This post is taken from the weekly newsletter “Darons Daronnes” on parenthood, sent every Wednesday at 6 p.m. You can register for it for free here.
This morning at breakfast, my eldest daughter, aged 7, asked me what I was going to do today. I told him that I was going to write an article on separated parents, “a week with dad, a week with mom”. My daughter then said: “Yes, well, it’s rare. In general, the system is rather: “All the time with mom, and weekends with dad.” Because the fathers, they are overwhelmed. » As I choked on a freeze-dried strawberry from my Special Ks, she corrected herself: “Actually, it’s not always because fathers are overwhelmed. It’s because that’s how it is. »
That’s how it is: an excellent way of summing up this state of affairs, which can be verified by the figures. In France, only 12% of children of separated parents live in “alternating”, that is to say part of the time for one, part of the time for the other. This represents 480,000 children in 2020, or 3.4% of minors. The other children of separated parents therefore mostly or exclusively live with one of their parents, most often their mother (86%). The law instituting shared residence in France dates from 2002and the percentage of those who practice it has been increasing very slowly over the past twenty years.
It so happened that this week I ran into one of my long-time friends on a bike. It’s been a good month that we repeat by SMS that we have to see each other. As we each hurried to a school, she offered me a drink ” Monday or Tuesday “. The same day, another friend from this same group of girlfriends wrote to me, giving me dates when she would be free the following week. My two friends are “alternating” and staggered: one is childless on even weeks, the other on odd weeks. What spices up conversations when trying to organize a dinner together.
2-2-5-5 or 1-1?
Over the years, they have each told me about their separation, the setting up of shared residence, their doubts, their joys and the gradual settling into a routine. One first tried to split the weeks with her ex (according to an organization worthy of Didier Deschamps, in 2-2-5-5), but the system was complicated and they preferred to opt for complete weeks. The other broke my heart when she told me about her difficulty in returning home at night to find her children’s room empty, silence instead of laughter, the blues of waking up alone in the morning. The first has rebuilt her life, and children, has moved, reorganized her daily life; the other kept the apartment, partied, met someone and now allows himself to sometimes take a babysitter the weeks when his children are there, while feeling guilty for not enjoying every moment with them.
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