How the hell can dads just up and leave their kids?!

[harboromummy]

Feeling super hormonal tonight.

Left abusive ex husband over two years ago. He was around the kids the first year, this year he's been shocking. Haven't heard from him in over a month, doesn't pay csa, demands to have the kids on his terms (I.e every time it's someone in his families bday so he looks "good").

My dd isn't that bothered, she's 7 and my ds whose 6 doesn't really talk about him. But they adored their dad.

I'm heartbroken for them. They must be. How can someone just leave like that?! How can he carry on his life and no be bothered especially having spent 5/6 years with them practically full time?! I'm so angry.

I think the reason a lot of previously involved fathers can cut and run is because they're good at compartmentalising, so they can just shut off the area of the brain that misses their children and throw themselves into something someone else to distract themselves.

I think compartmentalising is caused by nurture not nature - with little boys being expected to be brave, boys don't cry, get over it, stop being a wuss etc. This may be wrong, of course, but I wasn't allowed to cry as a child so became very good at compartmentalising. This obviously has its benefits such as being able to leave stress at work, but it means that it can be worryingly easy to cut out whole chunks of your life.

I imagine that men have fewer rewards to overcome this socialisation and, when it comes to divorce, go into automatic mode of compartmentalising difficult emotions because "boys don't cry" and sadly, this means they also cut themselves off emotionally from their children.

Obviously fathers that were never involved with their kids in the first place are just arsewipes.

He has a child with me thanks. And he doesn't know where his ex lives, I've tied contacting her and she ignores me.

He doesn't want to do the solicitor route. To be honest I don't see why e should have to, she shouldn't be using a child like that. But it's in her nature as that's what her mum done to her. Nobody else in my partners family knows if the child is my partners, she just tells everyone to fuck off when we ask about it.

Just to redress the balance a bit, I do also wonder how much of a role parental alienation plays in the number of fathers who have no contact - i.e the child chooses to go nc due to the conflict that occurs after divorce. I'm sure that many of those one in three/ four/ five fathers don't try that hard

No where near as frequently as people think, a NRP going to court is far more likely than not to get a contact order and when PA is genuine SS and sanctions are imposed often.

IMO Most children as they grow will make decisions based on what they witness either falling out with a PA parent or a deadbeat one obviously there are exceptions

elf badgering someone to prove the parentage of a child under many circumstances is very hostile and offensive a great many people would tell people who did that to fuck off.

It would be incredibly easy to locate her. But your right he just does not wamt to. Nice bloke you have there.

lion a child can just as equally do that to a RP, do you think it would have happened if the child thought he was a great dad?

Elf I'm sorry but why doesn't he go down the solicitor route ? You say he shouldn't have to but it's his child!

If you don't know where she lives get a private investigator , contact her family /friends , do an appeal on facebook asking for help but do something.

If that was my child I couldn't rest before I had tried every avenue to track her down but to just say he doesn't want to go down the solicitor route says he isn't that bothered to me.

Needs no they couldn't do it just as easily with a RP because they live with the RP and therefore there is no opportunity to avoid the parent and continue avoiding them. It is very easy however for a teenage child to avoid seeing a nrp, particularly when the RP encourages it. There are plenty of cases of good fathers being alienated - it is just a shame that it is not recognised. I am not placing blame on either parents, I am saying that psychologically post-divorce acrimony on both sides creates the right circumstances in which older children 'switch off' from the nrp due to their complex emotions and sense of loyalty, usually to the RP.

Oh and I should add that I am not your stereotypical stepmonster or ow either since that's usually the accusation levelled at nrps and stepmother. I have been part of both girls' lives for just over a decade. We both felt bereaved when dsd1 stopped coming. Dsd2 remains very much involved in our lives and vice versa - partly due to her different personality, partly because she is younger and remembers less and partly because her mum has accepted that she dealt with the situation with dsd1 wrongly and has adapted her approach, as have we.

I think there is a "biological imperative" involved, in that males are supposed to "spread their seed widely" - but you know, humans are supposed to have evolved beyond that extremely basic biological imperative. I guess the men who can walk away from their own children, and those who have children with several women and leave them all behind in particular, are unevolved. Whether that is down to their nature, or their nurture, or a combination of both, is debatable.

"but to just say he doesn't want to go down the solicitor route says he isn't that bothered to me." Yep usual bullshit reasons!

