To understand the first, but not the second, third, fourth...

[Sayitagainwhydontyou]

I know that lots of men only show their true nature once children are born, that abuse very commonly starts with pregnancy, and that many women are completely blindsided when their husbands become abusive/neglectful/selfish/useless/detatched after they have a baby...

I am absolutely not saying "what possessed you to have a baby with this man??"

But i am baffled by women who's partners are shit dads, who then go on to have more children with them. It just seems so hugely unfair on the kids.

You can question why women make poor decisions for their children and why their husbands are feckless. Having children with feckless men only perpetuates an awful cycle as those children don't have a good male role model. For some women their self-esteem seems to come from producing children. If you're in a horrid relationship and the children are your joy then you'd hope that the mother wouldn't want to bring more children into an awful situation. I hate the term "fell pregnant". No one falls pregnant. You have unprotected sex without using the myriad of contraception choices available.

Often the reason a woman is with the guy in the first place. If she wants more kids, she wants more kids. Sometimes it's much harder to leave. Especially if they doubt themselves and their mental health is poor.

Reproductive control

Sexual coercion

Rape

Damaging/hiding contraception

Open your eyes op. Domestic Violence often includes sexual abuse.

Some women have grown up in abuse homes with fathers who aren’t any better or are totally absent. I have a friend who is an emotionally abusive relationship and from the time they started dating there were red flags everywhere. But her dad hit her mum, her previous boyfriends were violent with her. I would never date someone like her current bf because he’s clearly emotionally abusive but for her she thinks she can’t do any better or that he’s not too bad because he provides for them and doesn’t hit her. Peoples backgrounds play a big part I think in what they expect in life

I think this pretty much sums up the thinking of many women, to my mind. A low opinion of men, reinforced by a society that lets men get away with being useless and lazy in the home, coupled with a desire for children and financial stability

Yep. And also reinforced by ideology about women, proper femininity, happiness and motherhood.

So many posters quick to shout 'abuser' about the husband/partner of an OP. It's shameful in a lot those threads that it isn't abuse at all, and is disrespectful to the women actually in DV or CC relationships.

Isn't it just? People crying wolf continually undermines real cases and makes a mockery of people suffering and those who have survived. It makes me so angry. There can be a post about a disagreement about what to have for dinner and guaranteed the first or second post will be 'does he control you in other ways, OP?'

@differentnameforthis

Reproductive control

Sexual coercion

Rape

Damaging/hiding contraception

Open your eyes op. Domestic Violence often includes sexual abuse.

It often doesn’t though. Which is exactly what the OP is talking about.

Do people on this thread not think that calling every instance of a woman having a child with an unsuitable man a result of abuse demeans actual abuse? Domestic abuse in any guise is terrible, but having a baby with a lazy man because having a baby is the most important thing to you at that moment doesn’t then make it abuse when he continues being a lazy man!

@Graphista I didnt mention different types of abuse in my post. I simply said abuse, which I assumed everyone would know meant all abuse, mental, physical, financial, emotional.

I just dont buy into the theory that every useless father is abusive. This thread has completely descended into people describing their abusive relationships which is not what the OP meant.

I understand that perhaps some posters have a different view to me and believe any father who is lazy/useless is abusvive. But just because I dont doesnt mean I alao dont understand/emphathise with abuse.

I have tried to encourage a friend to leave a marriage I think is abusive. I am not denying it exists, nor that it comes in many different forms, just that it cannot be applied to every father who is lazy.

I have friends who have had multiple children with abusive men, and a close friend is trying to divorce her abuser right now. I have seen how horrible and frightening this is.

And on the other side, I know women who are with very very useless men, facilitate their uselessness and frankly I think they just want a moan. This woman (we used to be friends, I couldn't hack it any more) start the 'useless man' narrative when we were young - 'omg isn't it so funny, he has NO IDEA how to use the washing machine!' - heehee-ing about balls out laziness and trying to get me on board. My partner at the time probably did more chores than I did and my ex-friend almost seemed annoyed that I didn't want to jump on the 'wow aren't men just useless' bandwagon. Now she has 3 kids with her useless man, and when I do see her bitches endlessly about how her husband never helps with anything, and makes catty remarks about mutual friends with more equal partnerships - as if 'pah, AS IF her husband actually takes her kids out without her, as if he could do that.'

Some people just have low expectations of life and like being martyrs. And before anyone comes for me, I do mean the ones who are not experiencing emotional, physical, financial - any type - of abuse. They are out there. Moaning. A lot.

Because it's what they know.

It is far, far easier to stay with the known than to venture into the unknown, even if it's healthier for you.

My friend had 5 children with her useless husband. What’s surprising is she is really shocked he is still useless when they split up.

Lazt Thank you !

The OP writes a post SPECIFICALLY asking about women who continue to have children with shit useless men.. but SPECIFICALLY said she was not referring to women in Abusive relationships ... and what happens ? Pages and pages of people talking about abuse .. seemingly unable to accept that there ARE many many feckless women in the world along with men.

However it seems impossible for most on MN to comprehend that a woman is EVER culpable of poor decision making because she is a selfish - self absorbed individual that she MUST be abused... and to suggest otherwise is 'victim blaming..'

I call bollocks .

We have the 'stately home' thread. With thousands of posts from children of abusive parents 50% of whom are WOMEN.. then we have god knows how many posts of 'controlling abusive' mothers -in-law .. who are roundly castigated by all... So somehow you can be a pretty unpleasant piece of work as a mother or mother-in-law.. but MUST be a 'victim' as a partner ?

