Neither parent wants to live with their child fulltime what happens?

@WhatWillHappenToTheDC have there been developments in the last week?

Your relative has completely lost sight of her child and even if she did "crack" both her and dad have caused irreparable harm to their child by making him feel like a burden and unwanted. It's understandable to want help and support but you cannot make people change if they don't want to. Additionally they will probably just fail the child as they would be up under duress.

Wtf am i reading. Poor child.

No child should ever have to go through what you went through. I'm so sorry.

I'm so sorry, @AlbertCamel. That's so incredibly irresponsible of your parents.

This happened to me. My parents separated and neither wanted me full time. They were, on the surface, caring responsible adults with well paid jobs (law and MOD), and weirdly I never felt unloved, but I ended up going to boarding school miles away in Yorkshire which enabled them not to have to commit so much time to looking after me. One holiday when 14, I took the train home (3hrs) and neither parent was in, I didn't have a key and I had nowhere to go. I ended up staying with a friend for two weeks. Both parents gad gone on holiday (separately) at the same time.

I 100% knew what was going on at the time when I was around 12 and they split up, and although looking back it seems so sad, at the time I, like them, felt it just made sense. As I've grown older, I can see the effect this had had on certain aspects of my life more clearly.

When I was a new mum and had PND I used to plan all the ways that I could take a break. Including driving my car into a wall so I could stay in hospital. These days I'm a single parent to two and no longer have PND and sometimes my mind wanders. I think "maybe I could leave the kids with their dad and travel the world" on my own or something like that. You read something in my post that absolutely wasn't there but I if someone said to me that they had considered if their child could be taken somewhere safe for them to have some respite I would think they must surely need it.

You have misread the poster's comment. Her daydream is about taking a break for a bit, not foster care.

I might daydream about having a day off work while my child is at nursery. I might daydream about my child’s dad taking them out all day so I can sleep in bed, or winning the lottery so I can afford a lovely nanny to wake up with my child in the mornings. But all those things are things that my child would also love, enjoy, and still feel safe and secure and loved.

none of them involve GIVING MY CHILD AWAY TO A FOSTER FAMILY

What on earth are you on? I’m staggered that you’re so blasé about what the OP is describing.

I don't understand the outrage. These are totally normal feelings.

And yet this mother gets up every day, plants a smile on her face and gets on with doing what needs to be done.

Why shouldn't she daydream about not having others to look after and being able to be selfish and concentrate on herself for a bit?

Or is she required not only to sacrifice through her actions, but also be a martyr in her thoughts as well?

👏 Well said.
The child is the loser here, and it could possibly have serious repercussions when he’s older if he feels unwanted by his parents.

Absolutely and 100% this.

Make no mistake, the child, as an adult will also realise this.

Well done to the mothers who carry on without abandoning their child/ren.

Yes, it’s hard , especially in teen years,but no court in the land will enforce a dad to see their child more.

It’s painful for the child most of all.

You daydream about handing your child over to social services to be put into foster care, so that you can “take a break from it for a bit”?

wow.

How does this work in practice @Supersimkin2 ?

This.

I think we have to question our system. Currently men can walk away, get away with minimal care, or do some care but not share 50% of the burden. This means that everyone else often else picks up the bill. Single mums can’t work or have to do less hours, the benefits system picks up the bill and their pensions suffer. Men then go on the next woman and do it all again. Women have no option but men can get away with this. Everyone just accepts this as normal. It shouldn’t be normal.

Is it enforced if the child is unhappy? When I got divorced we agreed the kids could come and go as they wanted, I had to see a judge in chambers as he insisted this wouldn't work, I insisted it would and said if we were forced to agree to a timetable we wouldn't follow it if it wasn't what the children wanted and I felt uncomfortable lying about that. He accepted it but warned me it wouldn't work. It did. We didn't agree on much but we absolutely agreed that what the children wanted was the most important thing.

I didn't think you could really opt out of child-raising here either. Isn't it a sort of "who gets in first" scenario?

It's not neglect to leave your children with their other parent, so really you just need to be the one who walks out first.

In some of Europe, you can’t opt out of 50:50 child raising - eg Denmark. They don’t let you. The default is equal care.

Everyone’s better off.

I agree. I think there's a lot to be said for making parents who opt out of 50/50 care when the other parent wants this liable to pay the market rate for childcare for 50% of the child's time (or less if they have the child sometimes).

THIS

I think the question to be asked here when we say that the mother isn't wrong to want him to step up, or pay more, but it wrong in her approach is what is her alternative. The answer is nothing, she has to just suck it up and that is wrong. There should be avenues available to RPs to force the genuine, at least financial, support of children by NPRs including childcare costs. The current option is make yourself and martyr or damage your children and become an unforgivable villain.

If either parent refuses to, for example pick up the child from school then SS may class it as abandonment and they could be prosecuted by the police.

It's unlikely but a possibility. It's likely that SS will place the child in emergency foster care whilst they discuss with friends and family the possibility of the child living with someone else and the parents have access.

If that's not possible then the child will be placed in a foster home and SS will agree with the parents a visitation schedule but everything will go via SS, a care order will be put in place etc. it's going to get very messy, with various reports on the family on record with a child who's done nothing wrong and likely have trauma as a resukt.

Poor kid.

Totally reasonable for the mum to want the dad to do more or pay more, but utterly unreasonable to let it go to the point where the child ends up in care. Shame on both of the parents in this situation.

Yes. Like I said it has to be something extreme for parents not to want to have the kid