I accept that it CAN happen that rp makes contact difficult etc but my own experience is that it's very rare. More common for nrps to just not bother/not make enough effort.

If it was a choice between dealing with solicitors and spending every last penny I had, or never seeing my child again, I could never go for the latter option. Yes, it's shitty that you have to go the legal route, but that child is his flesh and blood. He simply cannot say 'I've done everything I can' when he hasn't even had proper legal advice.

Sorry, I'm sure I sound harsh, but obviously I've been on the other end with an uncaring father. I couldn't be with a guy who didn't try to see their DC from a previous relationship. I'd be wondering whether he'd do the same to me.

They can just as easily go and live with the other parent and its not unusual

There's some real snake oil being spouted on this thread.

We don't need to come up with theories based on some idea of evolutionary psychology. Actually, if men did always stay with their kids, it would be just as easy to explain in evolutionary terms, which shows what a red herring evolutionary psychology can be.

We are only one generation on from a society that says: raising kids is women's work, not men's. That attitude is still unconsciously engrained in society in all manner of ways, and it is only going to change over time. When a woman leaves or reduces work to raise a child, when a man takes on extra hours to compensate, when women praise a man for changing a nappy, when a man is criticised or considered wierd for looking after a child instead of working, you see that old attitude at work.

Same as when the man leaves, because the house is not his domain, and the family courts don't award him custody because the mother has been the dominant carer, not to mention when he gets away with not paying a cent of child support.

shebird

I think men have the ability to compartmentalise aspects of their life in a way that perhaps women do not. They are better at emotional detachment and so find it easier to walk away. They are also be selfish, self centred and needy and I think many resent the fact that their kids take precedence over their needs, let's face it some of them are just big babies themselves.

Charming. .

But you may have a point about emotional detachment. If society tells you that you are the second choice parent, some measure of emotional detachment is inevitable. Also, as the main breadwinner in my family (and yes, I am male) I find switching from work brain to home brain hard. Emotional detachment and compartmentalisation really helps me achieve this.

I agree about the ingrained idea in society that children =women's work, and that we are a long way from equalising that. I don't know about your compartmentalising work/home explanation as being specific to men though. I mean, most women work too and have to "switch from work brain to home brain" all the time.

Definitively not just the dads, in your case it is OP of course, but the question is "how can a parent abandon his kids"?

Aren't something like 91% of single parents mothers? I think of the 9%ish who are fathers, the majority are single because their wife/partner has died.

As for all these women denying access/poisoning the children against the dads and so on, I'm sure they exist but I doubt it is in great numbers. Certainly not true in my case or in any of the (many) children of single parents I have known in my life. I think it's so unfair to put the blame on women for a problem mainly caused by men. To repeat: I know there are some women who do cause difficulties but I do not believe that is the norm. I think most single parents would be grateful for a break every weekend or two for one thing.

Oops sorry somehow missed the thread had two more pages to go when I wrote that!

Aren't something like 91% of single parents mothers? I think of the 9%ish who are fathers, the majority are single because their wife/partner has died.* but does that only account only for single parent families as compared to remarried or parents/step families? Because 9% for men doesn't match with my experience. Maybe I live in an odd area

I think this is so true I can see who in extream cases that parental alienation happens in very young children but most children have lived with their children at some point so the children no their fathers I am a foster carer and I can tell you often even the most abused and neglected child still love and want to see their children

My son is 16 and thinks his father sperm doner is a cock because of the numerous times he's lied to him told him he's coming to see him and not turned up , made him keep secrets including trying to cosere my son to give him his passport in order to get housing even though he doesn't live with him or rarely sees my son, also the fact he's never paid a penny towards wildest showering his half sister in gifts also the fact he can't hold down a job due to his spells at her majesty's pleasure

To be honest he's done the job for himself but it's the lie deluded dads tell themselves to help get to sleep at night

She's stopping me seeing my kids , parental alienation

He couldn't explain to the mediator why if that's what was going why he stays with his own father (my son ps grandad ) 2 nights a month and attends church with his auntie even staurday they were so close my son was even named in her will when she died last year

Even 2 years after the mediator laid down plans to a route to contact we still are nowhere because he's not followed any of the agreement

Sounds exactly like my ex but he hasn't just done it to my son, he's done it to the daughter he had with the woman he was with after me. He's now living with another woman, has another son but I'm sure once he gets bored that boy will be forgotten about too. I get no CSA, he can't be bothered to see him (and when he does he just ignores him most of the time) and never phones him. Disgraceful.

