To understand why some women have children within a a short time with multiple different partners?

[Beautifulweeds]

Genuine question, arose in conservation today. An in law has 3 DC from 3 different Dads and is only 25 and is a single Mum to them. Their Dads are going about their normal lives, including sleeping with other women (probably more pregnancies) and don't have much to with their children. She's not the most invested Mum (meaning not at all) has to live off UC, leaves her kids with grandparents, who in reality look after them.

She has met another new fella, doesn't take precautions (oh I keep forgetting to take the pill) and it won't be long before she has another baby.

So, I guess my question was...hopefully you would learn from experience that you can and should take responsibility? Guidance doesn't always work, so same old patten repeated...meet someone, get pregnant, let someone else look after baby...taken away...fostering...adoption.

We've tried to help and intervene but a brick wall. X

Most relationships don't last. Some involve kids, some don't. Some last longer than others. When the long relationships end, the kids are just as upset as they are when short relationships end, often more so, especially if both parents/one parent has been clinging on for grim death long past the sell by date. It's all tricky stuff. As for why people break up, the reasons are as varied as why people got together.

Re the grandparents' involvement, some parents don't do a great deal of parenting. When the parent not doing a lot of parenting is a guy, mostly that isn't questioned.

Because this is how chav culture works- and I say this as someone who isn't a twin set and pearls Tory- have kids , get given social housing, get given cash and if you are lucky maintenance on top that doesn't affect your benefits!! These girls may seem a bit dumb- a lot of them are actually quite sharp when it comes to maximising income from state and ex partners- hate to sound harsh but not driving means I've heard the conversations around this multiple times on buses.

I've had the misfortune of dealing with a kid at work who is number 10 or so of 15. The family are absolutely feral, the elder kids have maintained files with Youth Justice all the way from 10 to 18, and the younger kids are heading the same way.

I think her childcare providers need to tell her no more… she’s taking the piss… she needs to use a different form of contraception !

This was my mum. Back in the 90s it was a bit different though. With each pregnancy she would have a claim to extra benefits, a bigger house.
She had 4 of us in 5 years, all different dad's.
I didn't see my dad, and neither did 2 of my siblings, 4th borns Dad stayed with her, so we had to call him dad and play happy families.

We were neglected, and abused by her and her husband (who was also my Dads brother) and as a mum myself I cannot figure out, or forgive why she continued to have kids.

She had me, she struggled. One of my earliest memories were of her having a friend of a friend to drive us around so she could find skittles and Fanta so she could give them to me, and telling me to act naughty and funny and kick and spit at the people who were coming to see us so I could play with my friend. I now know she was applying for provision for childcare through social services because she needed rest from my behaviour... what behaviour? I only ever acted like that once, on her instructions.
She allowed me to be sexually abused by a man who had a prior incident he was involved in.

I don't understand why she went on to have 3 more children after she knew she wasn't coping.
I was then parentified and took most responsibility of keeping us all together and everything being OK. It was always my fault if it wasn't.

We were used to gain money wherever she could get it. She sometimes worked, I helped with the gardening jobs, I helped with the cleaning jobs, I helped with the Avon rounds.

She used to talk me into doing runs for charity. I was so proud of doing that, until a teacher told me he had proof that we hadn't been giving the money I'd fundraiser to the charities. I was so upset by that, and didn't realise until much later that it was true.

I don't understand either, I kind of wish I did. People like the woman from the OP and my mother have no understanding or care that these are human beings they're screwing up.

What is the relevance of psychopaths?!? Very unlikely to be unwittingly mothering multiple children

I don't agree with the broad strokes but can see how a woman with emotionally unstable personality disorder might end up this way due to her intense need for relationships and fear of abandonment.

I'm much more appalled by the men who do this and seem to get away Scot free, face little judgement and, live life as single men with no responsibilities, heck most people seeing these men would have no clue how many children they have fathered. And huge numbers of these men never pay maintenance or just a pittance.

But obviously it's the women we should be slagging off ....🙄

As a child of a mother who was a social worker specifically for (often teenage) single mothers and I learnt there was a myriad of reasons so I had the insight not to ignorantly judge or condemn the mothers.

It’s their choice to care for the children their daughter keeps having. Obviously they may not feel that letting these children go into foster care is even an option, but they can’t go on absorbing endless children, if they’ve already got three substantially in their care and their daughter is still only 25.

