Author: Super User

May 22, 2019 by Robert Franklin, Member, National Board of Directors, National Parents Organization

This continues yesterday’s discussion of a New York Times piece that excoriates fathers for not doing their share of childcare, but ignores mothers’ failure to pull their weight in earning (New York Times, 5/4/19).

In so doing, the author, Darcy Lockman, produced one figure on the percentage of childcare done by mothers with no citation that contradicted the best survey data on what men and women do every day. Plus, she ignored all figures on how much time at the office or plant men and women spend.  And of course, she also failed to mention that, when hours spent in paid and unpaid labor are aggregated, men and women are as close to identical as statistics-gathering allows.

All that tends to maintain the popular fiction that women are done dirt by men who in turn are lazy louts, unconcerned about their children and wives.  There’s a lot of commentary in the press and among politicians to the effect that we live in very conflicted times.  That’s right; we do.  And the Times contributes to that conflict by imagining issues that don’t exist.  I understand that the message “men and women spend almost equal time in childcare and paid work and the two together are equal” won’t sell a lot of papers, but then you’d think there’d always be room for the truth, especially when the truth is good.

But Lockman’s intention is to lower still further her readers’ opinions of men.  It’s not easy, requiring her to ignore her own biases that fairly scream out from the page.

The couples offered three explanations for this labor imbalance.   

Again, there is no labor imbalance.  The only way Lockman can use that phrase is her dogged insistence that paid work isn’t part of the equation.  But the great majority of couples know better.  Partners all but invariably sort out who’s going to earn most of the money and who’s going to do most of the childcare.  If both work full-time, then some form of daycare comes into the equation. 

The permutations of who does how much of what and why verge on the infinite, but essentially no one turns a blind eye to how much time the primary source of income spends doing so.  No one, that is, except Lockman.  She pretends to be terribly concerned about “unfairness,” but never pauses to consider how unfair it would be for John to work an hour a day longer at the office than Jane and still be expected to do an equal amount of domestic work.  No, for her, unfairness is a phenomenon that only affects women.

 The first was that women take over activities like bedtime, homework and laundry because men perform these tasks inadequately. But this isn’t “maternal gatekeeping,” the theory that men want to help but women disparage their capabilities and push them out.

Actually, that’s exactly what it is.  To a ‘T.’  Indeed, one of the main ways that mothers sideline fathers in childcare is by “letting” them try it, finding their efforts wanting and then taking over.  The simple truth is that, likely due to the biological imperatives of motherhood, men often have to fight to do hands-on childcare.  That sometimes includes real conflict with Mom who relinquishes her role only begrudgingly.  If Lockman knew even a little bit about maternal gatekeeping, she’d know that what she and her interlocutors are describing is a form of it.  Instead, she casts the concept aside without explanation.

Meanwhile, one father said,

So my wife does most of their laundry. Let me do it my way and I’m happy to do it, but if you’re going to tell me how to do it, go ahead and do it yourself.

Lockman could have actually listened to him, but again, that would have interfered with her anti-dad narrative, so she ignored the fact that the man is happy to do the laundry, but not if he’s denigrated by his wife.  What would be the point?  Men and women parent differently and they keep house differently.  One is neither better nor worse than the other, but very often we see women hewing very closely to the traditional role of “queen of the house” compared to whom no man can measure up.  Women who truly want men to take an equal share of domestic tasks need to accept that the men have an equal say in how they’re done.  NOW president Karen DeCrow long ago understood the concept that, “if women want power in the workplace, they have to give up power in the nursery.”  Too bad Lockman’s not as enlightened, balanced or respectful of men.

The “other two” “explanations for this labor imbalance” are actually just more of the same, i.e. men’s and women’s differing approaches to domestic work tricked out as men’s oppression of women.

The second explanation involved forgetting or obliviousness…

A dad in San Francisco said that many of the tasks of parenting weren’t important enough to remember: “I just don’t think these things are worth attending to. A certain percentage of parental involvement that my wife does, I would see as valuable but unnecessary. A lot of disparity in our participation is that.”

Again, if we listen to the man, we learn that the disparity in the time he spends on domestic chores is mostly a function of his wife’s choices.  He wants it done differently and, rather than agreeing to do it that way, she spends more time and does it hers.

Finally, some men blamed their wives’ personalities. A San Diego dad said his wife did more because she was so uptight. “She wakes up on a Saturday morning and has a list. I don’t keep lists. I think there’s a belief that if she’s not going to do it, then it won’t get done.”

