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..Shared parenting and parental alienation what does it mean







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Shared parenting


Stating that "children need two parents" and that "children have a fundamental human right to an opportunity and relationship with both their mother and father", members of the fathers’ rights movement call for greater equality in parental responsibility following separation and divorce. They call for laws creating a rebuttable presumption of 50/50 shared custody after divorce or separation, so that children would spend equal time with each parent unless there were reasons against it. They point to studies showing that children in shared custody settings are better adjusted and have fewer social problems such as low academic achievement, crime, pregnancy, substance abuse, depression and suicide, and state that shared parenting is in fact in the best interests of the child. Warren Farrell states that for children, equally shared parenting with three conditions (the child has about equal time with mom and dad, the parents live close enough to each other that the child does not need to forfeit friends or activities when visiting the other parent, and there is no bad-mouthing) is the second best family arrangement to the intact two-parent family, followed by primary father custody and then primary mother custody, and he adds that if shared parenting cannot be agreed upon, children on average are better off psychologically, socially, academically, and physically, have higher levels of empathy and assertiveness, and lower levels of ADHD, if their father is their primary custodial parent rather than their mother.
 


parental alienation

  is a social dynamic when a child expresses unjustified hatred or unreasonably strong dislike of one parent, making access by the rejected parent difficult or impossible. These feelings may be influenced by negative comments by the other parent or grandparents, generally occurring due to divorce or separation. Characteristics, such as lack of empathy and warmth, between the rejected parent and child are other indicators The term does not apply in cases of actual child abuse, when the child rejects the abusing parent to protect themselves. Parental alienation is controversial in legal and mental health professions, both generally and in specific situations. Terms related to parental alienation include child alienation, pathological alignments, visitation refusal, brainwashing, pathological alienation, the toxic parent and parental alienation syndrome, though the last term is a medical syndrome proposed by psychiatrist Richard Gardner that should be distinguished from parental alienation and is not generally accepted by psychiatrists or courts.