"He's a great Dad"...no he isn't.

[CrowSinger]

That line is on so many posts that I sometimes think to myself that they must all have been written by AI. It is always in a post where the "great" dad is manifestly abusive.

"He's beats me, calls me a fat ugly c*nt in front of the children, he punches walls/me, he puts his hands around my throat, the children are terrified of him and have wet themselves when he's got angry, I'm not given any money and all my clothes have holes in, he cheats on me regularly and gives me STIs because he doesn't take no for an answer with sex, he's isolated me from all my family and friends...but he's a great dad".

WHY do women say this??? Has anyone come out of an abusive relationship and seen the light and realised that he was a piece of shit, not a great dad? What would have made you see it sooner?

I've found when women do this either the bar is so low that the bare minimum is mind-blowing or the father is a nasty human as in abusive to her and/or the kids and she's covering for him.

I think in some cases, women deflect abuse onto the kids. If he didn't have the kids to kick off at, his attention would turn to her. So she lets or even encourages him to abuse the kids and justifies it as them needing discipline or being bad kids.

You can say that the bar is low, but for most women, seeing an adult man screaming at a little kid, or having a kid watch as an adult man abuses her, would be the moment she knew she needed to get out for good. I think women lie to themselves and others in order to hold on to their man.

Unless you have learning difficulties or a serious mental incapacity, you know that your kids are being abused.

And this is a perfectly rationale reason to stay (in my mind).

But if you profess they are a great dad while being abused by said dad, then you shouldn’t be at all worried about the dad getting unsupervised access.

If he's abusive to the mother of the child, then he can't be a great dad

I agree, but ‘lack of attention’ is oversimplifying an incredibly complex issue that starts with girls being primed from childhood for a ‘family life’ in the service of men and children. This is still treated as the ultimate goal and validation for women, regardless of what else they may achieve, and girls become subconsciously aware of the disdain with which single and childless women are still treated.

For many there’s a lack of economic opportunity to be self-supporting, especially once kids are in the mix, plus learned notions of what’s ‘normal’ from their own childhoods, lack of education around what healthy and equitable relationships should look like (and also what constitutes abuse), and internalised misogyny.

And its embedded in every strata of society. Every week on here you see highly educated, independent, professional women blindly excusing terrible dynamics and abusive behaviour in their relationships. You can almost see the scales falling on some of these threads. It’s really much more complicated than ‘any man is better than no man’, even though that’s the net outtake.

It won’t change as long as women spend more time policing each other than men and spend more time judging/expecting other women than raising their expectations of men (and raising sons to those expectations). The general expectations of men on here are so low at times a slug couldn’t limbo under the bar.

“He’s a great dad” is a phrase which always puts me on the alert for signs of abuse. Good fathers and husbands don’t need that comment - they simply are.

DD’s best friends mum is always saying her DH is a great dad and I always think nah he isn’t. He’s not abusive just lazy. He’ll get out of bed at 3pm on weekends while her and the kids wait for him so they can go out. I would say Dh is a great dad, I had a shit one so the difference is extremely stark. I think if you are hitting the minimum expected from a mum you are just doing what you should be doing.

I think women say this for one of three reasons:

1. He must be a good dad because the children love him. Even though children love their parents even if they are abusive or neglectful.
2. They have to lie to themselves that he's a good dad to assuage their guilt at exposing their children to him and his behaviour.
3. He must be a good dad because he interacts with his children at any level. The bar for men is often that low.

Psychologically, it's very hard for many women to accept they are being abused unless the man is punching them in the face daily. Often our first reaction is to defend him, minimise the abuse and play up his good points. You see it a lot on MN.

I imagine women in that situation know that people will ask 'why haven't you left yet' so they feel the need to justify it somehow by saying he's a great dad. But I agree with you. The bar is shockingly low for men

Absolutely. It's horrifying, I can't bring myself to read any further on threads like that.
So many where the victims of child abuse 'love' the man who is actively abusing them- yes, that's called fawning.
It's brutal how many kids are still being abused and like me, will have to live with the lifelong consequences of being failed by adults.

I agree with PPs, either they need to justify why they’re still in the relationship or they have really low standards of what “good” is. If you had rubbish or abusive parents then anything better than that will seem good. And some women just have a very low opinion of men, that they are incapable and can’t cook/clean/look after babies/pets, so anything above the bare minimum makes them amazing.

I sometimes hear ‘he’s so good with them! He’s such a great Dad!’. As though the guy is a bloody tiger or male dog and it could’ve gone either way. But then it turns out all he does is play with the kids and tell them he loves them

I mentally translate "he's a great dad" into "he hasn't actually lamped them in the face yet and once played peekaboo for a full five minutes before he got bored".

I agree with everything- but I think the shocked stridency does not actually help women who are in that situation to hear and change their mind.

these women are in horrible circumstances- often have only experienced abuse in their own childhoods. Often gaslighted and with weakened self esteem due to the abuse they are suffering. Often with very few reliable loved ones, who have the full picture, and can help them reflect back what is really happening to them.

On top of that, we know that ‘appearing good’ is absolutely part of what the abuser does a lot of the time. Partly because actually all human beings ARE a mixture of good and bad. Partly because it is important to abusers’ own self image to be nice and therefore believe in their own goodness. And partly it can also be a highly conscious act of manipulation.

That means that amid all the abuse, they will often see the man be tender or fun-loving with the children they love. That is immensely powerful and confusing when your heart and brain are already befuddled with mistreatment, when you are desperate for hope and relief, and when your abuser is often telling you you are the problem, that if it wasn’t for you and your bad parenting, everything would be perfect, that we’d be a happy family etc…..

