It is highly likely that there was some form of conflict involved with your divorce. Some divorces, naturally, are more acrimonious than others; however, almost all of them involve hurt feelings.
This can make parenting in the aftermath of a divorce very challenging. In order to keep emotional conflict away from the children, some families are experimenting with parallel parenting plans. According to Healthline, parallel parenting is different from co-parenting in that the parents are very rarely in the same place at the same time for very long.
What are the benefits of parallel parenting?
The biggest benefit to parallel parenting is that it will remove the children from extant conflict between the parents. Often, divorce is not enough to solve whatever the issues were between the parents that caused the separation in the first place. This means that divorced parents may still harbor very negative feelings toward each other.
This is natural, but it is not healthy for the children to experience so much negativity. Parallel parenting allows the children access to both parents while removing them from a negative emotional situation.
How is this different from co-parenting?
Co-parenting typically involves the family presenting a united front to the world. For instance, both parents may choose to attend a dance recital, even if they are attending with their new significant others.
Many times, negative feelings between ex-spouses will not allow for this, and trying to force the “united front” may not be the best choice. Parallel parenting ensures that the parents are properly separated. It is also possible that after some time spent successfully parallel parenting that enmity between the parents may lessen.
