Where are the fathers in these stories?

[BernardBlacksBreakfastWine]

Very sad news piece about mothers struggling to cope with their disabled children. But I couldn’t see any reference to what the fathers might be doing to help. Call me cynical, but it very much seems as if they might have fucked off at the first sign of difficulty. Then the news story becomes ‘mother abandons son’, and everyone gasps in shock.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c2lnd5wj9z5o

Just a bit sick of society giving fathers a free pass.

And do you think these are the women in the article? Do you think it’s more likely that women with extremely demanding disabled children chose to be alone or that feckless men took off at the first sign of difficulty? With all the evidence in front of us, which do you think it is?

Good news! The government is holding consultations on the best way to do exactly that. Of course, various governments have been trying this since the fiasco of the Child Support Agency in the early 1990s, so it might not be an easy task...

OP, if you watch the hour-long documentary this article references, you'll see that 3 of the 4 families featured comprise mother AND father, and the fathers are fully involved in all aspects of their children's care - and probably bear more of the brunt of the physical injuries as they try to protect their wives/daughters.

This is not made clear at all from the article, and I wonder why (though there is another article written from the perspective of the fathers - but without making clear that these are the same families ). Not very helpful or responsible reporting by the BBC.

Whilst it is not the case in 3 out of 4 of these families, I agree that it is scandalous that mothers so often find themselves left alone, to carry the full responsibility and brunt of care for their disabled children. I remember that mother who killed her own child out of sheer desperation/panic/overwhelm/despair, and the noticeable absence of the father in their everyday life.

The documentary - which is harrowing but well worth watching - highlights the vicious circle of respite/residential care provision (specifically in Ireland, currently): all the residential places are full up already of children on long-term placements who can longer live at home with their parents; this means that there is little or no regular respite care available to families who have not yet reached that point of having to re-home their children... but the lack of that respite means that they are more likely to hit rock bottom, and more quickly, than if they'd been given regular breaks for rest, recovery, and a chance to focus on the rest of the family unit for a change. It feels like a ticking time-bomb.

The documentary is absolutely harrowing and yes, three out of four of the fathers are very much in the picture and suffering equally. I suppose the idea of mothers being attacked by their sons is seen as more emotive for a news article.

Having worked with severely disabled autistic teenage boys it was nothing I didn't know and yet it was one of the most devastating things I've ever seen. And having been on the other side, working in a care home (many years ago), I know that the quality of life these boys will get if they find a care home placement will probably be pretty poor. It's a tragic situation.

You are completely missing my point.
Have a nice day

Thanks for this. Yes, I clicked on the link to the BBC story about the fathers, and it almost seemed as if they’d done it as a follow-up to explain where the fathers were in this scenario?! It was published about 4 days later. I think it’s interesting that the story about the fathers was very much referencing the mothers too - because of course people would expect the mothers to be present- whereas the first story was able to leave out the fathers completely without justification.

Why don’t you explain what your point is then? I’m genuinely not sure.

These fathers do seem to get away with walking off and taking no responsibility, but I must say, at the risk of getting flamed, that some women need to take some responsibility before having babies with these feckless bastards.

Well, they do take responsibility tbf; they literally have to because the feckless father isn’t there to do it…

So you’ve got the wrong end of the stick then?

What exactly is your problem? Are you an absent father?

My OP was a very reasonable question. The article I quoted reads as if only mothers are responsible for these children. The fact that the BBC thought it was fine to run this tells you all you need to know about the normality of that scenario.

The article about the fathers is very different. It directly references the mothers - because they would have to explain where the mothers were if it didn’t. No explanation needed for the first article.

I do wonder if people complained and that’s why they ran the second piece.

Ask yourself why you’re such a cheerleader for absent fathers.

I think there is something of a wider social problem that is illustrated with that story. Somewhat distinct from the men fucking off and not helping with their disabled kids.

We've basically normalized casual sexual encounters, with people we fancy but who we'd never consider as good prospects for fatherhood (or even just as a life partner without kids.) The reality is though that pretty much any sexual encounter could potentially lead to a pregnancy. And women are more tied to infants in particular than fathers. Mums are usually already attached before birth, a lot of fathers take a bit of time to grow into fatherhood, it's a different experience.

There are parts of society where it's almost totally normalized for mums and kids (and not uncommonly grandmothers) to be families while the men move around from household to household or live separately. My partner grew up like this and I find it interesting to talk to him about it, he doesn't see fathers as particularly important, well behind mums, sisters, aunts, and even maternal uncles. (I disagree obviously but I can see how he came to this way of thinking, and I think it sadly impacted his relationship with his own kids.)

There are some legitimate reasons we got to this kind of attitude - part was trying not to shame single mums. People also wanted sexual freedoms for women. But in the end I think this has contributed to scenarios where young women don't stop and think about whether men they are involved with are father material, and also where there is a lot less social pressure on men to provide for their kids. In part because we see having a baby or not as fundamentally the woman's choice.

Even where the kids were planned and the were parents married, this attitude bleeds out because we are used to seeing it, and also don't usually know what led to other people's situation, so we reserve judgement.

I’m not cheerleading anyone - your post was about absent fathers in an article about families where the majority had a present father. 🤷🏼‍♀️

I mention down thread my partner comes from a family where this kind of thing was the norm. It's not uncommon, but does tend to cluster.

In his family, his mum - who was a great mum and fully intended to function on her own - had seven kids with four or five fathers. His father, who he knew a little as a young boy, had 10 children with 10 mothers.

He was born in the mid-1960s, for context.

There just wasn't as sense in his family that fathers were people who were involved. His mum had kids, not even by accident really, but because that was normal family life as she saw it and she wanted to be a mother.

This was not inside the UK and there was never any concept that the father would pay up or be involved, or for that matter have any saw in the kids lives. But you can see very similar patterns in some families within the UK.

It's really hard I think to "normalize" being a single mum without it at the same time meaning less shame on absent dads as well.

@BadSkiingMum regarding the child who was in court while his mother went on holiday to Ibiza, the father was in jail so there wasn't much point in the judege making any reference to him.

"We've basically normalized casual sexual encounters, with people we fancy but who we'd never consider as good prospects for fatherhood (or even just as a life partner without kids.) The reality is though that pretty much any sexual encounter could potentially lead to a pregnancy. And women are more tied to infants in particular than fathers. Mums are usually already attached before birth, a lot of fathers take a bit of time to grow into fatherhood, it's a different experience."

Casual sexual encounters are normalised across all levels of society. The kind of behaviours (children by multiple women/men, fathers being extremely transient in children's lives) you go on to describe in deprived communities do not occur to any great extent in affluent communities, despite casual sex being just as prevalent (if not more so, especially at universities). The difference is that the middle classes are scrupulous about contraception and delaying parenthood until career and partner align. Whereas if you live on a sink estate, with no qualifications, and are surrounded by women who all had children very young, then that's just what you do. At the end of the day, it's a choice - one that is taken under pressure to conform to a societal norm, but still a choice.

Yes, there is clearly a difference of culture centered largely around social class. And yes, it represents different choices people make.

But I'm not sure what your point is, really, in terms of the question about fathers, or my post?

Social norms have changed in terms of how we judge women and men who have kids without a stable relationship.

Some people would also see this, particularly among people in low income communities, as being influenced by unintended incentivization of having kids because of the economic benefits they give access to. Whereas for the middle class people you mention, children are generally an economic drain.

However you slice it though there is a big social change and one of the consequences is that it means that the social pressures (both negative and positive) that used to encourage young men into stable family roles aren't nearly as powerful as they once were.