Shared Parenting News.
The posts below are a selection of the most recent shared parenting news. To view our archived blog from our old website, please visit our Blog Archive.
The Difficult Conversation This Evening: Can AI Assist Fathers in Navigating Relationship Conflicts?*
Organizations such as the National Parents Organization are working to change the structures surrounding separated and divorced parents: family law, shared parenting policy, institutional practices, and the assumptions that shape how fathers and mothers are treated.
That work is essential, though structural change takes time. Meanwhile, there is an individual father who has to get through his day and his week.
Announcing the Inaugural NPO Champion for Children Award Recipients
The landscape of child custody law in the United States is undergoing a vital transition toward rebuttable presumptions of equal shared parenting. To honor the leaders driving this change, National Parents Organization (NPO) is thrilled to announce the creation of the Champion for Children Award.
Kids Need Both: Why Equal Shared Parenting Matters for Every Child
"I love you both. Please don't make me choose."
A child should never have to say those words. But every day, in family courtrooms, lawyers' offices, and quiet back seats on the way to handoffs, children carry a weight no child should carry.
Children don't ask for their parents to separate. They don't sign the papers or pick the lawyers, and they don't choose the schedule. But they live with every decision made about them, often affecting them for the rest of their lives.
It's Nice to Be Recognized for Our Effectiveness—Even by Our Opponents: Why "The Co-Parent Trap" Misses the Mark
It is not every day that a law review article opposing equal shared parenting includes a glowing tribute to National Parents Organization. But in a recent paper published in the Brooklyn Law Review, law professor Daniel Bousquet singles out NPO as the "leading organization in the campaign for equal parenting time". He goes on to observe that NPO has been "wildly successful in its efforts to obtain the long-elusive prize of presumptive equal parenting," highlighting our landmark legislative victories in states like Kentucky, Missouri, Florida, Arkansas, and West Virginia.
While we certainly disagree with Professor Bousquet’s conclusions, we appreciate the candid recognition. It is gratifying to know that even critics of shared parenting recognize the momentum and effectiveness of NPO’s grassroots advocacy.
Disarming a Manipulative Co-parent: Part 2 – The Redirect
Manipulative co-parents thrive on pulling you into arguments about you instead of your child. Every minute spent defending yourself is a minute you're no longer solving the problem that actually matters.
The goal isn't to "win" these exchanges. It's to redirect them back to parenting while protecting your credibility, peace of mind, and your child's well-being.
NPO's Child Support Work is Producing Results
Good news! Effective advocacy yields results.
National Parents Organization has been increasingly engaging in the hard work of reforming child support laws and policies to create more fairness in the program, to remove barriers to shared parenting, and ensure that both parents have the financial resources necessary to raise their children.
Disarming a Manipulative Co-parent: Part 1 - The Reboot
Frequently, parents reach out to me because they feel they and their children are being manipulated by their co-parent. Such behavior can leave you feeling vulnerable, exhausted, and defeated.
If your co-parent is hellbent on derailing your well-intended co-parenting efforts, what do you do? Is there anything you can do?
As a parent, you have rights. If you long to reclaim your parental rights and put an end to co-parenting manipulation, read on. You can redirect this damaging behavior back to a place of respect and protect your rights and the rights of your child.
Before we get into dealing with your co
News From Our Northern Neighbors: The Risks of Bill C-223: Why “Keeping The Children Safe Bill” May Do the Opposite
Late last year, private member’s Bill C-223, the “Keeping The Children Safe Act,” was introduced in the Canadian Parliament. If passed, it would fundamentally reshape family law by rendering claims of parental alienation—the process where one parent manipulates a child to reject the other—inadmissible in family court. Furthermore, the Bill would prohibit court orders that reverse custody in response to extreme cases of alienation, ban reunification therapy intended to repair the child-parent bond, and remove the requirement for corroborative evidence when claiming intimate partner violence (IPV). Additionally, it would significantly reduce barriers for a custodial parent to relocate without the consent of the non-custodial parent.
Why It’s a Bad Idea to Bring Family or Friends into your Co-parenting Disputes
I know it sounds good on the surface. You and your co-parent can’t communicate but you need to. So you ask parents, siblings, or close friends to help mediate your interactions with each other. What’s wrong with that? Don’t they say it takes a village to raise a child?
Well, let me put it this way, bringing in loved ones to handle your messy communications is akin to the alcoholic who leans on family and friends to solve their disfunctions. Those loved ones are referred to as codependents. More on that in a minute.
When Something Bad Happens to Your Co-Parent: A Moment That Shapes Your Child for Life
When parents separate, it’s tempting to believe that what happens to your former partner is no longer your concern. Emotionally, legally, and logistically, many parents feel they have closed that chapter of their lives. The divorce is final. The households are separate. Each parent is responsible for their own choices and consequences.
