Every Other Weekend & Holidays
Seriously?
Welcome to 1982, a newsletter by Shani Silver. This newsletter does not publish free content, but if you’d like to read it you can subscribe here. Thank you for enjoying the work of independent writers.
Eighties stuff isn’t easy to talk about. That’s kind of the entire point of this newsletter. If I can bring the uncomfortable shit to light and show myself I deserve to exist because for damn sure the 80s weren’t communicating that message then maybe I’ve helped someone else who lived through it feel a little better, too. Maybe I can help us both feel a little less angry. I don’t want to be the kind of person who sees newly divorced people in 2023 establish a perfect child custody split and scowl because “these kids don’t know how good they have it.” In an effort to not be that person, I’ll write this.
Wanna talk about dads? I don’t, but I’m going to. Because someone needs to talk about how the 1980s let dads off the entire hook and vilified the overworked, under-supported mothers as chief disciplinarians and structure-bearers because they didn’t have two goddamned seconds of ease to be anything else. The 80s let men make children and then bow out of taking care of them just because they didn’t love the kids’ mother anymore. I’m talking about the absolute bullshit child custody strategy that was “every other weekend and holidays.” Whoever invented this, I’d like to take them out back while wielding an object large and heavy.