This isn’t normal is it? Mum walking out on her children.

@LondonLady1980 🫂🫂🫂
That was a shitty behaviour from your mum.
im sorry. You and your dsister deserved better.

@SpidersAreShitheads i just want to highlight that it’s pretty normal to not recognise your parent(s) were abusive for years and years. It’s a protection mechanism both then and now.
Its not possible to say ‘if you didn’t realise until you were in your 40s then it’s not that bad’.

I know I would never have used the word abusive with my parents. I’d have said my dad had a really short trigger as a child. But I thought it was normal. Later on I’d have added that my mum was unavailable. But even now I’m struggling to use the word abuse. Even though I have c-PTSD from it. It has affected me my whole life etc….

Sadly it’s probably more common than you think, although nowhere near the rate of fathers leaving. I went on a group cycling holiday with a lady that left her children (not sure of the circumstances). I work with a woman that left her children to go marry her affair partner (incidentally they have now divorced as she’s started an affair with his best friend) - children are young adults now). My male cousin had a relationship with someone who was a bit of a druggie waster. They had 2 kids and she already had one. She left all three with him, and his mum (my aunt) ended up bringing all 3 kids up as he was useless. In a cruel twist, one of those children had a daughter very young and has also ditched the child with my aunt (so my aunt has brought up her children, 3 of her grandchildren and currently her great grand child, whose about 9 or 10 at the moment.

My father-laws mother walked out her 6 kids, the youngest being 2 years old. My father-law never forgave her

I know someone whose mother left him and his two siblings when they were still young children. I believe she ran away with the milkman and never contacted the children or her husband again.

That was in the 1960s so it must have been even more unusual then.

I am so sorry that this happened to you and your sister. It is much less common for a mother to leave her children with their father but still falls within whatever we choose to define as "normal". Men do it every day and while there is criticism there is not the opprobrium that a mother who does the same faces. My husband walked out on me and our baby because he was having an affair with a work colleague (this was in the 80's so the same time you and your sister were babies) and I was asked by my health vistor what I had "done to drive him away" and when I went to the CAB to get financial advice the male worker told me that i must have neglected my husband and that women with young babies "forget about getting their hair done and wearing make up so men look elsewhere" I was too gobsmacked to complain, but that is indicative of the sexism of the time. Of course none of this helps you but it is a snapshot of the times you were born into. .

It's not as common, no. It does happen though. My ex-partner's wife left him with their two children, and she moved away with another man. Around the same time, a woman in our street left her husband and two children for a man in the armed forces who moved away. A friend of my Mum's, met another man, left her husband and two daughters. In all these examples, the children were left with the husband's and the women didn't all have regular contact with their children going forward. It tends to be more shocking when women leave their children, because women are portrayed as the maternal sex, the ones who nurture and fight for their children. When we hear of women, who do the polar opposite to what we expect, it's shocking and we're appalled. We are used to hearing of men who walk away from their partner's and children, but not so much women. The fact is not all women are fantastic Mothers, who put their children first - some are selfish and self-centred - just like the men who do the same.

If it helps, I do know someone who was abandoned by his mum. She never tried to get in contact, but a couple of years later bumped into them all in the street and acted like a friendly enough neighbour who had moved away. She even offered to babysit if her ex husband 'needed a break from the kids'. Utterly bizarre.

My mistake I thought your sister was younger! Sorry OP.

It’s less common than a dad walking out but family friends had this happen. When their boys were about 8 and 10 she came home one night and announced she had been having an affair for the past 2 years and was leaving him and the kids

Jesus Christ. This is beyond awful. I’m sorry people have demanded detail of what happened to you. Do feel free to share if it helps, but you don’t owe anyone an explanation. What you describe is disgusting treatment of children. But you already know that of course. I’m so sorry no one stepped in to help you. It’s great that you are seeking therapy to deal with this. It’s easy to think you’ve come out of it OK. More than likely the scars are so deep you can barely recognise them, but the feeling of not being safe as a child will likely be impacting your decisions and your relationships to this day. I’m sorry for your sister too. It’s often worse for the younger ones. My sibling was the younger one of the two of us and I’d say he’s been impacted worse than me. (Though he laughs and jokes all day long! You’d never know).
If you’re not ready to engage with your mum on the subject then don’t. It may be that you never want to. And that’s perfectly OK. Explore things with your therapist, stay close to your sister, and sack anyone off who doesn’t add positive things to your life. (Easier said than done!).

You do only what you are comfortable with OP, and only do that when you happy to do so.

Just do what you think will be healing, &/or cathartic for you & your sister. You owe your mum absolutely nothing at all, but you owe yourself & your sister special care & consideration with how you go about this path of healing. I've no doubt it will be very bittersweet & you will have to grieve the childhood you never had as part of that, which will not be at all easy I imagine.

