Leading Women for Shared Parenting

Leading Women for Shared Parenting (LWSP) is an international educational and advocacy organization that promotes shared parenting and the right of children to have both parents present in their daily life. The organization was founded to dispel the widespread myth that it is only - or even mainly - disgruntled fathers with limited access to their children who promote equal shared parenting as the default model for separating parents.
Mission
The organization has only one mission, to promote shared parenting where children live equal or close to equal time with their divorced parents. They think that children benefit most from the active involvement of both parents regardless of their marital status and they recognize that absent issues of abuse, neglect or abandonment, government policy and laws must be structured in such a way as to maximize the opportunity of all parents to contribute to the social, emotional, intellectual, physical, moral and spiritual development of their children. The organization does not take a stand on other issues, as it considers shared parenting to be an issue that is neither the domain of conservatives or liberals, poor or wealthy, and pays no attention to ethnicity or gender.
Advocacy and education
Leading Women for Shared Parenting have worked actively to dispel the attempt to brand shared parenting as a father's rights issue, emphasizing that shared parenting is in the best interest of children, including daughters. Among the members there are stories of the daughter who only got to “visit” her Father, the Grandmother who became an “every other weekend Grandma”, and the Step-Mother who watches her Step-Children struggle due to a “Custody Award”.
In many places, the organization has been an active and vocal advocate for family court reform in order to establish a legal presumption for shared parenting. For example, members have advocated for shared parenting laws in Michigan, Minnesota, North Dakota, Florida and Illinois.
The organization think it is important to make exceptions to shared parenting when there is child abuse, neglect or abandonment, but it does not think that this should be used as an excuse against a legal presumption of shared parenting for the majority of children. In fact, the membership includes some of the world's leading domestic violence experts and activists, such as Erin Pizzey, Denise Hines, Elizabeth Celi, Barbara Mills, Emily Douglas, and Nicola Graham-Kevan.
Family lawyers and bar associations have been identified by the organization as one of the leading obstacles to shared parenting reform. Citing Paul Bohannan's estimate that the size of the Divorce Industry rivals that of the Automobile Industry, the organization has lamented that the family law system is structured to make parents adversaries, entice Parents to fight over Custody of their Children and to prolong the process all for the sake of generating fees with billions of dollars going in to the pockets of attorneys, mediators, and the Court System, at the expense of the child’s future educational needs, medical needs or even basic lifestyle.
History and Organization
As an organization, Leading Women for Shared Parenting was conceived in March 2013 and launched on Father's Day, June 16, 2013, when more than 150 influential women lent their names in support of the equal shared parenting principle. It was founded to dispel the myth that only father are in favor of shared parenting.

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