To wonder if it’s ok to choose not to be involved?

[LittleWhiteRabbits]

I’ve just seen an article about Katie Price saying that Dwight has seen Harvey six times in 24 years.

There are lots of comments saying that if a parent doesn’t want to be involved, that’s their choice and you can’t force someone to have a relationship with their child (and some not so kind comments.) but the general consensus was he was right to step away as he didn’t want to be a father to him.

It got me wondering what people actually think about this.

I’m not talking about maintenance or financial support, he has paid/does pay maintenance, and that isn’t what I’m asking about.

I mean choosing not to have any involvement in your child’s life, when there’s no safeguarding issue or anything preventing contact.

Is it reasonable to say that if someone doesn’t want to be involved, they shouldn’t be forced to be?

Or does becoming a parent create a responsibility to have some level of involvement with your child, even if you don’t particularly want to?

I genuinely don’t know where I stand on this, so I’m interested in hearing different perspectives. He has another child who he does see and did bring up but I don’t think that adult child has contact with Harvey either but I could be wrong.

Always a difficult one. I’m sure many people would say they wished their mum/dad wasn’t in their lives from the start to avoid the trauma they caused. It’s also definitely better to have no dad than a shit one who jumps in and out of their life.

The woman gets the final say in whether the child enters the world and does as a result have to accept there’s a chance she’ll be left holding the baby forever, so to speak. You can’t force the man to be a dad- how would that even work?