Just a rant about how blatantly unfair this is for women?

[jiarA]

And yes it is mainly women.

My ex does next to no parenting. I do 95% of it because he is ‘busy with work.’ Many women actually would criticise me for this and say I should TELL him to step up. I have… newsflash, he won’t.

He pays CMS which is 12 percent of his salary. Despite being a reasonable amount as he earns well, this doesn’t touch the sides of 50% of the actual costs due to nursery. He gets away with this while I meet the shortfall…and do all drops offs and picks ups and 95% of personal care for our child.

The narrative of single mothers being a drain on society.. sorry what? You mean the mothers picking up the physical, emotional and financial shortfalls of these largely absent men? The narrative is so deeply wrong it is shocking it has become a narrative at all.

Ex doesn’t need to be there if his child is unwell or needs to be picked up from nursery. But if I wasn’t there I would be considered neglectful.

My earning potential is hampered by the fact I am doing more than the lion’s share of care for our child while he does almost nothing. He will be applauded for his career and his standing in society while I am forced to fade out at least until our child is older.

There’s lots more.

These men should surely be noted for their lack of involvement with their children? Even if they cannot be forced to actually parent, it should be publicly available for all to see exactly what they pay and what they do for their child.

I know I sound bitter. I’m actually quite good fun usually - honest 😂 but all of this bollocks absolutely drains me. It feels unfair because it is!

I totally feel your pain OP. When I separated from my exH he totally opted out of all parental responsibility only seeing our children if/when it suited him. He then dragged us through the family courts once I refused to support his adhoc parenting and attempted to gain sole custody. He lost and hasn’t seen them for six years. He stopped paying child support and only began again once I took him to court. He has done absolutely nothing for our teen DDs. These men are just deadbeats …

@lemming40 I thought it would be fun.

I was very shocked on a previous thread where a stepmum said that her husband had his children (from a previous relationship) every other weekend and one evening a week and that this was "enough".

Couldn't believe that. Don't think her husband's ex would agree that he was doing "enough". And I'm not sure the children would agree, either.

(As a separated dad, it would kill me to only see my daughter that often).

Who are the 5% who think you are being unreasonable? The men who don’t want to pay for their children?

I’m with you, OP. I have an ex who won’t pay a penny and I don’t dare go to court as I value having so much more time and don’t want to lose it. So I just pay. I do find it very interesting how upset he gets if I mention on a school what’s app group or to our child that I pay all the school fees and expenses. I would encourage women to speak about this and shame them as much a possible. Truth is a complete defence to defamation so they can just suck it up.

This isn’t true. Plenty of men take the shared parental leave in my industry now (financial services).

Generally, it is absolutely true.

The uptake of shared parental leave is poor.

I’m in my 50s but my mum was a single mum from when I was 4 years old. She worked full time from when I was 18 months old. I was at nursery full time. My nanna picked me up from nursery and school always.

My dad lived across the road from the school. I didn’t have a key to get in to his. Nanna fetched me and kept me until mum got home at 6pm.

Dad paid mum £1 a week for me and my DSis.
Some people might think £1 was a lot in 1976. It wasn’t. A jelly sweet (cola bottle) was 1p so he basically paid her the equivalent of 100 cola bottles for 2 children for 7 days. That was for all clothes, shoes & food. No after school clubs or activities as they weren’t a thing.

When he took us on hols he stopped paying the money. Dad bought us both a coat once but wouldn’t let us bring them back to mums and eventually gave them to our younger half brothers.

To the posters who believe all of us that have ended up as single mothers are to blame for our own downfall what about our children? We aren't asking for sympathy for ourselves we are simply outraged that out children suffer because of these men. I would guess none of us had children knowing they would be emotionally abused and financially disadvantaged by their own parent. I'm not really complaining about the impact being a single parent has on me, I'm more concerned by the impact it has on my children.
I have an older child and I co parent with her father with few problems, we are amicable and he pays maintenance of a fair amount consistently and also splits the cost of anything additional, we work together to parent her. This shows me it is possible to end a relationship and still be able to Co parent effectively. This also lulled me into a false sense of security as i wrongly assumed all men behaved like this. My ex husband has sadly shown me the other side of how men can be and since that has happened I've realised it's probably more common than it is to have a decent ex. Ultimately all I care about is my children's well being and I find it very sad that their other parent doesn't feel the same way about them.

I agree. Men's input to fathering is seen in terms of "anything is a bonus".

It's grossly imbalanced. When they walk out of a family, the mum is invariably left to pick up the pieces.

The law should be more balanced.

