All

Happy Divorced Family Holidays

Tips for dealing with combined family holidays

With the increasing emphasis on mediation and collaborative divorces, perhaps it stands to reason that some of those ideas are taking hold in areas of post-divorce life, like navigating the holidays.

I read an article about a woman who co-wrote a book on this subject. You'll never guess who the other co-writer was — her husband's ex wife! It's actually a nice niche for divorce information that tends to get ignored. We get hung up so much in the legal process, dividing up assets and figuring out visitation schedules that it can be easy to lose sight of the fact that kids get pulled in a lot of different directions during holidays. And that's not good.

Saving Marriages? One Size Doesn’t Fit All

I stumbled across a column in a small Georgia newspaper written by the president of the Georgia Family Council. Not surprisingly, he was advocating the benefits of sticking it out through the bad parts of a marriage and not getting divorced.

I always cringe when I hear about organizations like this. They have an agenda — usually a conservative political agenda that is religiously motivated — that I don’t care for. And you can start to get that vibe when you read the writer’s "strengthen the family" message. But rather than simply being critical on socio-political grounds, I think it’s wise to read what he has to say and then see if you agree or disagree with it on a point-by-point basis.

Tough Times For Divorcing Dads

I read a rather stirring column in Canada's National Post the other day about the difficulty many Canadian men face in their nation's legal system when it comes to child custody cases. Ironically, the piece was written by a woman, but she boldly and rather forcefully makes the point that men frequently get the short end of the stick in these cases.

She says there are statistics that back up her claim that there is a gender bias in the way the courts handle these situations, though she never cites the numbers. Still, her argument has merit on a number of levels. First and foremost, if a man is an attentive father to his children, nobody should keep him from them — especially not a court system.

Beyond that, I think the writer raises a valid concern about men being labeled as bad fathers simply because the courts more frequently award custody to mothers. Obviously, there are some guys who fit into that category, but it would be easy to paint a lot of men with that brush, and it's not fair.