Men who abandon their kids

[Rafhjj]

It never ceases to amaze me that men from all walks of life are capable of this. Yes of course women are too… but what is it about men that it seems to happen far more often? I cannot comprehend how someone can leave their own child and carry on with their life and ignore their existence. My sister brought up her Dd alone and the dad quite literally just got on with his life after meeting baby when she was a few weeks old.

They don't care or have any connection to the child. It was just a sexual encounter. They distance themselves fully from the consequences. Like someone having a fucking out of body experience. Just look upon their child and either think it's a possession or feel nothing about it.
I'm just guessing here obviously.

I think they just don’t want the responsibility of it. I have a child and she is now 10 and has not seen her dad since she was about 6 weeks old and that was the second time he’d seen her. He went on to have further children after her and now has 6 kids

I don’t understand women who have those men as partners. I see “ex won’t let him see his kids, it’s not his fault” on here from time to time. A) if ex won’t let him see his kids what does that say about him? And B) Why isn’t he going to court and fighting tooth and nail to see them?

They think of children as a 'women's issue'. They just run around doing the shagging. Once the shagging with that particular woman is done, so is any significant relationship with the resulting children.

Loath though I am to make men's bad behaviour women's problem to solve, probably the only significant deterrent would be for women to not enter into a relationship with a man who has children he doesn't see or support. I think I find that they routinely do so almost as shocking as men abandoning their own children in the first place.

I think that most men don’t actually want to be parents anywhere near half as much as most women do. Many men tend to go along with it because their partner wants children but wouldn’t have been fussed otherwise. If they grew up in a fairly traditional set up themselves, where being a father didn’t involve much in the way of doing childcare, it comes as a bit of a shock that they’re expected to pitch in with a baby. They then struggle to bond, and feel resentful at the upheaval in their lives, and it’s not difficult just to blot something you aren’t bonded to and resent out of your life when you move on.

It's interesting, isn't it? DH wanted a child far more than I did, so I made it very clear that while I would be carrying it and giving birth to it and breastfeeding it, and would obviously love it, I wasn't going to be sidelining my career, or being the default parent, so that, if he really wanted a child, he was going to have to think about how he made his job more family friendly, how he was going to manage childcare drop offs etc and cover my absences.

One factor is that women, at least in countries where abortion is legal, are significantly less likely to have children they don’t want in the first place.

Because, let's face, its socially acceptable to do it. If society condemned the men who do it they may have more reason to not do it.

But they are the ones losing out in the long run. My DN is now an amazing adult, her mum and stepfather did a wonderful job and I'm thankful they let the rest of her paternal family (us) have regular time with her despite loser BIL

Totally agree with this

Society in general sees motherhood as the ultimate goal and highest possible attainment of women. This is why women who leave their children are seen as monsters. As a consequence childcare is seen predominantly as a female activity and so men and women are not seen as equal parents. You see that view on here all the time - fathers are seen as second-class parents whose role is to care for the children in the way that the mother requires him to do.

If you're a lazy, feckless man then that can be an easy way to justify to yourself to not bother.

And while condoms do fail, a man using them properly will be very unlikely to conceive a child he doesn't want, far less have a string of them. If he's certain he never wants a child, a vasectomy is quick, safe and a very minor procedure.

It’s so weird isn’t it. And very unfair!! My dad just left when I was a child and started a new family with someone else.

In my case I was with husband 20 years - no real red flags that everyone talks about bar the usual tendency for untidiness - was a pretty good dad to our eldest. But seemed to fall apart once I got pregnant with twins. couldn’t have been more planned - multiple rounds of IVF. But it seemed like going from parenting one child between us to parenting 3 and no one getting a break (even though let’s be honest mums do most of the work in the baby years!) was the catalyst and he walked away when twins were babies and barely seen any of the children since.

he pretty much said he’d had the kids for me and felt he’d fulfilled his “duty” and was now off!

Imo men tend to love the children of the women they are with, while they are with them.

When they walk away from the women, they find it easy to walk away from the kids because the two are intertwined.

I was one of the fools who believed my ex when he told me all about his crazy ex withholding his kids etc, and now I am the crazy ex withholding his kids and his new wife thinks the sun shines out of his arse and I'm just a big meany.

Sure 🤷🏻‍♀️ I’m not disputing that.

People are saying it was just sex and the man didn't want the child but plenty of men walk away from multiple children

I often wonder what would happen if women point blank refused to have sex with men who won't use condoms.

They have plenty of role models. Boris Johnson being one.

When it comes to children they did (or said they did) want, it’s scary how men can walk away from responsibility so easily when it wouldn’t even register as an option to almost all women. I saw in the recent “advice before getting married” thread lots of people saying not to have a child/children if you don’t want to be a single parent. Good advice but very sad

It’s a lot easier to ignore children and pretend they’re not yours when all you did was nut 10 months earlier. Dad doesn’t grow the child and bond with it in the womb and if he’s not around the pregnant mum then he can completely ignore the whole process.

Many that I’ve seen also just deny the kid is theirs.

They’d rape them in a lot of cases…. Or stealth take off the condom.

Another question would be, why do so many women choose to have children with men so quickly after meeting them?

My observation is that many women either wait until they are near the end of their fertility window and settle with a man they are not fully compatible in order to have children or women who know their relationship is crap but think that having a baby will ‘keep’ him.

It’s not a case of just blaming men, women need to make better judgements and choices when choosing their husbands and fathers of their children.

I think some men just see children as a slightly more advanced menstrual period. They're not emotionally attached and often think more of their pet dogs. The knots they tie themselves up in to avoid paying child support is something to behold. They view children as mere objects who don't need to eat, wear clothing, need transport etc. They're just an abstract concept.

I think some of them are less evolved and see fatherhood as a side effect of having sex, like dogs or cats do.

This. I remember having a school friend with no dad and telling my own father about it (this was in the olden days when it was less common) and my dad bursting into tears and saying he couldn't imagine a dad not fighting to see his little girls and if it was him he'd do everything in his power to make sure he was always there for me. That's a proper man.

Men seem to view children as an extension of women. When they lose interest in the woman, they lose interest in the children.

I also think a lot of men don't really want children. They agree either because their current love interest wants them, or because it makes them feel manly and they know she'll be the one doing all the work anyway.