Parents often disagree

One of the arguments against shared custody is that the parents may not agree on everything. Parents should agree on everything, they say.

I find this argument bewildering. Did all these people really grow up with parents who agreed on everything? When I quiz them, they always admit that their parents often disagreed on things, but they nevertheless argue that everyone should have parents who agree on everything.

Comedian Louis C.K. was on the NBC Tonight Show with Jay Leno Wednesday night, and he addressed this issue with some funny stories:

I had my kids this week. I share custody of my kids with my ex-wife. So I had to get them to school ... [funny story]

Me and the kids have great times together. Being a single parent is a little easier, because you don't
have to agree with the other parent. That's the hardest part of being a parent is the other parent, because you have to agree on everything. No two grown-ups ever agree on anything. Just one of them goes "Fine!". That's all that ever happens.

So, anyway, when you are a single parent, you can just say, "Let's go camping." I just said it in June, "Let's go camping." So we just put a bunch of stuff in the car, and we drove down to Maryland. That's where we went. We went to a little state park, and it was beautiful. We walked around. We borrowed marshmellows from neighboring campers. You can do that when you have kids because they are like little ambassadors.

He is right. It was much easier to do something like camping after my divorce. Disagreements often make shared parenting easier, not harder. The mom can do what she wants on her time, and the dad can do what he wants on his time.

The biggest potential disagreements are in where to live and where to attend school. Almost everything else is trivial.