In last weekend’s NZ Herald article Two-home children can have best of both worlds, Simon Collins writes:

The term “solo parent” no longer reflects reality for many split New Zealand families, says a new report.

New terms such as “two-home child” or “two-household child” would indicate that many children now split their lives between two separated parents, say the authors of the Families Commission study, Paul Callister and Stuart Birks.

The recent census provided a good illustration of this issue –

Mr Birks said this month’s Census was typical of officialdom’s failure to catch up with split families, asking people only about their relationships to other people in the same house.

The online Census guide says: “For example, if someone in the same household as you acts as your mother and you think of her as your mother, select ‘my mother’.”

“They have to be in the same household to count as the same family,” Mr Birks said. “But for a lot of children in two-parent families, the parent could well be living somewhere else.”