Canada: Sometimes unequal works

Article here. Excerpt:

'This private member’s bill, introduced by Conservative MP Maurice Vellacott, would amend the Divorce Act to mandate “equal shared parenting” when parents split up. Courts would start from the presumption that parents share time with the kids and decision making on a 50-50 basis, and put the legal onus on parents to show that such an arrangement would not be in the child’s best interest.

Before I had a baby, I would probably have supported this legislation. Who would deny a child the right to the equal love and care of both parents? Why do mothers get custody so much more often than fathers?
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When it comes to very young children, the presumption of the bill contradicts the first law of every parenting book on Earth: Disrupt a baby’s routine as little as possible. Expert after expert advises parents to establish one sleep routine, nap routine and meal routine, and to ease young children slowly into transitions, such as moving house or mommy going back to work. They further warn that vacations — or any time away overnight from home — will prove disruptive. Indeed, what parents haven’t returned from a trip with their tots only to find that they suddenly won’t sleep through the night, or cling to your leg like Saran Wrap?
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Which brings us back to Bill C-422. Equal shared parenting would mean that very young children could be constantly shuttled back and forth between their parents’ homes. Breast here, bottle there, stay-at-home parent here, daycare there. This type of endless transitioning will do them no favours — in fact, it can do a lot of damage. Courts can already order these kinds of arrangements, even without shared parenting rules, and there is mounting evidence that the stress hurts a young child’s ability to attach to either parent, and to other people in general.

Bill C-422 would make this type of arrangement even more common at a time when other jurisdictions are questioning this model. Case in point: The Australian government, which four years ago introduced mandatory equal parenting legislation, is currently under pressure to revise its laws in the wake of several damning reports. Researchers found that not only were some children at risk of being placed in violent situations, but even children who were physically safe felt depressed, stressed and confused, and suffered adjustment problems. They also found that some fathers’ motivation in seeking shared custody was not to bond with their children, but to reduce the amount of child support they had to pay.
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I hope our lawmakers will allow other fractured families the same latitude, and defeat Bill C-422 or amend it to respect the needs of very young children, and other special circumstances. Until then, happy birthday Zara, and happy Father’s Day, Ian. You both deserve the best celebrations a daughter and dad can have.'