or otherwise unfit. And both bills have substantial backing and momentum, although their ultimate fate remains unknown.

But what a difference a thousand miles or so can make! This article on shared parenting actually deals honestly with some of the issues involved, particularly the issue of domestic violence (The London Free Press, 3/10/10).

(As a brief aside, let me point out that the entire debate about equally shared parenting sometimes seems like nothing more than a debate about domestic violence. In that way, the anti-dad crowd has successfully highjacked the terms of the discussion. And that's a shame since actual incidents of physically harmful DV are fairly rare. As but one example, about three months ago, the government of Scotland published its most recent findings on DV in that country. It found that about 5% of men and 5% of women in intimate relationships had experienced some form of DV in the previous year. Seventy-nine percent of those had suffered no injury whatsoever or simply a "minor cut or bruise.")'