SECURING THE CARE OF CHILDREN IN DIVERSE FAMILIES: BUILDING ON TRENDS IN GUARDIANSHIP REFORM

Abstract

The issue of childcare has been widely discussed and hotly debated in recent years. Discussions about mothers unequally burdened with childcare and fathers needing to take greater responsibility proliferate in magazine articles and on television shows. Searching deeper into this societal dialogue on child care reveals that the focus is on childcare within the normative nuclear family: a biological or adoptive family with a mother, a father, and a child. The needs of single parents living alone with their children or in diverse family forms are often not mentioned in the conversation. Yet, single parents have at least as much, if not more, of a need to share their childcare duties with another adult.