Agony of being a 50/50 mum
Women once held the upper hand in custody battles. Now fathers are winning EQUAL access – and mums are struggling to cope
EVERY mother lives for those small, joyful moments when her chil d masters something new — a book once too challenging, the telling of a joke previously stumbled over, a food devoured that had formerly been rejected.
For it’s in the gentle minutiae of a little one’s life that you really see their budding personality grow.
Imagine, then, the agonising pain of being privy to your child’s life for only half the time. The milestones missed. The l ost cuddles before bedtime. The long nights spent wondering if they are sleeping sweetly or crying out for Mummy.
This is the reality for Britain’s growing legion of 50/50 mothers, who divide their time with the children equally with their exes. It’s a growing phenomenon that — on the surface — might seem the fairest way for separated parents to organise their lives.
But it comes at an emotional price for the mothers involved — and the consequences for children are as yet untold.
Veronica Sweeney-Bird is one such mother who wishes more than anything that her two little girls were having a more relaxed, stable childhood. Instead, every other Thursday, she drops one off at nursery and one at primary school, full of foreboding as she kisses them goodbye.
A week-on, week-off shared care arrangement with her former husband is the high price Veronica has to pay for a broken marriage. And two years on from the split, she still struggles to cope with the moment she says goodbye to her girls for seven long days.
‘I so hate being a 50/50 mother,’ says the 33-year- old bar worker from Tunbridge Wells, who was married for seven years.
‘When it’s not my week to have the children, I have to try to switch off from being a mum and it’s so very hard.
‘To distract myself from the pain, I throw myself into work, working all the hours that I can to keep myself occupied.
‘When they’re not here I daren’t even go i nto the girls’ room because just seeing their clothes and toys is very painful. I know
I’ll just dissolve into tears and won’t be able to function.’
Veronica only ventures into their room the night before they are due home, to tidy up and get ready for their return.
‘ I know they’re coming back so I feel more excited than upset and can handle it,’ she says.
Though her former husband lives just a ten-minute walk away, relations are strained and there is little contact between them apart f rom a court ordered FaceTime conversation with her daughters — Ziva, five, and Tali, three — every other day while they are with him.
‘Even that is hard because Ziva doesn’t like talking on the phone and I can’t force her,’ says Veronica.
She trusts her former husband implicitly with the care of her girls, but the lack of easy communication means she knows little of what they do in their time apart. More than this, decisions about their care are often made that are out of her control. ‘I once went to pick up the girls on my Thursday and was shocked to see he had taken them to the hairdresser’s without telling me,’ says Veronica.
‘Tali’s hair had just grown long enough to tie into ponytails and now it was far too short to tie up. I was devastated.’
On Mother’s Day this year, Veronica wasn’t even able to speak to the girls, as it didn’t fall on her court-appointed FaceTime day — something, she says, she found utterly heartbreaking.
And recently her ex informed her that Ziva would be going to an afterschool judo class every Wednesday — which encroaches on her own week with the girls.
‘Ziva really enjoys it, so that’s OK,’ says Veronica. ‘But I don’t like not being part of the discussion to decide what activities my own children are going to take part in.
‘When you have children, you want to have a say in every element of their upbringing. But in my situation, that’s impossible.’ Such emotionally gruelling arrangements over childcare are becoming increasingly common in Britain. While official figures suggest that only 3 per cent of separated parents share their children’s time equally, experts say this is a gross underestimate because many arrangements are unofficial and so unrecorded.
More and more couples are agreeing to split care of their children without any intervention by the courts, according to Jane Robey, the chief executive officer of National Family Mediation, an organisation that conducts more than 30,000 mediations a year between separating couples.
‘Ten years ago, shared care wasn’t really an option,’ says Jane. ‘ Now there is a cultural shift towards fathers taking an active role in their children’s upbringing. So many men are saying they want to be involved in day-to-day parental care.’
however, Jane warns that trying to be fair to both adults can be damaging for the children.
‘It can be very hard for them, as they have to live in different homes and move from place to place continually and that can make them feel unsettled and unhappy.
‘ There may come a time when they just won’t want to go or they’ll start playing one parent off against another. When deciding on arrangements post- split, all this has to be considered.
‘Shared care has to work in favour of the child and has to focus on their needs, not just those of the parents.’
There are many potential permutations of shared care — some more difficult to bear for the mother than others. It can mean a 50/50 week-on, week-off arrangement like Veronica’s; splitting the week, with three or four days for each parent; or one parent having the children during the week and the other every weekend.
Nicola hewitt, who split from her 42-year- old police officer husband Dan in 2011 after ten years of marriage, faces the trauma of being without her children — Devon, ten, and Sonny, eight — every weekend. Instead, she must make do with being a midweek parent.
