What is Parallel Parenting: A System for Estranged Ex-partners

Friday, July 25, 2025.

They used to argue about the thermostat. Now they argue about which driveway counts as “neutral ground.”

This is how love dies in the suburbs: not with a bang, but with a court order and a co-parenting app.

It’s called Parallel Parenting, and it exists for people who once promised to grow old together but now can’t make eye contact in the school parking lot.

It’s parenting in exile. Two governments. One child. No diplomatic relations.

What is Parallel Parenting?

In parallel parenting, each household becomes a self-contained country.

Momland. Dadistan. The child travels between them like a tiny ambassador with a backpack full of homework and half a toothbrush.

There are rules. Court-mandated schedules. Color-coded calendars. Holidays carved up with surgical precision.

You don’t talk to your ex. You email. Or better yet, you upload a “communication log” into something called OurFamilyWizard, which sounds like a failed Disney+ series and feels like a war crimes tribunal.

You both still love the child. You just can’t love each other without flinging the emotional equivalent of crockery.

Why This Isn’t as Crazy as It Sounds

Children aren’t ruined by divorce. They’re ruined by watching two people pretend they’re not at war while quietly burning down the house.

Psychologists figured this out decades ago.

What hurts kids most is not the split, but the conflict that oozes on afterward like a toxic leak.

Kelly and Emery (2003) said as much. So did Cummings and Davies (2010). In other words, when parents keep fighting after the lawyers go home, the kid becomes a battlefield.

Parallel parenting is less a parenting style and more a ceasefire. You don’t coordinate bedtime routines. You don’t agree on screen time. You simply don't destroy each other in front of the child. That alone is enough to reduce anxiety, behavioral issues, and the urge to grow up and write memoirs with titles like Why I Don’t Trust Tuesdays.

The Research—Because People Still Like Proof

Bauserman (2002) ran the numbers. Joint custody, even when mediated through cold silence, is better than turning one parent into a ghost. Kids with access to both parents—especially when kept out of the line of fire—do better across the board.

Saini et al. (2016) described parallel parenting as a structure for psychological containment, which is academic code for “at least no one’s screaming during the science fair.”

McIntosh and colleagues (2010) warned about the dangers of catching kids in the emotional crossfire. Parallel parenting, they noted, actually works better when rules are clear and everyone stops trying to win at divorce.

What It Looks Like (On a Tuesday)

Marla picks Lily up from school. She’s wearing sunglasses and a calm expression that took three years of therapy to fake.

Kevin drops Lily off at the curb and nods like a man saluting a former comrade.

No one speaks. Lily climbs into the car and sighs. She loves them both, separately, like you might love two distant planets.

In Marla’s house, there’s bedtime at 8:30 and no sugar. In Kevin’s, there’s Xbox until someone collapses. Lily adapts. She becomes a traveler fluent in two dialects of love.

The Limits of the System

Let’s be blunt: it’s lonely. There’s no united front. No family dinners.

Just two silos with a child ferrying peace treaties between them. Sometimes it feels sterile. Sometimes it feels like surrender. But mostly it just works, and in the world of family conflict, that’s something close to a miracle.

It isn’t growth. It isn’t healing. It’s functioning. And for a family on fire, functioning is a form of grace.

Final Thought: Love, After the Bomb Drops

Parallel parenting is what happens when a couple stops trying to repair the marriage and starts trying not to ruin the child.

It's parenting by airlock.

It’s building a parenting plan not out of shared dreams but out of duct tape and court orders.

But it works. Not perfectly. Not warmly. But consistently enough.

And for a child who has seen too much, that consistency can be life-saving.

So yes. You don’t speak. You don’t collaborate. Perhaps you don’t trust after what you deem a profound betrayal

But you show up. You feed them. You listen when they cry. You get them to soccer on time.

And in a world that’s increasingly loud, unstable, and self-absorbed, after infidelity, that’s what family looks like for some folks right now.

Be Well, Stay Kind, and Godspeed.

REFERENCES:

Amato, P. R., & Afifi, T. D. (2006). Feeling caught between parents: Adult children’s relations with parents and subjective well-being. Journal of Marriage and Family, 68(1), 222–235. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1741-3737.2006.00243.x

Bauserman, R. (2002). Child adjustment in joint-custody versus sole-custody arrangements: A meta-analytic review. Journal of Family Psychology, 16(1), 91–102. https://doi.org/10.1037/0893-3200.16.1.91

Cummings, E. M., & Davies, P. T. (2010). Marital conflict and children: An emotional security perspective. Guilford Press.

Kelly, J. B., & Emery, R. E. (2003). Children’s adjustment following divorce: Risk and resilience perspectives. Family Relations, 52(4), 352–362. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1741-3729.2003.00352.x

McIntosh, J., Smyth, B., & Kelaher, M. (2010). Parenting arrangements post-separation: Patterns and developmental outcomes for infants and children. Australian Government Attorney-General's Department.

Saini, M., Drozd, L., & Olesen, N. (2016). Parenting plan evaluations: Applied research for the family court. Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/med:psych/9780199396580.001.0001

Vanassche, S., Sodermans, A. K., Matthijs, K., & Swicegood, G. (2013). Commuting between two parental households: The association between joint physical custody and adolescent well-being following divorce. Journal of Family Studies, 19(2), 139–158. https://doi.org/10.5172/jfs.2013.19.2.139