Best Interest 04.15.2026
Landmark boys/men legislation, violent women, questioning therapy for men and a divorce calculator?
Been a minute since the last roundup, but I’ve been busy!
In this issue:
Virginia to create first U.S. commission for boys and men
Now mainstream: Women are violent, too
Why are we pushing men into therapy?
Related: For men in crisis, VCU offers Feminism 101
Higher ed is in a free-fall and this is good news for feminism
Other stuff
Newly released: Audiobook for The 50/50 Solution
50/50 and Black. Single. Mother the book
Divorce Calculator - what are your odds?
Celebrities and 50/50 parenting
Equal parenting in the news
Colorado, Utah and New York now enjoy 50/50 cultural presumptions!
Virginia to create first U.S. commission for boys and men
The big news in my world is that Virginia will now have the nation’s very first commission for boys and men thanks to bipartisan, 91-6 vote on a bill I’ve worked on over the past 18 months. Big credit goes to Del. Josh Thomas and I could not be more proud and excited for my state and the work we’ve done!
The nation is watching this exciting work and over the past few weeks I’ve been asked to consult on policy efforts in Massachusetts, the United Kingdom, Australia and for national groups here in the United States.
Most of my insight into policy is really about what NOT to do and what might be done instead to change culture and minds, as I laid out in a presentation I gave at the International Shared Parenting Conference in Lisbon, Portugal in December:
Now mainstream: Women are violent, too
The third rail has been crossed: the masses are waking up to the fact that women are perpetrators of intimate partner violence, too.
In recent months my algorithm has been serving up lots of content about the fact that men and women are physically, sexually and emotionally violent in nearly equal measures, but it is this week’s headlines about reality TV star Taylor Frankie being charged with assault and domestic violence that tipped this understanding into the zeitgeist.
Why are we pushing men into therapy?
Psychology is grossly dominated by women — both clinicians and researchers. Despite its status as a silver bullet for nearly any form of emotional discomfort, there is growing evidence that therapy often makes your sadness sadder, while the broader mental health industry has been complicit in medical travesties including the overprescription of SSRIs and ADHD medications, as well as the medical gender transition of children — not to mention fueling a navel-gazing culture obsessed with diagnoses, fragility, and victimhood.
All of which begs the question: If female-centered therapy is hurting us, why do we keep preaching that men get more therapy? The movement is treating men as defective women, prescribing them remedies designed for someone else. It is also looking backwards about what most of us assumed to be true and ignoring a growing popular and clinical dismay with the multi-billion dollar mental health care industry.
Related: For men in crisis, VCU offers Feminism 101
A case study in why men are uninterested therapy as a treatment or profession: Virginia Commonwealth University counseling offers its men lessons on gender ideology and the patriarchy
Higher ed is in a free-fall and this is good news for feminism
These days my favorite reading are news coverage documenting the implosion of the house of cards that is higher education. My kids are aged 16 and 18 — 10th and 12th graders — and I cannot tell you how welcome and necessary this cultural lightning bolt is, especially for upper-middle-class, white, educated parents like me who are especially guilty of perpetuating the college-prep industrial complex.
I find the demise of this monster enormously, orgasmically freeing — like popping a pimple of pent-up insanity that is now proving, finally, to have net negative outcomes for kids, schools, communities, parents and the adults those children will become. Gender equality also stands to benefit since us moms are now freed from the perceived burden of managing yet another competitive extracurricular activity.
Other stuff
Newly released: The audiobook of 50/50 Solution
The 50/50 Solution: The Surprisingly Simple Choice That Makes Moms, Dads, and Kids Happier and Healthier After a Split. Everything you need to know about why equal parenting for separated families is best for the whole family, and how to change society and law to push it ahead.
50/50 and Black. Single. Mother the book
Culture critic Jamilah Lemieux’s new book Black. Single. Mother.: Real Life Tales of Longing and Belonging gives me/my book a nice big chunk of support and goes on to encourage readers to share parenting time 50/50 — while acknowledging how emotionally and socially messy it is for women to abdicate parenting power:
I have a bit in my stand-up routine about women who refuse to let their capable, competent exes have more time with their children: I call them “masters of self-sabotage.” But I also acknowledge that it’s difficult to let go of the traditional image of motherhood, which means being your child’s main parent.
For years, I was afraid that if David and I were doing things evenly, I would be less of a mother. Having Naima the majority of the time meant I was a good mother, doing what good mothers do. Y’all, let me tell you how grateful I am for our current arrangement. The time that I have to myself allows me to fully show up for my daughter when we’re together, and the gift of her being parented equally by both of us bears fruit every day. I also suspect that Naima will have a healthier relationship to men and dating when she gets older because she truly knows her dad.
I am passionate about more Black co-parenting families shifting toward a 50/50 dynamic, or as close to that as they can get. It’s time for more of us to abandon the every-other-weekend arrangement that is so popular among separated parents.
You can’t raise someone you see every other weekend. Or even every summer. If you had a job and you only worked two weekends a month, your friends and family would say you ain’t got no job. If you only worked in the summer, they’d call that an internship. How is that a sufficient amount of time for parenting? Dads need to be in the trenches; they need to see just how unpleasant their kids can be when they wake up for school in the morning. If you have your kids every other weekend, you’re waking up and taking them to IHOP! It’s not fair! And don’t even get me started on carefree summers versus the stressful-ass school year.
Divorce Calculator - what are your odds?
ChatGPT and I vibe coded this calculator based on divorce likelihood factors like age at marriage, cohabiting before wedding, employment, education, income, sharing of bank accounts, political and religious alignment and more. Curious what you think!
Celebrities and 50/50 parenting
Blac Chyna is doing what millions of (mostly low income, but overall a big trend) single moms do: Forgo child support for involved dads. See: Feminist success: Poor moms aren’t signing up for child support
Irina Shayk and Bradley Cooper co-parent 50/50
Equal parenting in the news
Even when parents do 50/50 schedules, dads still need support only extended to moms
Child outcomes, ranked per new study on stepparenting: 1. Married parents, 2. Divorced parents who remain single, 3. Children in remarried stepfamilies, 4. Children in cohabiting stepfamilies
Casual mentions of 50/50 co-parenting in unrelated articles, because it is now the norm: here, here, here, and here and here.
Equal parenting state updates
This journalist assumes Colorado has a 50/50 presumption. “Colorado courts start with an expectation of 50–50 parenting time ...” Great work Colorado!
A New York attorney says it is the default in his state, which it is, culturally. Good job, New York!
In Utah, law establishes minimum parent-time for non-custodial parents: alternating weekends, one evening per week, alternating holidays, and extended summer time. However, courts report 60% of recent cases result in more than minimum parent-time, with many approaching equal time. Keep it up, Utah!
PSA of the day
If you are in a marriage or cohabiting partnership and unilaterally choose not to earn money, that is financial abuse.
