If you grew up without a father, do you, in fact, blame your mother?

[Freakingouttt]

As is so often trotted out on threads and in real life

“Will you be able to explain what happened”
“It’s important you (the mother) work to keep the relationship with the father and child going”
“They will want answers when they are older”

Plus all the how damaging it is for kids to be fatherless stuff trotted out all the time. If you are an adult without a father who do you blame or do you blame anyone at all?

My father left was kicked out when I was 9. I saw him for an hour a week, he wasn't very good at being a father. I never blamed my Mum I was angry with my Dad. So was his Mother. If he concentrated more on family and less on drinking and socializing it would have been a different story.

My father was gone for most of my childhood. I don't blame my mother for that - he chose work/money, drugs, and sex as a priority, but when I had nowhere else to go at teen, he was there without question. He and not my mother who I was living with knew where to find me, he knew my friends unlike her, even though I often went months without seeing him. It was far less than ideal, it would be nice to have regular parents, but I wouldn't say blame is the right word.

I did spend a long time making excuses for my mother, but now I do think she is accountable for her (as an adult) easily disproven lies to make herself look the helpless/victim and her antagonistic nature (using going to stay with him as a threat, making us feel like we were abandoning her if we had anything to do with him or his side of the family, going as far as encouraging us to be violent to him) which caused a lot of issues. I view him and his partners as responsible for his lies (his partners for covering for those lies) and infidelity and both for their drug use, abuse, and neglect. I blame the community I was in for turning their eye from both of their misbehaviour because "family is important" and other lies they told that allowed children to be harmed. Their encouragement for my parents to marry was also not helpful, those two shouldn't have had kids - at least not together.

I think these things tend to be too complicated to say that all children in the situation want or react the same way. I think we should be able to discuss the general trends and data that shows the issues of fatherlessness (and ways we can help those affected by it) without using it to beat single mothers. Many things in life are less than ideal, many times less than ideal ones are all we have, we should use the data to work towards how to improve things, not to beat people in already difficult circumstances.

I grew up with my dad, however it probably would have been better if he had fucked off. My mom is my best friend and on fathers day I send her a card that says ‘if you do both jobs, you deserve both days’ I have never once blamed her for him being a shit.

I’ve just had a think and realised I’m probably not in the same situation as you, even though my dad fucked off when I was 15 and is now dead but I feel so strongly about my mom and mother’s in general blaming themselves I felt compelled to post. Sorry if I missed the mark.

I’m going to stop in a minute I promise but just to say if anything, while I don’t blame my mom for not getting rid sooner, I think she should have done. I would have completely understood why and supported her.

I wished my whole life that my mum would leave my dad from as young as I remember. She didn't until it was too late. So much damage has been done to me and my brother.

I thank my mother not blame her. She did an amazing job on her own and our lives would've been hell if she stayed with him.

I feel similarly to @Isthebigwomanhere. My Dad had an affair and left my mum. But my mum dealt with it exceptionally badly and tried at every opportunity to turn us against him/use us as pawns...
I have an ok relationship now with both of them, but only ok. Am closest to my brother as we have the shared experience and frustrations I think...

I absolutely blame my mother, she was selfish, narcissistic and did not facilitate a relationship with me & my father

I'm NC with both of them now and just trying to not make the same mistakes

To post from a different perspective I grew up without a father because he died before I was born. This was accidental so obviously no one to blame.

What I can say is that I have never felt like I'm missing something by not having a dad. This isn't the case for my sister who was 2 when he died so I think the fact that I never had him in my life has made a difference in that respect. I had a good, very capable mother and other male relatives in my life (grandpas and uncles).

I'm sure my life would be very different if I had grown up with a father but have no idea whether I would be better or worse for it.

Not sure my experience is particularly relevant to this thread but thought it worth adding a positive story about growing up in a single parent family.

Nope not one bit. My mum was a rock. My dad was an abusive jerk. I had just enough of a relationship with him to know what he was like. She made the absolute best decision for both of us and I couldn’t be more grateful that she was brave enough to make that choice.

I grew up with a father, how he stayed with my mother is a total mystery to me. Our house wasn't a happy one due to her, constant nagging and trouble causing. There was never enough money for her, but that was probably true of most family's at the time, but screaming about it wasn't helping.

He died at 58, she's still alive now 87 with Alzheimer's, how I wish it had been the other way round.

I grew up without a father. He left my mum when she was pregnant with me. He made an annual phone call to my mum to see how I was. He didn’t pay a penny towards my upbringing. I don’t blame my mum at all. She’s my absolute hero. Yeah it messed me up a bit as a teen, to be expected I imagine. But I had such a lovely childhood and my mum is still my number one supporter.

This is a really interesting thread. Sorry this may be long (I'll try my best to keep it short though)

My eldest is 15. Her "dad" and I had a fling, he was a twat and refused to have anything to do with the subsequent pregnancy as he believed I was screwing around (I was dating but not screwing around).

Fast forward 10 years, never heard from him. Had sent him a letter and then emails with photographs every year on her birthday. Never got a reply.

Never chased him for maintenance out of pride. Then I needed more money because she was going without and I, as a single parent and struggling financially, couldn't give her even the basic stuff. My parents constantly stepped in (and did so with love) but it shouldn't have been down to them and it made me so angry that he'd just walked away without a care.