The whole "Fathers for justice" thing was responsible for a lot. Mothers have lost every single bit of agency they had.

It’s such a shame, we need to educate us women on how not to accept this neglect.
it’s a huge long term imbalance. Not only from the men that walk away from their responsibilities but also some men that stay with partners and kids are still not picking up or sharing the load.
A lot of women are left without support to keep building on their own working life, career and financial earnings.
They are not left with pleasant choices but to keep going and in the end they can feel like a failure amongst partners that have kept building themselves.
I would have appreciated to have my own earning, confidence and liberation but instead have to appreciate that I fall under my partners protection from his financial achievement since we started family life. Sadly there have been occasions where he has remarked negatively directly to me about why I haven’t built myself as there are many other women who have after having kids ect

Absolutely agree with the op.

There are countries where daycare is heavily subsidized.

This means that ALL children, regardless of class or economic situation have access to well managed, regulated daycare. Good food. Regular exercise. Language acquisition. A learning system. Socialization. Play. Etc

Because of this, it enables women (and men, but let's face it, men are usually higher learners so return to work and leave women at home as primary care givers) to return to work. Which means they retain their independence, and financial stability.

WHY are more women not protesting against the daycare system in the UK???

Why not??? It's completely detrimental to women.

(And children also in some cases, as there are a lot of kids who fall by the wayside who are not placed in the education system until aged 4).

The US has it's faults but fathers can't even buy a donut until they have paid their alimony.

Accountability. It's starts there.

But that's why MN is so hypocritical. It's very unfair to stepchildren, so from that perspective if you're the second wife it's absolutely ok for the father to be a shitty parent to his other kids

But realistically, what man 'tricks' another woman to have babies, when they have no interest, are useless fathers from the beginning and then leave? Absolutely they should be paying their share, but it's simply not true that the man in the relationship is pressuring to have the kids. (Except in an abusive relationship where he may want to trap the woman). Genuinely not trying to be argumentative, but I don't think people are being honest and until they do, this will continue.

Once a women marries a man already with children the step children appear to have live in a 'box' and only pop out when it suits, until the next child comes along then the original children are an inconvenience 'he is mine now and does what I say' it's all really weird and as usual the children suffer

Lying to receive more child maintenance

On this thread everyone is fully supportive that the father doesn't pay his way

Absolutely. My ex did nothing and paid nothing. He lived 150 miles away and saw DS 3 x a year when I took DS to see him. My career up in smoke.
unfortunately he died when DS was 8. Now we get a small pension payment. I’m with you all the way.

@Sweetteaplease I know plenty of women personally and have read dozens on here who were in safe and secure marriages with jointly planned babies. I know one, who posts on here a lot, who was persuaded against her better judgement who was then left with a high needs ASD toddler. People on this thread have said they had IVF with their partners who then left. Why is that "not honest"? And if it WAS all a big charade, why is that then ok for men to not pay their share?

@Sweetteaplease that thread is about a totally different circumstance where the dad has the kids 50/50 AND pays the mum £450 a month in acknowledgement that she gets the uniforms etc. The mum is now lying to CMS that the children stay with him. It's irrelevant to this thread.

It doesn't work like that. Men change when a baby arrives. They deal badly with breakups, even when they're at fault. They hurt, and this manifests as anger. They move on to a new relationship. Then things change again as you get a whole new set of rules, largely dictated by the new partner. The man is basically weak and does whatever new partner wants, to ensure continued shagging rights and slippers by the fire. And you end up wondering what on earth happened to the man you married.

That's brilliant
Why oh why is this not a key political issue in the UK

I'd say because this debate gets nasty, personal and full of "whattaboutery" Every single thread on this topic, no matter the starting point ends up covering absent fathers, NAMALT, bitter greedy exes, how to quantify costs, fair division of time and labour, women who "trap" men, the idea that a man should be able to sign away their responsibilities before 24 weeks in utero...In short, it's really HARD. So no one wants to touch it.

That’s at best a very naive viewpoint. Male parents are constantly praised for whatever part they take in bringing up their own children be that financial, physical or emotional.
The default setting is still that it’s a woman’s job, certainly not 50:50
Its insane that nursery costs, pick up/drop off, sickness and holiday cover are still not naturally apportioned between both parents.

This is not true.
A person with this salary wouldn't get any UC at all.
I just checked with the government online calculator.
They wouldn't get child benefit either, as it's over the threshold to having to pay it back to HMRC (£60K is that threshod)
AND - they could also not even access the Tax-Free childcare (20% back up to £2k a year, which is a joke anyway as this is closer to the monthly cost of nursery), because the threshold for that is £100k.