Why are so many dads absent

[randomtuesday]

My dad has never really been around for my life or most of his children's lives. He's been in and out and then just disappears and ignores messages or resolution.
So many fathers appear to be like this and you're often hearing about 'deadbeat' dads.
Why is this? I'm trying to understand why my father just doesn't care and why this is so common

We are talking here about the real world, not some ideal world where all men are sensible, responsible and attentive to contraception. We are looking at possible reasons for absent fatherhood - we are not excusing carelessness, we are analysing it as a cold fact.

The choice to ejaculate without the use of a condom was entirely theirs.

hth

It'd be the mums fault then would it?

I agree, it's because it's socially acceptable to do this. And the blame and responsibility is all theirs.

I don’t know, I find parenting boring, like a giant chore etc, but because I love my kid I couldn’t stand to ditch her. Just wouldn’t happen and I’m as far away from a cheerful mum as you can get.

Thats what I struggle to understand, how men just switch off any feeling for their kids (or maybe didn’t have it in the first place.

I think there is definitely a societal bias that lets men do less and seen as normal. I have been very active in all my children's lives but the amount of times people commented on how unusual it was or how lucky my wife is ... astounding! There shouldn't be anything special about an involved father but agree that's not the real world right now.

If men were left with the DC most of the time for the next 18 plus years I can guarantee most of them would be more attentive to contraception. They know they can afford to be careless because there are no proper consequences when they choose to walk.

I think my dad has a personality disorder. He keeps having kids then moving on. He has no moral compass.
I don't feel like I missed out. Now I have a DH who would walk through fire for his kids.

Interesting perspective and I think partly true.

As a kid from the age of 2, I rarely saw my Dad - once / twice a year, it was just what normal looked like to me, knowing him as I do now, he would never have coped with me and I'd have been very unhappy. I have huge respect for my Mum as a role model - she always worked as a single Mum and managed to do a good job with me (so my DW says!).

I split with my exDW when our kids where 5 & 7, I'd been focussed on my career and like a lot of career Dad's had left the heavy lifting up to my SAHM exDW.

When we split, she thought I wouldn't be able to cope with the kids and my career so made a plan for me to have the nearly 50/50 (not quite 50/50 as she wanted the £ that came with primary carer status), she wanted to set me up to fail and told a mutual friend as much.

Anyway, I went with it as I wanted a relationship with my kids and agreed for me to have them 43% of the time.

She made it very hard with pick ups / drops offs for the first 3 years - always messing me around on timings / locations etc. A lot of Dad's may have just given up then and blamed Mum?

I found it very hard to focus 100% on the kids during my time with them to start with - I had to dig deep and really make an effort, I didn’t have a clue TBH. I cut down on my work hours and moved to a WFH role so I could make it happen and do school runs / clubs etc.

Fast forward 7 years, I still get abusive drunk messages from my exDW saying she will tell the kids what a cunt I am, but they know who I am, and as young teens, they can make their own mind up about me. We have great banter / fun / conversations together, and I'm so glad I put the hard work in (please take note any absent Dad's that maybe reading).

To answer the original question - a lot of Dad's take least line of resistance and frankly don't want to put the effort in.

Because society lets them get away with it.
gender stereotypes mean that taking care of the children was down to the women and the men went to work. Now it’s the women take care of the children and the men are away but it’s ok because they have their mother.

There are no repercussions to the man that walks away. Only feelings of abandonment from the children

I think this. In certain social circles it is seen as socially unacceptable to abandon your children. I don't know a single absent father or child with an absent father in my social circle.

• Patriarchy
• Half of pregnancies are unplanned (because we are, as humans, incredibly irresponsible with contraception)
• The toxic, incredibly pervasive societal that being in a relationship is the one goal you chase in life above all others, even over having kids. You are expected to have low standards, for fear of being called 'high maintenance' because society relies on women willing to do the thankless task of raising future taxpayers and managing mens lives, and so has successfully demonised the idea of you knowing what you want and not settling for less, because being 'demanding' or 'high maintenance' is portrayed as the worst thing a woman can possibly be. In TV show after TV show. In film after film. In magazine after magazine. In conversations with coworkers about co workers. In conversations in families about wives, daughters, sisters, female in laws.

You are expected to accept a huge amount of flaws and bad behaviour on the basis that 'he loves you so much' (he says, as he gambles away your money, and meets prostitutes on the weekends, and never changes a nappy) because if a man SAYS something, it must be true, even if there's mountains of evidence to the contrary (in stark contrast to the other belief where if a woman says something, she must be lying, or you must have taken it the wrong way, or there must be a reasonable explanation, even if there's mountains of evidence to back her up) Men are for some reason, treated like gods, despite the fact far, far, FAR more women in this country manage to hold down work, childcare, household, caring for relatives, managing a man's social calendar - whereas a man does a 50 hour week and fuck all else and is upheld as some kind of hardworking provider god.

Fairly sure my MIL (who is a gentle woman) would literally take DH apart of he walked out on DD, me yeah she wouldn’t approve but she would be on his side but not DD.

