No. The court will look carefully at which parent is best able to meet the child’s day to day physical and emotional needs, both now and in the future. The work commitments of one parent may make it more realistic and practical for the other parent to have primary care of the children. In the past, this tended to mean that mothers would have primary care of the children, but increasingly this will not be the case. Even where the children live primarily with one parent, the other parent is still likely to retain “parental responsibility”, so will still have a key role to play in the children’s life. Just because the children may spend more time with one parent than the other does not mean that either parent is more important in the eyes of the law or can make important decisions about the children’s upbringing unilaterally.