Parenting Arrangements for Children Under Four After Separation

Separating when you have a baby or young child raises some difficult parenting questions.

How often should the child see each parent? Should there be overnight time? Is equal time appropriate? Should time increase gradually as the child gets older?

There is no standard answer.

A parenting arrangement that works for one three-year-old may be completely unsuitable for another. An arrangement that works at 18 months may also need to change substantially by the time the child is four.

For children this young, the starting point should not be mathematical equality between parents. It should be the developmental needs of the particular child.

What does the law say?

Under the Family Law Act 1975, the Court must treat the best interests of the child as the paramount consideration.

Section 60CC requires the Court to consider matters including the child’s safety; their developmental, psychological, emotional and cultural needs; each parent’s capacity to meet those needs; and the benefit to the child of having relationships with their parents and other significant people, where it is safe.

There is no presumption that a child should spend equal time with each parent. The former presumption of equal shared parental responsibility was also removed from the Family Law Act in May 2024.

The question is therefore not what division of time is fairest to the adults. It is what arrangement best meets the needs of this child.

Why are children under four different?

The first few years of life involve enormous emotional, neurological and social development.

Young children are developing attachment relationships with the people who regularly care for them. In practical terms, they are learning who feeds them, comforts them, settles them and responds when they are distressed.

A young child can have secure relationships with more than one parent or caregiver. The difficulty after separation is supporting those relationships without asking the child to manage separations, transitions or changes in routine that they are not ready for.

In her paper Parenting Arrangements for the 0–4 Year Age Group, then Federal Magistrate Robyn Sexton emphasised the vulnerability of children in this age group and the need to consider the individual child rather than apply a standard parenting formula.

What does the research say about overnight time?

There has been considerable debate in Australia about overnight care for babies and toddlers.

The research does not establish a rule that overnight stays are harmful for children under four.

Judith Cashmore and Patrick Parkinson, in Parenting Arrangements for Young Children: Messages from Research, concluded that the available research did not support the proposition that overnight stays for very young children were inherently problematic. They instead emphasised the overall family context and the circumstances of the individual child.

Other Australian research has urged greater caution. Jennifer McIntosh, Bruce Smyth and Margaret Kelaher identified associations between more frequent overnight care and some measures of poorer emotional regulation among children under four. Their work also recognised the limitations of applying population-level findings to an individual child.

The academic debate continued. McIntosh, Smyth and Kelaher later acknowledged that questions about overnight care for very young children could not be resolved through a simple universal rule.

The practical conclusion is modest: overnight time should neither be prohibited simply because a child is young nor introduced automatically because a parent wants it.

What should parents consider?

1. The child’s age and development

There is a major developmental difference between a four-month-old baby and a three-and-a-half-year-old child.

Very young children have a limited understanding of time and separation. Their ability to tolerate longer periods away from familiar caregivers generally develops as they get older.

Age matters, but it does not decide the issue by itself.

2. What care did each parent provide before separation?

Did both parents regularly feed, bath, settle and put the child to bed? Can each parent recognise when the child is hungry, tired, overstimulated or distressed? Has the child previously spent substantial periods alone with each parent?

If one parent had limited involvement in day-to-day care before separation, an immediate move to lengthy periods or frequent overnight time may be a significant change for the child.

That does not mean the relationship should not develop. It may instead support a gradual increase in time.

3. How does the child manage transitions?

A child may be comfortable with each parent but struggle with repeatedly moving between households.

Parents should look at what actually happens. Is the child generally settled after changeover? Or is there persistent distress, disrupted sleep, unusual clinginess, regression or a marked change in behaviour?

One difficult handover does not mean an arrangement is inappropriate. What matters is whether a pattern emerges.

4. Can the parents exchange information?

Parenting a baby or toddler across two households requires information to travel with the child.

Has the child slept? When did they last eat? Are they teething? Have they had medication? What usually settles them?

Parents do not need to be friends. They do need a workable way to exchange important information.

High conflict can also make an otherwise manageable arrangement much harder. Young children should not repeatedly experience tense or hostile changeovers.

So when should overnight time start?

There is no legal age at which overnight time should begin.

For some children, overnight care with both parents may be appropriate from an early age. For others, frequent daytime care followed by a gradual introduction of overnight time may better suit their needs.

Relevant considerations include the child’s age and temperament, their relationship with each parent, each parent’s previous involvement in bedtime and overnight care, feeding arrangements, how the child responds to separation, parental conflict and the practical arrangements in each household.

Overnight time should not become a symbolic test of whether somebody is an equal or important parent. A secure relationship can also develop through regular, responsive daytime care.

Keep the arrangement practical

A timetable can look balanced on paper and still be miserable for a young child.

Parents should consider travel, childcare, nap and sleep times, work commitments, feeding, the number of changeovers and whether the child’s routine will remain reasonably predictable.

The broader principle is simple: parents should adapt the arrangement around the child rather than expecting the child to adapt to an arrangement designed around the parents.

That is also why step-up arrangements can work well.

A child might initially spend shorter but frequent periods with a parent. Those periods can then become longer and eventually include overnight time as the child becomes comfortable and the relationship develops.

The timing of each step does not need to depend on an arbitrary birthday. The child’s response to the existing arrangement is often more informative.

What if parents cannot agree?

Most parents should try to resolve parenting arrangements without going to Court.

This will often involve negotiation or Family Dispute Resolution (FDR). Except in limited circumstances, parents must attempt FDR before filing an application for parenting orders. If agreement is reached, it can be recorded in a parenting plan or consent orders.

For parents of very young children, FDR can also allow an arrangement to evolve over time rather than trying to settle on one timetable for the next 15 years.

The central question

Disputes about babies and young children can easily become disputes about equality.

More useful questions are: Who has cared for the child? Who comforts and settles them? What relationships have already developed? How does the child cope with separation and changeovers? Can the parents communicate? Is the proposed arrangement stable and practical?

For children under four, the best parenting arrangement is usually not found in a formula.

It is found by paying close attention to the particular child.