I think it can’t just be society, you have to make a personal decision not to bother with your kids. Dh would fight me tooth and nail for 50:50, literally worships the ground she walks on, but I don’t think he decided to be that way. He was always a hands on dad so yeah he bonded with her easily. All I can think of is a genuine absence of love, you would have to have zero empathy with your child and zero desire to actually see them.

But still you have to know when you leave your kids they will be asking where you are, it will come up at school etc, doesn’t the sheer guilt just crush them. It wouldn’t matter to me if society was ok with mums walking out, the thought of her little face scrunched up and crying because I never came home or being confused about why and where I had gone or her thinking that I just didn’t love her, makes me feel queasy just thinking about it.

That is irrelevant to the question being asked, which is, why are so many fathers absent not is it right or fair for fathers to be absent.

I think societal expectations have a huge role in it tbh.

I stumbled across a woman on TikTok who had her son living with her for 9 years, then he went to live with his dad and she had him on the weekends instead, and the amount of negativity and hate she was getting in the comments was astounding when you consider that lots of fathers get praised for doing the exact same thing and seeing their children every other weekend.

Fathers walk away because they can, society allows them and accepts that of them, they aren’t socially shunned or slated online. Mothers wouldn’t get the same treatment.

So many reasons..but i agree with the no responsibility from society...

I mean how many times do you go to a Dr/nurse/professional and they automatically direct all questions to only the mum, even when the dads are there.
How many with 50/50 or any contact and if there is a health issue or a problem, even if it was on dads time they make the mum assume complete responsibility? And ask what she did to prevent the issue?

So back to why absent, they can check out without much fuss. You do get the bitter breakups between parents make contact harder in many ways, not just refusing to allow contact, but when either party is hostile, it becomes rather strained and tricky to organise without the kids getting stressed.

Also i dont think they seem to view things the same. (Not all) but most mums i know naturally go without to benefit their child, or will sacrifice say a promotion or social events without too much thought as its for their childs benefit, but some dads wont understand why and be baffled why they need to.not sure if im explaining it well 😬 but i just found a natural difference in thought process. Again not everyone not trying to bash anyone here, its just a common difference in thought ive come across a lot.

A lot of men are just bad news.

A lot of women need to choose better who to have kids with. A good lover doesn't always equal good dad.

They can't go the distance

And it's so easy for them to walk away

Especially in the UK

Because having a child is hard, and for many of them they probably weren't that keen to have them in the first place so it's easier to just walk away when it gets difficult

And you know they don’t really want to, how?!?
I was married to DD’s dad, we discussed having DC, she was planned. He left within her first year to be with someone a good few years younger than him 🤷🏻‍♀️
I think for him, it was definitely DC are actually hard work, disrupt your sleep and there was less time for him.

i guess it also depends on their role in society and weather they can settle or weather their career prevents it, eg militay , covert ops, security services ect obviously if its more an under cover or a fling while on a mission etc rather than the traditional relationship.

You seem to be trying to back pedal on your initial comment, which was that men who create unwanted (by them) pregnancies do not have a choice about whether or not to create that pregnancy. They do. As pointed out by several other PP now, men can make an informed choice not to ejaculate into a vagina if they feel unable/unwilling to cope with a possible pregnancy. They have full control over this.

If you actually want to analyse the OP, the question is "do lots of men create children they do not want?" and if so "why?", given that they do indeed have a choice. For these men, I suspect the answer is simply that they prioritise their orgasm over the need to prevent unwanted pregnancy by abstaining. Some of them also prioritise their sexual experience and choose not to use condoms despite the obviously much greater risk of unwanted pregnancy.

Agree with PP, there's no social shunning of deadbeat dads. It's normalised in our culture. To the point some women will try to have kids with existing deadbeat dads. When logically, they should run for the hills. For illustration, my deadbeat dad, who never saw us and dodged paying child maintenance by becoming unemployed......went through many rounds of expensive and unsuccessful IVF with his second wife (who never had any kids but wanted them).

Also, by default, men invest less, their bodies don't go through the same damage, neither do their careers typically, etc. The less you invest into something, including your own kids, the easier it is to walk away.

The child maintenance service is a joke, might as well not exist. So when men don't invest financially/pay for their child, they're psychologically less likely to invest time into child too. Without time; the emotional bond can't be formed well, if at all. That's why paternity leave (for resident -non deadbeat dads) should be given more priority.

You seem determined to sidetrack the discussion with your particular moral point.

Some men, left to their own free choice, would not have children. How they arrived at a position where they, nonetheless, have children is not the point. It's not relevant to this discussion whether they have been stupid, thoughtless, or selfish in allowing children to be conceived. The point is that, if they end up in a position where they have children they didn't want, it's not surprising they don't stick around, even if it's 100% their fault they are in that position.

Well in our generation there was a lot of sahms, meaning the dad was at work so you’d see him as absent because your mum was always there! Saying that my dad was very much a hands on dad, as are most men I know

I don't know why my ex is a dead beat Dad. We had fertility treatment to conceive our eldest so DD was very much a choice for both of us. He's got a new family of younger kids but they are not his. My DD's (21 & 18) met up with him recently for the first time in forever and he didn't say one word. Or even make eye contact once during their lunch. The DD's stepmother made huge efforts with them. I've no idea why he's like he is?