by Clare Callow

Created on: April 23, 2008

Divorce is a terrible, stressful time for every member of the family, be they parents, children or broader family. Be in no doubt: a divorce will have a negative impact on the children of the marriage. The question is, how do you reduce the impact the split will have on the children?

Traditionally, decisions on custody reflected the roles the parents had in the home. The father brought in money, and the mother provided care: in the split, the logical result was for women to retain major custody of the children and receive maintenance. This decision had more to do with practicality than psychology. As a man was traditionally out in the world all day, it made little sense to lumber him with children, regardless of his feelings in the matter. Over time, as the results of divorced families became clear, parents and judges made efforts to take the emotional care of children and parents into account, but the decisions remained substantially the same.

Legal decisions are always slow to reflect changes in society, and it is only in recent years, with much hard work on the part of divorced fathers, that custody rights have begun to be distributed more equally between the sexes. However, traditional roles still have an amazing amount of influence on the decisions made in divorce courts.

As the child of an amicably split marriage, I am in a position to say that custody is a prickly issue in even the best of situations. As a grown adult considering having children of my own, I have been thinking a lot about the decisions and mistakes that they made. My parents did their best to negotiate a settlement that was best for me, but their arrangements still affect me today.

My parents divorced when I was 8. The split had begun around two years before, and they had made notable attempts to stick it out, including a period of living separately under the same roof, before the final split.

As a child of the eighties, I had access to plenty of information on divorce and the things that I would go through as a 'divorced kid'. My parents talked with me about the situation and did all the right things, but when it came to it, main custody was with my mother and my father had access every second weekend.

The result was that my father, despite his best attempts, became a kind of fun uncle. Seeing him so irregularly, even if it was for solid chunks of time, removed him from my home sphere, and his need to gain my approval meant that visits were 'events' rather than ordinary time together. My

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