Do men just give up on their children

[HollyIvy89]

Ex is re married and having baby with new partner. Unplanned. Both older than most to start again.
He has said to our child I’ll never take you to a competition again for their sport now I’m having a new child. Do men just generally just give up that easily on their ‘original’ kids? Is it that easy for them to ‘move on’ and relinquish responsibilities to do with their other children?

Well yes and I'm healthily sceptical, but that is life and dating and whether your female or male you have to take things at face value until evidence to the contrary or you would never have another relationship (romantic or friendship).

He could have just not told me his son exists at all and I'd have been none the wiser.

My ex constantly put his new relationships first. He’d be the doting Disney dad while single, then drop them like hot stones when a new woman came along. I remember the devastation my son experienced when his dad, who had been seeing a new woman for four whole weeks, introduced him to his gf and her son. Her son was already calling him dad. It broke my boy. Then he remarried and forgot he had dc or would see them in secret so as not to piss his new wife off.

my son is in his 30’s now and is no contact with his dad. Our other dc still see him. But the patterns still the same. Around when he’s single, don’t see him for dust when he’s in yet another new relationship.

in all the broken relationships I’ve known over my many years, not one man has maintained a healthy bond/relationship with his children. Not one.

and why do men think they can just show up once a week or do every other weekend because they work!? What the heck do they think we do when we are having to provide for OUR children. We work. Piss poor excuses.

Not all men. My son is divorced and has full custody of his daughter. He always puts his daughter first. She doesn't see her mum. All legal with a child arrangement order. He gets no cms from his ex wife. My nephew is divorced and in another relationship with another child but he continues to be a good dad to his daughter from his first marriage. I know there are many terrible fathers out there but there are also plenty of good dads and some awful mothers.

👏👏👏

Spot on.

We can't generalise. We can only go off what we know and our own experiences as pps have stated.
My cousin ( 60) has been married to her 3rd husband for 10 years ( he's 80). Ages are just for context.
He walked out of his 1st marriage ( to travel), leaving 3 boys ( 10, 12 ,14) and his 2nd marriage ended when he had an affair ( with cousin). 3 children from that marriage who now don't speak to him.
He of course blames the 2nd wife for this - though the children were young adults at the time of the affair.
None of his children have anything to do with him and he just doesn't understand why. It's laughable if it weren't so sad.
He's now a very sad, lonely man. He only has my cousin and if he thinks she'll look after him, he's sadly ( or not) mistaken.
I can't understand how she can be with him.

Of course it's not all men, but sadly, it's a notable percentage rather than a few outliers.

I've noticed that the crappy ones fall into a couple of camps - degrees of crapness? But what they all have in common is a deep seated belief that the children are not their responsibility.

so a very common one I see a lot around here are the dads who do genuinely love their children, and feel some responsibility towards them, but ultimately see the core job of bringing them up to not be theirs. Men who do the EOW, pay maintenance etc, but just aren't present on a day to day basis and don't really think they need to be. So they're more like kind uncles, than real parents. I find this hard to get my head around, but it's pretty common, and as long as it's done consistently, I think the whole family deals with it okay.

Then there are the ones who come and go, resent paying, can't get their head around the fact that children might not want to do what they enjoy, or might behave differently and so resist spending time with them or only want to do the odd, super fun thing. If you ask these men they'll tell you they love their children, woudl do anything for them, etc etc, but really they're pathetic and useless. These men often justify moving on entirely when they get into a new relationship as being "better for the children" etc etc.

Then of course, there are the ones who just disappear completely. Who don't turn up. Who never pay a cent. Who say awful things like what OP's ex has said to her children.

Mine did and never paid maintenance, but now they are in their 20’s and his wife has died he is at a loose end of acting like dad of the year.

My cousins son was the bees knees. Cousin seemed to be a really good dad. Until he had an affair with his boss. Got her pregnant, and at the same time married someone else. He’s not seen his eldest son, or spoken to him in several years. At his mums funeral, eldest son was there, and was completely ignored by him. It was so sad. I think my cousin is an absolute shit.

Not all men.
Personal experience, yes they do, I divorced when DS was 2, ex remarried and from that moment on it was all about his new wife and her teenage daughters (so not even about his own new children) Ex saw ds regularly but caused massive issues over ds doing anything in 'his' time yet step mum clearly didn't want ds around at all. There was a period of time where she was extremely abusive to ds and his dad would rather preserve his relationship with 'the love of his life' than stand up for a child. The relationship dissolved completely once ds reached teenage as his dad just couldn't put his child first.

Ds is now 24, step mum recently died of cancer, ex now alone and ds won't interact because of the choices his dad made when he was a child.

Alternatively, I remarried 8 years ago and ds considers him to be far more a parent than his own dad ever was.

We don’t know if my ex is dead or alive. He saw my DS a handful of times after leaving eight years ago. Not my DD. Didn’t want to pay any CMS initially but was very interested in getting a large financial settlement from me. CMS did not cover the cost of the kids of course.

He had given the impression of being an interested and involved dad until he left.

The men who tut-tut about child support don’t seem to live on the same planet. We all know having kids is expensive!!

Occasionally married friends have asked whether my kids see their dad - they are both grown up now. Most are quite shocked to hear he isn’t involved at all. Somehow it’s like it reflects on me - how did I choose so badly? But so many people are divorced these days, it could happen to anyone.

I’ve a professional job and a middle class life, I’ve provided a lot for the kids and I work very hard - somehow people always assume there is a man in the background providing this. There certainly isn’t!