Eventually I went to the CSM and asked for maintenence (I was like a bloody detective, Facebook and general online stalking to get his address!)

Found out he's happily married with a daughter a similar age to ours.

He contested the CSM request and made our daughter take a DNA test. She was 10. I had to tell her what was happening, but did so in the best way I possibly could (even came on MN asking for advice)

DNA test proved he was the father. He's paid regular maintenance ever since. However...he physically transfers the money and I don't believe his wife is aware of our daughter.

DD has always asked about him and I've been honest but fair, never brought my feelings into it.

As a 15 year old she is so angry. She suffers terribly with her mental health and I belive it is rooted in his abandoning of her. Probably also my flailing attempts at trying to help her with questions I can't answer. She can't get over the fact he demanded a DNA test. She can't get over that he still, once proved, then chose not to have a relationship with her. Of course she's found him, his daughter and wife on Facebook and she is heartbroken that he has a family and she is, in her eyes, not good enough to be part of it.

And I am here without a clue of how to guide her and support her and feeling like I'm failing her time and time again.

So I'm scouring these replies and desperately seeking reassurance that one day she will be OK, but that she won't blame me.

I blame mine for knowing what a piece of shit my father was, and making me live in the same house as him for almost a decade, because she was ‘scared’, yet it was fine for me to be damaged for life by being forced to live in an abusive house. I also blame her for her choice to emotionally abuse me, and to foist another shit excuse of a male into my life.

I wholeheartedly blame my mother. After all she moved us to the other side of the country to live near her new husband's family, without telling my father who regularly visited, she was moving or where to. She refused to agree to contact when he found us when I was 13. I only found out when an older sibling (different father) gleefully told me to upset me. When I told her I was meeting him at age 38, she started a campaign to turn the rest of the family against me because I had betrayed her in her eyes, eventually disowning me when I confronted her about preventing me from having a relationship with my Dad and other abuse in my childhood.

I didn't realise what a disgusting person she was until my oldest DC was a similar age to what I was when they split and how close she was to DH, as I had been to my father.

Unfortunately he was a stranger when we met again after 30 years and I couldn't cope with his relationship with his step daughter.

My dad left us when I was 11, but he still did the normal stuff we used to. I would never blame my Mum but I never had any reason to hate him, as an adult I know all of the things that happened between them. Although I don’t agree with what he’s done he’s only human. He’s got a new family now and I see them at least 3 times a year as they live 200 miles away.
It’s the same if me and DP broke up I’d never stop the kids from seeing him....

No, I blame my father entirely for being an abusive controlling arsehole. I did blame my mother for her subsequent relationship choices though and I still feel guilty about that.

Have to say that as a child of a broken marriage I think I did marry very young as I was trying to create what I had wanted eg a ‘normal’ family. Happy with DH but do wonder if I was a bit too focused on settling down when I could have been having fun, I was very young when we got together and when we married.

No I do not. My father could have fought to see more of his kids if he cared enough.

I grew up without a father. My parents split (my mum ran off and took me with her) when I was 2. My dad came to see us when I was a teenager. I am not bitter or sad about it. I was curious about my dad's family but have answered most questions by researching family tree. I do feel a bit nostalgic when I see dads with their daughters but that's all.

@Freakingouttt I only wish she had left him sooner. I don't blame her at all. She wasn't a very good Mum in some ways but I adore her. I talk to her every day. She is very sweet and caring. I can talk to her about anything.
I just wish she hadn't meet my father as he made her life terrible. At least she has 3 great daughters.

Not my experience but my dad's. My granddad did a runner when my dad was about 7 (OW). My dad thinks his father s was complete shit, and admires his mother for bringing him up single handedly when that was a very, very rare thing. Also (having watched children get screwed up by messy tug of war divorces) he also says about the only thing his father got right was to bugger off completely (different continent!) rather than hang around making things difficult for his mum. It's also left my dad a life-long feminist sympathiser (definitely at the radical end of the spectrum) .

My parents got divorced when I was 5 ish. I don't blame either of them. They were I'll suited and unhappy and I just remembered being pleased that he was leaving because the fighting would stop. I have contact with him throughout childhood and have a reasonable relationship with him now, though pretty distant. My husband says it is more like an uncle/niece relationship than father/daughter.

I love my mum and get along great with her nowadays. As a teen, I used to blame her for pretty much everything that was less than perfect in my life - but never for my dad not being there. In fact, I've always kind of thought that she would have been better off if she'd aborted me and LTB before going on to marry him and have another child.

My parents split up, among other things, because my father's decent into utter insanity and paranoid conspiracy thinking was having a detrimental effect on my sister and me.

My dad and I don't have much of a relationship nowadays. He essentially thinks I'm one of THEM now - my mistake, I should have known that "NASA doesn't spray chemtrails and isn't hiding the fact that the earth is flat: I should know, my boss used to work for them" would be understood as "I work for THEM now".

I've no idea how my mum managed to be married to him for 12 years without going out of her mind. She's a hero.

@Anerak - I could have written your post word for word, with an extra brother added.

"I wished my whole life that my mum would leave my dad from as young as I remember. She didn't until it was too late. So much damage has been done to me and my brother." ..