Men who abandon their kids

I can just about buy that argument for the aspect of being an involved parent and knowing the child, but not the financial side. Any man old enough to have sex is old enough to know the potential consequences and the biology that allows the woman one extra choice. If a child is born, it is owed to financial support from both parents. It's that simple.

I guess if the man is married he's less likely to fuck off or do no childcare, but it still happens frequently. Just look at half the posts on here in Relationships.

I think many men do want children to continue their “legacy/name” but they don’t want to be parents.

Agree, they only want the sex.

It happened less when people got married and had children.
These days casual sex and not being in a relationship etc has led to more of this happening sadly.

fundamentally I think having children changes women far more than it does men. They want / expect that their pre child lifestyle doesn’t change and are just not prepared emotionally and physically and financially when it does.

I think far more men have mid life crises than women too

i suspect if I had said I didn’t want children at all my ex husband would happily have gone along with that.

While id agree that it's that society that accepts this (especially it seems that men don't condemn other men as often as they should) I think it's grown out of the biological differences between men and women. And the actual physical differences between women and men and what they have to do to produce a baby.

Then it's been ingrained over centuries. And women were much more physically affected by the process of pregnancy and childbirth in centuries gone by.

May l ask what happened? Did he step up and put having children above his career?

My children have two different fathers. One is a multimillionaire and U.K. and British born banker. He hasn’t contacted me or his child since pregnancy. He told me I had trapped him and his parents said the same. He tried to get me to terminate and piled on the abuse via emails to do so. I refused. He then said he was never paying a penny in child support and promptly transferred to a bank overseas. Nearly 20 years later he still hasn’t paid a penny and is now 55 and has no other children. He owns 5 houses in London and has never paid 1 p in maintenance or child support and unfortunately a court is not going to force him to. He worked abroad out of jurisdiction of the CMS and would have battered me in court.

My daughter would be highly unlikely to ever get an inheritance and indeed I would be highly surprised if she did - in my mind he has UK assets and they should be given to her. Or at least a token amount. After all he has paid nothing ever.

For many men - they control by withholding time, assets and money as they are selfish. Raising children is a thankless expensive task and they literally can’t be bothered.

So many of them are just selfish fuckers who don't really realise that other people - especially children - are full humans who they should feel some responsibility to and for.

My ex started travelling more and more with work, culminating in 3 full months away when he didn't even bother to text the (primary age) kids, came home a couple of days and I discovered what he'd been up to and made him ex, and he disappeared for another 7 months - he did call a couple of times, but didn't see them for 7 months. Now he sees them a couple of times a month, but doesn't bother with contact in between.

I can't imagine it. My kids are teens now, and I still tuck in the youngest and the eldest comes and says goodnight every single night before he goes to sleep! I've been away for work a couple of times, and we've spoken every day still (at their behest, they want to say hi/goodnight/ask what I'm up to)

I think there are a few differernt dynamics that go on. One factor though is that the hormones are massively more powerful in the case of women. Men don't always bond, especially with very small kids, in the same way mothers do. They bond with the mothers, and the baby is part of the package of that. By the time the kids are older it's less likely they will just completely bug out though it crertainly happens.

A lot of people are also kind of weak. It's hard to be the non-custodial parent where there is conflict with the other parent. Some dads just see the kids less and less and it becomes easier to just withdraw all together. I've seen the same dynamic with mums but less often, usually where the kids are in foster care but also in some cases where the dad was the main carer. So it may be that situation happens more with men because women are more likely to be the main guardian.

I also think there are some scenarios where there is a strong culture of women being the ones to decide to have the kids and being the main carers, and the men kind of slide from relationship to relationship. my dp grew up in a scenario like that, his mum had several kids with various men, there was no expectation that they had any say in having the kids or caring for them, and the fathers were only slightly involved. (His father had 10 kids with 10 differernt mums!) His belief even now is that the hierarchy of important family members are your mum, sisters, aunt, maternal grandmother, brothers, and then well down at the bottom of the list, father. None of that is formalised and there are some dads that stick around, but it does seem to be how many people in his community function. Personally I don't think it's a healthy dynamic, but there is a kind of logic to it I suppose.

They wouldnt have sex with those men 🤷‍♀️

My stbxp will be moving countries, leaving me and 2 dc (one of them is an autistic, very problematic teen) effectively homeless. I have the option to moving back to my home country so this is what we'll be doing but it's not what I wanted.
He also liked the idea of children, played with them some when they were little but became a total workaholic (literally working 7 days for months and months) and absolved himself from all responsibility. As a mother I am a default parent even though I also work and bear all the stress of dealing with a school refusing dc. On my own. Fml.

I agree you can’t always tell. My friend’s long marriage dissolved and her ex never sees the children, she never stopped him, he just couldn’t be arsed.

From what I see, not many men go the distance with children

I was with my ex for 13 years. We chose to have a baby pretty early on. My other son was 13. He was a fantastic dad and a great bloke around the house.
He left me and then left our son when he was 11. He moved abroad (with another women) and i haven't heard from him since. He's now 23.

Madness!

I’ll get absolutely flamed for this but if the couple is using contraception and there is a failure I can sort of understand it in those circumstances. Women get to choose between abortion and not being a parent or continuing with the pregnancy and being a parent whereas men do not get that choice. Not saying it’s exactly moral but I do understand it in those circumstances if the man has made it clear that he doesn’t want children.

No contraceptive used or a planned pregnancy and yes I think it’s reprehensible behaviour to walk away.

I wonder this too. If they’re capable of walking away from one child they will happily do it again.

I think this is very true. Childfree friends of mine actually did not find it as easy to find men who never wanted kids. They wanted children just not to parent them. They want a “legacy” though.

Ex hasnt seen DD for nearly 3 years, i have no idea why he wont see her, probably because he hates me more than he loves DD.

She saw him at his parents house on fathers day as she was dropping a card off for him and he was there, he gave her hugs and told her he loved her and they all need to go out, but hasnt contacted her since. He is more interested in his AP and her kids than his own.

I dont have his phone number, email address or even where he lives. I always think that if DD was seriously ill in hospital i would have no way of letting him know.

It’s the patriarchy

My ex husband hasn't seen his 3 children since 2014.

Bastard.

Absolute bastard.

My parents married young and waited a good few years to have children. They had several and then one day he left. We were devastated. He walked away and had nothing to do with us again either physically or financially. It’s so hard to understand. He was our dad and we were his kids. And then he was gone. I can understand falling out of love with a partner but why is kids? He went on to have another family almost immediately. Which I believe many years later he left again. But stayed in touch with those children. It’s very hard not to take it personally. Consequently I have low levels of trust or expectations of men.

Well that's what "love" evolved for isn't it - to get men to stick around when babies come so they can feed their woman and children. It's a failure of nature when they up and run and our Society allows it.
Perhaps in our distant past men were cast out from the tribe if they failed to provide for their children, or killed.
Love is supposed to be the glue that bonds a couple together, so if the love goes.........

NAMALT obviously.

I actually think a lot of men do want kids, in the sense that they like the idea of having offspring in a primal, passing on the genes kind of way. They just don't want to be parents. It's just seed-spreading for some of them.

@Complet
I think it’s also the general acceptance of it all though. I met a lady recently who’s child lived predominantly with their father and I admit I was a bit taken aback, where I wouldn’t have batted an eyelid if it was the other way around.

My friend’s (female) ex (male) as primary custody of their son and most people react like you or worse! Despite it being mutually agreed. So I agree with you.