Shared Physical Custody: Intensive and Alternate Motherhood

Abstract

Shared custody is an emerging model of post-divorce cohabitation between parents and children that has spread progressively in Spain, especially in the last decade. This advance has taken place to the detriment of exclusive maternal custody, considering that exclusive paternal custody is very exceptional. In this article we focus on making visible the maternal practices of women who have decided to negotiate parental co-responsibility agreements with their male ex-partners.

Methodology includes the analysis of data on post-breakup custody along with an empirical study, carried out from 2016, that includes focal interviews with professionals from the extrajudicial family mediation service of the Government of Navarra, and interviews with mothers, derived from this public service, as representatives of good co-responsibility practices. The results indicate that this service constitutes an intervention and prevention instrument to facilitate sustainable but flexible agreements over time for the well-being of dependent children.

The women interviewed are protagonists in decision-making before the breakup and in the search for expert support for the negotiation. Apart from this exercise of autonomy, there is a prevalence of gender in the allocation of time and quality of parenting. Intensive maternity is attenuated with the agreements negotiated after the divorce, but the stewardship in maternity practices is maintained, even if it is carried out alternately or discontinuously. Stratified reproduction explains misalignments to this mandate, such as those that illustrate some defective maternal practices that generate the conditioning of neocolonial migration policy.