Absent father

CSA money is also a joke. It should better reflect the true cost of raising a child alone. Maybe that might make them realise?

My ex’s family had no history of men walking away. It didn’t stop him. As long as it’s legal and there are no real sanctions - not even public opinion - then it will go on, causing immense harm to the kids.

I think the OP’s point though was how can they do it? It’s not really about the money or the work, it’s how they can inflict such mental cruelty. I can’t understand how they can. Imagine if 90% of women abandoned their kids?

I was envisioning more of a drink-driving type sea change in public opinion, but then I'm an eternal optimist!

Obviously I know that won't happen.

My son has no role models of men who walked away from their kids. His dad put huge effort into staying in touch with him and he watched his step dad and step brother do the same with their kids. He’s adamant that he won’t have children outside marriage.

Maybe we should advise our daughters not to get involved with men whose family background features men who turned their backs on their families.

Yes OP you're right. I wonder what he'd say if you said back to him "and is that what you want for your own flesh and blood?"

I suppose the whole marriage system is meant to tie men into sticking with their families. That’s why it existed through the generations. Of course it doesn’t work - there have always been men who upped and left and strangely the shame was always put on the women. I suppose because the rest of society feared they might end up claiming on the parish or something. It makes me laugh she a friend talks down to me as I am now a “single mum” - so very patronising! It could happen to her but she can’t see that. I think these men must have some major fault in their brains. Even if they didn’t feel the love or were faking it, where is their sense of responsibility? Utter snakes.

(Not blaming women btw just saying the men wouldn't like that one little bit.)

I actually don't think men will stop doing this until they lose the respect of other men.

It's got to come from them, there's precious little women can do, especially as some of them don't really care what women think - or we'd have fixed it generations ago.

My father was around until my early teens (and I have 2 younger siblings) then went and lived abroad. I’ve seen him a couple of times since.

He’s happy to call himself a father and post proud pictures of his grandchildren to Facebook (who he has met once in the decade since my eldest was born and never acknowledges or remembers their birthdays), but it’s all just appearances. He wants to be able to call himself a family man without taking the effort to do the emotional heavy lifting. He hasn’t been around to support his children in any way. He doesn’t seem to miss us or ask how we are doing. He is most probably autistic, and he went to boarding school aged 6, which led to a very detached relationship with his own parents. I can see his situation objectively sometimes, and don’t feel he ‘owes’ me anything or that I had a right to have an involved father. But I can also say, since having my own children, I couldn’t never imagine choosing to not be actively involved in their lives, and not knowing them.

My question was really, how can we change society to make men feel shame when they don't support their dc

I don't like this response We bring our sons up to take responsibility. It’s not rocket science

How??? Yes I can make my boys be responsible in every way - within the limits of mothering - but the 3 generations of men above them have left their dc. Actions speak louder than words, and when the going gets tough, they'll know in their bones that it's a possibility just to walk away.

I don't think mothers can solve this alone.

It’s old fashioned to say it, apparently. But it reflects on a man’s character. It’s a pretty big warning sign that someone is a liar and untrustworthy.

Yes the “careful who you pick” stuff is total nonsense. Posters don’t understand it could happen to anyone - and does. Any man is capable of it. Even out PM. And they get away with it.

I get a bit ratty about the “careful who fathers your children” thing. XP was desperate for kids and we tried for years (including 2 miscarriages). He was devoted through the pregnancy, nested around the house, present at the birth, etc. All the positive pointers were there. When DS was 6 months old he left. Just fucked off because it was too hard and hadn’t matched his expectations.

And with that, he left me to it. No maintenance (and I couldn’t track the fucker down), no support, no nothing, just left me to do it all. His family supported him to exit and actively prevented me from contacting him or knowing where he was. So my family stepped up and we raised a fine young man, if I say so myself.

He turned up again about 18 months ago and wanted to see DS (now 17) to form a father -son relationship (his words). He couldn’t understand why DS was angry at him and wanted an explanation. He blames me for poisoning him and wangs on about parental alienation on social media. He forgets that DS is a fully autonomous human and perfectly capable of drawing his own conclusions and making his own decisions. The link between actions and consequences is utterly lost on the man.

Overwhelmingly it is the mums who stand by their kids and raise them. This means a huge amount more work and effort for us. Yes we love them but there’s still a lot of hard graft and it’s not always easy. Meanwhile it’s quite alright for men to walk away Scot free. What recognition is there for us? None. I had to PAY my deadbeat ex to go away.

However I agree that a decent parent would see their DC no matter what.

So @WhatWouldPhyllisCraneDo your children's biological father is a lazy selfish shit who uses his new partners' as an excuse to limit how much he sees his older biological children.

No man or woman will stop a father seeing their kids if they really want to see them.

Something's got to change or our daughters will be going through the same thing in 20 years. Christ knows how we do it...

Massive admiration to the mums here who are holding it all together.

My ex left 11 years ago, dc were 5 and 3. He used to see them eow when he was with the OW (and yes she was the OW, she persued him knowing he had a fiancee and 2 dc at home). Then they split up and he saw them 1 day every weekend as he had nowhere to have them overnight.
Then he met his now wife. Who encouraged him to give up work, "why should that bitch get our money" and spend less and less time with them, "my dc get really upset when you spend time with your boys. They don't have a dad so it's not fair on them" . They've had more dc since and contact is cancelled at the last min for every and any reason. He hasn't seen them at all since last March as apparently its against the law

Meanwhile I've had such bad depression I've been suicidal. Anxiety that's now become agoraphobia so I don't leave my house unless I'm with someone. Guess what? I still get up everyday and make sure the dc are fed, at school/working at home atm, clean, do the housework.

So sorry if I'm not very sympathetic to feckless men walking away and claiming depression. They can get to fuck.

I think there's a lot to it, but I believe the starting point is that women seem to get more joy from parenting than men.

I've never heard a man talk about being a father in the way that women here describe mothering. Men wills at that they love their kids and of a duty to provide, but I regularly see women describe it in ways that sound alien to me "all encompassing love", "the most fulfilling thing they can imagine", "more love and joy than they imagined possible" etc etc.

The day to day of parenting does seem like drudgery, so without those hefty doses of oxytocin and dopamine to counteract things, it almost doesn't seem worth it.

Women also seem more inclined to bend to social pressure, so you end up with a situation where women who do not have those hormone blasts are still in a position where they feel they have to pretend that they do for the benefit of society at large and it becomes a sort of self-perpertuating thing.

You also have the obvious fact that the men only really get one input factor in the reproductive process. Have sex or don't have sex. This, combined with a social zeitgeist that has sort of created a separation between sex and reproduction that doesn't exist as extensively in nature means that a lot of men get women pregnant without really signing up to commit to parenthood.