About friend moving out without her son

[Fanfeckintastic]

I'm prepared for a flaming as I suppose my opinions on this are uncharacteristically sexist.

My friend has ended her relationship with her DP, they have a 3 year old DS and my friend is a SAHP. I understand her reasoning completely as the spark was gone, he works very long hours etc, but she has chosen to move out without her little boy. I'm finding it so hard to support her in this as I really don't understand it, her DS adores her and she has so much freedom to do her own thing, nights out, holidays without him, a very good support system etc.
She still plans to see him and be a part of his life so maybe I'm being judgmental and dramatic?

Has anyone been in a similar situation where they've had to support a friend through something they just felt was so wrong?

Gender aside, the science does back up the idea that abrupt total removal of a primary caregiver is very disturbing to young children. I think most people instinctively grasp that and so the judgement is primarily about that.

There's a side order of sexism there as well, in that most people assume that in most cases the mother will be the primary caregiver, so a woman walking out and leaving her children behind is much more readily assumed to be very damaging to the children.

Fundamentally though it's about the indisputable fact that the disappearance of a child's primary attachment figure will affect that child for its entire life. Obviously if a parent dies there's nothing you can do about it; but in situations where that might have been avoided people naturally think it strange and not very nice that a parent should not do everything they can to avoid psychological damage to their own child.

Vezzie speaks sense. The fact that OP reports fairly shallow reasons for her 'friend's decision doesn't mean the ex-partner hasn't exerted pressure on her over years or months, or that she has the resources currently to take their child away from the family home.

I often agree with some part of a greengrow post, and I do with this: "It was not a myth that housewives were on the gin in the 1950s and on prozac or alcohol today." Being a SAHP, with a co-parent whom you don't much like, and yet dependent on that person for financial & practical support, can feel like imprisonment.

Loads of people who work take prozac or equivalents or drink and lots of SAHPs don't. I'm not sure what that proves. If anything, if a SAHP is unhappy with their situation, they have the option to go back to work or volunteer. If someone is working, they may well have no other options if they are unhappy with their situation.

Hibiscus, your post appears to demonstrate a disturbing ignorance of social history, the legal status of co-habiting partners, and the politics of power within relationships. These issues dramatically affect the lives of women, in particular, who have children.

It's hard to respect the views of anybody who thinks mothers have a duty to resign themselves to unhappy relationships.

Men walk out on their families all the time and just don't seem to care about the devastation they leave behind. It affects the kids badly, but....when the woman does this (which is much rarer) the effects are a million times worse. Anyone who thinks otherwise is deluded.

It's hard to respect the views of anybody who thinks mothers have a duty to resign themselves to unhappy relationships.

Nobody has said anything of the sort. This is a thread about people leaving their children, not a thread where people are saying women should stay in unhappy relationships. Hard to respect the views of someone who invents things to argue against that no one has actually said.

Hibiscus, there have been remarks along the lines of "either she stays in where she is until he's older, or she takes him with her" throughout this thread. We don't know that she has the resources to keep her child with her - only that she's been dependent on her XP's family for childcare cover. Evidently she's not going to have that now, nor does she have the family home any more. Numerous posters have suggested she should basically suck it up so as not to "abandon" her child to being with her two days a week, and with familiar family members for the rest of the time