This isn’t normal is it? Mum walking out on her children.

[LondonLady1980]

My mum and dad got married in 1981 when they were in their very early 20s and quite soon after meeting each other.

My dad was besotted with my mum, whereas the impression has always been that my mum married my dad in order to escape from living with her parents.

My mum was pregnant with my sister within a year of being married, and then a year after my sister was born she had me (we are only just over 12 months apart).

When me and my sister were 2 and 3 years old our mum came home from work one day and told my dad she had met someone else and she just left, leaving me and my sister behind.

She moved into the other man’s house and although me and my sister stayed there a few nights a month we didn’t see her at any other time.

After 2.5 years she and the man broke up and she moved into her own place. Me and my sister were returned to her care via the courts.

It isn’t normal for a mother to walk out and just leave her two young daughters behind is it?

I wasn’t as young, but my Mum left my dad and I for another man when I had just turned 13. My lovely Dad was ill and I became his carer. The other man she left us for was an egotistical, money obsessed pervert. They eventually married and broke up. It’s caused me some pretty significant mental health and trust issues.

I haven't spoken to her for about 5 months now.

The funny thing is that we fell out over something so ridiculously stupid, but at the same time it was the straw that broke the camel's back.

The way she behaved in that fall-out led to all the pieces of the jigsaw starting to come together with regards to me always feeling that something wasn't 'right' in our relationship, and always feeling that our relationship had never been "normal" for as long as I could remember.

I then started asking questions and Pandora's box was opened.

My mum also walked out (1992) on me and my sibling. We were older than you though. I had just turned 15 and my sibling was 12. I couldn’t stand my dad so it was a bit of a shock to find out I’d been left full time in his care! It wasn’t what I wanted. But nobody asked children what they wanted or how they felt back then. My sibling and I both had a very close relationship with my mum so it was devastating when she walked out. I will never forget it. I was staying overnight with a mate. When my dad picked me up in the morning he announced “oh yeah, your mother left yesterday”. As if it was nothing. I felt like I’d been gut punched. I knew she wanted to leave but we’d talked about the three of us getting away from him together. I obviously couldn’t cry out “but what about me???” so I just sat there silent and stunned, feeling like my insides had been ripped out.

We did see her, but she moved to the other side of the city so maybe a couple of evenings a week she would come by. She got her own place a bit closer after several months but we didn’t stay overnight.

Things had been bad between her and my dad ever since I could remember and I think she just couldn’t take anymore. I encouraged her to leave because she said she would take me and my sibling with her. I wanted to get away from him and just be with her. We had talked us getting away many times.

But then she just went. Without us.

For months my dad threatened to kill himself and I sat up late many a night talking him out of suicide. If he was late home from work I’d worry he’d seen his threat through. It wasn’t great really. I used to think I’d emerged relatively unscathed but as I get older I wonder if that’s actually true. My sibling has all kinds of emotional attachment issues. Funny that no one bothered to ask if I was alright. I don’t think I was.

On the first Xmas eve after my mum had gone, my dad lost his temper and punched me in the face (his explosive anger was one of the reasons my mum left). I ignored him all of Xmas day. I couldn’t understand how he could give his child a fat lip like that. At Xmas as well!!! And not even say sorry! My aunt (his sister) said I should be more sympathetic to him and cut him some slack as it was first Xmas without his wife (also my first Xmas without my mum but no one mentioned that!).

Children were treated like shit. Nobody seemed to care. On the outside we were an affluent family and we looked well turned out. We were confident and polite and did well at school. You might not have known I was skipping school and drinking and taking drugs.

So no OP, I don’t think it is normal for a mother to walk out on her children. I’m a mother. I’d lose a leg before I left my children in the care of someone like my dad. I am divorced from their dad and we share care 50:50. We are on pretty good terms. The children can come and go between our houses. We don’t live far apart. I am struggling to live where we live as it’s extortionate and my ex earns more than 50% more than me. He is comfortable but I struggle financially. But I’d rather that than walk away. Times are different now. Thankfully.

My mum could never forgive herself for walking out. She drank herself to death eventually. I loved her so much. I miss her every day.

If you have no contact with her now, I REALLY wouldn’t try and talk to her.
Youd add the difficulty of just seeing her on the top of a difficult conversation she won’t want to have.

