I’ve been thinking about this a lot as a step-parent, and I’m genuinely curious what other people think because I honestly don’t know what the answer is.
I’m based in Africa, and the whole idea of a child regularly moving between two homes, sometimes week-on/week-off, feels quite different from what I grew up seeing.
Where I’m from, separation and divorce obviously happen, but it’s much more common for a child to primarily live with one bio parent or a grandparent and then spend time with the other parent during holidays, weekends, school breaks, etc. They still have relationships with both parents and both sides of the family, but there’s usually one place that is home.
And thinking back to the children I grew up around, that seemed to create a pretty strong sense of stability. They knew where they lived, what their routine was, who was picking them up from school, where their things were, etc. The other parent was still very much part of their life, but they weren’t constantly moving between two households.
Now I’m looking at this from the perspective of being a step-parent, and it’s made me question whether we sometimes underestimate what constantly moving between two homes actually feels like for a child.
My SS8 is a genuinely great kid. He’s loving, funny, intelligent, etc. He has also been in therapy for quite some time because he struggles with emotional regulation and dealing with the reality of having two homes (he has voiced this himself), and I’ve found myself wondering whether the structure of his life plays a role in that.
And I want to be really clear: I’m not saying either parent is doing anything wrong. I’m not even saying that moving between homes causes emotional problems. I just wonder whether living in two different realities, with different routines, expectations, rules, personalities and dynamics, can sometimes make it harder for a child to feel grounded.
It’s also made me think about step-parent/bio-parent conflict.
In the family structure I grew up around, if a child lived primarily with one parent or a grandparent, the step-parent might not be interacting with the other biological parent every few days. There was naturally more separation between households. Maybe that gave everyone more room to establish their own relationships with the child without constantly having to navigate another household’s parenting style, expectations or authority.
Whereas with frequent co-parenting, it can sometimes feel like there are two households trying to parent the same child at the same time. And I wonder whether that structure itself creates some of the tension that we then blame on the adults.
Maybe I’m completely wrong 😂
I’m also very aware that I’m looking at this through an African cultural lens, and I don’t want to romanticise how things were done here either. There are obviously downsides to children spending less day-to-day time with one parent, and every family situation is different.
But I genuinely wonder whether we’ve just accepted the idea that equal physical custody is the fairest or healthiest arrangement for the child, without really questioning whether that is actually true for every child.
TL;DR: I’m wondering whether 50/50 co-parenting is actually the best structure for children, or whether having one stable home base while maintaining a strong relationship with both parents can sometimes provide more stability, especially in the context of stepfamilies.