More of the same.  But whatever the reasons why mothers do more childcare than do fathers, the simple fact is that, on average, the difference requires just 29 minutes a day.  If Lockman were to admit that, she’d undermine her thesis that women are hard used and men are the reason.  That amount of time is not, for most people, reason to rush to the barricades, so of course Lockman omits the salient point.

For many decades now, certain segments of the commentariat have been doing their best to exacerbate female-male conflict.  The New York Times is a reliable part of that, one of the generals in the anti-father/anti-male army.  That it can only do so by ignoring important facts and is willing to do so speaks volumes about its editorial integrity.

But despite it all, men and women keep right on doing what they’ve always done – living together, loving each other and raising the next generation.  That they never manage to suit the editorial page of the Times seems to concern them not at all.  Who’d have guessed?

May 20, 2019 by Robert Franklin, Member, National Board of Directors, National Parents Organization

This being the New York Times and a pre- Mothers Day piece, we’re not surprised to find it astonishingly anti-dad and utterly incurious about the realities of family life and the “work-life balance.” (New York Times, 5/4/19)  Put simply, the writer, Darcy Lockman ignores the obvious, the not-so-obvious and basic common sense in order to excoriate fathers.  Doubtless, come Fathers Day, she’ll turn her sights on moms. In the meantime, as an attack on dads generally, it’s also an attack on their right to have meaningful relationships with their kids post-divorce.  After all, if fathers are as bad a bunch of ne’er-do-wells as Lockman pretends, why should they have even part-time custody of their kids?

It’s the same old complaint we read every year, usually several times a year: mothers, even working mothers pull a second shift; they do the lion’s share of the childcare and that’s not fair to them; fathers are clueless louts who not only don’t parent the kids correctly, they don’t do it very much.  Needless to say, mothers are angry about the matter.  Of course they are.

Lockman treats us to statistics.

Mothers still shoulder 65 percent of child-care work. 

In an article that’s chock full of links to other information, it’s interesting that there’s none in that sentence to a dataset.  I found it so because, as is commonly known, the Bureau of Labor Statistics has long maintained the best such set of figures in this country.  It’s called the American Time Use Survey in which people keep logs of what they do every day, broken down into numerous categories.  Two of those categories include childcare and working outside the home. 

Nowhere in the ATUS over the past 16 years do women do anything like 65% of the childcare.  In 2017, for example, mothers performed 56% of the childcare and fathers 44%.  That broke down into 2.17 hours for mothers and 1.69 hours for fathers, a difference of 29 minutes per day.  In 2003, mothers spent 2.13 hours per day in childcare and fathers 1.55 hours, a 57.8%/42.2% ratio and a 35 minute difference.  In 14 years, the difference in time spent in childcare changed by six minutes.

And paid work?  In 2017, men worked 8.66 hours per day versus women’s 7.67 hours.  That’s a split of 53%/47% and 59 minutes per day.  In 2003, men worked 8.46 hours and women 7.40, a split of 53.3%/46.7% and 63 minutes per day.  In 14 years, the difference between the time spent by men and women at paid work changed by four minutes.

Or, another way to say all of that is that there was no statistical change in the way men and women spent their time regarding paid work and childcare.  Men did more paid work, women did more childcare.

In the world of the New York Times that’s cause for outrage and Lockman doesn’t disappoint.  There seems to be a sort of pathological inability in this type of article to turn the coin over and look at the other side.  So, according to Lockman, the imbalance in childcare is unfair to women.

Why are [women’s] partners failing to pitch in more?

The answer lies, in part, in the different ways that men and women typically experience unfairness. Inequality makes everyone feel bad. Studies have found that people who feel they’re getting away with something experience fear and self-reproach, while people who feel exploited are angry and resentful. And yet men are more comfortable than women with the first scenario and less tolerant than women of finding themselves with the short end of the stick.

See what I mean?  According to Lockman, the only inequality in families is in childcare.  That there might be another in the world of paid work is an idea neither mentioned nor countenanced.  She indignantly asks why men fail to pitch in more with childcare, but the same could be asked about why women fail to do as much paid work.  But of course she doesn’t.  Sufficient unto her need for outrage are the data on childcare.  Those on paid work might interfere with that and are therefore avoided.

And then there’s Lockman’s real gripe that men’s behavior is all about privileging men at the expense of women.

By passively refusing to take an equal role, men are reinforcing “a separation of spheres that underpins masculine ideals and perpetuates a gender order privileging men over women.”