I know someone in a similar situation, who is a single parent in her sixties who is raising her daughter’s two young children, but her daughter is pregnant again, by a man in prison for beating her, but to whom she remains loyal, and her mother says she can’t care for this baby too, as her health isn’t good, she has only a 2-bed flat and is trying to hold down a job. This baby will go into care if her daughter can’t or won’t care for it, and it may be removed anyway if the father is released and the daughter maintains the relationship .

That's why the state locked up the women years ago, including the poor caught once in a pregnancy types, they didn't want so many psychopaths in society. Now people think what horrors the mental institutions and mother and baby homes were, when we look at an isolation single pregnancy women we see someone who wss young and exploited. The narrative ignores the multiple pregnancy psychopaths though.

what?

If she can pay for them all, and support them all- by all means, go ahead.

But the standard of male she will be having sex with won't be the type to pay for their children or be a responsible parent to these children.

@Beautifulweeds Sounds like she tries to bring these dubious quality men ''to heel'' by getting pregnant?

People are either brought up with the idea that deferring gratification is beneficial in the long term, or they aren't. If you're in the first group it can be immensely hard to understand the mindset of the second.

DD's BF is a great guy who works really hard. But his parents and two siblings are slobs who live mostly on benefits. I'm not sure how BF acquired the skills to work towards goals growing up with the background that he had, but I'm very impressed with him — more than I am with DD, who we kind of assumed would inherit this attitude from us (which she did).

You also see the opposite in well-off families, though. I know a couple of cases where professional parents have had 2 or 3 children and one of them is still living with them at 35, playing music or whatever, complete failure to launch. My grandmother had a saying, "People go from trade to trade in 3 generations", by which she meant that their kids would do better than them, and then again, but after that it would drop back. There's some truth in that, I think.

The more intelligent the man, the more likely he is to have a vasectomy or use condoms all the time.

@tobee haven't these women heard of contraception- they are in most cases choosing to get pregnant over and over again in unstable short term relationships - yes the men are total twats in many cases too - but the women are putting themselves in a preventable situation-

I'm appalled by both women and men who have such a casual approach to having children, but I do recognise that it's usually the mothers who are left in the doggy do whilst the so-called dads piss off into the sunshine.

She may be vulnerable to the behaviour of men for some reason. She may have learning disability that is unrecognised. Her family may not be in a position or understanding in the best way to help her understand herself. Different partners coming in and out of the children's lives is more concerning.

I don’t understand it either BUT whenever I have met/known women in these situations none come from privileged backgrounds or have had stable upbringings. Comparisons to young women who have graduated uni, doing gap years travelling etc aren’t always fair because most of the time these are women from comfortable, middle-class upbringings.

I know this isn’t always the case but often it is. I agree with PP that it’s complex and multilayered.

Because there are no significant enough constraints for the not to do so. I feel like I had my first on the young side (27 when DC1 was born but 28 a month alter) 2nd DC 31 and now I laugh at the thought of being “old” when I was pregnant,

It was expensive enough when I was young, with house prices etc..16 years later I’m much better off financially. I’m fortunate to be in a financial position to be able to afford 4 kids but personally I couldn’t think of anyone worse as I couldn’t give 4 children enough quality time for my liking.

Her body, her choice but is she supporting her choices? Or is the rest of society?

It's really shitty to saddle offspring with that sort of life, too.

That's why before the welfare state these women (I don't agree with what happened to rape victims or one off pregnacy
/taken advantage of) were locked up in mental institutions as thats what their behaviour is, insane and it harms so many.

They are idiots. And always "accidentally" getting pregnant. It's funny how the women who are committedly childfree-by-choice almost never seem to end up with babies they didn't want....

But it's the women who want the babies not the men, if they didn't want them they'd figure out how to use contraception to stop it happening. If she really didn't want kids she'd take the pill AND insist he wears a condom. He has no say in whether she takes the pill or not so only has one form of contraception whereas women have two ie their own and the fact they can refuse to sleep with a man without a condom. If they ever invent the male pill it'll sort all these issues out and it can't come soon enough. But they won't invent it because they know lots of women will hate having their choice to have kids taken from them.

But contraception in the U.K. is FREE

I was so shocked the day I realised this given how often women make it sound like preventing accidental pregnancies are so difficult..!

Not sleeping with every woman/man you feel horny around like a dog on heat is also free.

I think past generations made some mistakes, some things they did were wise and we were daft to stop some of it.

@SpoonHeader agree

But even if someone wants to be promiscuous, which isn't my business, it's fairly easy not to bring children into the world!