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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

To think it's different when a mother leaves?

34 replies

Anonynony · 20/04/2014 22:09

like other people's opinions on it.

My mam left me and my dad when I was 11 or 12 (on Easter Sunday actually!) to rent a little bedsit and just do her own thing really. I always thought this was really cool and had her on a massive pedestal until after she died nearly 3 years ago. Her sister also left her husband and all her kids to move abroad and also just do her own thing.

It's only since I've had my little girl (just before my mam died) that I've looked back at the situation and been incredibly hurt by it. I hate to be sexist and am usually very liberal and open minded but I just can't get my head around this at all. My daughter stays with her dad one night a week and I miss her so much when she's gone (however I also welcome the break and love that she spends quality time with her dad), I can't imagine ever ever just leaving her for ANY reason.
In saying that, there was a thread here a few years back by a woman who wasn't the full time parent or whatever the correct term is and someone commented that it was odd how she didn't have full custody and I ate him, wanting really badly for it to be normalized and I didn't like seeing her condemned, but now I'm left feeling a bit of a hypocrite because somehow I do think it's a bit different.

So I'm just wondering what people's opinions are on a woman being the one to leave and also and most importantly, this is a serious scary fear that plagues me, what if I wake up one day and that maternal instinct has vanished and I end up like my own mam and aunty? It sounds stupid I know but could it be something in the genes or a lacking somewhere?

OP posts:
Bananapickle · 21/04/2014 08:31

I'm not sure whether it's worse or not but what I do know is that Dads get the crap deal sometimes.
I have two people I know where the wives have had affairs as decided that the marriages are over but they aren't walking out the door. They have both forced their DHs to leave and now expect the kids, the house, everything. (BTW both DHs wanted to give them another chance)
Not sure what the purpose of me saying this is other then maybe it's right that the mother is the one to leave the home and in all these situations it really hurts the children.

feelinlucky · 21/04/2014 08:45

I was abandoned by my mother at 4, then rejected and abandoned by my father at 11, I feel nothing for my mother except maybe sad about what I didn't have, namely the experience of a mother's love. I still resent my father and he hasn't contacted me since he gave me away at 11. God only knows why each child of them gave up their children but the impact on a person's life can be very difficult. Sadly my son's father has also rejected him. As a mother, I cannot understand why anyone would reject their own child. Thankfully, I had a beautiful granny and a loving grandad so I didn't go entirely without love.

superbagpuss · 21/04/2014 08:53

my mum left home when I was Seven to move hundreds of mules away to love near her married bf, who she jhad been seeing for years

he maintained two households ( wife and my mum) for a few years before choosing my mum. she took all my savings and was always considered a pawn in the divorce battle and then an inconveince. I look like my dad which I think was hard for her and we never actually bonded.

now as a grown up I try to be nc although it hurts me as I have no contact with younger Siblings

I do worry about my own DC and that I am a bad mother. she has no idea I have DC and they don't know yet that my step mum is not my natural mother . I don't want my DC to have the issues that I have

Jinsei · 21/04/2014 09:19

It is incomprehensible to me how a mother could leave her child, I cannot imagine any circumstances in which I could even begin to contemplate such an action. I feel the same about fathers too, in some ways, but I guess I have less insight into a man's experience of being a father, so it's easier for me to rationalise and I don't have such an emotional response.

I can only suppose that the mums who do leave perhaps have such a warped view of their own value as a mother that they misguidedly feel that the kids will be better off without them? I struggle to accept that they might go purely because they've just had enough.

Saski · 21/04/2014 09:22

I think it's different. My husband is madly in love with our children, but he doesn't seem to have the kind of physical craving for them that I do.

moldingsunbeams · 21/04/2014 09:29

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moldingsunbeams · 21/04/2014 09:32

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BertieBotts · 21/04/2014 12:20

I don't know that it is different. With the exception of some of the category of "feckless fathers" who have always sort of compartmentalised or shut off from their children, even when they lived together, my experience through friends/relatives/people online is that dads are just as devastated to lose contact with their children, but they accept it because they feel they don't have a choice. If they want out of the relationship, they can't force her to leave her children, and if she wants out of the relationship, he doesn't usually get a choice to take them. They may have got to a very dark place before they choose to leave the relationship - because really for a man who doesn't feel he can ask his partner to leave, he's talking about walking away from the family, not just the relationship.

In our current and past society, most adult men have been taught that men shouldn't show emotions other than anger, meaning that grief, loss, depression etc may come out as anger/aggression, sometimes extreme anger which eclipses common sense and a wish to do what's best for the children, it becomes a wish to hurt/punish their ExW. Contrastingly, most adult women have been taught that anger isn't ladylike and only other emotions are acceptable, meaning many many women turn anger inwards and blame themselves, leading to depression, anxiety, low self esteem, etc.

Or if this doesn't happen, still, many men lack coping mechanisms for their emotions due to their upbringing leading to responses like using addictive substances as a crutch, distancing themselves from the children because it hurts too much to see them and have to say goodbye at the end of the weekend or the 4 hours or whatever it is, or immersing themselves in things other than their children the rest of the time as a distraction which can become overwhelming and bleed into their time with the children.

I hope that these emotional difficulties will be lessened in future generations as we now realise the importance of letting boys be in touch with their emotions, but of course there are still parents who believe that "boys don't cry".

Secondly, I have gone through tough times with DS. At the worst parts I thought that if he was a dog, it would have been kinder for me to rehome him. Because he was (is!) a child, it just wasn't an option, but in those darkest times I did think that if I knew it would cause him no long lasting distress and he would be absolutely fine, I might have done. That terrifies me now, but I never came close to actually doing it, and the reason why was that I knew on some level that even if I felt like a crap mum, even if I was finding it hard to spend time with him, he would still be devastated if I left, it would still damage him, he still needed me to be there however crap I was being or feeling. And on a very basic level, yes he probably would have been fine with just DH but I couldn't bring myself to do it. I don't think that's a female thing, it's just a logic thing - logic won out over what I felt I wanted at the time. I suppose I just wanted to say that even if you ever did experience feelings like that, experiencing them is no reason to act on them, there are a lot of barriers in your way (as a woman especially) to doing it. Now I am horrified that I ever thought, even hypothetically, about giving him up and couldn't imagine it.

I don't think men and women are fundamentally different, I just think we grew up in different worlds, and it's still the case now.

purplecoyote · 21/04/2014 14:02

There are some great points raised on this thread. I think chaps do get the sticky end, it's difficult for them to ask for more than the standard ROW contact and if they do are labelled as trying to steal the children etc. I have spoken to men who say it's easier not to see the children ever than only have them part of the time as it opens up too much for them when they go. While I get that, it has to be about the children's best interests, not the adults.
Do you think guys are presumed to care less because they don't carry the babies? I'm currently pregnant with my second child and DP is excited, sure, but it's all an abstract thing as she hasn't arrived yet. We get to bond while they grow in us. Maybe that's why women have the craving Saski mentions.

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