“Ohio lags on shared parenting”

By Don Hubin

National Parents Organization (NPO) published the 2019 NPO Shared Parenting Report Card, and the news for Ohioans isn’t great. The Buckeye state received a middling “C,” the same grade it received in the NPO study five years ago.

That’s no surprise. In those five years, the Ohio legislature has made no improvements in our laws dealing with post-separation parenting.

NPO researchers evaluated the statutes of Ohio, the other 49 states and the District of Columbia to determine the degree to which those laws promote the well-being of children by encouraging separated parents to share as equally as possible in rearing their children. NPO then graded the states’ statutes based on 21 factors that encourage or discourage shared parenting. The average grade for all of the states is a disappointing “C-.”