Best Interest 10.17.25
Virginia's Boys and Men Commission, new perspective on divorce and suicide, 50/50 celebs and more ...
Hello!
In this monthly roundup of equal parenting news:
Announcing: Virginia Commission for Boys and Men & Coalition
New Danish data challenges assumption that unfair divorce leads to suicide
Data-devoid WSJ article on 50/50 presumptions a relic of yesteryear
Action items for Canadians
50/50 mentions in the wild
50/50 celebrities
Virginia Advisory Commission for Men and Boys announced
The big news!
I’ve been lending a hand to this very exciting effort of Democrats aim to create nation’s first legislative committee to address issues affecting males, including health, education, workforce development and family.
The effort was announced this week at a press conference lead by our Commonwealth’s House Speaker Don Scott, Democrat Party Chair Sen. Lamont Bagby, Del. Josh Thomas and others. Very hopeful signs this bill will be passed in 2026.
Awesome coverage from Associated Press, Richmond Times-Dispatch, ABC News:
In parallel, last month we launched the Virginia Coalition for Boys and Men, a nonpartisan, multi-discipline force to highlight the ways Virginia is a leader in serving our males, coordinate and collaborate with the national movement to address gender disparities.
Reach out to learn more and get involved: emma@vaboysandmen.org
New data from Denmark challenges assumptions that sexist family law kills men
Does unfair family court drive men to suicide?
A new study that looked at single dads with custody and single mothers with custody in Denmark found that single dads have a markedly higher risk of early death from addiction, suicide and lung cancer. They are also less likely to repartner and more likely to live alone.
Of great importance: Danish single dads are among the most likely in the world have equal time with their kids and are still dying deaths of despair at rates much higher than that of single moms or married men.
This new information challenges the 50/50 parenting advocates’ very loud assertions that unequal, sexist divorce laws rob men of their children and drive single dads to suicide.
Data-devoid WSJ article on 50/50 a lazy relic of yesteryear — but important nonetheless
Last month the Wall Street Journal published a very poorly written and researched article: Kentucky’s Equal-Custody Experiment: A law setting 50-50 shared custody as the state’s standard was hailed as a victory for fathers, but critics say it puts mothers and children at risk.
The reporter quoted me, for better or worse. The summary of my long breakdown:
The article is a smash-up of anecdotes from dads who wanted more time with their kids and women who claim they were abused by their husbands and won’t divorce for fear of having to co-parent with a violent man. The article contains no data on family violence trends in Kentucky or elsewhere but relies on unsubstantiated anecdotes. Long-term child outcomes are not considered, but divorce rates are feature prominently even though 43% of Kentucky children are born to unmarried parents.
The article ultimately advances the cause by failing to substantiate concerns about equal parenting presumptions and providing a platform for hundreds of comments that overwhelmingly support 50/50 presumptions.
The big takeaway that 50/50 reduces divorce — long assumed and touted by activists (a very reasonable assumption). However, this was refuted by vicious statistics Substack ninja Lyman Stone, a Kentuckian fwiw, who crunched the numbers and found that divorce rates in Kentucky relevant to neighboring states did not in fact drop.
However, Stone found that parenting time for divorced parents did equalize after the 2017 law passed — which is really great news.
Also of interest, a few days before he was assassinated, Charlie Kirk shared the WSJ article:
Canadians, please sign and sign up!
Our friends at Canadian Campaign for Equal Co-Shared Parenting are collecting signatures in support of the creation of a nationwide rebuttable presumption of equal parenting time for our northern neighbors. Please sign!
And our friend Elaine Weiner at McGill is looking for 50/50 parents in Quebec and Ontario:
50/50 parenting in the wild
Roundup of casual media mentions of parents sharing parenting time equally — signs this is the new, brilliant normal:
Bored Panda reports child support drama with a 50-50 schedule.
Slate’s Care and Feeding advice column often gets letters from families sharing parenting time 50/50 like this one about adding to a blended family and step-mothering.
Ranker summarizes 11 Reddit threads about co-parenting and 3 share parenting 50/50, while in its new clickbait downmarket content strategy, Newsweek quotes a Tiktoker who successfully 50/50s, as does a family interviewed in an unrelated article for a local newspaper in Central Oregon and a mom who wrote an essay about co-parenting for the Irish Independent.
In response to a recent New York Times article about struggling boys, equal-parenting researcher and Arizona State University professor William Fabricius wrote a concise letter to the editor advocating for 50/50 time-sharing rebuttals, which the paper published.
Celebrities who 50/50
Josh Duhamel and Fergie share parenting time equally, per AOL, as does comedian Christopher Titus as well as Channing Tatum and his ex.
