#if they'd both been the same gender it would've been Unhinged to give the 'breadwinner' parent primary custody! | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

cesium-sheep · 2 months ago

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when I was little, alternating weekends and holidays read to me like a 50/50 deal between my parents, which was probably because mom was a workaholic and never spent a second of time at home that she didn't have to on weekdays anyway. and then as I got older I spent a lot of weekday afternoons at dad's anyway because his house was much closer to my school and all my friends, but he was working nights so he was usually asleep most of that time and I still had to go back to mom's in the evenings. (I tried using this convenience of proximity as weight to negotiate to move in with him instead once. she had a screaming crying meltdown about how I don't love her and I never asked again.)

but being court-allotted 96 hours out of every 672 (14%) with a handful of bonus days throughout the year is uh. not half. it's very not half. even if we subtract school and sleeping that becomes 64 of 288 (22%). he really got fucked over trying to reach escape velocity huh.

#and yet he still managed to do more for me than she could even in her wildest shitty fantasies.#ask to tag #relevant context: prior to the divorce he was a stay at home parent #he did the cooking and cleaning #and the driving us everywhere #and the keeping us company/supervised outside of school #he even coached my soccer team #if the genders had been reversed and literally nothing else had changed #that custody arrangement would've been viewed as outright criminal #or even if we lived in topsy turvy world and same sex marriage was legal before I was born!#if they'd both been the same gender it would've been Unhinged to give the 'breadwinner' parent primary custody!#instead of the one who had actually been raising the kids!#and of course no one ever asked me or my brother what we wanted #granted I was 8 (albeit already 'mature for my age')#but my brother was 12 - definitely old enough to have a valuable opinion on his own housing #(although she was perfectly happy to do whatever I wanted to my room structure-wise when we moved into a literally-new house the next year)#(so apparently I was old enough to be allowed to have *some* opinions)#(just not ones that might affect her)#a character in a fanfic had a custody arrangement that's 2 nights every week in addition to every other weekend #which even if you pretend it doesn't matter where you sleep would literally double the amount of time you get with the kid #compared to dad's allotment.

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