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.

I wonder this too. If they’re capable of walking away from one child they will happily do it again.

I’ll get absolutely flamed for this but if the couple is using contraception and there is a failure I can sort of understand it in those circumstances. Women get to choose between abortion and not being a parent or continuing with the pregnancy and being a parent whereas men do not get that choice. Not saying it’s exactly moral but I do understand it in those circumstances if the man has made it clear that he doesn’t want children.

No contraceptive used or a planned pregnancy and yes I think it’s reprehensible behaviour to walk away.

I was with my ex for 13 years. We chose to have a baby pretty early on. My other son was 13. He was a fantastic dad and a great bloke around the house.
He left me and then left our son when he was 11. He moved abroad (with another women) and i haven't heard from him since. He's now 23.

Madness!

From what I see, not many men go the distance with children

I agree you can’t always tell. My friend’s long marriage dissolved and her ex never sees the children, she never stopped him, he just couldn’t be arsed.

My stbxp will be moving countries, leaving me and 2 dc (one of them is an autistic, very problematic teen) effectively homeless. I have the option to moving back to my home country so this is what we'll be doing but it's not what I wanted.
He also liked the idea of children, played with them some when they were little but became a total workaholic (literally working 7 days for months and months) and absolved himself from all responsibility. As a mother I am a default parent even though I also work and bear all the stress of dealing with a school refusing dc. On my own. Fml.

They wouldnt have sex with those men 🤷‍♀️

I think there are a few differernt dynamics that go on. One factor though is that the hormones are massively more powerful in the case of women. Men don't always bond, especially with very small kids, in the same way mothers do. They bond with the mothers, and the baby is part of the package of that. By the time the kids are older it's less likely they will just completely bug out though it crertainly happens.

A lot of people are also kind of weak. It's hard to be the non-custodial parent where there is conflict with the other parent. Some dads just see the kids less and less and it becomes easier to just withdraw all together. I've seen the same dynamic with mums but less often, usually where the kids are in foster care but also in some cases where the dad was the main carer. So it may be that situation happens more with men because women are more likely to be the main guardian.

I also think there are some scenarios where there is a strong culture of women being the ones to decide to have the kids and being the main carers, and the men kind of slide from relationship to relationship. my dp grew up in a scenario like that, his mum had several kids with various men, there was no expectation that they had any say in having the kids or caring for them, and the fathers were only slightly involved. (His father had 10 kids with 10 differernt mums!) His belief even now is that the hierarchy of important family members are your mum, sisters, aunt, maternal grandmother, brothers, and then well down at the bottom of the list, father. None of that is formalised and there are some dads that stick around, but it does seem to be how many people in his community function. Personally I don't think it's a healthy dynamic, but there is a kind of logic to it I suppose.

So many of them are just selfish fuckers who don't really realise that other people - especially children - are full humans who they should feel some responsibility to and for.

My ex started travelling more and more with work, culminating in 3 full months away when he didn't even bother to text the (primary age) kids, came home a couple of days and I discovered what he'd been up to and made him ex, and he disappeared for another 7 months - he did call a couple of times, but didn't see them for 7 months. Now he sees them a couple of times a month, but doesn't bother with contact in between.

I can't imagine it. My kids are teens now, and I still tuck in the youngest and the eldest comes and says goodnight every single night before he goes to sleep! I've been away for work a couple of times, and we've spoken every day still (at their behest, they want to say hi/goodnight/ask what I'm up to)

My children have two different fathers. One is a multimillionaire and U.K. and British born banker. He hasn’t contacted me or his child since pregnancy. He told me I had trapped him and his parents said the same. He tried to get me to terminate and piled on the abuse via emails to do so. I refused. He then said he was never paying a penny in child support and promptly transferred to a bank overseas. Nearly 20 years later he still hasn’t paid a penny and is now 55 and has no other children. He owns 5 houses in London and has never paid 1 p in maintenance or child support and unfortunately a court is not going to force him to. He worked abroad out of jurisdiction of the CMS and would have battered me in court.