‘It made sense because my ex lives half-an-hour’s drive away and wasn’t near school, so the weekends work better all round,’ says Nicola, 42, an office manager from Kenley, Surrey.
‘But I really miss the children being in the house. I miss putting them to bed and hearing Sonny say “I love you” as I walk down the stairs.
‘I sit in the house at weekends deafened by the silence, hankering after their company and feeling like bits of me are missing.
‘After all, when you’re married, you do everything with your partner and everything is centred on the children. Then suddenly it ends and you’re ousted from your normal life. It took me two years to get my head around it.’
At first, she coped by filling the hours as best she could — focusing on her work, her five dogs( three of which she got after her husband left) and going running. But the void remains.
‘It is lonely on special days like Mother’s Day or my birthday when they’re not with me. I just try to power through the day,’ says Nicola.
‘holidays are hard, too. Three years ago, their father took them to Florida for christmas for two weeks — which they loved, of course — but I couldn’t stop crying when they arrived at the airport. It was far too long to be away from them.’
While Nicola knows her ex is a good
father, there are often sticking points when it comes to their different styles parenting. I am very outdoorsy so the children are often muddy and not in their best clothes, while he likes them to be ultra- clean and dressed nicely,’ she says. ‘I believe children should be a bit grubby and fit.’ She is left to cope with the travails of the school and working week, while her partner gets to enjoy the more relaxed weekends. I get the worst of them, as he has them when they’re not tired. I get Their grumpy sides and have to nag them to do homework.’ Nicola believes the children have Adjusted well to this set-up and enjoy having two separate lives. But even after two years of having their mother only part-time, there are still signs of neediness. Sonny often plays up when he gets home from his father’s after t he weekend, she confesses, and is a lot more clingy and attention-seeking. ‘But I know they feel secure and loved because my ex and I have a good relationship and can communicate easily and the children know their routine,’ says Nicola. And t hat’s t he key, according to Jane Robey. Communication, she says, is the key to a good shared care arrangement and is often a problem with waring couples who can’t put aside their personal differences. 'Shared parenting has to be about focusing on the children’s needs and it works best when the parents aren’t playing silly games with the children caught in the middle. ' It’s also beneficial if the parents live close to each other, so they can maintain the children’s routine to give them a sense of belonging. It’s important that the children are not being shuttled round the country or feeling isolated in one parent’s house away from everything they know. It’s not about the parents’ rights, but the children.’
It was this relentless focus on the child that Charlotte Dickinson tried to maintain when 12 months ago she separated from her partner of ten years. CHARLOTTE splits care of their five-year-old daughter Jessica with her former partner, who lives over the road. he has her three nights of the week and Charlotte the remainder.
‘It was a joint decision to split up and there was no animosity, so it made the shared care a lot easier,’ says t he 38- year- old t eaching assistant from Cardiff.
‘But it took time to adjust. on the days when Jessica was gone, the house was so quiet. In the middle of the night she’d often crawl into my bed, so when she wasn’t there I struggled to sleep.’
Charlotte soon developed coping mechanisms for the lonely nights when her little girl was away. ‘I ended up getting a cat as it was nice to have something else to come home to,’ she says. ‘And I started cooking meals for the freezer, so I wouldn’t have to cook when Jessica was here and could devote more of my time to her.
‘I also went for a long run on each of the nights that Jessica was with her dad, and made arrangements to see my friends.’
though they do differ in parenting styles — ‘I’m a soft touch, while my ex is more disciplined,’ says Charlotte — she believes Jessica benefits from the continuity of contact with both her parents.
‘It’s very hard to be apart from her, but she loves her dad and enjoys spending time with both of us. She has two sets of toys and her own bedroom at each of our places, and seems to have adjusted well to the new set-up.’
It is this maturity of attitude that more separating couples need to adopt, says Relate counsellor Denise Knowles, or children will undoubtedly suffer.
‘As children grow up, they do become less needy. But in these shared- care situations the l oss becomes acute from an early age.
‘While it can be heartbreaking, you just have to make the most of the time you’re with your child, see your time apart as time off and use it to focus on your own interests.
‘eventually we all feel the loss of our children as they grow up i nto teenagers and leave home, and we end up having to re-find our purpose aside from being parents. this is a chance to do that a little earlier.’
Veronica Sweeney-Bird, though, is yet to adopt this sunny attitude.
‘I know the girls have to see their dad, but at the end of the day I’m a mother who has to somehow learn to stop being a mother for half of my life,’ she says. ‘I’m not sure I can ever come to terms with that. I don’t know many mothers who could.’