With all the bitterness and resentment that surrounds divorce such as alimony, co-parenting, every other weekend, and the train wreck it makes of lives in general, the notion of parental visitation is head and shoulders the most dehumanizing of all.
The mere fact that, as their father, I only get to ‘visit’ with my children is enough to make me strap TNT to my chest and walk into the nearest family court room. It’s the one piece of my divorce that I have yet to come to complete grips with.
When the Jap and I divorced in ’05 our children were 10 and 18 months old. I moved, and still live, seven miles from the home she and the Trainer live in today. Unaware of their impending living situation and ultimate marriage, I agreed to provide enough financial resources for her to stay home full time until my son was two years old. She felt, and I agreed, that at their young age stability was vitally important and the going back and forth with sleeping here one day and there the next was a tad bit much. While I could have fought for joint custody, all along I knew it would do little good and not the best thing for my kids.
Seeing a chance to keep their docket moving forward, the court system eagerly agreed with our decision. as do most family courts in Georgia. Instead of routinely offering joint physical custody to both parents, the father is relegated to non-custodial loser parent with scheduled visitation, but only if it is acceptable to the mother. And I don’t need to mention the financial incentive gained with sole custody.
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All of this meant my time with the kids would consist of a few hours two nights during the week where I would bring them back to her house before bedtime, and then every other weekend, where I was picking them up on Friday afternoons and dropping them off on Sunday evenings. At that stage of life what we agreed on worked for everyone, especially me, as I traveled for business periodically and continued to fight my way through the mental and emotional fog that comes with any divorce.
But even then, with my agreement to the plan, the feeling that I just got to visit my kids was a sore subject. You visit the dentist or your Aunt Sue in Hoboken, that shouldn’t apply to your toddler children. For me that term ‘child visitation’ reeks of prejudice. To me it says:
“Yes, we know they have your DNA and look just like you, we know you were there in the delivery room and changed countless diapers; while we appreciate that you support them financially and love them unconditionally the best you’re going to get is a visit that will be put in writing and can’t be deviated from without an attorney. Now shut up, stay out of the way, and keep writing the checks!”
As the non-custodial parent, I have limited rights in the decision-making process for my kids. The ex, if she chose, could take them and move to another country and I would have to sue if I wanted to stop it. However, if I took the kids and moved there would be an APB out on me for kidnapping or worse. The custodial parent has the right to choose schools, activities, even religion, while the non-custodial has limited if any say in the matter. As far as I’m concerned that’s not parenting - it’s settling.
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Though I have been spared a good number of the challenges that many non-custodial parents suffer it’s still that term ‘visitation’ which continues to haunt me. It’s like somebody’s thrown me a parental bone and I’d do good to be happy with what I’ve got. But that doesn’t sit well with me. I’m not one of those absent fathers who takes to the road as soon as the papers are signed by the judge, never to be seen or heard from again.
Why is it that far too often when a man wants to be in his kid’s life as equal as the mother that he has to fight for it? Are the cards stacked against me because I didn’t give physical birth, mothers are more important, or because so many dads before me blew it and now I’m paying for their sins?
Seven years later I’m still a non-custodial parent though my structure has changed a good deal. While I still don’t have equal time with my kids like their mother does, I’ve learned to play the hand I’ve been dealt.
Originally published in 2011