Exactly how men’s spending an hour a day more in the rat race than do women privileges them, neither Lockman nor the authors she quotes explain.  They don’t explain, I suspect, because to attempt to do so would require them to take a broader and, yes, fairer look at what men and women actually do.  When that is done, it’s impossible to escape the realization that, when all work activities – paid and unpaid – are added up, men and women spend almost identical amounts of time each day, week and year.  Given that, it’s hard to sustain a sense of righteous indignation which is what articles like Lockman’s are all about.

What publications like the NYT will never admit is that there’s actually a quite benign explanation for men’s and women’s behavior.  Men tend to do more paid work because they’re evolutionarily “hard-wired” to be resource providers.  Women tend to do more childcare because they too have a powerful biological tendency in that direction.  Are people capable of reversing roles?  Of course they are, but overwhelmingly, they don’t want to.  They tend to be more comfortable in their age-old roles than out of them.  Some 70% of men are in the workforce versus 56% of women.  Stay-at-home mothers outnumber stay-at-home fathers by a 30:1 margin according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

For men, parenting is also part of their genetic makeup, but, as Ruth Feldman’s team at Bar Elan University in Israel have demonstrated, fathers’ parenting role is secondary to mothers’.  When Mom can’t or won’t do that job, Dad can and does step in.  And when he does, he’s every bit as good a parent as she is.  But until she drops out, he’s likely to be the fill-in parent.

Seen in that light, how mothers and fathers spend their time loses both its mystery and its ability to anger.  That of course is highly unsatisfactory to the NYT that often seems to prefer men and women to be each others’ enemies, but alas for the Times, sometimes reality just doesn’t conform to our desires.

More on this next time.

May 18, 2019 by Robert Franklin, Member, National Board of Directors, National Parents Organization

Texas Child Protective Services has dropped its appeal of a $127,000 sanctions case against it (Houston Chronicle, 5/16/19).  I first wrote about the case here.

Last July, little Mason Bright, then five months old, fell forward and hit his head on the driveway.  His mother, Melissa, took him to Texas Children’s Hospital where doctors found two skull fractures and what seemed abnormal bleeding on his brain.  That spurred a “child abuse pediatrician” to say that abuse of Mason must have been the cause.  Later, better-informed medical opinions said that Mason had a rare clotting disorder that could explain the bleeding and that it’s not unusual for such a fall to cause more than one fracture.

But CPS had already acted.  They took Mason from his parents, Melissa and Dillon Bright, and placed him 40 miles away with a relative.  That arrangement didn’t work out and soon Mason was back with his parents.  The Brights had understood that his placement with the relative was temporary, so, when a caseworker contacted them to ask how the little boy was, they happily responded with updated medical information and happy-child photos.

All was well for over three weeks.

Then suddenly, CPS appeared at the Brights’ door and took Mason into foster care.  After a lapse of 22 days, they’d gone to Judge Michael Schneider and demanded an emergency hearing, at which they demanded an order taking the child from his parents.

When the Brights were finally allowed their day in Schneider’s court and informed the judge what CPS had done, Schneider was none too pleased.  Among other things, he called CPS’s actions “illegal, fraudulent and unreasonable,” and ordered it to pay the Brights and their attorneys $127,000 in sanctions.

That was six months ago.  CPS appealed and has now dropped that appeal.  Why?  That’s uncertain, but a good guess has little to do with the boilerplate claims by CPS spokesperson Patrick Crimmins.

“With so many other CPS cases pending in Harris County that demand our attention, we have decided to forgo an appeal and to focus our attention on those children and families, and their needs,” said agency spokesman Patrick Crimmins. “We will have no additional comment on this matter.”

We’d all like to believe that, but there’s another, more likely explanation.

 Had the court of appeals ruled against them it could have set a precedent that would make it easier for other families to win sanctions in similar cases.

When Judge Schneider first hit CPS with the sanctions, the agency’s lawyers claimed he had no power to do so.  What their theory was at the time was unclear.  But what now seems apparent is that the judge exercised his authority appropriately and CPS doesn’t want an appellate court so stating.  The court in question governs the district courts of the City of Houston, the state’s largest city.  So CPS’s leeway with parents would be officially hamstrung throughout that population.  More importantly, other appellate courts throughout the state might follow the Houston’ court’s lead.  CPS preferred to keep its head down and out of sight to the extent possible.

Sadly, the cynical view is the one that sounds most accurate to me.  Texas CPS doesn’t have the most savory reputation in the state, a fact made concrete by Federal Judge Janis Jack’s scathing opinion and order against the agency almost three years ago.  Attorneys for the Brights are similarly dismayed.

