To not want people to feel sorry for my children

[cadburyegg]

A few months ago my friend was telling me of a situation where her husband went away for work for a few days. Her child was upset with daddy being away. My friend told her "well at least daddy is here with us most of the time - cadburyegg's children's dad don't live with them. So we are really lucky." She happily told me about this conversation.

Last weekend I went to a different friend's house, and she told me "I feel so sorry for your children, because they don't have a reliable father figure".

I feel like something has died in me. I am sick of this attitude. Being a single mum is really hard but I don't want people saying this to me. I just want to move on and live my best life but I feel like I'm being held back. It's fair enough if someone feels for my kids or thinks they're unlucky but why do they have to say it TO MY FACE?

I'm not a victim and I don't want my children to grow up with a "poor me" attitude because their dad no longer lives here. They don't want for anything. I have a lot of guilt for picking the wrong father for my kids but I am trying to work on myself and my self esteem. These comments are not helpful for this. I am sick of it. The double takes when I say I'm divorced. The sad faces and head tilts.

AIBU to ask how to deal with this?

Statistically at a population level but not in every case.
That's a bit like saying bottle fed children do worse than breastfed children.
Overall it's true. But pick an 18 year old from a line up and you won't know how they were fed as a baby or whether their parents are still married.
In addition, once you remove socio economic factors, both feeding and family type have a negligible effect

I’ve noticed that for many women any kind of “reliable father figure” (and by “reliable” I mean living with the children) is better than none, even if that father is shit, makes the mother unhappy and she’s staying for the sake of the children. So many families are like this and if the women are feeling smug because they are not single mothers, god help them. Their children are more likely to be messed up than the ones living with just a good, reliable mother.

Fuck your so-called friends.

You don't miss what you never had. As someone who had grandparents who were too far away to see regularly, I don't have any concept of what a loving grandparent in your life would be like. I don't feel I missed out though - others who experienced it value it highly.

There's no particular reason a father in the home is any more important - apart from societal stigma which is getting less and less. Biologically children do not need involved fathers - that's a societal construct. Actually from an evolutionary point of view most modern children are missing out on a variety of female relatives and children of different ages being around all the time. The nuclear family is a very recent thing.

Maybe for boys there is something positive about having a male role model. Doesn't have to be a father though.

If it bothers you, you need to tell them.

Why just boys?

Do you not think girls benefit from having a loving father present in their life?

Your friends are rude.

However, you say your children want for nothing - that’s not quite true, is it? They want for a decent father. That’s not your fault, but it just jumped out at me.

(Obviously their lives are better without a bad father in the picture.)

Bottle fed children have a greater chance of ending up in prison than breastfed children?

That's a new one...

@HeyDrake UC has been devastating for student parents trying to improve their life. I was so lucky I managed to go to uni in a kind of golden age when the childcare grant had just come in and before UC. I now regularly see students crying in the wellbeing office and using foodbanks. I did a study in my MA and worked out that supporting a single mum to do a degree and get a graduate job works out better "cost to the tax payer" wise than keeping her on lifelong low pay and benefits. Obviously there are some assumptions there such as she gets the graduate job and progresses in it, buys a house so has no rent in old age etc but disincentivising studying/training is a really bad move long term.

@DrCoconut you're completely right. I see it too. I work in the NHS and there are so many bright, capable, ambitious mums who want to be nurses, social workers, OTs but chat afford to study and lose their UC. I was so skint as an MA student. It was only some loans from family and the fact that I have fairly cheap housing which allowed me to do it.

Your friends sound awful. It's bad enough for them to tell their kids this, but to tell you what they have said is really insensitive.

You don't need friends like these.

Sorry I haven't come back to this thread. Feeling a bit sorry for myself today (something bothering me that is single parent related funnily enough) so probably not the best time to respond 🤣 I will go through and reply tomorrow. Thanks to everyone who has taken the time to comment.

They are not your friends
Get new & better ones who hold you up & make you feel good

Your ‘friends’ sound like insensitive arseholes. Who the hell thinks these kinds of comments are ok? They need to be told. Why should they get away with such crap?

These people are your friends?! That's a really awful thing to say.

God but they sound absolutely awful.

My daughter has two friends whose parents are not getting on for years.

She finds it hard to hear her friends describe their fathers as selfish pricks.....which they are correct about.

She pities those two pals far more than her buddy whose parents are happily divorced.

I would give those friends a sharp hard swerve.

Rude.... and better to be with a reliable mum than in an unhappy 2 parent relationship. They'll appreciate it one day, you're doing a fine job.
Tip... these sound like "friends" you could do without x

OP you only need to scroll MN to see the idiot some women will put up with. There's no need. Better to be a single parent than stick with some of these men.

While they shouldn't have said it to your face, the amount of denial in our society about absent fathers is very damaging. You only need to look at reddit to see the number of people (particularly men) who've been really damaged by not having a father around.

Frenemies! They definitely are not your friends op.

Would they prefer you stay with your ex like my mother did? He abused both her and us for our entire childhood. You have done something so loving and courageous for your children, I would have loved my mother to do what you have. Would have adored a childhood with just my lovely mother and not be damaged on a daily basis. Your children do not need their Dad to live with them! They need a happy, safe, relaxed mother that engages with life and with them.

Please drop the vile friends asap and find some supportive friends that actually care about you. They will corrode your confidence and happiness.

Certainly this is never the case with abusive men. Children grow up emulating the abuse they consider as normal and the cycle continues. It is far safer for children to grow up in a safe environment.

Jesus Christ, people are fucking rude. Especially when you think that a fair whack of them will end up divorced or separated - but the smugness of those statements is astonishing. If they say it to you, ask if they meant to sound so rude. Or say what a curious thing for them to feel they need to comment on, but you do understand that some people have a very narrow view of what children need. And then tell them there is nothing to feel sorry for, there are plenty of children in 2 parents families being poorly treated.

Just say actually my kids are better off, they life in a home with a happy mum. Much better a single parent happy home than one with two parents who hate each other and can't wait to get out the door or work away. Point out many kids have two parents at home that can be toxic.

This. Posters above who have got weirdly diverted into arguing whether it’s reasonable to feel sorry for OP’s kids or not are completely missing the point. The point is you absolutely do not talk the way they did to a friend if you expect to keep the friendship. Telling someone you pity them or their children, or consider yourself luckier than them, is absolutely always rude, tone deaf, and a completely bizarre way to behave.

Urgh how insensitive. Families come in all shapes and sizes.