Duncan Fisher

I have just come across a fantastic website, reviewed in the Guardian, Equally Shared Parenting.  A mother and father, Amy and Carl, have decided to share parenting absolutely equally and to blog their way through the entire project.  They have achieved quite a following in the US.  By going all the way, they get to the heart of the matter - how true sharing requires above all that both parents relinquish ownership of traditional roles, how sharing demands complete mutual respect and how it must be founded on a belief that fatherhood and motherhood are of equal importance to children.  It confirms that maintaining sharing is a constant effort, given the pressures not to.

I also read this week the report by Gingerbread, I’m not saying it was easy, by Victoria Peacey and Joan Hunt.  This documents the real difficulties that parents face in sharing care after separation.  A lot of the same issues emerge - the power of beliefs about who is most important for the child, the constant struggles to get the right balance, the need for mutual respect.

It struck me that the oceans of advice for parents out there are almost all individually targeted - either at the mother or at the father.  But there is almost nothing about the really key issue - the art of sharing.  And sharing roles is not a lifestyle choice for many - it is a necessary adaptation to the 21st century economy.

The Good Childhood Enquiry recently stated that “above all” we need to “reverse the increase in family conflict….the heartbreak that damages so many children.”  How much conflict is generated by parents unable to work out a mutually acceptable balance of roles and feeling unsupported by each other as a result?

Fatherhood family, parental relationships, parenting, USA