In 2012, I was contacted by a graduate student who was looking for stories about single fathers. I think she found me from an old blog I used to have. It’s so interesting to listen to this recording eight years later. Very little has changed with my relationship to my kids as well as my thoughts about marriage/divorce and family court.

In 2012, I was still reeling from a highly contentious divorce process and still dealing with the fallout. My ex-wife and I were arguing over the silliest of things. I knew back then, the things we are arguing about wouldn’t matter in the long run. What I did know at the time was that our children needed and wanted both of us in their lives. They still do all this time later. Why on earth my ex-wife wanted to cut me out of our children’s lives, I’ll never quite understand.

Am I a single father? I guess I am, but the reality is that we are co-parenting. We share our children equally. Shared parenting works. I have our kids during the day, and she has them, when I leave for work at night. My ex has our kids all weekend because that is also when I work. I have one Sunday each month to be with them so I can enjoy weekend activities from time to time. I think it has worked out for all of us. My ex can focus on her career while I focused on our children during the day. At night, I worked and made moves with my own career. That’s what I call equality.

As I listen back to this recording, I often wonder why people, in 2020, still feel mothers should have more time with children post-separation or divorce than fathers should? What makes a mother any more worthy than a father? When you start thinking through modern families and divorce, who should be the custodial parent when there are two mothers? What if there were two dads raising kids? If both parents are working 10 hours a day and a nanny is caring for the kids all day, who should get custody if the parents want to split?

Absent extenuating circumstances such as abuse, addiction, instability, neglect or abandonment, courts should simply start from the idea that children should have equal time and access to both parents. Courts should allow parents to retain joint legal and physical custody unless presented with clear and convincing evidence that this arrangement is not in the best interest of the child. The bar should be extremely high to allow any court to take away custody from loving fit parents.

I shouldn’t have had to fight for 11 months and waste tens of thousands of dollars to be in the position I’m in right now. It made zero sense then, and it doesn’t now.

I love my kids. My ex-wife knew it too. Thankfully, my judge saw through the nonsense my ex-wife’s legal team was presenting and forced us to work things out in a way that wouldn’t waste precious time. Time the court could be spending on much more serious cases. I feel most divorces are similar to mine. There shouldn’t be an incentive for a winner-takes-all, adversarial system that encourages bad behavior.

In New York State, one parent is the custodial parent and the other is relegated to “visitor” status. The way you win, and become the custodial parent is to play a horrible game and make accusation so that the court can award one parent the children. It’s a horrible game and the incentives to “win” are enticing. The losers are the children in the long run.

If I didn’t fight to retain the status I always had as a parent, I would have been that every other weekend parent. That made no sense to me. It’s why we share our children equally and neither one of us pays child support. We support our children by supporting them. Why should we have the state tell either of us how to spend our hard earned money on our children?

Courts all across America should have the standard where there is a presumption that both parents are fit, and the children of both parents will be shared equally after a breakup. It is in the best interests of everyone.

Clayton Craddock is an independent thinker, father of two beautiful children in New York City and is the drummer of the hit broadway musical Ain’t Too Proud. He earned a Bachelor of Business Administration from Howard University’s School of Business and is a 25 year veteran of the fast paced New York City music scene. He has played drums in a number of hit Broadway musicals including “Tick, tick…BOOM!,Altar Boyz, Memphis The Musical and Lady Day At Emerson’s Bar and Grill. In addition, Clayton has worked on: Footloose, Motown, The Color Purple, Rent, Little Shop of Horrors, Evita, Cats, and Avenue Q.

Clayton is the chair of the New York chapter of the National Parents Organization and is focused on promoting shared parenting, where both parents have equal standing raising children after a separation or divorce. He is writing a memoir and writes for various local and national publications.

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