A recent newstory caught my attention; it was a NY judges decision to order a woman to purchase a digital web camera and to arrange for her children and her ex-husband to have their “visitation” for 3 hours on a web program called Skype.
It seems that times are tough financially, both for the man & the woman, and the ex-wife feels the need to move over 1,000 miles away to the state of Florida where she will live with her family to make ends meet. They are about to lose their home. There is not enough money to live on. So she is making a plan that she feels is a good one. But her children are young, ages 6 & 9. I can’t help but wonder, don’t the children need more interaction, than 3 hours a week, with their father…ONLINE?
Some people would say, well…why doesn’t the father move to Florida as well? It seems he just had cancer surgery. And in my opinion, if neither the mother, nor the father, is financially stable…how is it that either of them will find the finances to get set up to communicate digitally if they don’t already have the equipment or the software. That all costs money.
Can a parent meet the emotional needs of their children stictly by being online at the same time? Is it enough interaction to chat with your children? Is the Skype program going to replace physical hugs, going places together, putting them to bed at night, joining them in their after-school activities? Nothing against Skype but, it lacks the physical component of parenting in my opinion. I can’t imagine a mother or a father thinking that this kind of visitation is “enough” in a long term situation.
Are the co-parenting responsibilities and priviledges going to be able to be satisfactory? Will one parent end up with more of one and less of the other? Will the children feel abandoned or cheated? I wonder if there will be enough of an opportunity for natural bonding to be maintained in this type of arrangement.
Was there NO OTHER ALTERNATIVE than moving so far from the children’s father? No other affordable place to live in NY? No other job that would increase the family’s financial situation? Maybe we weren’t told all of the pertinent information regarding the situation that the family is facing. Still, I wonder for any parent; father or mother, is digital visitation enough when it comes to parenting your children? What do you think?
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