Last week the Congress of Deputies approved a motion asking the Government to make the necessary modifications so that the Civil Code contemplates guardianship and shared custody of children as a preferred modality.
When parents decide to stop living under the same roof, child custody is one of the most thorny and bleeding issues to resolve. Most of the time it was granted to the mother, but in a society that fights for equality, the logical evolution is that, in case of divorce, custody is shared by both parents. However, here there also seems to be no agreement that be shared by default.
In favor of equality
With this step you are looking for state-level legislation to avoid inequality between autonomous communities that apply joint custody by default and those that do not.
Until now, joint custody is granted only when there is an agreement between the parents, or if one of them requested it "exceptionally", but what is intended is to stop being exceptional, and raises a principle of parental equality.
Appeals to "co-responsibility" and to parents know how to agree when making the best decision for your children. Because when the couple separates they must remain parents and the priority must remain the welfare of the children.
Parents do not want to be "visitors"
Parents are increasingly involved in raising children, and when they divorce they do not want to separate from them and become "visitors" to their children; They want to live and share with them every day.
The claim is absolutely valid and fair. Children should have the right to enjoy their two parents, and for their part, parents have the obligation to share the duties and responsibilities on the education of their children.
The new modality of preferred shared custody It would grant periods of time equivalent to the father and mother to avoid that the relationship with their children is not damaged by the lack of daily contact with any of them.
There is parents who have been greatly affected by the modality that granted custody to the mother reducing the hours they shared with their children and being arbitrarily separated from them.
From SOS Dad, an association that defends shared custody in the absence of an agreement between parents, they maintain:
"A child who feels loved by both parents / families, and who perceives such emotional ties as something stable and solid, by force feels much more confident and emotionally stable than another child who is prevented from contacting one of their parents / families, and that they perceive that their emotional relationship with the latter depends exclusively on the whim of their custodial parent. "
More and more parents are asking for joint custody
Many think it is an illusion and an unreality that parents can exercise shared custody equally with the mother, that this modality does not correspond to the social reality that is lived in the upbringing in which the mother acts as the primary caregiver.
This is an idea that has changed in recent years due, in part, to the fact that women are increasingly present in the workplace and more and more parents are becoming involved in raising children at the same level as A mother can do.
Before it was unthinkable that a man would ask for custody of the children when they divorced, but in recent years every time they are more encouraged to ask for it. Shared custody is currently granted in one of every four breaks. If in 2007 it was granted only in 9.7 percent of cases, in 2015 it had risen 15 percentage points.
Is shared custody unreal?
In his column of eldiario.es, Barbijaputa makes it clear:
The problem is that we do not live in a feminist country, in fact, we are very far from that horizon. The reality is that the care of creatures continues to fall on women, and historically they, the parents, were the first to disregard this responsibility. So much so that, if the custody has always fallen to the mothers, it is not so much because they won all the trials where both parents fought to the death to be as long as possible with the children, but because the man simply did not ask to stay with them .
Also the spokeswoman of the PSOE, Dolores Galovart, has indicated that the motion has the "feet of mud" because it is based on "an advisable option in an unreal world of co-responsibility during the coexistence that does not exist."
"A harm to the children"
The 7N Platform formed by women and feminist groups, has expressed in a statement that it is in favor of shared custody provided it has been a measure agreed by the parents, but not when there is when there is no agreement between the parents.
They consider the imposition of joint custody "It is harmful to children and represents another form of violence against women. "
"The defenders of the custody and joint custody imposed base their defense on the real equality between the parents, at the time of the breakup, and forget who, up to that moment, has led to the raising of the children, the sick leave of work, the reductions in working hours ... "
And it also touches a very sensitive issue: cases in which there is gender violence:
In addition to what happens in cases of gender-based violence ?, although the law 1/2004 expressly prohibits the application of this regime in these cases, we cannot forget that in order to prove abuse, a sentence is required and sentences are not within reach of any woman who suffers violence, this is because more than 60% of the cases are not reported, 30% do not want to ratify it or accept their right not to testify, or the difficulty of the test, such as in cases of psychological violence. All this impunity would enter fully in cases where custody and custody could be imposed, being the most harmed children.
The welfare of the children, first
When parents divorce and cannot resolve their differences in a civilized way, the only ones harmed end up being the children, who in addition to feeling sad and vulnerable having broken the family shield where they felt protected, suffer in many cases the consequences of the folly parental.
Each case is different and nobody knows the children better than their own parents. For your sake, it is important that Know how to put aside the differences and make the decisions that best benefit you. What do you think about the preferred modality of shared custody in case of divorce?