Good luck with it all, your story is a sad one, but also very heartwarming in other ways ironically e.g. how you survived & thrived despite all this adversity that you & your sibling (&your dad & aunt) had thrown at ye and simply did not deserve. Good luck OP 👍

Not the same but I feel so much of your story resonates with what happened to me and my sister. My mum had an affair when I was 9 - I caught her kissing one of their supposed best friends in the kitchen. Me and my sister (6) left with my mum to live at the new boyfriend’s house. It quickly became apparent that the boyfriend was very abusive and he treated me and my sister awfully in the few weeks I was there. I told my Dad what was happening and I refused to go back there. I ended up going to live with my paternal grandmother whereas my poor sister was left in the abusive house. She tells stories of how he lined up 3 bullets on the kitchen worktop and other equally horrifying stuff. I don’t know why my sister was left behind but my Dad always said it was his biggest regret in life, not taking her too. After I left my Mum would go months without speaking to me and I would only see her during the school holidays. I still feel we have a very strained relationship and as a mum of three myself now, I find it hard to comprehend how she prioritised her love life over her own kids. So sad.

It’s unusual but it does happen. It happened to my dad over 70 years ago. His parents married after a whirlwind romance but his father was abusive. His mum left the home when my dad was 6 and his brother was 8. He never knew where she went but he finally tracked her down in his late 20s. She’d remarried but could never really give a reason why she’d left her two little boys behind (and with a father who beat them). But then I guess that men do this all the time and no one ever really questions why.

That's not the full reasoning why many women leave though. I'd say it's often domestic abuse or violence related, or as I said addiction issues or mental health where the mum realises she is not being a good parent and leaves. I have heard so many stories of being threatened that the kids will be hurt if they try to take them, it's all heartbreaking really, which is why I always strongly suggest talking to the mother as a primary way to understand what was happening at that point in time.

There was a kid at my dc’s nursery who lived with his grandparents. His parents were in London with all-consuming careers and they’d decided he would be better off living with his grandparents 70 miles away. They saw him most (but not all) weekends. Poor kid was only 3.

I often chatted to his granddad who was a lovely guy, and he did say he found it hard to understand their disinterest. He said his DIL (the child’s mother) was a very cold fish.

Before he started school, his parents split up and there was some kind of custody fight. The kid went to live with his mother briefly, and was looked after by a live in nanny. His Granddad was devastated.

I bumped into the Granddad a few years later. He told me that after his grandson had left, he’d barely seen him (not for want of trying). Then at the age of six the poor kid was sent to boarding school. Granddad said that on the rare occasions he got to see him, it was clear the kid was very messed up. He’d begged his son and xDIL to let him raise him, but they wouldn’t agree to it.

I can only begin to imagine the abandonment and trauma that kid must have gone through.

It’s unusual because society recognises (consciously or otherwise) that the mother-child bond is irreplaceable and utterly vital. Yes fathers do it all the time and it’s really damaging but actually the presence of a strongly bonded mother is a protective factor in the way that a father just isn’t.

Mothers do it much left often as we are hardwired to stay with our young whereas men (at a purely biological level) are hardwired to go and make more offspring.

so yes it’s way less ‘normal’ for a female to abandon her young.

I lived in an area with a lot of generational trauma. The WC women in the 80's, got married to get away from their 'home'. They became wives and Mothers way too young and with unresolved and minimised emotional damage, most had no chance of being good mothers. She's got to admit that she let you down, but unless she's able to go through her childhood experiences, which might be too much, you aren't going to make full peace between you. As for getting you back for monetary reasons, income support was at poverty levels. Minimum wage didn't exist. It could have been because everyone around her was telling her that she should have her ch. My friend agreed that her ex was the better parent and should have their little boy in 1987, she paid maintenance and had regular contact. He had a Mum and sisters which meant he work. I was in constant defence of her, the judgement was terrible.

It’s quite astounding how children were just assumed to be OK. Or rather told they must be OK! This was the 90s. It would have been even worse in the 80s! My attendance at school was shocking. Not so much as a phone call home back then. (Though had there been I’d been shouted at for bringing shame to the family and for being a nuisance and told to bloody well get on with it!) I did have one kind teacher who told me on my last day of school that she’d been fending off complaints from other teachers about my appearance, work output, attendance for years! She’d told them to cut me some slack as she suspected things weren’t good at home. I had no idea! I was very grateful to her. But afterwards I did wonder that if you suspected things were that bad, why didn’t you do anything or ask if I was alright? To be fair, at the time I thought I was alright. I didn’t have anything to compare it to so it was my normal. It’s only as an adult with my own children I can truly appreciate what an absolute car crash it was. As a result I do have a very close bond with my sibling. We need it to deal with my dad!!

Have you spoken to your sister about this? You obviously had no real memory of living with your father but your sister is a year older so might remember more.

Your mother is a product of her own upbringing too. She is also a product of a certain generation - things are much different now.

Aside from her leaving you then returning to court to fight for you you have not said specifically what she has done.

And there was hardly any benefits from the state back in those days for single parents so I really doubt it was anything related to cash.

Can you elaborate further?

I am nit sure that’s correct. I think usually women feel a bond with their children that is stronger than anything else. I can’t ever imagine not putting my dd first. But it was very easy for her father.