What does effective "co-parenting" look like?

[red and lulu]

I'm not posting this in single parenting on purpose: I want to know how the other half lives, if you will. It occurred to me that the reason I may be having such a tough time wrapping my head around the dynamic b/n me and my 3 mo daughter's dad (who is involved & loving and with whom I'm on excellent terms) is because I was raised by a single mom- I have no idea what a 2 parent house looks like, good, bad, or indifferent. How do you not do it alone?

What works? What doesn't? I realize, that since we don't share a home, some things will be different, but it's all co-parenting, right? Two people working together as a team to raise a happy, healthy child?

[limabean]

I sometimes wonder the same thing, so I'll be checking this thread for comments.

I was raised by a (wonderful) single mother, and on one hand, I'm glad that I was raised witnessing a woman's ability to handle it all on her own, but on the other hand, I want my kids to see DH and I working as a unit. It's something that I've found that I need to be conscious of, because I have a tendency to just take the reins since that's what I grew up with.

[RiverTam]

What it looks like at our house: (YMMV)

1. Husband is a nurse who works weekend options. I work days during the week. The kids go to school, but not daycare. I take them to school on my way to work. DH picks them up from school.

2. I make breakfast and pack a lunch for school. DH is in charge of after-school snacks and dinner.

3. DH takes them to karate classes (Tuesday and Thursday nights) and most doctor's appointments. I take them to swim lessons because it's on Saturday.

4. I wash the clothes. DH puts them away.

5. We both pick up the house during the week. I do the heavy cleaning of the bathrooms and the kitchen on Sunday mornings. DH vacuums and takes out the trash.

6. We both do the dishes.

7. We both do the grocery shopping.

8. I do the school clothes shopping.

9. We both do the holiday shopping and the birthday shopping.

10. We have a set of agreed rules for conduct. If there's an issue we talk about it, until we get some agreement. DH says I'm too lax. I say he's too strict. We usually find a middle ground.

11. Big decisions are made together. (ie. We've started speech therapy and talked about ADHD drugs. Those kinds of decisions are made together, and nothing is done until we have a solution we can agree on.)

[graceshappymum]

I would say that there is really only one thing that I could recommend to you....talk, alot , about everything, all the decisions that you make reagrding your DC. DH and I talk all the time about parenting, daily life decisions, big things, little things. I think that when I married DH I knew that I was entering a partnership and that is really what it is. I come from a happy two parent house hold, and so does my DH. That is not said to be judgmental at all, but perhaps that has made the transition to a partnership with DH easier for us then for those raised by single parent households where there was really only one adult decision maker. DH and I find that we have to try to work as a unit with DD, that can be tough sometimes, as we try to be consentual in our lives with her.

Dh and I do try to consult each other about most of what we do, not only things involving DD, but just day to day things, finance etc. DH works from home, but when he is away it is for 6 weeks at a time (he is an opera singer) for a production, and then I function as the sole decision maker. I think that all relationships have a different dynamic, but this is what works for us.

When DH is home we split the school run, we do the shopping together, unless he has a vocal student then I just do that by myself. I do almost all the cooking so I do almost all of the food decision making a nd budgeting alone, although we do discuss, DH usually just follows my lead on that one.

DH does the swimming lessons and the weekly fun swim, most of the outdoor stuff with DD. I do all the horse related stuff.....and believe me there is alot of it.

We share all the household cleaning duties, other than laundry, I am just super particular about that so I would rather just do it alone. I also do all of the clothing shopping for DD, but again that is because I am a bit of a fanatic about what she wears........(picture DH rolling his eyes!). When we disagree on something big, we talk till we have found a solution that works for everyone concerned, including DD....

[reezley]

I grew up in what I perceived to be a stable, happy two-parent home. My parents are still together and happy, but I'll bet they have a different, less-idealistic view of their child-rearing years. Good things I saw and appreciated: Them hugging in the kitchen, doing memorable family stuff together, like a day trip on the weekend, camping vacation in the summer, family dinners all together, watching Cosby Show together, etc. The day-to-day stuff for me.... mostly it was my mom handling the dinner, the lunch-making, the food shopping, the nagging us to get ready for school, the kids' clothes shopping and such. My dad helped I'm sure, but she did most of it. My dad did the finances, outdoor and car maintenance, taking out the garbage kind of things. But he was very involved and happy to do the family stuff in the evenings and weekends! He learned somewhere along the way the value of the "yes, dear"... letting my mom handle stuff and helping where he could.

As for me and dh, our marriage is going fine, we're together, we're trying, but we're definitely a work in progress! I don't see the specific division of labor to be the hard issue - I think it's getting both partners to try and give and compromise and communicate. DH is not so good at "yes, dear" yet - he wants me to handle stuff (I'm a SAHM) but he also wants to critique it and complain about HOW I do stuff.... so .... I'm trying to get more positive communication/consulting/compromise from him. Being partners, to me, doesn't seem to be a WHOLE lot of "we" day to day, working together at the same time as a team, but is more of one parent letting go and being accepting when the other is doing their "job" of the moment, whether it's keeping kids occupied when the other is busy with chores, or staying quiet when the other is handling a discipline situation, or just not complaining about how the other person did something if it was generally acceptable. (AHEM, dh....! ) I guess that broadly translates to respecting the other person.

