Today nearly half of all babies born today will spend some time in a one-parent family. Each year more than 1 million children experience the divorce of their parents. According to the Census Bureau, in 2003, more than 40% of children in the United States were living with only one biologic parent due to the divorce of their parents.

Divorced parents have continuing responsibility for being involved in raising their children while having far less control. Each parent is involved in the raising of the child but although the marriage has been dissolved the joint parental relationship is not. To put it another way, one parent is never completely free of from the other (Wallerstein & Blakeslee, 2003).

There are several varieties of custody. Custody arrangements include physical custody, where the child lives, as well as legal custody, who is responsible for the decisions in a child’s life. Each type of custody, whether sole or joint, has it advantages and disadvantages. Shared parenting is becoming a increasingly popular choice in child custody, which today consists of more than 20 percent of living arrangements after divorce (Crosbie-Burnett, 1991). There are a few reasons why this trend is growing. First, men are no longer content with just being an occasional visitor in their children’s lives. Fathers want, and should have, a more primary role in raising their kids. Second, the number of mothers who have to work full time is growing. In other cases it has become a fair ruling for a judge to make in a custody battle between two perfectly competent parents (Karpf & Shatz, 2005).

The sharing of child raising between parents is called joint custody. There are two types of joint custody, joint legal custody and joint physical custody. In a joint legal custody arrangement the children have one primary residence, but the major responsibilities of the kid’s care like school, health care, and religion are a shared decision between the parents. Joint physical custody has the same criteria, except the children have two primary residences. The children split their time between the mother and father’s homes. This arrangement can take on different forms, from staying at one parent’s home during the summer and the other parent’s home during the school year, to changing homes every other day.

There are many advantages to joint custody. It gives children the opportunity to build a good relationship with both parents, and if the joint custody agreement was voluntary, the parents generally get along. A positive effect of joint custody is time with the children is shared on a more equal level between the biological parents. This means that one parent won’t become labeled the "fun" one while the other becomes the "disciplinarian." It is common often in sole custody agreement the parent who sees the kids every other weekend buys them gifts, takes them on special outings, and rarely enforces rules to make up for lost time. Thus, leaving the children feeling that the custodial parent is "mean" because they are the ones who set rules, and discipline (Crosbie-Burnett, 1991). The children have a more positive feeling about the division of their time between parents if they have some input in the decision on the time split (Kaganas & Diduck, 2004).

Although, as Kaganas and Diduck (2004) noted, nothing’s perfect. Children of joint custody do not have any consistency in their lives. They are bounced between two households and have two of everything: two bedrooms, wardrobes, toys, and other possessions. Joint custody can also make it more difficult for children to stay focused in school if they are shuttled between two homes during the school year. This also makes it harder for parents to keep track of homework assignments.

In the end, parents must weigh the pros and cons of the custodial agreement. Most importantly both parents must realize that they must communicate and cooperate for this type of arrangement to truly work.

Crosbie-Burnett, M. (1991). Impact of joint verses sole custody and quality of co-parental relationship on adjustment of adolescents in remarried families. Behavior Sciences and the Law, 9(1), 439-449.

Karpf, M., & Shatz, I. (2005). The divorce is over -- what about the kids? American Journal of Family Law, 19(1), 7-11.

Kaganas, F., & Diduck, A. (2004). Incomplete citizens; changing images of post-separation children. Modern Law Review, 67(6), 959-981.

Wallerstein, J.S., & Blakeslee, S. (2003). What about the kids? Raising your children before, during and after divorce. New York: Hyperion.