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 have to agree…. If all the friends I know that are separated from their child(rens) dads, there are a few who split childcare fairly and they do 50/50 with the children literally spending a week with one parent then a week with the other… but the majority of the women I know have their children 24 days out of every 28 with the men only seeing the children every other weekend…. And even then they often cancel because something else comes up (football/golf /a date….) one friends ex is disposed to have his kids every other weekend and regular phone calls… he hasn’t seen them since December and they’re lucky to get the occasional text!! We all assume he has a new gf so his kids have taken a back seat (really sad !!)….
my own ex left 2 years ago and has seen his DD once in 2 years!! He pays the minimum maintenance and only occasionally offers extra cash towards things she needs.

I do have a couple of friends whose ex’s have been amazing tbf to them…. If the mum is ever ill the dad has had the children extra, and vice versa…. So I do know some parents co-parent absolutely perfectly…. But yeah when it doesn’t work out it is usually the mother picking up all the childcare and even married couples it’s often mum having to leave work to pick up sick children or take time off when they’re poorly…. Problem is if I’d said to my ex (when we were together) that I needed to work he’d have just said DD either had to go to school feeling poorly or go to my DP’s… which obviously isn’t ideal if she’s throwing up!!…. But he would’ve known that his refusal to stay home would result in me stepping up… nd I think a lot of people play on the fact they know the other parent wouldn’t send ir leave a poorly child at school! I’m sure some men are the main carers too, but it is mostly women in my experience… even when they’re the higher earner! I don’t think childcare will ever be equal!

Where did you get this information? Are you sure it's correct?

The applause that single fathers get if they are the main carer too 🤦‍♀️. I’m not saying they shouldn’t be thought highly of, it’s just that juxtaposed with the eye rolls over the single mother it makes me so frustrated.
i am not a single parent- just frustrated with the world in general.
I am quite passionate about social mobility. Question for the single mothers out there (project of mine at work) - what could a workplace do to help you excel (into more senior positions)?

Isn’t it about £30k? The £100k threshold is for 15/30 free hours at nursery.

Can I add that women can also get screwed when it’s 50/50… my friend’s ex , a high earner but has the kids 50% of the time, makes her pay 50% of the cost of things like school trips or new trainers. She’s on a low income after spending years being a Sahm basically to support his career. And so he told her she needed to pay half, about £500, towards a school trio the child wanted to go on and her ex told the child that if mum doesn’t pay he can’t go and it’s mum’s fault… £500 is nothing to him but it’s about 1/3 of my friend’s monthly wages! Absolute madness. I mean I know it is better to have 50/50 but it doesn’t always stop the inequality.

@WildTwins The current narrative is that if a man does anything, it's a bonus. If he pays more than the absolute minimum, 'Oh he's so generous to you'. If he has the children for a night, 'He's so good to you.'
I don't know how to change the narrative but I want to scream from the rooftops. Everything we single mothers ask for is FOR THE BENEFIT OF OUR KIDS. And I want to scream even more loudly, AND THEY'RE HIS KIDS TOO.

This is like my experience. When we divorced, calculating the pension part really laid bare how much my work in the family unit facilitated his career progression and continued financial success. My career is about 12 years behind his, and thus income as well. I'm in a single income household. He, of course, is living with a wealthy new partner!

I mean ideal world is onsite childcare but realistically, just an understanding that whilst we can't come in for a super early or late meeting, we can be trusted to do a big or important job if you let us manage our own time more. Don't insist on things being done in person that could be done over Teams, don't make schmoozing and late night socialising and integral part of the role. Don't assume there's a willing co-parent or grandparent or "someone" who could spring to the rescue.

Men should definitely be paying their share absolutely agree with this. My point earlier was just there are many women who choose to have children with less than desirable men

@Sweetteaplease but if I recall, without scrolling back, you didn't say that. You just said women should choose better and didn't bother to differentiate or acknowledge that there are a myriad of circumstances. I also think women should be cut more slack if they have 2 children with a man who hasn't been great with no1, because its easy to see how you'd want your child to have a sibling and how much more complicated would it be to have different fathers, a large age gap etc. Its also relevant to point to the boiling frog analogy. From the outside or with hindsight the "obvious" path is much easier to see. None of it matters if we are talking about fathers abdicating responsibility. That is 100% solely on them. They can be utter twats to the women if they like, but they owe a duty to the child they fathered, regardless of any circumstance.

