Parenting after Divorce: Guidelines for Separating Parents

Parenting after Divorce
Don Posterski

Reprinted by permission from Context, Summer, 1997, Volume 6, Issue 4. Context, a division of World Vision Canada, has as its purpose “research to make religion relevant.” The Editor, Don Posterski is responsible for the material presented here.

 The agony of divorce involves more than just wives and husbands. As men and women disentangle themselves as spouses they must also negotiate their parenting commitments. The question is not whether parents should continue parenting after divorce, but how they should do it. A pastor who is equipped to help parents work out an agreement on sharing their parenting responsibilities, will assist the entire family to move beyond the disaster of marriage breakdown. A shared parenting agreement can build the post-divorce relationships which parents need with their children, and which children need with both their parents. Traditionally…one parent gets sole custody (usually the mother) while the other parent get visiting rights. Based on the language of the legal arena, one parent is in the absurd situation of winning custody of a child as if that child is property to be owned. The other parent wins the right to visit one’s child as if the child is a stranger to be courted. The predicament is demeaning to the parent-child relationship.

It is difficult for children, young children in particular, to comprehend that the most powerful people in their universe are unable to sustain the one adult relationship that matters most to the child. Such comprehension “shakes a child’s egocentric notion that ‘Mom and Dad love each other because they love me.’” 1

Much of this pain comes from the fact that all members of a family interact in a complex system of relationships. It is through this interaction that family members “perceive and experience both each other and the external world.”2 This family system perspective helps shed light on why when divorce disrupts the relationship between a parent and a child, that child’s sense of himself or herself is in turn damaged.3 If the pre-divorce relationships which children valued before the divorce are never restored the damage can be significant and long-term.

Parenting isn’t legal

The disaster of divorce and the havoc it brings to the lives of mothers and fathers does not need to victimize children. Pastors can help separating couples realize that the nurture of their children is a parental responsibility rather than a legal decision.

While divorce, like marriage requires a legal document, “the legal process should not define the nature of the divorce any more than the legal marriage defines the nature of marriage.”4 The goal “is to get information from a lawyer to better understand your options without having the lawyer take over.”f5 The one major exception is if a spouse or children have been threatened with violence. Then immediate legal action is required.f6 An agreement determining how a couple will care for their children after divorce is different from establishing the legal ramifications of custody. Custody establishes which children live where and when and who pays. Too many couples wait on the legal process to determine their postdivorce family. In many cases a knowledgeable pastor can help parents establish a parenting agreement that clarifies how they want to parent their children once the divorce is finalized.

Sharing parenting agreements

A shared parenting agreement should be in writing. It should be spelled out as a limited partnership that establishes boundaries between the two parental households, between the two parents, and between each parent and child. The agreement should clarify how future changes can be accommodated and answer questions such as: Will the parents freely call each other? Will they play together with the children? Will they have regularly scheduled meetings? Will they attend parent-teacher conferences together? How much does each parent have to say about how the other spends time with the children? Who gives the birthday party? Who makes the doctor appointments? Who calls the teacher about school problems?7 Michael Benjamin and Howard Irving’s three year TorontoShared Parenting Project confirms that both parent and children report a high degree of satisfaction with a working shared parenting arrangement. The findings released in their book, Family Mediation, show that 83% of parents found these arrangements helpful, so much so that almost 90% would recommend it to other parents in similar situations. Overall, 60% of lawyers found the shared parenting arrangement ‘helpful’.8 Notably, say the authors, shared parenting families are “significantly more satisfied” than families who arrange their post-divorce life on the sole custody model.

Research shows adults like the fact that they choose to continue parenting after divorce rather than submitted to a court-ordered custody arrangement. They also like the fact they were involved in joint decision making around their children and they were positive about the relief from the burden of sole parenting. Children were satisfied because shared parenting usually meant a continuity of peer relations, reduction in tension at home and a sense of relief that they were no longer part of the marital battles.9

Pastors need to be prepared

Michael Benjamin points out that about 35% of couples are not ready to discuss shared parenting. They may need professional counsel in how to make the transition emotionally, financially and mechanically from being married to becoming divorced. Benjamin asks pastors to assess whether a couple is ready to talk about their family after divorce. If not the pastor can help them get counsel from someone trained in this area.10

As Director of the agency, Families in Transition, Rhonda Freeman helps families navigate through the chaos of divorce. Freeman counsels pastors to be cautious. When mediating parenting decisions they are dealing with incredibly serious and far-reaching implications. If a pastor is not trained to deal with the specifics of family mediation they need to identify support systems available and redirect couples to the types of services needed.f11 Freeman gets parents to focus on the question, “What is better: Dividing your child or working toward a plan for shared parenting?” This will help get couples to think about how they arrange post-divorce life. The way they want to arrange their post-divorce family will heavily influence how they conduct themselves during divorce proceedings.

