How do you make parenting a priority when devastated by a relationship break-up?
GEMMA AND Mark Turner are baffled as to why they are considered abnormal – not because they have separated but because they co-operate fully and cheerfully in the shared parenting of their two young children.
There has been no squabbling over access, they agreed on maintenance payments, they communicate all the time and the four of them still celebrate all the significant occasions such as Christmas, birthdays, mother’s day and father’s day as a family together. As far as their children, Morgan (eight) and Megan (six), are concerned, they are best friends.
But many adult acquaintances find it strange that they haven’t a bad word to say about each other. “It is so sad that people expect me to hate him for no other reason than we separated,” says Gemma.
When their four-year marriage broke down in 2007, it was heart-breaking. “I thought I had the dream and the dream was over. I didn’t have a clue who I was and how we were supposed to do this – live in separate houses and raise our children.”
However, they promised each other that they would both be there 100 per cent for their daughters. Although Gemma (35) and Mark (40) come from very different backgrounds, they wanted the same thing for their children. Her parents have been happily married for 45 years, whereas Mark’s separated when he was two and he grew up with his father.
“Family would not have been as important for him as it was for me,” says Gemma. “But when we separated, it was important to me that my children have as close as possible to what I had growing up – and Mark swore his children would never lose out the way he did when he grew up.”
She moved out of the house they owned in Cork and returned to her parents’ home because otherwise Mark would probably have had to go back to his native Wales (they met when he came to Ireland on a rugby trip in 2000) and that would have been Gemma’s “ worst nightmare”.
Unlike some women who seem to wish their ex would drop off the face of the Earth, she says, “I couldn’t imagine rearing my children without him. I know Mark is a good dad and he knows I am a good mam and in the middle of it we had to figure out how to do it.”
It was easy to get legal advice about property and money when they first separated, she points out, but there was nowhere to go for guidance on their biggest concern – how they were going to raise their children.
Research consistently shows that the way parents manage their separation is key in determining its effect on children and that, generally, shared parenting is the best solution for children post separation.
Now Parents Plus, a charity specialising in evidence-based parenting courses, is addressing the lack of advice and support for shared parenting in Ireland. It has devised a six-week “Parenting When Separated” programme that is being rolled out nationally.
Some 20 different agencies throughout the State have been trained to deliver the programme, designed to be a practical, positive course for parents who are preparing for, going through, or who have been through separation or divorce. It is hoped that professionals dealing with separating couples, such as solicitors, mediators and judges, will encourage them to avail of the course.
There were almost 88,000 divorcees and more than 116,000 separated people living in the State at the time of the 2011 Census, according to figures released by the Central Statistics Office last March.
Some aspects of shared parenting are hard to put into practice, acknowledges John Sharry, co-founder and director of Parents Plus and HEALTHplus columnist. A parent can be very wounded by the relationship breakdown and not talking to the other parent. “But that doesn’t help your children,” he stresses. “The silent treatment is very damaging to children.”
The programme has been piloted with groups of 10-15 separated parents in four different centres, and feedback has been very encouraging, reports co-author Michelle Murphy. But one thing it showed was that the notion of separated couples attending a group together was not always the ideal.
Part of the programme encourages people to reflect on how they, personally, are coping with separation and it was observed this was “somewhat difficult if you were there with your ex-partner”. Now, although both parents are strongly advised to do the course, those running it recognise that some might find it easier if they do it in parallel, in different groups, while continuing to communicate outside the group.
Is there any point in one parent doing the course if the other refuses to? “Yes definitely,” says Murphy. “There is no doubt in my mind, if one person within the dynamic of what is going on tries to make things a little bit better, or to approach things differently, it will have a knock-on effect on relationships.”
Two facilitators meet parents individually before the start of the programme, “to see where they are at, let them tell their story a little bit and give them a chance to connect with us; also to address some of the issues”.
They have a list of other relevant agencies that people can be referred to for particularly sensitive issues such as violence or drug use.
Murphy was also struck, during the pilot course, by the question of different parenting styles. “People can get quite consumed with ‘they don’t parent like I parent’ – in other words, it is the wrong way to parent.”
Yet when participants took the time to reflect on that, they began to accept that they couldn’t control what happened outside their home and their time with the child. And, when it came to the small stuff of parenting, it was okay if their ex-partner did it differently.
She also observed how some couples were only beginning to realise that they would have to continue to communicate with their ex-partner in the long term, as co-parenting is an ongoing, evolving process for children.
Separation is such a difficult time that there is a relief on both sides when they are past that and arrangements have been put in place. But children need to be kept in the loop and have routines reviewed, she stresses.
There is a tendency to contact the other parent only when something has to be done or something has gone wrong, which characterises all communication as negative. When some people in the group made an effort to reach out in a different way, she says, by regularly updating the other parent on how school or some activity went well, there was an immediate shift towards positivity.
It is really important, she believes, to have a mix of men and women in the groups so they can hear the other gender’s perspective – without it being their ex.