Hope this helps. Good question. Made me think.

[LynnS6]

For us, it's really shifted over the years. The key is to state what your needs and wants are, and as someone else said: TALK.

In the first few months of life, I nursed a lot. I also had PPD with each child, so dh had to pick up a lot of slack in terms of getting housework and things done. Dh also works from home and I work out of the home, so when I went back to work, he naturally did more of the day to day care for the infants. Our kids entered daycare part time at 1 1/2 -2, and then dh had the primary responsibility 2 days a week, part time responsibility on the weekends, and I did the daycare stuff 3x a week.

Right now the kids are 5 and 8. Dh is more of a morning person than I am. He packs ds' lunch and gets him off to the bus stop. I get dd ready to go to kindergarten because she goes to K on campus where I work. I'm looking forward to next year when dh gets both kids ready!

Dh picks ds up from the bus stop. He does more of the schlepping the kids around. He buys groceries at CostCo. He's the designated Chuck E. Cheese birthday party attender. Dh is home with the kids on days when there is no school and on days when one of the kids is sick. I can take those days off, but it's more difficult. Dh coaches ds' soccer team, so he does soccer with ds.

I'm more in 'charge' of dd right now because of the school schedule. I also take her to soccer (because dh is coaching the other team) and to piano (because I want to). I shop for fresh foods/groceries. I buy the kids' clothes. I weed out the ones they've outgrown. I'm the one who keeps track of when they need a bath or their nails clipped (I don't think dh even thinks about that!). I tend to make the dr. and dentist appointments, but we split taking them pretty much evenly.

There are a few things we split pretty much evenly: (1) cooking/dishes - dh cooks MWF, I cook T/Th and weekends (this quarter at least, sometimes it changes with my schedule). Whoever doesn't cook does the dishes. (2) bedtime duties - I do 2 nights, dh does 2. That's a schedule we worked out when the kids started going to bed at the same time. Before that, I did 2 nights with ds and then 2 nights with dd, and he did it the other way around. (3) laundry (4) yard work -- dh mows the lawn, I tend to do the rest of the stuff (gardening). We all go to church together on Sundays.

There was a period of time when we 'tag team' parented, where dh did all the care when I was gone, and then when I got home, he disappeared into his office to do his work. That worked OK (not great) while ds was small, but once we had two, it didn't work. So, the upshot was that dh moved his work upstairs. Now that the kids are older, I could handle him disappearing again, at least some of the time. But I didn't like the tag team stuff because I never saw dh!

I'm sure I've missed things on each of our lists. The bottom line is that some the things that each of us does are things we want to do, some of them we do because we're the most logical person, and some because we have to. Talking about and reevaluating that balance is a real art!

[ollyoxenfree]

You have to be open to two possibilities:

1. You may be WRONG on some issues (I know - shock horror, LOL!)

2. Even if you are right, you may have to compromise but it will be okay - everyone will survive and maybe even thrive despite the fact that things weren't done your way (again - shock horror!).

The rest - the division of labour, the decision-making - will all come along if you communicate and participate together in solving challenges.

[pinksprklybarefoot]

I have a different perspective because we are a blended family: DH and I have two young sons and DH has a school-age daughter that lives with us just over half time. So I am part of a together parenting situation and an apart parenting situation.

-Right now, the house is my domain as I stay at home and go to school. DH works two jobs. I do most of the cleaning and most of the cooking (Although DH is picking up more of the slack with my school schedule becoming increasingly demanding).

-I get up with the kids and get them ready for the day. I make DSD's lunch, do her hair, etc. More often than not, I do the school drop-off. DH and I split the pick-up about 50/50.

-We have some tag-team parenting going on. On nights that I have school, sometimes I leave as DH is arriving, other times we are able to have family dinner before I leave. On the weekends, DH often has to care for the kids because I am studying somewhere outside the home. DH does have to work some weekends, so then I have the kids.

-I do all of the shopping for our house - food, clothes, supplies. DSD has two sets of everything (wardrobe, backpack, etc), and I am the purchaser of that at our house. I am the planner and I generally make the appointments.

-I think the thing that separates living together folk from apart folk is the casual talk about the kids. DH and DSD's mom talk a lot, but it is usually for a reason. There isn't much of that, "Oh guess what she did today!" talk. You miss the cute-kid moments that happen at the other house. You also don't *really* know what goes on at the other house. The two are run pretty differently, but in the end, DH and I are going to run our house like we see fit, and DSD's mom will run hers how she does.

-The other difference is that DH and I spend a lot of time talking out issues. Vaxes was a big one - we argued and researched. DSD's mom refuses to talk with DH about the issue. I have trouble seeing a couple living together just not talking about a health-related issue regarding their child.

I could go on, but that is the gist of it.