So yes, we must always refute this statement, this misunderstanding, that someone who is abusive can possibly, in sum, be a good dad. But I think we need to extend compassion and understanding for the confusion that moments of love and goodness create, amid abuse. They are often the deadly islands of hope that make women think it’s worth keeping going or that they are the problem, not the abuser….. we must help women understand that these moments of goodness are a mirage that perpetuates the abuse long term, - extending hope and increasing confusion. We must not make the victim of abuse feel derided or judged for how she sees things.

When DC1 was a baby, DH used to get up Saturday morning, stick them in the sling, and go and do the weekly shop while I got a few hours off. The female staff of Tesco used to coo and twitter at him endlessly about what a wonderful dad he was, and I'm still retrospectively annoyed by it. I've done a shop with a baby in a sling about a million times, and strangely nobody has ever stopped me to tell me what an amazing mum I am for it. It really doesn't help that society is so ready and willing to lavishly praise the slightest, simplest bit of actual parenting by men.

This is very true. Behind most children with an abusive father there is a mother who, if she does not, has decided on a level of either passive or active participation. It’s a nasty truth that such women will do a lot of mental gymnastics to avoid recognizing

@CrowSinger by ‘great dad’, I’ve come to the conclusion the OPs mean he doesn’t take any of his anger directly out on the kids. ‘Great dad’ probably encompassed more things pre-abuse but post-abuse they cling onto the phrase instead of realising the point at which he started attacking the mother of said children automatically negates him being anything but a toxic influence.

I have 2 adopted children (adults now) and the number of mothers who lose their kids to adoption because they prioritise their dangerous partners is unbelievable.

When we were looking to be matched with children, we read details of a lot of children, and this stuck out as a pretty universal issue.

Sadly, the mothers were not just tolerating these guys but neglecting the children to please them - going on all night benders with them and leaving the kids alone (maybe locked in cupboards). Not having any food because he needs his beer and betting money. Never mind enabling or turning a blind eye to the paedophile stuff, which is just unbelievable.

It is a huge problem. These women may love their children but it isnt enough.

Yes I've just read that thread too. Utterly chilled to the bone that she's gone quiet after one post. I hate when it's clear they don't see it yet. I try and stay off relationships these days as it's just too depressing.

A lot of women seem to think the DC don't know what their DFs really like, that the abuse goes over their heads. DC do know, they know Dad gets angry, they play up to him to keep themselves safe, then DM thinks she can't take them away when they love him so much.

Scared children will often fawn over their abusive parent. It's a survival instinct but it gives the impression that they are happy and doing well.

I think it's also easier for some mums to pretend that they are staying for their children, rather than admit that they can't/won't leave.

This 'great dad' designation often bothers me too, and not just in relation to abusive relationships. 'Great dads' who are not getting on with their child's mother remember how important she is to their child and do what they can to help her remain sane, solvent and in touch with friends and family who can support her. They don't do their best to undermine her health and peace of mind whilst being the 'fun' parent who provides games of football and cinema trips.

Several possible reasons I can think of, but the one that pisses me off the most is that because, generally, this is what the society we live in tells us all. Women are just expected to get on with all the hard graft, not complain and woe betide her is she fails to meet the impossible standards expected 100% of the time, whereas men are "such a good dad" if they occasionally take their kid to the park on a Saturday morning or change 1 nappy a week. Maybe if people stopped commenting that men doing basic parenting are "such good dads", women who are beaten down by subtly abusive partners (before if gets to the physical violence stage) would be able to see their situation more clearly.

Yes, and while I know you are being somewhat sarcastic, I do think it is useful to switch the language to one of concrete observation, versus absolute judgement.

while true, I’m not sure responding “he’s not a good dad, he’s a shit dad’ is particularly useful, because it replaces one absolute judgment for another absolute judgement…and debilitates the abused woman’s powers of observation (which are already debilitated due to the abuse). I am guessing that helping her to shift her beliefs to more concrete observations, that align with her own perceptions, could be a helpful first step.

EG, when you say he’s a good dad, I think what you mean is that sometimes he treats them ok, and when he is being nice, this sometimes makes the kids happy. I guess they must feel happy and express a lot of relief when he is being nice. They must be really grateful because they are desperate to be loved by him. But I bet they are also scared and confused and distressed when he is acting abusively, even if they are too shocked or scared to express it externally…. A really good dad never scares his kids or attacks their mum. So what you’ve got is not a good dad. You’ve got an abuser, who punches his kids’ mother, scares his kids and is nice to everyone sometimes. That means everybody is on a really painful roller coaster, all the time. That’s what abuse often feels like for everyone- there are terrible lows, and there are also highs. But more lows always come. It must be really confusing and disorientating for you and your kids.

Women have a tendency to go into maternal mode. On the Macron-Brigitte post a few comments were like "If Macron were my son..." for my sins I immediately thought the same thing. I remember when Putin first invaded Ukraine and an American actress posted a video reciting a poem wishing she were Putin's mother and saying she would have loved him more and given him more light in his life, referring to him as a little boy as though Putin is just a vulnerable child in need of maternal affection and that would sort everything. Our gendered strengths are a dual-edged sword. They can elevate society or they can destroy it.

I think its because many of them had absent fathers, or were abandoned wholesale. So a father who is at least nominally at home and still “with” the family is considered out of the ordinary and amazing.