My ex was a great father to our 2, until his affair and he left. He now doesn’t see them, and hasn’t bothered for months, but he was a constant presence in their lives for 14/16 years, and couldn’t be faulted as a dad. What happened to him, I’ve no idea, but now he’s financially and emotionally abusive, and chooses to have no contact with his children. Maybe I was too stupid to realise, maybe he always was that way 🤷‍♀️ But my children now have no father.

I can answer why try for a first child despite knowing he's an abuser. Firstly it's my only way of ensuring longterm safe housing. With no dependent children and not working due to poor health (made much worse by abuse) I face homelessness or a lifetime in dangerous hostels if childless.

But, I also can't bear not being a mother. I feel desperate about it and the older I get and the more chances slip away the more unbearable it is. It's acutely painful. The way society views childless women doesn't help but I've always wanted children. I feel deeply panicky at the thought of never having any. I've no time to find a new partner and no money to do it myself with donor sperm, etc. Being childless is a different and deeper pain than that from the abuse. It's sort of worse.

I can imagine there's maybe a similar urge for a second child. Having a sibling for your child is a natural desire and when it's a longtime abusive relationship you often downplay the abuse in order to mentally survive. It genuinely becomes a not real thing in a messed up traumatised mind. You see in huge mind it's a normal happy vibrant family complete with siblings for your child. You genuinely believe in a way it's a normal family. I think that's what happens as it's what I do just as a childless couple. I can't explain it fully.

I know it's selfish. He's violent and abusive and I know would be a terrible father. I don't intend to stay with him though and won't tell him if I manage to conceive. I intend to approach the local authority (who would have to house me if pregnant). He wouldn't see the child as he wouldn't know about it so I feel I wouldn't be putting the child at risk.

Seems a bit victim blaming to me

Tbh I think that if a father is lazy and wont do his share if parenting, that actually is abusive.

I think the anonymous vote reflects the fact most posters actually read the OP and are voting based on useless lazy blokes, not abusers.

I think it encapsulates the true face of our society, which has recently come to despise women and excuses rape (if she's gruesomely murdered during rape, he actually gets away with both the rape and the murder, it's called "sex game gone wrong"), domestic abuse of all kinds (not just "real abuse", which our own male associates would never do, oh no ) and even the wholesale violent murder of wives and children ("I can't believe it, he was such a nice guy, he really loved those kids", all the focus on the tragedy of him).

All the vote represents is that people don't "get it" and they don't want to because that would be inconvenient and involve the work of assisting friends and relatives out of abusive situations. So much easier to blame the silly cow for not leaving (keeping in mind that the family courts will immediately grant a useless, endangering twat 50/50 care of the kids) and swish off congratulating oneself for being such a clever sausage. ⭐

Jesus the reading comprension on this thread is fucking terrible.

Jesus the reading comprension on this thread is fucking terrible

Indeed.

I completely understand your point OP. I've seen it so much on here. You get a poster saying their feckless OH has done something specifically off (like spending the mortgage on a 4 week boys cycling, golf and playstation tournament holiday for example) then they drip feed that said OH has never put the kids to bed or made them dinner, that the OP hasn't had an evening out since the first child was born and then they say they've got 4 kids under 10!
As has been said earlier in the thread, this is obviously different to abusive relationships

@disorganisedsecretsquirrel

Lazt Thank you !

The OP writes a post SPECIFICALLY asking about women who continue to have children with shit useless men.. but SPECIFICALLY said she was not referring to women in Abusive relationships ... and what happens ? Pages and pages of people talking about abuse .. seemingly unable to accept that there ARE many many feckless women in the world along with men.

However it seems impossible for most on MN to comprehend that a woman is EVER culpable of poor decision making because she is a selfish - self absorbed individual that she MUST be abused... and to suggest otherwise is 'victim blaming..'

I call bollocks .

We have the 'stately home' thread. With thousands of posts from children of abusive parents 50% of whom are WOMEN.. then we have god knows how many posts of 'controlling abusive' mothers -in-law .. who are roundly castigated by all... So somehow you can be a pretty unpleasant piece of work as a mother or mother-in-law.. but MUST be a 'victim' as a partner ?

Well said @disorganisedsecretsquirrel.

And I don't buy "broodiness" as an excuse for poor life choices either.

And I don't buy "broodiness" as an excuse for poor life choices either

Neither do I. A parents want should never override the child’s quality of life/welfare etc.

@Elmo230885

I completely understand your point OP. I've seen it so much on here. You get a poster saying their feckless OH has done something specifically off (like spending the mortgage on a 4 week boys cycling, golf and playstation tournament holiday for example) then they drip feed that said OH has never put the kids to bed or made them dinner, that the OP hasn't had an evening out since the first child was born and then they say they've got 4 kids under 10! As has been said earlier in the thread, this is obviously different to abusive relationships

There's certainly financial abuse there and possibly even (if the W wanted to go out but was obstructed from doing so by H) coercive control.

This really is an issue of a lack of public education in the dynamics of abuse/control and consequently a lack of knowledge of this amongst women - where that knowledge would do so, so much good.

PicsInRed

This really is an issue of a lack of public education in the dynamics of abuse/control and consequently a lack of knowledge of this amongst women - where that knowledge would do so, so much good.

So are you really saying that no women make selfish decisions to procreate ? Your argument throughout this thread seems to point that way. Even though the OP specifically said she was not referring to abuse - physical, mental or indeed in any aspect ? That NO women is culpable of a bad decision within a relationship as that bad decision is always as a result of abuse ?

If so, I think your glasses aren't just rose tinted but misted up ! and demonstrates some of the peculiar thinking on here that has every woman as 'saint' and every man as 'sinner'.

With the exception of stepmothers of course who are exempt from this paragon of female virtuosity .. (probably because they have married the 'abusing' man or 'taken him away' ! )