My daughter would be highly unlikely to ever get an inheritance and indeed I would be highly surprised if she did - in my mind he has UK assets and they should be given to her. Or at least a token amount. After all he has paid nothing ever.

For many men - they control by withholding time, assets and money as they are selfish. Raising children is a thankless expensive task and they literally can’t be bothered.

May l ask what happened? Did he step up and put having children above his career?

While id agree that it's that society that accepts this (especially it seems that men don't condemn other men as often as they should) I think it's grown out of the biological differences between men and women. And the actual physical differences between women and men and what they have to do to produce a baby.

Then it's been ingrained over centuries. And women were much more physically affected by the process of pregnancy and childbirth in centuries gone by.

fundamentally I think having children changes women far more than it does men. They want / expect that their pre child lifestyle doesn’t change and are just not prepared emotionally and physically and financially when it does.

I think far more men have mid life crises than women too

i suspect if I had said I didn’t want children at all my ex husband would happily have gone along with that.

Agree, they only want the sex.

It happened less when people got married and had children.
These days casual sex and not being in a relationship etc has led to more of this happening sadly.

I think many men do want children to continue their “legacy/name” but they don’t want to be parents.

I guess if the man is married he's less likely to fuck off or do no childcare, but it still happens frequently. Just look at half the posts on here in Relationships.

I can just about buy that argument for the aspect of being an involved parent and knowing the child, but not the financial side. Any man old enough to have sex is old enough to know the potential consequences and the biology that allows the woman one extra choice. If a child is born, it is owed to financial support from both parents. It's that simple.

I think society accepts this behaviour from men. I always hate it when the singer Tom Jones is described as a national treasure when he has boasted so much about his many extra marital relationships. One of those resulted in a son who he completely rejected and refused to see. Absolute bastard of a man.

What did his family think of that. Surely his parents wanted to see them didn't they?

If they are like that the kids are better off without them.

My 'father' had affairs and abandoned my mother and us four children (three girls and one boy under the age of eight). Never paid a penny in child support, my mother worked full time but we were incredibly poor and my poor mum had absolutely nothing for herself ever. He just upped and left. Demanded half the house. Moved thousands of miles away. My sister tried to get in touch when we were in teens and he left a disgusting abusive voicemail tellimg us kids how awful we all were and we were the scum of the earth (i was 8 when he left). He went on to have another family with kids. Now early 80's and split from 2nd wife too.

I've really wondered over the years what goes through someone's mind to do this. Why be so abusive and horrible to your own children. Leave them destitute to go and have another family. We were so very young and had done nothing wrong. My mum was a saint and the stress of this made her gravely ill and took her life.

It damaged me and my siblings for life.

And yet...in a way...that still relies on women..

As women, if we don't want to get pregnant then clearly the only option if condoms are the answer is to refuse point blank any sex without a condom.

Problem solved....

First paragraph, absolutely. There is a direct correlation between their parenting effort and the reward i.e. shagging the mother of the child they are parenting. That's why so many men put more effort into second families and step kids than they do their first families.

The question was what happens if women refuse to have sex with men who don’t want to
wear condoms. I was adding one to the one’s provided.

It makes me so angry when people say the woman should have chosen better.

I was with my ex-DH for 3 years before we got married and a further 5 years before we had DS (now 21) and DD (now 18). We had a great relationship and he was a model husband and father: hands-on, loving, committed, devoted. We were together for 20 years.

Then one day, 10 years ago, he suddenly decided he couldn't be bothered any more and left. He made little to no contribution to the children after that point, whether financial, practical or emotional. He never looked after them again and they were never able to visit him because he never did give us his address. He hasn't seen either of our children for 3 years now and we have no idea where he is.

The contrast between how he used to be and what he turned into could not have been greater.

But yeah sure, it's my fault for not choosing better.