Best Interest: 1.29.25
How rich and middle-class divorces perpetuate class divide, news from Spain, Denmark, and learning to talk about 50/50 from Tiktok
Hello!
Second email and I am heartened by the kind words and shares with your friends and colleagues. Reach out if you have any relevant news to share with the world: research, articles, advocacy, social media posts of note.
In this issue:
Updates on Virginia’s crap child support bill
A Tiktok that models effective advocacy
How family courts are over-influenced by rich and middle-class families, and what to do about it
Research: The Lost Dad’s Project, a paper on race and family court, the latest from Ed Kruk and sexism + alienation
Equal parenting law updates in Spain and Denmark
Update on Virginia SB805
I’ve been working on killing SB805, which aims to raise child support payments across the board in the name of “inflation.” I testified at the Virginia Senate Courts Committee, but it was ultimately passed. All nays were members of the Black Caucus.
In meeting with House delegates this week I realize that there is an appetite to learn about common-sense, forward-thinking family law issues. I am heartened and will be at the Virginia capitol tomorrow shaking them down for a down vote.
Here is what you can do today to help kill this SB805.
Let’s talk about family law in your state, how we can work together, share ideas and find messaging and methods that get things done. [Do not reach out with blathering about case law or your own sad story please-thank-you.]
EQUAL PARENTING IN THE NEWS
The biggest struggle in normalizing 50/50 parenting is old-fashioned sexism. Aside from the gender stereotypes that hold us all back, stuck in dated parenting roles consciously and unconsciously, this movement drips with misogyny and misandry. I’m looking at you.
Tiktok failed to load.Enable 3rd party cookies or use another browser
On a Tiktok post with 21 million views, a mom captures her experience with 50/50 parenting when she picks up her 4-year-old from school. The little girl breaks into tears, clearly having missed her mom while on her time with the dad. This post is the mom’s honest experience with equal parenting — it is hard for her to miss her daughter, and not-easy for the kid, either.
The mom writes: “Her little heart breaks every day we are apart.”
Maybe, but probably not. Sounds like the mom misses the daughter and could be doing some projecting. For women, the expectation to miss our children every minute they are not in our arms is real. That pressure affects our economic, career and relationship choices. That pressure influences family court and co-parenting relationships.
However, note that the mom is not bashing her co-parent, or arguing for more parenting time, or advocating against 50/50 parenting. Quite the opposite.
Replying to a comment from a struggling father who will soon be co-parenting, the mother writes, “You’re not a failure! The fact that you care so deeply already shows what a great dad you are. Co-parenting can still mean giving your child a happy and loving family. You’ve got this.”
This co-parenting mom is simply sharing her complicated feelings about a complicated, human experience: missing our kids when we are apart from them after a separation, while still supporting equal parenting. I hold her up as a model for empathetic, evolved advocacy.
EQUAL PARENTING 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 dumb it down for the masses.
American Institute for Boys and Men published this interesting article that addresses the class divide in separated families: How family law undermines fatherhood and how to fix it.
Based on the recently published Economic History and The Remaking of Family Law, the article elaborates on the reality that family law is grossly over-influenced by the affluent, white and married couples who can afford attorneys to fight over custody, assets and ongoing financial support:
Family law is fueling the class gap in family life, which is damaging the most economically vulnerable communities, weakening relationships between children and fathers, and failing millions of men. It’s time for reform.
Couples with assets tend to drive the legal changes as they are more likely to bring cases that produce precedent-setting legal developments or engage in the political lobbying necessary to enact legislative changes. At the same time, couples without assets often form families, dissolve them, and form new ones without necessarily interacting with the legal system at all. This makes the body of statutes and decided cases, “middle class family law,” reflecting and reinforcing the norms of those with assets.
The authors argue that family centers are an economic way to serve low-income parents, bridge wealth gaps and increase father involvement.
In Australia and in some U.S. states, such family centers succeed because:
They are community-based, and thus able to assist families with different norms and different cultural assumptions
Provide integrated, whole-family services including employment, housing, and mental health needs — all critical to building healthy families
Encourage voluntary resolutions compared to judicial proceedings that are often coercive and difficult for low-income families to navigate.
Economic History and The Remaking of Family Law, June Carbone & Naomi R. Cahn, Journal of the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers (2025).
Intersectional racial and gender bias in family court. Discover Psychology. Williams, M.T., Faber, S., Zare, M. et al. ( Nov. 2024)
Ben Hine is Professor of Applied Psychology at University of West London and parental alienation expert and equal-parenting advocate. His recent Current Issues Facing Men and Boys: A Case for Urgent Change is a great summary of the mental, physical, social and emotional challenges facing our men — including fatherhood.
Ben is also the muscle behind The Lost Dads Project “the most comprehensive examination of separated fathers’ experiences to date, drawing on data from over 1000 clients, 130 fathers, and six support organizations.” Two articles:
Fathers’ Experiences of Relationship Breakdown Including Post-Separation Abuse and Parental Alienating Behaviours explores the emotional, psychological, and financial impacts of FBSD on fathers. It highlights the distress caused by parental alienation and post-separation abuse, emphasising the need for gender-inclusive support services.
Fathers’ Experiences of Negotiating Co-Parenting Arrangements and Family Court examines the systemic challenges fathers face in establishing equitable co-parenting relationships and highlights perceived gender bias and inefficiency within the family court system.
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).
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).
EQUAL PARENTING AROUND THE WORLD
Spain
Spain, where equal-parenting presumption laws were passed in five of the country's 17 regions between 2009 and 2011, last week announced that single parents are entitled to the same total amount of paid parental leave that couples are entitled to. As it stands, each parent is entitled to a total of 16 weeks of paid leave. Now, a single mom or dad can take up to 32 weeks of paid leave.
These rulings are quite progressive, and made in the spirit of gender equality, child wellbeing and reversing Spain’s declining birth rate — the lowest in Europe. It is also an extension of an earlier court ruling that barred discrimination against children born into single-parent families.
On the surface, this parental leave ruling seems like a progressive move that allows single-moms-by-choice extra support, but it is messier than that. The court ruling was made in the spirit of granting this benefit “for a single person serving as both parents” according to the New York Times.
Of course, most of those babies also have fathers who are entitled to paid leave and bonding time with their child. And locals report, via the Times’ comments, that this sort of ruling is ripe for welfare fraud — similar to how in the United States unmarried parents are interpreted as father absence.
The fact that 1 in 10 mothers are single parents in Spain is true and not true. Large numbers of couples I know with children have chosen not to marry but live as couples. In many ways they take advantage of this situation claiming single mother subsidies, applying for schools or daycare or low rent apartments as single mothers when in reality they share homes, lives and expenses and childcare with partners. How is truly single motherhood going to be determined. I agree with the ruling but it is the carrying out of the law that will probably be unfair to many mothers who are really single mothers.
Denmark
Our good friends in Denmark will consider parental alienation in all family court matters as of Jan. 1, 2025, continuing to position the Danes as leaders in custody matters:
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