It's weird. My children's father was involved at least 50/50 when we were married - we both worked full time but since the divorce over 10 years has hardly seen most of them eg I don't even get a night a year when they are with him. What are the reasons? he could certainly have then 50% of the time or whatever he wanted of course. I think the following explains it for some men:-

1. Can't be bothered. Children are hard work. if you can have 48 hours in bed with your new woman or be up twice in the night with the toddlers on Saturday and then up for good from 5.30am clearning up sick and singing wheels on a bus may be the young lover seems a better prospect.

1. Think they are failure so the children are better off without them.

1. To hurt the ex - I paid my ex and he pays us nothing so the only way to make things harder for me is not to give me even an hour of childcare a year.

I don't really understand why new women in these men's lives will go anywhere near fathers who choose not to see their children and not just see but do things like half their washing and all the dross. I wouldn't date a man who didn't play a full role.

Yes Deo my mum as the higher earner had to pay my dad. I was surprised the fact that she had us children full time did not stop this from happening. My father's new wife is less a wife and more a live in slave. She probably would have fallen for his lies about not being allowed to see us at first, I imagine years of living with him must have opened her eyes to the truth.

Yes, because on going child support is totally separate from on going spousal support which the lower earner gets whether they have the children or not and separate from the capital sum you get on a capital division (and in our case "clean break" - he got just under 60% of our joint assets on the basis I took on all support for the children and housed them and he gave up his request for maintenance for life).

When the courts said my ex could have no direct contact, he refused to pay a penny in maintenance for them. They are now 13 and 15. We live on minimum wage and tax credits. Their 'father' is, I'm told by the old CSA, rich enough to not be in the benefits system yet not working either. He has trips abroad whenever he feels like it. Saw him whining about his iPhone 6 on FB. Kids had no holiday last year (they normally get a couple of days in a tent somewhere not far away about which they are heartbreakingly grateful). I couldn't even afford to pay the new CSA whatever they're called, to look into it.

(He inherited money, got a flat in London in the 1980s when property prices were low - mortgage now paid off, and is a serial litigant when he wants more money).

He used to be an actor and was in a few well known shows, so he went and bitched to a certain broadsheet newspaper, which has an agenda about secrecy in the family courts. Secrecy is there to protect the anonymity of children. Ex had a huge photo of himself and his real name, which is a very distinctive name only one family have in the country - then it said "Names have been changed". They hadn't. That is how many shits he gives for his kids - tried to humiliate them in a national newspaper.

The old CSA couldn't find ex - it took me under a second to pull up his address on Google and it is the same place he has lived since about 1988. Not rocket science.

I came to the conclusion the system is set up to benefit the feckless parent and punish the caring active parent.

Ex had done the Alpha course in a church in Holborn, and was putting pics of my kids up online and his creepy church members were commenting how good looking my kids are... So the family court judge's opinion that he shouldn't be around kids, and my kids not around his holy joe creepy mates, proved to be very accurate.

He was obsessed with the older child; neglectful of the second. I was very pleased to see my oldest - who would only be months now off being old enough to go and live with him if he wanted despite the old court rulings - has set his privacy settings on FB so high, there is no way this man can even glimpse his profile.

Coming in late to this but I wanted to ask elf - how do you know your dp's ex's child is the spit of him if you don't know how to contact her? Some things are not adding up here. If you think that the child is his please pursue contact and get your dp to pay maintenance! I was the child of an absent father who went on to be a doting dad to more children and it hurt so much to know that he was capable of being a good dad but chose to just ignore me.

In answer to the other questions raised on here I think it is seen as more acceptable for a man to walk away from his children than it is for a woman. I know of 2 women who have both disappeared from their dc's lives and that is still the most known thing about them eg "do you know x? The one who left her kids?" That stigma will never leave them. I know lots of men who have done the same and although it is still frowned upon the stigma is not the same and people are able to look past that and still accept them. I'm not saying that the view of society is the only thing that stops parents from walking away but I think that women have that constant reinforcement that it's something you just don't do whereas most of us know a man who has done it and successfully left those children in the past.

There's photos of said child on Facebook. My partner can't afford a solicitor, we contacted the Jeremy Kyle show in August, the family never replied, tried e-mailing her on Facebook no reply, don't know her address nobody does, she honestly doesn't care