But the agency still hasn’t admitted wrongdoing, a fact that irked the family and their attorneys.

 “To this day, they just can’t admit that they screwed up — to me that’s the saddest part for all of the children in Harris County,” said Stephanie Proffitt, one of the attorneys representing Melissa and Dillon Bright. “They could have at least said we may have messed this one up and we’ll do better next time. Instead they’re basically taking no responsibility. Shame on them.”

To be clear, whatever the medical facts of Mason’s injury, CPS went to court claiming an emergency when there plainly was none.  Mason had lived with his relative for a time and been back home safe and sound with his parents for 22 days, a fact known to and documented by CPS.  The idea that there was an emergency such that no notice of the court hearing had to be given to the Brights is patent nonsense.  Had they received notice, they could have appeared (as they later did) and produced evidence that Mason was healthy and in good medical condition (as they later did).  That’s precisely what CPS didn’t want, so it declared a fraudulent emergency to bypass the parental rights of the Brights and their little boy.

Judge Schneider has been angered by CPS for that very behavior in the past and with good reason.  Given CPS’s attitude about the Bright case, we shouldn’t be too surprised when another judge somewhere levies sanctions against the agency.

May 17, 2019 by Robert Franklin, Member, National Board of Directors, National Parents Organization

The same article I wrote about yesterday goes on from Scott Vogel’s story about spending $130,000 and three years of his life trying to get more than about 14% parenting time with his son and daughter (KARE11, 5/14/19).  It discusses a bill before the legislature that would establish a presumption of equal parenting.

State Representative Peggy Scott, R-Andover, is leading an effort to change the law.

She and a long list of supporters feel it’s time for the law to catch up with culture.

“It’s a winner and a loser,” said Scott. “It’s a contest to see who can be a better parent in the eyes of the court. And that’s not fair to the kid.”

Yes, the idea that there has to be a “winner” parent and a “loser” parent has always meant that, whichever parent comes out on top, little Andy or Jenny is the loser.  Going from seeing Dad every day and forming an attachment to him to seeing him only four days per month is a trauma for kids.  I hope we’ll someday look back on that routine practice of family courts and call it ‘child abuse,’ because that’s what it is.  It’s injurious to children.  That we have so much science demonstrating the fact and yet still marginalize dads in their children’s lives is not defensible, absent unfitness or abuse by the marginalized parent.

And let’s be clear.  When Rep. Scott says it’s time the law caught up to the culture, she’s right, but could have added that it’s time the law caught up to the science of children’s well-being and parenting time.  Of course state bar associations doggedly refuse to teach judges those all-important facts revealed by that science, so we can’t entirely blame the judges.  But still, it’s not as if the pertinent information is in hiding somewhere.  Ask NPO or any of the other organizations seeking family court reform and we’ll all be glad to inform anyone about what the science shows.

Scott’s bill would make a new presumption, right off the bat, that each parent receive 50 percent parenting time. A judge could then alter that if there’s proof one parent would endanger the child physically, emotionally or mentally. The judge can also change parenting time if there are logistical or geographical issues. Parents would still have the ability to agree on a schedule that works best for the child and them without the aid of a judge.   

In other words, the bill would presume equal parenting as long as both parents were fit to do the job, but judges would retain flexibility to order some other arrangement if the circumstances required it.  And, as ever, parents could always fashion their own parenting plan.

Also as ever, the state bar opposes the bill.  Of course it does.  And, as always, it ignores obvious realities in order to do so.

[Attorney Samantha] Gemberling believes a 50-50 starting point is not in the best interest of every child.

See?  Gemberling hides behind the pretense that, in some way, if the bill became law, “every child” would be stuck with equal time.  The bill is clear that that’s not the case, but, lacking any real argument with which to oppose equal parenting time, Gemberling opts for an unreal one.  The idea of simply aligning her opinions with the science on shared parenting apparently isn’t an option for her.

The same is true of custody evaluator Mindy Mitnick.

“Are we talking about a child who is nine months old who is nursing multiple times in the middle of the night?” said Mitnick. “What would happen to that if the child is 50 percent of care with the other parent? What if we have a two-year-old who hasn’t settled into the routine of sleep and toileting? It doesn’t make sense from that perspective that every child would be appropriate for an equal time share…

But that complaint too has already been refuted by the science on overnights for even the youngest kids.  Indeed, five years ago, 110 scientists worldwide joined Dr. Richard Warshak’s analysis of the pertinent research on young children having regular and frequent overnight time with both parents.  And guess what; kids who have that time with both parents tend to do better than those with just one.  As to Mitnick’s specific question, the way Dad feeds the baby when Mom’s not there is that Mom expresses milk and hands it to him to use as needed.  That’s true if the two are married and she goes on a business trip, and if they’re divorced.  Mitnick of course knows this full-well, but again, has no responsible argument to make, so she’s left with an irresponsible one.

