01/08/2025
An article I wrote in 2023 with considerations for when your coparent isn’t really a coparent, lives far away, or has sporadic contact, whether they’re involved in drugs, crimes, addictions, or behaving in ways that tear you down as a parent and a person.
My surprising suggestion: look for the good in them and try to find some way for these parents to have some loving -even virtual -interaction with your kids. Make those ways known to the other parent.
And then leave it alone.
Many separated parents, at least initially, seek to adopt a joint custody paradigm. But for some unmarried parents, it’s different. I’ve written a short essay on special considerations for sole custodians with visiting/sporadically-involved parents.
Even when two parents are no longer living together and have no personal relationship at all, there is usually a basis to trust that they love and will protect the children.
Where parents have both lived together in the same home with the children for a reasonable period of time, and both parents have had a healthy relationship with those children since their birth, this trust can be strongest.
However, there are some situations in which there has never been, or is no longer, a basis for trust. Terms for custody and visitation must be negotiated, and an agreement executed, or a decision made by a jurist, to keep the children safe, and the the rights of the custodial parent and the sporadically visiting parent in tact.
Writing and signing an agreement, or getting a court order is, of course, no guarantee that the terms will be followed, but it does provide for some measure of redress in the event that they are not.
The main indication that children cannot be left safely with a visiting parent is a negligectful or abusive condition occurring inside the home. For example, a parent may have unlocked, loaded fi****ms in the home. That is especially detrimental in cases in which a visiting parent is involved in, or even make his living, engaging in criminal activities. 
Children casually visiting homes such as this will most likely have had no training in the careful use and storage of fire arms. Supervised visitation is indicated in this type of situation, in a place other than the home with the unsecured fi****ms, if the parent will not voluntarily rid the home of such fi****ms or lock them up carefully while the children are visiting.
Sometimes visiting and sporadically involved parents have drugs or drug paraphernalia in the home, engage in smoking in front of the children, excessive drinking in front of the children, or have a parade of different paramours coming and going in and out of the home.
Some visiting or sporadically involved parents may engage in corporeal punishment, name-calling, verbal abuse of the children, and most especially damaging: continuous malicious gossip about the other parent. Again, supervised visitation, if any, is the only safe option in these cases.
Other, less egregious, but still telling, indicators of visitation time that is not spent appropriately are the visiting parent leaving the children for long periods, with a friend or paramour, especially overnight, not providing toys in a home where there are young children, having a TV that is constantly on, exhibiting parental addiction to to the Internet or online gaming, or spending several hours every day continuously engaged in video games, whether it be gaming with the children, or parallel play, in which the father or mother is engaged in more adult-themed activities, while the children are left to play their own video games.
Saying unkind things about the other parent, without remorse, is a strong indication that a parent is not concerned with the best interests of his or her children. It is an indication that one parent has unresolved feelings about the other parent. It’s not a healthy situation in which to put any child. Some parents knowingly break the rule, because they are overcome with fear or anger and feel they “can’t help” complaining or raging. Others don’t even realize what they are doing is wrong, as long as they are stating their subjective truth. Still others make excuses for themselves.
Maligning, neglectful parents usually deny how damaging the often false, exaggerated or misleading information that they have given their children was. Sadly, this behavior often works to make the maligned and more responsible, parent act out and appear controlling and punishing.
Unfortunately, the more mature parent must take the neglectful parent’s contempt and jealousy in stride, and may take comfort and joy in simply being the better-behaved person.
If the insistence upon a written custody agreement, and a casually visiting parent’s failure to enter into one, results in a rupture with the children, and there is a refusal to commit devotion to reasonable behavior to pen and paper, one inference to be made is that the visiting parent was only vaguely interested in visits with the children, and only did so out of a desire to appear as a caring person.
Or, perhaps, in the most unfortunate cases, the parent had engaged with the kids, for a short time, in order to have instant little friends, like playthings, at his or her disposal.
In one of the cruelest ironies, the custodial parent may have to take steps to regularize visitation with a custody petition, seeking seeking safeguards to the children from some of the foregoing factors. Nevertheless, at the point where their own behavior will be scrutinized by a jurist, or an attorney for the child, and rules may be made for their behavior via stipulation or court order, the visiting or sporadically interested parent may refuse to participate in any adjudication.
Out of guilt, they may complain to their friends and relatives, that the other parent has frustrated their visitation for “no reason.”
In the very rarest of cases, one may accurately conclude -and in some cases, this is with the help of a jurist-that your visiting parent is unfit for any parenting time at all. 
That is a very rare case, indeed, because even a difficult or chaotic parent has moments of normalcy and empathy. If the time spent with an immature parent is appropriately managed, and in some cases, supervised, those moments can be sweet memories that will last your children the rest of their lives.
It’s a tricky, razor-thin tightrope we walk when arranging visitation with parents whose personalities do not always allow them to work and play very well with others, and who may not always be interested in being effective, involved and safe parents. The custodial parents are not always their best selves, or playing enlightened negotiators, when dealing with parents such as these. Single parents, especially those with jobs, are constantly taxed in ways that sporadically visiting parents cannot fathom. If children exhibit negative behaviors toward parents it’s going to be ones to whom they are securely attached. Parents who only sporadically exercise their parenting responsibilities, create fear and anger in children, which anger, in turn, those children may take out on devoted custodial parents. It’s a thankless job, indeed, but one well worth the price, if there is any chance of providing the children with another loving parent even occasionally.
I write this next paragraph with empathy toward all parents, especially those who find themselves in a tough situation with a very difficult other parent.
That person was once your partner, even very briefly, and (outside cases of sexual crimes) that pairing was not involuntary, nor an accident. You chose that person.
Take a long, hard look at yourself and your own behavior, before you unfairly determine that you are a better person than the one with whom you chose to have babies.
Then, do whatever you have to do to protect those kids, which, oftentimes, is being silent in the face of astonishing apathy toward your own needs and overburdened situation, and the glaring inequality of the financial and physical support you give, vis-à-vis that given by the sporadically interested or visiting parent.
Every child deserves to have both a mom and a dad whom they can find some reason to respect and love.
If you choose not to go to court, or if the other parent will not participate, and the children really want to see the other parent, simply suggest and facilitate visitations that are in settings that are not harmful to the children. Put your own feelings aside and ignore what the other parent is telling you about yourself, (there may be grains of truth, but it’s usually mostly a projection) as long as the children aren’t steadily inculcated with it.
If you are leading a visiting parent horse to water and he or she is still not drinking, just provide for your own children the best you can, enforce their child support rights, remind your children of loving memories with the other parent, and let the other less involved parent paint you as the villain in their story, understanding that it’s too painful for them to face the fact that they chose this situation with their own actions.