It’s very hard to come to terms with to our parents abuse.
And it’s clear that what you had to deal with isn’t just her leaving for 2 years because she wanted to be with her then boyfriend/partner (who I suspect just didn’t want young children to spoil the fun. Nor did she).

Im not sure knowing why she did that or how she could even conceive it will make it easier.
But i get how putting things into words, ‘intellectualising it’ as they say can help. Well I know it helped me! Just to be able to put experiences and feelings into words. Giving history some sort of meaning (whether negative or positive) and owning my own story iyswim.
To do that, I suspect talking to your aunt, your grandma and your dad woukd be much more efficient than talking to your mum.

What a very heartbreaking tale, I'm so sorry that you had to experienced this. I can't even imagine how this must still affect you to this day.

Life is too short to put up with abuse. Fill it with good people and good times. You don’t owe her shit!

Too many assumptions not only about what was ordered by Court, given or not by her, asked for by anyone for this to be any useful dialogue here. Particularly given we are going back to the 1980's - no CSM.

How comes you were returned to her care? Couldn't you have stayed with your dad?

My mum left my dad and us when we were kids although not as young as you. This was early 80s. We did see her fairly regularly though and after a couple of years one of my bothers moved in with her

@BustyLaRoux You write beautifully, I’m so sorry to read what you have been through. You have so much strength and resilience.

@BustyLaRoux , neither of my parents left but the way you were treated (asking you to be sympathetic as if you hadn’t been struggling just as much if not more) is something I recognise.

And it’s heartbreaking. You want to scream ‘what about ME? Is my pain not worthy too?’ And you know you can’t (or it’s not even worth bringing it).
I remember shouting in my head something like that myself. I was about 16yo. I’m now 55yo and I haven’t forgotten the rawness of my silent scream tbh

You’re very kind, thank you. I think perhaps we are all stronger than we imagine. Although it would be better for that theory not to have to be tested.

I'm sorry, I haven't read all of the thread but someone close to me went to school one day and their Mum just did not come to pick them up. It doesn't seem to be related to mental health illness, though perhaps it was hushed down as they are all older generations within my family.

It badly affected this person, and I would say it is far less typical than the Dad. Which I think in its own right can feel quite isolating.

I am so sorry the judge just returned you because at the time it was viewed as being the right thing, and you have then been subject to a lot of further trauma.

It wasn't you! Children cannot do anything to drive a parent away! The child/care giver (usually mother) bond is usually so strong. I cannot imagine leaving mine.

I worked with a woman decades ago when I was young and childless who had left her DC for another man. They were young and she had never seen them since. By the time I knew her she was single, renting a room.

My DM didn't leave but I think it was because despite her many affairs nothing got that far. If she had I think I'd have been better off. Her only connection to me was via my DF. Once they divorced when I was 20 she never made even the minimal amount of effort that I was used to.

Not that usual, but it happened to my Dad when he was 5 and he never saw her again, never even heard from her.

Oops. Wrong thread!

What strikes me from your posts OP is the hostility towards your mother, and how you're certain that your father was innocent and blameless.

If I've understood correctly, the outpouring of emotion and stories that you've heard are from your father's side of the family. They're hardly unbiased, and they're very, very unlikely to want to paint your mother in a good light.

You haven't given any details of why your childhood with your mother was so bad, and it's not our place to ask about this. But you said until recently you didn't realise it wasn't normal, so that suggests that she was unavailable, uninterested, etc. You've also referenced the fact that your grandmother, your mother's mum, was a pretty awful person and that was the reason that she married.

As a child, it's really hard to get past abandonment, even when it's temporary. And you clearly still have raw scars from that now that you're trying to heal.

I think multiple things can be true. You can be understandably struggling with the period when your mum walked out and you only had visits with her, rather than living with her as you'd been used to. You can also struggle with the fact that she was detached and emotionally distant from you. But, I wonder what story your mum would tell, if she was able to talk without fear of judgement or shame? It sounds as if her life has been pretty awful, and the fact that she fought to get you back suggests that she wouldn't have willingly chosen to walk out unless she was at breaking point for some reason. And possibly her own scars are why she was distant emotionally.

