Advantages And Disadvantages Of Co-Parenting

“For parents who are having great difficulty sharing parenting responsibilities without becoming embroiled in conflict, legal and mental health professionals may help to create detailed parenting plans that limit parents’ interactions with each other and structure transitions with their children at a neutral site.”

Edelman, Hope. “The Myth of Co-Parenting: How It Was Supposed to Be. How It Was.” Writing and Reading Across the Curriculum. 10th ed. Eds. Laurence Behrens and Leonard Rosen. New York: Pearson Longman, 2008. 320-327.

     The purpose of this paper was to give some insight into the vicious battles that take place over child custody. It is important to mention that raising children is difficult even with two parents, now when there is only one parent the difficultly increases by leaps and bounds. The idea of joint custody seems to sound like a good solution however, Smith (2003) stated

Joint Legal Custody is the most common and is described as that both parents have the rights to make major decisions for the child. This is includes education, religion, and health care. This is also called Co-parenting. The set back to this arrangement is that both parents will not be able to agree on certain decisions that need to be

One thing that almost everybody will have to deal with at least once in their lifetime is parenting. In parenting, both parents are needed to make the job easier on themselves, their marriage and their child. In the essay The Myth of Co-Parenting: How It Was Supposed to Be. How It Was. by Hope Edelman, Edelman tells her experience with co-parenting. Edelman, along with many women, initially believed that co-parenting was possible. She soon figured out, however, that it was not a realistic goal. Some points that Edelman hits in the essay are the gender roles and societal expectations in parenting, being the nurturer versus being the provider, and how poor communication can ruin

The Reasons to be against co-sleeping, parents need to bond with each other, talk about their day, and just cuddle. It would establish a better sleep schedule for the parents and the baby.

The article goes into great detail over the fact that co-teaching, when implemented correctly, has the potential of really enhancing the learning of all students (Conderman & Hedin, 2014, p.359). Before any co-teaching can happen though the article elaborates on the fact that a teacher needs to know who their students are. And when differentiating instruction a teacher needs to be able to address a “students’ unique strengths, interest, skills, and readiness” (Conderman & Hedin, 2014, p. 353). After all helping each child learn, whatever that looks like, is the ultimate goal, and this article shows how teachers can do this with a co-teacher.

In her article “The Myth of Co-Parenting: How It Was Supposed to Be. How It Was”, author Hope Edelman claims that perhaps the ideal, balanced, and harmonious marriage that many couples yearn for is merely an unachievable myth. Edelman’s anger and frustration drives her essay as she recounts her childhood, analyzes societal gender roles, and narrates her own relationship in order to explore the concept of shared responsibility in a marriage.

one parent while living with the other, all create a challenging new family circumstance in which

In “The Myth Of Co-Parenting: How It Was Supposed To Be. How It Was.,” Hope Edelman lays out the many obstacles she and her husband, John, had to overcome in their first years of marriage. She admits that from the beginning she assumed that all responsibilities would be split 50/50: if she contributed to the household income, he would contribute to helping out with childcare and housekeeping. But because John was in the midst of starting a new business and was working up to 92 hours per week, Edelman quickly realized how wrong her assumption was. As her own work hours started to dwindle down to about 18 per week, Edelman started to become extremely angry with the way her household as being run. She wanted John there to help her make decisions,

For the first five years of my childhood, I was raised in a single parent home. My mother would have to work harder to provide anything that was needed for me and my other siblings. But that changed when my father came back into our lives when I turned six. From that point on our family structure took a drastic change for the better. My mother didn't have to work as long as before, so we were able to see her more often. Having two parents at home caused the quality of our lives become better than it was before when only one parent supported us. For many households, however the reality is that only one parent during their upbringing. This does have a rather big effort on them in the life of the child and the parent who is raising the child. A single parent household harms the parent and the child.

From my research when dealing with child custody there are four different types of issues and those four have incommon is that it’s a custody battle over a child or children. The first type is legal custody where the parent has the right to make decisions about the child's upbringing, The second type is physical custody where the parent has the right to

"shared parenting" is a controversial topic in family law. It generally refers to the presumption that children of divorced or separated parents should spend an equal (or almost equal) amount of time with each parent. The concept has largely been promoted by fathers' organisations that contend that a child's life is enhanced if both parents continue to be significantly involved in the child's life following separation or divorce.

Parents need to maintain the daily schedule. This is most difficult for the parent who does not have primary custody of the child. The non custodial parent must try to accomplish a schedule of their own that must include the needs and wants of the child. Depending on the work situation of this parent, it can be a quite difficult task. “The finding that decreased income was associated with higher divorce adjustment for men but not for women was inconsistent with findings that divorced women suffer financially to a greater extent than divorced men” (527 Plummer). With this fact, it is known that single-parenting affects a woman more heavily that it would a man. If the custodial parent is constantly trying to keep up with the demands of their job, this will affect how much time the parent and child will spend together. The attachment many children develop with their father by the preschool years makes them sensitive to changes in the amount of time they spend with him and interact with him. A younger child cannot always understand who their father really is. This leaves fathers feeling desperate for time with their child. When the father spends time with his children, he is liable to stretch the time they have together by taking the children home later, which causes stress for the mother because she has such negative feelings toward the father. This becomes “fuel” for confrontations with the father.

In sole custody, a single parent provides shelter and makes all important decisions for the child. In joint legal custody, the child lives with a single parent but decisions are agreed upon by both. Finally, in joint physical custody the child lives with each parent for equal periods of time and important decisions may be made by either one, or both parents (Furstenberg 32).