And the session that Murphy was most anxious about beforehand, the one looking at the different challenges for residential parents and non-residential parents, turned out to be the most striking.
She feared it might end up focusing just on one side or the other, but having the mix of men and women “was very powerful” in helping people to appreciate the different viewpoints.
For instance, while a non-resident parent, typically the father, might have a lot of free time on his hands, that time can be very lonely and painful; the resident parent might have a lot more time with the children but it is very hard work.
Murphy knows it will probably be harder to get men than women to attend – although not only would fathers, and their children, benefit but their presence also would help the group as a whole.
“I think men often feel quite isolated and don’t include themselves because they don’t give themselves the credit of how important they are,” she adds. “Both parents are hugely important for kids.”
Mark and Gemma know this and have established a routine whereby Mark takes the girls on Monday, Wednesday and Friday and every second Saturday, staying overnight each time, so that over a fortnight he and Gemma have equal time with them.
“A lot of men think that bringing up a child is mainly the woman’s job and I don’t believe that,” says Mark, an electrician who has retrained and now works as a special needs assistant in a primary school. “I do think that many men who separate use it as an excuse to be single again.”
He acknowledges that he was lucky having Gemma as the mother of his children, as she made it easy for him. “It could have been someone else and gone pear-shaped,” he says.
They have different parenting styles but they don’t disagree in front of the children. “We can have our barney outside the door but we are a united front and they know that,” says Gemma, who admits that she still thinks of the girls as her “little babies”, while Mark is keen to foster their independence.
“At times I think Gemma is maybe a bit soft and there may be times when she thinks I am a bit harsh – nothing physical,” he stresses. Typically, he does lots of outdoor activities with them, in all weathers, and leaves the “girly” things to Gemma.
As separated co-parents she believes they have achieved the best outcome of a bad situation. Even in the earliest, rawest days of the separation, Gemma says, “I hoped we would come to the place where there wasn’t so much damage done that Mark couldn’t come into my house for a coffee or that Mark couldn’t pick up the children at my parents’ house.”
She reckons they had that duty to their daughters and admits she has little tolerance now for other separated people who focus more on each other than their children.
“I have fallen out with more women . . . they’re vindictive. How can you move on and mother your children to the best of your ability when you are walking around with so much hatred for their father?”
If she and Mark had fought from day one, she says, everybody around them would have been “jumping on the bandwagon” – taking sides and justifying hatred. “But because we didn’t, it has made our separation so much easier.”
She never told even her parents about why she and Mark had separated. “I went for counselling – I took it where it needed to go,” says Gemma, a counsellor herself, currently working with drug addicts.
However, both she and Mark say they pay a price for their harmonious parenting relationship when it comes to dating other people.
“They can’t cope with it – they think the door is open to us getting back together,” says Gemma, who has not had a long-term relationship since the separation. “Whereas I know we get on so well because that door is closed.”
Prospective boyfriends would be much more comfortable if she hated Mark. She gives a new date about four weeks: unless she has had a massive fight with Mark during that time, he’s gone.
Mark also finds with girlfriends that “it is not long before it gets in the way”. He has always introduced any woman he is seeing to Gemma.
“I always tell them nothing is going to change between me and the girls and my ex-wife. What is happening is very positive for the children – they love me and they love their mam.”
The girls were so young at the time of separation they don’t remember their parents being together. In fact they were amazed, says Gemma, when they came across a wedding photo album while she was unpacking boxes in their new home. “I took it for granted they knew we were married.”
Lots of questions followed. She acknowledges that the temptation is to tell her children that the break-up of the marriage wasn’t her fault.
“But what purpose is that going to serve – meeting my need and tainting their impression of their dad? Or, if Mark said, ‘it had nothing to do with me, your mum’s a lunatic’? You have to park it.”
Gemma recalls how she was on holidays with the girls in Madrid last year, when she overheard a boy at the swimming pool asking Morgan where her dad was. Gemma’s instinct was to jump in and divert attention.
“My pulse started racing and I was thinking I wanted to protect her, but then realising I can’t. And Morgan said ‘Our dad?’ as if why would he be there.
“The boy repeated: ‘Where’s your dad’. And she said: ‘Our mammy and daddy are not together but they are best friends.’
“I texted Mark and said ‘Job done’.”
swayman@irishtimes.com
SIX KEY TIPS FOR PARENTING AFTER SERERATION:
1. Take steps to manage your own hurt about the separation and to ensure you are personally coping.
2. Work constructively with your former partner on parenting issues.
3. Maintain the quality of your parenting after separation.
4. Tune into and listen to each of your children’s individual needs.
5. Support your children’s relationship with their other parent.
6. Minimise the moves and changes in your child’s life after separation.
WHAT IS PARENTS PLUS?
Parents Plus is an Irish charity committed to developing evidence-based parenting and mental health programmes for individuals and families, and to training professionals and community leaders to deliver the programmes in their communities.
For more details of its new "Parenting When Separated" programme, a six-week course that is currently being rolled out nationally at more than 20 agencies throughout Ireland, see parentsplus.ie/separation.
