Is It Better for a Child to Have One Consistent Mother?

Reader’s Question

I’m a lesbian mother to a 23 month old girl conceived via artificial insemination. I was in a relationship when I had her. I actually made the decision to have a baby on my own — somewhat against my partner’s wishes, but with her blessing. Once the baby was born, of course my partner fell in love with her and ended up becoming Mom after all. Unfortunately, the relationship ended when the child was a year old. The plan was that my ex and I would raise the child together. And for the past year, my ex has been pretty good about being active in the child’s life. I, of course, have full time custody and do 98% of the raising (both physically and financially). But my ex does love the child and the child adores her, calls her Mom, the whole deal. So it would seem my question shouldn’t even be asked.

But there are circumstances (aren’t there always?) that make me wonder whether it’s really the best thing for my ex to continue being Mom. First, I question her skills as a parent, and question the value of her influence on this little girl. She’s one of those people who can make you feel miserable about yourself. Her friends, even her mother, have said my ex is difficult to know. But, of course, if my ex were the child’s biological father, those issues wouldn’t matter so I’m not sure they shouldn’t matter in this decision either.

Another piece of the puzzle is the chance I may have to move back to Texas to care for my ailing mother in a couple of years. That would mean I’d be moving the child away from my ex at a time when she’s old enough to really understand and be affected by losing her close connection with my ex, whereas if she exited the child’s life now it would be more like a hiccup.

But even if we don’t end up moving, everything I’ve read so far suggests it’s difficult for a child to go back and forth between divorced parents. My ex already gets really upset every time she has to make the transfer from one of us to the other, I can only imagine that’ll get worse before it gets better.

Again, if my ex were the child’s biological father, there wouldn’t be a question. You just deal with it. But my ex isn’t her biological father and as much as I’d like to say that it doesn’t matter, it just might. Would it not be better for the child to have one consistent Mom and home than to be shuffled back and forth given the circumstances?

I have been struggling with this for awhile now and could really use an unbiased opinion.

Our Consulting Clinical Psychologist’s Reply

We may be applying the wrong model here. You’re referencing the model of Mother and Biological Father in terms of visitation, parenting involvement, and maybe ethical rights. The proper model might be Mother and Sweetheart. What you are dealing with is a common experience when a mother and her boyfriend have lived together — then end their relationship. In many of those situations, the boyfriend or sweetheart has bonded with the children in the family and may want to continue a relationship with the children at some level. However, their involvement with the children is totally the option of the biological mother. As time passes in these situations, the ex who remains involved in the life of the children creates multiple difficulties and issues when the biological mother establishes a new romantic relationship, leaves town, etc. To make matters worse, the same issues that ended the relationship often remain active during visitation or return with a vengence, creating complications.

A strategy to address this situation often involves moving the ex-partner from a participating parent-figure role to that of a friend of the family. The ex-partner is allowed to visit, maybe invited to future events, and may participate in birthday events — all depending upon the social situation of the biological mother. As the biological mother, if the ex-partner has personality and/or other issues that you feel may be harmful to the child, you are totally within your rights to limit their involvement or even dissolve the relationship.

In both models, everyone experiences some distress when the relationship changes or ends. As you mentioned, the younger children are more tolerant of these changes and experience little or no long-term issues. While these situations create tough decisions now, in the future such decisions will be more difficult as you describe.