The consequences of our conduct

Ironically, it is more how we conduct our divorces in this society than the divorce itself that seems to be most damaging to mothers, fathers, and children. Barbara Dafoe Whitehead is a noted scholar, opinion-leader, and advocate for children caught in the vice of their parent’s divorce. In her book, The Divorce Culture she explains that during the 1960s North Americans experienced a dramatic change in ideas about the individual’s obligations to family and society. “Broadly described this change was away from an ethic of obligation to others and toward an obligation to self.” People did not abandon responsibility as much as they became more aware of their responsibility to attend to their own individual needs and interests.12 An example of how this change in attitude impacts the conduct of divorce can be seen by mapping through one of North America’s most widely read columnists. “In 1957 Ann Landers defied readers to find ‘a single column in which I suggested divorce.’ By 1972 however, she was writing, ‘I no longer believe that marriage means forever no matter how lousy it is — or for the sake of the children.’”13

The result of this change in attitude was that “once parents were relieved of the obligation to preserve their marriage for the children’s sake, they were also relieved of the obligation to conduct their divorces with their children’s best interests in mind.”f14 Conduct is an issue because a power struggle often ensues with each parent feeling if they don’t grab more of the child’s time they will end up with less of the child’s love. Beleaguered parents need to know these fears are unfounded except in the most unusual circumstances. The truth about parent-child love: “Children rarely lose love for the parent they see less frequently.”15

One way to introduce a better perspective is by asking a couple to imagine future occasions in their family such as weddings, confirmations, or even the birth of grandchildren. Then explain how destructive it is for children, young and old alike, to live “with parents at war — even cold war.” While this doesn’t make the anger and hurt magically go away, parents do “acknowledge that they need to find a better way, together…for the first time they are motivated to learn how to manage better. The motivation is their children.”16

Acting in Christ’s name

Jesus spoke out against dividing a man and woman united in marriage before God. When brokenness reigns, however, we can take redemptive steps to help protect children. Pastors will serve cups of cold water to parents parched by the whirlwind of divorce when they help parents preserve the one consequence of marriage that will endure until death: their role as parents.

Divorce does not destroy the family system. It rearranges it. Shared parenting arrangements help protect the children of divorce by allowing the family to still function.

Some families need the protection of the courts to settle intractable family disputes. But for the majority of families, getting parents to realize that they can still be parents even if their marriage has to come to an end will help settle past grievances by shifting the focus of debate to the future of the children. Children will benefit when the relationship between the parents — married or divorced — is generally cooperative. Separating the issue of marital failure from parenting is important because children and parents don’t separate well. Parents trapped in the pain of divorce have no desire to inflict pain on their children. Pastoral care and good counsel can intervene to help parents work through their divorce on the basis of children first, self second.

Endnotes

1 Barbara Dafoe Whitehead, The Divorce Culture, (New York: Alfred A.
Knopf, 1997) 122.
2 Howard H. Irving and Michael Benjamin, Family Mediation:
Contemporary Issues, (Thousand Oaks: SAGE Publications, 1995)
293.
3 Irving and Benjamin, 293.
4 Constance Ahrons, Ph.D., The Good Divorce: Keeping Your Family
Together When Your Marriage Comes Apart, (New York:
HarperPerennial, 1995) 167.
5 Ahrons, 169.
6 Ahrons, 170.
7 Ahrons, 143.
8 Irving and Benjamin, 281-282.
9 Irving and Benjamin, 253.
10 Michael Benjamin, Family Mediation Specialist, Family Assessment
Mediation, and Parenting Enrichment Services (FAME), Personal
Interview, April 14, 1997.
11 Rhonda Freeman, Director, Families in Transition, Personal Interview,
April 16, 1997.
12 Whitehead, 4.
13 Whitehead, 82.
14 Whitehead, 102.
15 Ahrons, 136.
16 Ahrons, 128.
 

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