@ThePlumVan absolutely. I hate having to say that I can't do things at work such as stay back unexpectedly, travel, do certain times (that they are well aware of but keep asking anyway). My ex poleaxed my career the day he did what he did and became my ex. I will never achieve serious promotion now, two of my DC have additional needs and I'm closer to retirement than starting out. I can't work any more than I do, I need universal credit to survive and I'm skint now everything has gone up so much. But I'm the scrounging baddie who should have kept her legs closed according to common narrative, not my ex who due to the situation doesn't have the kids away from me and pays a negligible amount of maintenance. They need school shoes this week and it will be me (again) balancing the books to buy them.

disgusting how your can be taken to court and arrested in the UK for not paying your council tax but absolutely nothing is done about absent parents who do not pay CMS for their children. This country really has its priorities all wrong where they see paying towards getting your bins emptied as more crucial than paying towards the upbringing of children. Some child really do suffer without this financial support from the absent parent (mostly dads) and some mothers really struggle on low incomes to feed and clothe them properly, but as long as everyone in society pays for their bins to be emptied then that's alright!

Perhaps we should start lobbying our MPs and demanding change.

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

What a complete arsehole. The coats were for you, not your mother!!! That is beyond pathetic. My ex has that attitude towards the cheap items he occasionally buys. It’s very unfair on the child. I tell her that her things are hers and she can can take and wear what she likes when she goes to see her Dad. I hope he feels shame when he sees what she is wearing when he picks up up from our house, and that it encourages him to reflect on his own meanness when it comes to buying children’s clothes or shoes.

We should call it the Deadbeat Dads campaign. Such a great idea!

My loser ex asked the courts to make an order that I didn’t pay private school fees, our child went to state school instead, and the amount I would be paying in school fees would be paid to him monthly as maintenance for the rest of my working life.

I can barely look at him even 7-8 years on for trying to do this.

The judge thankfully told him there was no reason why a fit and able bodied man in the prime of his life couldn’t support himself.

I guess this is just to say that some men are even worse than the men who won’t pay child support. Some will even take away from the children if they can.

It won’t, not for him.

but for her, she will absolutely know you did your best by her in the end. Kids really just get it. They just know. You don’t have to do anything aside from looking after her well and being there for her.

What an absolute asshole. Don’t worry. Your kid has been raised by you and no doubt is a good kid. She has to deal with a hideous excuse for a father but she has you.

Thank you so much. She is such a wonderful, kind person. I’m so proud of her and so grateful to have her. She does very well, despite her father.

So many excuses. Women should make better choices, end of story. There's no thought for the child/ren at all (or the father), it's usually the women just wants to have children no matter what. I do think the fathers should have to pay, and it would be interesting if this was enforced as I think alot more men might think twice. It would be interesting to know from a man what their thought process is. I think in these situations neither parents have the children's best interest at the forefront.

Not at all my ex husband was the driving force behind our two children he is also the one who refuses to pay unless forced constantly changes jobs and fucks around and ditched seeing his children completely over a year ago

Men are responsible for their own actions not women

@Theunamedcat you're being disingenuous if you're suggesting it's usually the man who is the driving force behind having children

Why? Men can't want children more than women? I was ambivalent about having children it was never a goal of mine my daughter was an accident I decided one was enough my husband (not her father) was the driving force behind expanding the family NOT me

In my friendship group it is men more than women wanting more children most of my friends were one and done their husbands were not I do have one friend who divorced her first husband because she wanted more children and he didnt but she isn't the norm

Strangely the ones who split up the men always say "she forced me to have more children" but never before

We're talking about what usually happens. You only need to see thread after thread on here. Man doesn't want kid. 99% people tell OP to give him an ultimatum. So they have a kid, usually more than one and then they split up. Then usually both do it again with other people 😒