Sadly, those who are opposed to children’s having equal time with each parent once again carried the day in the Minnesota Legislature.

Scott’s bill made it to the House floor for a vote to attach it to the House Omnibus public safety finance bill. It initially had enough votes to pass, 71-64, but as the roll stayed open for several minutes, four representatives flipped their votes, ultimately failing to pass by a tie of 64-64.

That’s undeniably bad news, but shared parenting forces will return next year.  And the year after that and the year after that until state legislatures from coast to coast follow Kentucky’s example and do what’s best for kids and what’s fairest for parents.

Win, lose or draw, we aren’t going away.  And every year, we get a little stronger. 

May 16, 2019 by Robert Franklin, Member, National Board of Directors, National Parents Organization

Here’s a balanced and informative article on the push for shared parenting in Minnesota (KARE11, 5/14/19).  NPO’s good friend, the redoubtable Molly Olson has been battling the state legislature on behalf of shared parenting for well over a decade now, so it’s good to see her getting a bit of a boost from the press.

The article starts with Scott Vogel and his donnybrook in family court.

Unable to agree on a schedule for the kids, Vogel took their case to court where he has spent three years and more than $150,000 hoping a judge will award him equal parenting time.

Needless to say, it’s utterly unconscionable that a child custody case should take that long or cost that much.  Perhaps the main reason it so often does is that one parent wins and the other parent loses.  One parent ends up with the kids 80% of the time and the other gets the remaining 20%, usually every other weekend, some extra time during holidays and maybe a month during the summer.  A presumption of shared parenting would mean that neither parent wins or loses, that each would maintain real, meaningful relationships with their children post-divorce.  So there’d be less need to fight, resulting in fewer court appearances and therefore drastically lower attorneys’ fees.  So what did all that time, money and heartache achieve for Vogel?

“I have four nights a month with my son and two nights a month with my daughter,” said Vogel.

But surely, that must mean Vogel’s a problematic parent, right?  Well, no.

In a court ordered custody and parenting time evaluation, the evaluator found no issues with physical, mental or chemical health from either parent and found both parties “willing and highly capable of providing care for the children.”

So why was Vogel relegated to about 14% of the parenting time?

Yet, the evaluator recommended giving Vogel his son 34% of the time and his daughter 25% of the time without explaining the reason for the schedule. 

In other words, the well-established pro-mother/anti-father bias of family courts is alive and well, at least in the court Vogel finds himself in.  The judge has yet to decide the matter finally, but has the evaluator’s report and recommendations.

Fathers have had a remarkably hard time cracking the family court system that routinely sidelines them in the lives of their children.  Back in the late 90s, they thought they’d had a breakthrough when they were successful at amending state laws to include laundry lists of considerations judges were required to weigh before deciding custody and parenting time.  Surely, the thinking went at the time, when all those factors were considered and both fathers and mothers came out well enough, judges would conclude the obvious – that equal or near-equal parenting time was appropriate.  Minnesota was one such state.

There are 12 factors evaluators must look at in determining what’s in the best interest for the child.

However, according to one of the only studies of its kind in Minnesota looking at divorce cases from seven counties, the average parenting time for dads was 36 percent.

In fact what judges tend strongly to do is to weigh the various factors and, if one parent comes out slightly ahead, then that’s the parent who gets sole or primary custody.  So, if 11 of the Minnesota factors end in a tie between Mom and Dad and one weighs slightly in Mom’s favor, then the kids lose a meaningful relationship with Dad.  Make sense? It wasn’t supposed to be that way, but that’s the way it is.  When it comes to custody and parenting time decisions, judicial discretion has a way of meaning kids lose their fathers.  One-third of the children of divorce in this country have little or no contact with their fathers.

I’ll have more to say on this tomorrow.

May 15, 2019 by Robert Franklin, Member, National Board of Directors, National Parents Organization

The recent Nebraska case of Dowding v. Dowding gives us a good opportunity to take a second look at our fairly invariable support for equal parenting.  This blog has always recognized that there are plenty of instances in which equal – or even shared – parenting either cannot work or isn’t in a child’s interests.  Serious child abuse is one example, parental unfitness is another and significant geographic separation of the parents is another.  None of those is present in Dowding and yet the court’s decision to grant primary custody to the father isn’t clearly wrong.  Neither is it clearly right.

