Challenges in equally shared parenting as child gets older

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Challenges in equally shared parenting as child gets older

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As your children grow past the infancy stage and start to enter the world, your Equally Shared Parenting is going to become public as well and that poses its own challenges but you need to stay the course if it's what you believe in. Out in public you've got to navigate the puzzle of your work schedule, your spouse's work schedule and your baby's social life, in other words any outside child care you decide upon as a couple - preschool and then kindergarten and elementary school. All that stuff has to be meshed together. You're also entering the world of what I like to call "Mom-centric parenting," not that it wasn't true when your baby was a baby, but now that you've got a child it's kind of publicly assumed that mom is in charge. So dads have to get in there and sign up to be room-parent if they want to. Mom have to let them and be okay with that. Mom have to be fine with dad seeing all the baby's first and even accompanying their daughter to her first day of kindergarten. Mom could perhaps go on the second day or they can go together but you're out there in public trying to remain equals as parents and equally important in your child's life. Later, when your children grow older, Equally Shared Parenting may get a little bit easier. I still have only an 11 year old and an 8 year old so I don't know all the details yet. From speaking with parents who have older children, they say that the role of parents changes. You're more of an active listeners. You're more there with your teenagers or young adults. You're taking them from place to place, you're just being there and that is less gendered as some of the early parenting things. So I think Equally Shared Parenting may get easier as your children approach adulthood.

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Amy Vachon

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Marc and Amy Vachon are the authors of Equally Shared Parenting: Rewriting the Rules for a New Generation of Parents, and founders of www.equallysharedparenting.com. They are dedicated to helping parents achieve their dream of an equal partnership, and to providing both mothers and fathers with a roadmap to a balanced life of parenting, breadwinning, homemaking and time for self. Their work has been covered by the New York Times, Boston Globe, Guardian (UK), Fitness Magazine, The Today Show, Parenting, and other media. They have written their own personal story of equally shared parenting in One Big Happy Family, an anthology by Rebecca Walker. Amy is a clinical pharmacy director, and Marc is an information technology manager. They live in Watertown, Massachusetts with their two children, ages 11 and 8.

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