Virtual Visitation: a Modern Family Phenomena

Divorce generates many negative feelings among them that often haunt them for the rest of their lives. They became insecure about their future and do not know what will happen to them or who will take care of them. The kids often develop self-hatred and guilt complex because they begin to blame themselves for the parental divorce. They think that the parents are leaving them because they were not good enough for them.

Their insecurities and complexes twist their psyche in various ways. They start lagging behind in school studies. Quite a few children of divorce take to petty crime such as shoplifting or get involved in substance abuse. Some boys tend to become insensitive bullies while girls often suffer teenage pregnancies. When they observe their parents separating, the children lose trust in human relationships and they have problems in their marriage when they grow up. They often turn out to be chronic underachievers who fail to achieve the heights they should have, according to their capabilities. Divorce clearly impacts children severely with several long-term consequences.

When divorce is inevitable, the parents can do many things to ensure that the negative effects of their separation on the children are minimized. The first and foremost of these is to give an appearance of business as usual after divorce as far as the kids are concerned. You should make it a point to stay in the same neighbourhood so that they can have the same friends and go to the same school.

When divorce is granted by a court, one of the parents, usually the mother, is assigned child custody while the non-custodial parent gets visitation rights, that is, he or she has to come to the children’s home once every week or so to meet the kids or take them out for socialising. For decades, this system has been perfected with dos and don’ts and elaborate rules of behaviour of non-custodial parents during visitation.

However, recently, driven by high technology, a new kind of visitation – virtual visitation – has entered the scene. This uses a computer, web cam, microphone and speakers to ensure video conferencing through the Internet between the non-custodial parent and the children. This nicely supplements physical visitation and is increasingly becoming very popular due to the huge benefits it offers. The foremost advantage of technology-driven virtual visitation is that no matter where the parent is in the world at a particular moment, he or she can through video chat interact with the children as if they were all present in the same room. It is a boon if the parents are living far away in different cities or even countries. Never before in history have parents been so empowered.

Because of virtual visitation, time and distance become irrelevant. Since the parent saves a lot in commuting time, he or she can afford to spend extra hours interacting with the children. It is also a very inexpensive technology that only needs a computer, a web cam and an Internet connection to become useful. If the parent is far away or busy at work, he or she can simply dial the computer of their children through a broadband Internet connection and begin the video chat with them.

This has empowered the non-custodial parent to be involved in every small detail of the daily lives of the children. He or she can say good night to the kids every day, read them stories, compliment them on their new hair cut or help them in their home work. The emotional and psychological boost the children receive from getting to see both their parents every day goes a long way in healing the trauma of parental divorce.

For all its benefits, though, virtual visitation has one grave risk. Since it is so easy, convenient, inexpensive and a time-saver, the non-custodial parent may begin to use it as a replacement for physical visitation. This will defeat the entire purpose of the exercise since virtual visitation is meant to be used to support physical visitation, not supplant it.

Nothing can replace the intimacy and warm feelings that the children get when the parent meets them in flesh and blood and makes body contact through hugs and kisses. Virtual visitation can be a boon if used to bolster and pad up physical visitation, but a bane if used to replace it. Another problem is that virtual visitation is still available mostly in urban areas where high-speed Internet broadband connections exist.

Virtual visitation is an evolving area and the courts have only now begun to take it into account while deciding visitation rights of the non-custodial parent. But this is a phenomenon that shows a lot of promise for the future and may drastically alter the dynamics of the child-parent interaction after divorce.