Timothy and Cameo Dowding were married for about three years, but had an ongoing relationship well before that.  They had a son, Treton, in 2010, but separated in 2016.  Because they weren’t married at the time Treton was born, they both signed an Acknowledgement of Paternity to establish Timothy as his father.

So it was altogether strange that, when their divorce pleadings were filed, Cameo alleged that Timothy wasn’t Treton’s dad and demanded genetic testing.  The court refused the request because, under Nebraska law and the circumstances of the case, the only way to rescind an Acknowledgement of Paternity is to produce evidence that it was brought about by “fraud, duress or material mistake of fact.”

The question then arose how it would be possible for the child’s mother to be the victim of a material mistake of fact.  After all, as this blog has said many times, unlike men, women almost invariably know with whom they have intercourse.  That means they know who their child’s father is or, at the very least know that they can’t be sure.  In the latter instance, signing an Acknowledgement of Paternity would be inappropriate and probably illegal.

Interestingly, the Nebraska Court of Appeals made much the same point when quoting an Indiana court.

[O]nce a mother has signed a paternity affidavit, she may not use the paternity statutes to deprive the legal father of his rights, even if he is not the biological father.” The court reasoned that “a woman always has the information necessary to question paternity prior to signing the affidavit. A man, however, could easily sign an affidavit without awareness of the questionable nature of his paternity.

So Cameo’s effort to rescind the Acknowledgement rightly came to naught.

That left the issue of child custody.  The evidence adduced in court left little doubt about who was the better parent and who provided the child with the better home environment.  Cameo’s work history was unstable in the extreme and she’d chosen to remain unemployed for two years due, she said, to uncertainty about the outcome of the custody matter.

No such considerations kept Timothy from continuing his employment with the BNSF railroad.  Plus, his mother Sharon not only worked at Treton’s school, she was always available to fill in when Timothy couldn’t do hands-on dad care due to employment conflicts.

Most importantly, Treton seems to have been a happy, smart, well-adjusted little boy who had many friends.

Sally Agena testified that she is the Syracuse Public Schools’ guidance counselor for kindergarten through the eighth grade. She described Treton as happy, “spirited,” “chatty,” with a “good heart,” and “friendly.”…

Kathleen Weiler testified that she is Treton’s second grade teacher. Weiler described Treton as “a very smart little guy” who is an average to above-average student and is friendly and well-liked. She expressed no concerns regarding any behavioral issues and stated that Treton appeared to be happy.

So, living with Timothy, Treton was doing well and interrupting that arrangement could have caused problems for him.  Cameo’s living arrangements weren’t the best, but she is clearly a loving, caring parent, however hostile she’s been toward Timothy.  Under those circumstances, I’d be calling loudly for an equal parenting-time order.  As long as both parents are fit and loving, that’s the way it should be as I’ve said many times.  Yes, the two lived about 45 miles apart, but that fairly short distance shouldn’t stand in the way of a child having a full relationship with each parent.

But there was a problem.

In this case, both parties testified that they are unable to communicate effectively with each other and both parties expressed that they would be unable to share parenting time equally with Treton and effectively co-parent.

In short, neither parent wanted equal parenting time.  They did so because they couldn’t get along well enough to make such an arrangement work.  It’s similar to a parenting plan filed by two parents for unequal parenting time.  They know best what they can do and what they can’t, what their schedules permit and what they don’t.  Generally speaking, a court will rubberstamp the agreement of parents.

But, while both Nebraska courts gave sole legal and physical custody to Timothy, their reasoning suggests something a bit different.  Both courts seemed to “hang their hats” on the fact of the two being unable to make equal parenting work.  To me that suggests the assumption that equal parenting is the default position in the case of two fit parents, an assumption from which a court can deviate if necessary, but an assumption all the same. 

And of course that’s very much what the Nebraska Supreme Court did in the case of Leners v. Leners that I reported on here.  Its language there strongly suggested that it was stepping back from previous case law that presumed against shared parenting.  Higher courts never like to simply overrule previous decisions, preferring to erode their impact over time.  It may just be that the Leners wording was heard loudly and clearly by the lower courts and that all are moving, albeit slowly, toward a de facto presumption of shared parenting.

National Parents Organization wishes our readers and supporters a happy Mother’s Day.