As lockdown exit gathers pace, separated and divorced parents will once again have to adapt their co-parenting arrangements
For weeks now, we’ve all been dialling up our post-Covid daydreams. The first holidays and restaurants we’ll book. Our new working patterns. The friends and family we’ll visit as soon as we can.
For parents, there is an added level of post-pandemic planning. Childcare. School and exam arrangements. Postponed birthday parties. Which holidays and meals out the children themselves are lobbying for.
"Establishing the new normal in your co-parenting may not be simple, but it is important and needs to be sensible and empathetic."
For separated and divorced parents, there’s still further planning to be done: primarily, how to get back to ‘normal’ co-parenting arrangements.
Lockdown forced many families to adapt their contact and residence arrangements and most did it admirably. Now they face a new period of adjustment and the need to navigate some potentially contentious issues:
- Do care arrangements need to adapt to changed working patterns, such as one or both parents homeworking, returning to the office, or having to change jobs?
- What to do if one parent feels much more cautious about returning to normal life – such as holidays abroad – and wants to restrict what the children do?
- How best to resume contact with one parent (or other relatives) if contact centres are still closed or if a long time has passed since the last contact?
- How to repair relationships if one parent is perceived as having used Covid to limit contact?
On the other hand, there could be some positives to take from the pandemic and the co-parenting changes made. Rather than revert exactly to pre-Covid arrangements, could any of these positives be incorporated into your new arrangements?
In all these discussions, it’s important for us all to remember that children everywhere have faced some tough and uncertain times during Covid-19. Establishing the new normal in your co-parenting may not be simple, but it is important and needs to be sensible and empathetic.
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