I'm not suggesting you get back in contact with her. If NC feels right for you, then that's great. But sometimes you really start to heal when you let go of the bitterness and resentment, and try to understand what might have been going on for the other person. From a bystander's view, it sounds as if she's spent a life struggling, isolated and unhappy while your dad was surrounded by an extended and loving family and was "bonded" - to use your word - with his children. It sounds as if she might have felt like a perpetual outsider, with no way of forgiving herself or forging genuinely loving relationships.

None of that invalidates how you feel now, but it might help you to let go and move on if you can understand how maybe it was less of a conscious and deliberate choice for her, and just a woman struggling with life.

@Houseshmouse you might be on the wrong thread here - I read that one earlier 😂

I am nit sure that’s correct. I think usually women feel a bond with their children that is stronger than anything else. I can’t ever imagine not putting my dd first. But it was very easy for her father.

Your mother is a product of her own upbringing too. She is also a product of a certain generation - things are much different now.

Aside from her leaving you then returning to court to fight for you you have not said specifically what she has done.

And there was hardly any benefits from the state back in those days for single parents so I really doubt it was anything related to cash.

Can you elaborate further?

Have you spoken to your sister about this? You obviously had no real memory of living with your father but your sister is a year older so might remember more.

It’s quite astounding how children were just assumed to be OK. Or rather told they must be OK! This was the 90s. It would have been even worse in the 80s! My attendance at school was shocking. Not so much as a phone call home back then. (Though had there been I’d been shouted at for bringing shame to the family and for being a nuisance and told to bloody well get on with it!) I did have one kind teacher who told me on my last day of school that she’d been fending off complaints from other teachers about my appearance, work output, attendance for years! She’d told them to cut me some slack as she suspected things weren’t good at home. I had no idea! I was very grateful to her. But afterwards I did wonder that if you suspected things were that bad, why didn’t you do anything or ask if I was alright? To be fair, at the time I thought I was alright. I didn’t have anything to compare it to so it was my normal. It’s only as an adult with my own children I can truly appreciate what an absolute car crash it was. As a result I do have a very close bond with my sibling. We need it to deal with my dad!!

I lived in an area with a lot of generational trauma. The WC women in the 80's, got married to get away from their 'home'. They became wives and Mothers way too young and with unresolved and minimised emotional damage, most had no chance of being good mothers. She's got to admit that she let you down, but unless she's able to go through her childhood experiences, which might be too much, you aren't going to make full peace between you. As for getting you back for monetary reasons, income support was at poverty levels. Minimum wage didn't exist. It could have been because everyone around her was telling her that she should have her ch. My friend agreed that her ex was the better parent and should have their little boy in 1987, she paid maintenance and had regular contact. He had a Mum and sisters which meant he work. I was in constant defence of her, the judgement was terrible.

It’s unusual because society recognises (consciously or otherwise) that the mother-child bond is irreplaceable and utterly vital. Yes fathers do it all the time and it’s really damaging but actually the presence of a strongly bonded mother is a protective factor in the way that a father just isn’t.

Mothers do it much left often as we are hardwired to stay with our young whereas men (at a purely biological level) are hardwired to go and make more offspring.

so yes it’s way less ‘normal’ for a female to abandon her young.

There was a kid at my dc’s nursery who lived with his grandparents. His parents were in London with all-consuming careers and they’d decided he would be better off living with his grandparents 70 miles away. They saw him most (but not all) weekends. Poor kid was only 3.

I often chatted to his granddad who was a lovely guy, and he did say he found it hard to understand their disinterest. He said his DIL (the child’s mother) was a very cold fish.

Before he started school, his parents split up and there was some kind of custody fight. The kid went to live with his mother briefly, and was looked after by a live in nanny. His Granddad was devastated.

I bumped into the Granddad a few years later. He told me that after his grandson had left, he’d barely seen him (not for want of trying). Then at the age of six the poor kid was sent to boarding school. Granddad said that on the rare occasions he got to see him, it was clear the kid was very messed up. He’d begged his son and xDIL to let him raise him, but they wouldn’t agree to it.

I can only begin to imagine the abandonment and trauma that kid must have gone through.

That's not the full reasoning why many women leave though. I'd say it's often domestic abuse or violence related, or as I said addiction issues or mental health where the mum realises she is not being a good parent and leaves. I have heard so many stories of being threatened that the kids will be hurt if they try to take them, it's all heartbreaking really, which is why I always strongly suggest talking to the mother as a primary way to understand what was happening at that point in time.