Best Interest: Your weekly equal-parenting hub. 1.12.25
Why the new name? Equal parenting in pop culture, VA child support bill, latest research, hot conferences and more!
Hello!
Emma Johnson here. Lots to share!
Starting today, you can expect weekly newsletters from me on all things related to equal parenting — research, pop culture, policy updates and more.
Goal: Create a central hub of information and foster community among the academics, practitioners, activists and intersted parties who care about families through the lens of gender.
What’s in it for you:
Stay on top of the latest in the equal parenting movement
Connect with other thoughtful people in our movement
Promote your own good work. Message me here if you have a paper, conference, legislation, blog post, media hit, whatever that you think is helpful to others. If it fits, I am happy to include in this weekly newsletter:
MOMS FOR EQUAL PARENTING UPDATES
So, MEP is really just me, Emma Johnson, and all the good people I know and work with on a ad-hoc basis.
What I’ve been working on:
First, you may notice this new format and new name. I officially changed our name from Moms for SHARED Parenting to Moms for EQUAL Parenting on all channels.
Why “EQUAL”?
What’s wrong with “shared parenting” or “approximately equal parenting” or “shared care” or “equal rights” or “equal responsibility”?
This movement needs UNIFORMITY. A single message we repeat over and over to help others understand what is important and why.
Equal parenting is best. Our good friends in research, including Dr. William Fabricius, are finding that it is the 50/50 schedule that nets best results for kids.
Marketing 101: Be clear, simple, short. We are selling this issue to the uninformed, the nay-sayers and the skeptics. This is our mantra.
“Shared parenting” is NOT clear or simple, short — or accurate. A dad who has legal access to their kid two weekends per month has shared parenting. That is a failure!
I tell my kids to share the brownies and one kid takes 8 brownies and one gets 1 brownie is sharing. It is not fair or best or equal. One is pissed and the other gets fat. They fight. I have to intervene and everyone goes to therapy. Fail!
Equal parenting is best.
Equal is simple to understand.
Equal is backed by science.
Equal forces the skeptic to twist themselves in knots trying to argue against our simple answer to so many challenges. We win the argument. We win the revolution.
Monday, tomorrow, I am headed to my capitol in Richmond, Va., to testify about SB805, sponsored by a divorce attorney in bougie Fairfax County and promises to jack up child support calculations because of “inflation.”
Of course, the current calculator accounts for inflation, so this is just stupid, hurts men, kids and women, who are now nearly just as likely to qualify for paying child support as men. Bad marketing, lawyers!
Read all about SB805, and use our letter to send senators letters in protest.
EQUAL PARENTING IN THE NEWS
Every week I see accelerating signs that a presumption of 50/50 time-sharing when parents live apart is becoming the norm. If we change culture, we don’t need to mess around with the law!
I’m tracking celebrities who share parenting equally and other media mentions:
Last week this soap opera blog reported a 50/50 custody fight on General Hospital!
The pro-marriage think tank Institute for Family Studies wrote this post: To Achieve a 50-50 Marriage, No Divorce Required, a headline which requires a presumption that gender equality can be achieved through divorce exactly as I have been saying for 10 years!
Newsweek wrote this, which is a huge coup for those struggling to educate the public about PA: 7 Signs You Might Be Guilty of Parental Alienation.
Over the past few months I’ve enjoyed some good media hits that promote my book The 50/50 Solution (SOURCEBOOKS). Here are a few:
1. Actress and country singer with a huge podcast Jana Kramer interviewed me on her Whine Down podcast about co-parenting.
I am surprised/impressed by how honest and vulnerable Jana was about her co-parenting arrangement with her ex, Mike:
She chose to pay more in child support/alimony in exchange for more parenting time.
Mike chose more money in exchange for less parenting time.
Jana struggles with the sense of control she gains by having more time with the kids.
Jana clearly feels the obligation to be the primary parent since she is the mother.
Her current husband Allan rarely sees his son in England because he chooses lives in the US, and feels it is a fair exchange to pay more child support to the mom for this reason.
None of these admissions surprise me at all: they 100% reflect the majority of mothers and fathers sentiments.
I AM surprised that in the face of so much change towards more equal senses of both responsibilities and rights for kids — financial + time + care — these public figures were so frank. I appreciate that.
Also, I was a guest on John Papola, a libertarian, Republican think tanker whose Youtube channel and podcast attract some huge names. I really enjoyed our challenging, thoughtful 1.5 hour conversation about gender, family and the law on Youtube — the full version of the interview is headlined: “Kids Need Their Dads.”
A short version? “Emma Johnson: Old Feminists Don’t Want Equality in Divorce Court.” This edition generated 412 comments tearing me apart for being a feminist and ignored that I am 100% on their side on this topic:
It is exactly this binary thinking that makes this activism so damn hard in every way, including maintaining personal relationship with those we love so dearly who refuse to even try to hold two competing thoughts in their head at one time.
Richard Reeves, author of Of Boys and Men and founder of American Institute for Boys and Men (which received a $20 million grant from Melinda Gates for gender research - an enormous coup) wrestles with this very issue, and wisely published “Beyond zero-sum thinking on gender,” from which the equal-parenting movement can learn:
To move beyond a zero-sum mindset in gender relations, a collective effort is needed from parents, educators, policymakers, and the media. The narratives we emphasize shape how people perceive opportunities and challenges.
Framing situations solely through the lens of competition, scarcity, or inevitable trade-offs is not only narrow-minded but also reinforces zero-sum thinking. Instead, we must highlight the potential for collaboration and mutual gain, encouraging individuals to recognize and create positive-sum opportunities.
EQUAL PARENTING RESEARCH NEWS
In other research news, these papers related to custody, gender and child development crossed my desk in recent weeks.
If you have research you want to disseminate to the larger community, reach out and I will summarize it for this newsletter in plain English if you are willing to spend some time with me to help dumb it down for the masses.
Abused Women as ‘Alienating’ Mothers and Violent Men as ‘Good’ Fathers: Double Standards in Child Protection and Child Custody Proceedings. Child & Family Social Work. Simon Lapierre, Patrick Ladouceur, Naomi Abrahams, Alexandra Vincent, Michèle Frenette (Dec. 2024)
Beyond the Gender Paradigm: A New Perspective on Interparental Conflict, Family Violence and Fathering After Separation. New Male Studies. Edward Kruk. (Dec. 2024)
Grandparent Alienation: A Mixed Method Exploration of Life Satisfaction and Help-Seeking Experiences of Grandparents Alienated From Their Grandchildren. The Family Journal. Degges-White, S., Hermann-Turner, K., Kepic, M., Randolph, A., & Killam, W. (Oct. 2024).
Intersectional racial and gender bias in family court. Discover Psychology. Williams, M.T., Faber, S., Zare, M. et al. ( Nov. 2024)
Intimate partner violence myths toward male victims: Exploring gender, sexism, and participant perpetration and victimization. Psychology of Men & Masculinities. Russell, B., Cox, J. M., & Stewart, H. (Advance review 2025).
CONFERENCES OF INTEREST
International Conference on Shared Parenting
Lisbon, Portugal
Dec. 3-6 2025
Call for papers!
Men & Families (International Families Alliance)
Barbados
Sept. 9-10, 2025
BIG-ASS BRAG