Grandparent Alienation
Edward Kruk, MSW, Ph.D.
Grandparent alienation shares many of the essential features of parental alienation. This includes the “programming” of a grandchild by a parent or parents to denigrate the grandparent, in an effort to undermine and interfere with the child's relationship with the grandparent. It does not pertain to those cases where a child has been victimized by abuse, and the child is fearful of the grandparent as a result. The two main features of grandparent alienation are the child’s unjustified rejection of and refusal of contact with the grandparent, and the parents’ abusive strategies to denigrate the grandparent.
Does Shared Parenting Hurt Mothers Financially?
One concern that has been raised about presumptions of equal shared parenting is that they create financial hardship for mothers. Most states’ child support guidelines have parenting time adjustments—that is, they adjust the amount of child support ordered based on the amount of time the child has with each parent. Many of these states have seriously flawed parenting time adjustments, of course, as the 2022 NPO Child Support and Shared Parenting Report Card documents.
How to Insulate Yourself from a Co-parent’s Verbal Attacks
I am a huge advocate for collaborative co-parenting and honestly believe that most parents can achieve it with the right mindset and by treating their co-parent the way they wish to be treated. While it happens at varying speeds, most parents eventually graduate from hostile interactions they may have engaged in during the divorce to relative civility once the legal proceedings are behind them.
Over time, most parents release at least some of their hurt, anger, and disappointment toward their former partner. They swallow their pride, learn to pick their battles, and accept that they can’t control everything in order to keep the peace.
Your Co-parent is a Narcissist… Now what?
Not a day go by without at least one co-parent coaching client telling me their co-parent is a narcissist. It has to be the most common adjective parents in conflict use when describing each other. But…
What is a Narcissist?
First, Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD) is a recognized mental health condition. If you do a quick internet search, the clinical definition involves a person who has…
an exaggerated view of their self-importance / arrogance
a profound lack of empathy
and a sense of entitlement / lack of accountability
(Some of) What I Learned at PASG
Earlier this month, I had the pleasure of attending the Parental Alienation Study Group’s conference in Toronto. For those who don’t know, PASG is the premier parental alienation research organization in the world. I expected much from the conference and I wasn’t disappointed. I want to highlight here just a few of the important things I learned more about at this important event.
Kentucky’s Equal Custody Law Shows Why America Needs Shared Parenting Presumptions
The Wall Street Journal recently spotlighted Kentucky’s groundbreaking equal custody law in an article titled “The Equal-Custody Experiment.” The piece confirms what advocates of shared parenting have long known: children benefit when both parents are fully involved in their lives, and families are stronger when courts presume that mothers and fathers share custody equally.
More Good News on Shared Parenting and Domestic Violence
Critics of presumptions of equal shared parenting often raise the spectre of increased family violence, both intimate partner violence and child maltreatment. To motivate this concern, they frequently relate a horrific story of a family violence. This strategy for attacking the shared parenting movement is emotionally powerful but evidentially very weak. One can always find some terrible story to tell about family violence no matter what presumptions the state has about the custody of children.
What we need to do is look at the data. What do reliable statistics show about the connection between presumptions of equal shared parenting and family violence?
The bottom line is that we can find no jurisdiction in which the establishment of a rebuttable presumption of equal shared parenting has increased rates of either intimate partner violence or child maltreatment.
Is Parallel Parenting Right for You?
Let’s be honest. Not every divorced parent can co-parent with a former partner. It sounds great—working together, communicating calmly, putting the kids first. But what happens when your ex treats co-parenting like a courtroom or an opportunity to abuse you?
That’s where parallel parenting can be a viable option. And while it can be a lifesaver in some situations, it’s not the gold standard—it is better reserved as either the last resort or the only choice.
An Equal Parenting Info Hub
By Emma Johnson
While I’ve been advocating for equal parenting for separated families for more than a decade, this year I doubled-down on what I see as a void in the equal parenting space: A hub of information on policy, research, and culture related to separated families.
So, I created Best Interest.
Are Fathers More Replaceable than Mothers?
What does this graph represent?!
Let’s give some background first. The picture is an ngram—a representation of the frequency with which a word or phrase is found in Google’s vast library of digitized books and articles. This ngram shows the frequency of two terms since 1940. The full graph, only part of which is shown here, indicates that neither term was found with any frequency in published writings before 1940. In the 1940s and part of the 1950s, they were both found with about the same frequency. But by the late 1950s there was an increasing gap in the frequency with which these two terms appear—a gap that expands significantly from around 2000 on.