Harrison County Takes Giant Step for Children
Forty years of research speaks as consistently as social science research ever does about children’s well-being when parents are separated: children do best when both parents are equally involved in the day-to-day tasks of child rearing. On virtually every metric of child well-being, children whose separated parents share equally in raising them do about as well as those raised in intact marriages and much better than those raised in a sole custody arrangement. The long-term harms to children of divorce are largely the result not of parental separation but of parental deprivation.
Unfortunately, legislatures and courts have been slow to respond to this large and growing body of scientific research. Ohio still lacks a statutory presumption in favor of shared parenting and a just published study from National Parents Organization (NPO) reveals that 45 of Ohio’s 88 counties still have local parenting time rules that default to the out-dated “every other weekend and one evening a week” schedule that made sense for many families back in the 1950s but makes little sense today.
NPO has previously conducted studies of Ohio courts’ local parenting time rules in 2018 and 2020. The 2023 NPO Ohio Parenting Time Rules Report (available at www.t.ly/0GIe3) showed continuing progress toward courts’ adoption of parenting schedules that promote the active involvement of both parents in their children’s lives after divorce. The Harrison County Court of Common Pleas, which handles domestic relations cases, stands out as one of the major success stories. In 2020, along with 56 other Ohio counties, the Harrison Court applied the old “every other weekend” schedule. But NPO’s recent research revealed that, in 2021, Judge T. Shawn Hervey adopted an updated, and very much improved rule.
Provided both parents can provide transportation for the children to and from school, the new local parenting time rule for Harrison County, allows the children nearly equal time and nearly equal overnights with each of their parents. This schedule engages both parents in the routine but invaluable tasks that constitute parenting: feeding and clothing the children, getting them ready for school, ensuring that they do their homework, etc. It’s precisely the sort of parental involvement that research says most often benefits children and, so, is the appropriate presumption. It doesn’t work for every family but it’s the option that every family should begin by considering and try to make work if possible.
Judge Hervey is to be congratulated on making this important change to the local parenting time schedule. The families, and especially the children, of Harrison County will be the beneficiaries of this change.
Don Hubin, PhD
Chair, National Board, National Parents Organization
