Resisting the march towards 50/50 shared residence: rights, welfare and equality in post-separation families

In recent years, a normative model of equal shared parenting post-separation has become firmly entrenched in the minds of some policy makers and legal practitioners. This has been due, in no small part, to the high-profile campaign of fathers' rights groups. In attacking what they perceive as the gender bias inherent within the family justice system, fathers' rights groups have argued vociferously for a presumption in favour of shared residence post-separation, with the child's time being split on a roughly equal 50/50 basis between the mother and the father unless the child's welfare dictates otherwise. Although the Labour government resisted calls to introduce such a presumption into the Children Act 1989, the recent case law of the Court of Appeal on the use of shared residence orders risks pushing us towards a position in which 50/50 shared residence will indeed become entrenched as the normative model for organizing post-separation family life. This article warns strongly against any such shift in post-separation parenting, arguing that greater use of 50/50 shared residence is neither supported by the empirical evidence on children's welfare nor by the vociferous rights-based arguments of disaffected fathers for equality, justice and fairness in determining post-separation parenting arrangements.