I 100% agree it should be a crime.

Yep, my sons dad arranged a pick up 12 years ago following the divorce finalisation and never turned up, and we've never seen him since.

I was fed a line that his kids from his previous marriage were poisoned against him (I know, i know but I was in a more innocent stage of life then) but yeah i doubt it.

So four kids utterly abandoned by the c*nt, emotionally and financially.

I also think what makes it worse it's often "nice men" who are like this and in many cases, it's so normalised.

DH has a good friend who was with a woman from another country who had a son. When they married, he declared he loved this child like his own and they went through a lengthy and complicated process so that he could formally adopt the boy.

They then subsequently divorced. He was absolutely horrified that she wanted maintenance. Said all the things like, "How come I have to pay her when she's out getting her hair done or eating in nice restaurants". As far as I know, he hasn't seen the boy in years as eventually the mother and child returned to their home country.

I always liked this man but I just can't ever see him the same again.

The thing is, DH isn't wild about how he's behaved but he sort of just sees it as one of those things. And DH is a man who is very very actively involved with his children and who would 100% expect, and get, at least 50/50 should we ever divorce. So if even my Dh doesn't judge him that harshly, it's so easy to see how this behaviour carries on.

I think men struggle without the family unit. Ie the mum keeping all the plates spinning and its just too much work alone. My ex didnt have much to do with dc when we split now he has 30 percent but his partner does most of it. He simply cannot cope going to work and being a parent and all that entails

As for the getting hair done or going to restaurants…is there any reason why a woman who works and also raises kids single-handed shouldn’t have those things? The kids are 50% created by the dad - he should pay towards their costs. They still need a home and clothes and shoes!! I went to restaurants etc with the kids because I was paying from my own income! The cash from their dad was a tiny fraction of the cost. I have also paid for them through uni and taken them on holidays abroad as adults and he paid nothing!

yes, that's why I can't see him the same anymore. It irriates me so much. This concept that the dad thinks he only has to pay if the woman is on th ebones of her ass.

A friend had similar. Her ex said to her "Why shoudl I PAY you to look after your children. That's your job."

Id say about about 70 percent of men yes they do. My ex hasn’t at all. He’s very much involved . My dad left when I was a baby but ‘saw us’ ended up living with him as a teen after my mum passed. If my mum didn’t pass I don’t know what sort of relationship I could have had with him: however he was there for us in the end. But I know a lot of men who live in the same city as their kids and never see them it’s very common worldwide.

I honestly think that for most men they just aren’t attached to their children in the same way that most women are. That’s not to say lots of them aren’t good dads. My own dad had two children with his first wife and then they got divorced. It was apparently fault on her side but obviously I wasn’t there and don’t know the full story. He then met my mum, had two more kids and was with her until his death. He was a good dad. To me and all my siblings. But it was my mum who remembered her step children’s birthdays and bought them presents and forced him to write their cards. It was her who did the majority of their childcare during school holidays because he was at work and she worked term time only. It was her who bought cards and presents when they got married, when they had children etc. It was her who remembered the grandchildren’s names and birthdays and reminded him. If he had not been with her I do think he would have lost contact with them or had it very minimally and they would have ended up resenting him instead of holding him up as a kind of hero figure like they do.

My own husband I am happily married to and he is a loving father to our daughter. But he doesn’t know when her extra curricular activities are. He doesn’t know what size shoe she is or what story she wants at bedtime. He loves her but I don’t think he is as attached to her and bothered about her life as I am.

It is their loss but it doesn't stop the children involved grieving the father -child relationship they missed out on. I remember being a little girl crying silently in the bathroom because I saw how loving my friend's dad was with her and I really wished my dad loved me as much. I knew it would come across as jealous but it wasn't, so I had to wait until I could compose myself to go and play.

@Amiacoolorwarmcolour soory but your post is bs. Can’t be a great parent to children with different mothers. Utter crap !

suppose mums with children to 2 or more dads can be best mums though …. Such drivel

there are shit dads
there are shit mums
there are great dads
great mums
and a whole host in between

as we see on here time and time again mums often do t want or let dad have 50:50, or make access about visiting rather than parenting, or everything has to be on their terms as they know best,that’s not a great mum

In my experience, yes.
Ex-DH happily allowed his former wife & her new DH to adopt his 2 little girls.
He adopted my son from another man - he suggested it, I did not push him into it.
When we divorced, he asked his solicitor if he could unadopt him !

I think men don’t have the same brain as us women, in the sense of, they can disassociate from it all. Which isn’t an excuse, because it’s appalling and as a mother I just don’t get how anyone could not see there child again, but I do really think it’s a biological thing somehow. I used to know a man, young man, who had a child and decided from the off he didn’t want anything to do with it, he told me he pays for the child but he doesn’t want to know anymore, I questioned how he couldn’t see his kid? His answer was I don’t have to, I pay and that makes me a good man… the fuck?!

Wow. I don’t know one man who has abandoned his children like this. I am shocked to find out how common it is, I couldn’t be friends with a guy who did that.
I have one friend who’s ex is a bit rubbish, so she decided to not let their children stay overnight with him - but he still sees them every week.

How could he say that to a child, that’s nuts! Every dad I know has stepped up and although a lot have acrimonious relationships with exes I’m in awe at how well they parent together. They do all live near to each other though, which a friend told me can be a big issue- her friend moved away with the kids and wouldn’t listen to all the friends saying ‘well now he’s got to travel two hours to see his kids and he has a new baby, life won’t be very easy’

I would love to see dodging financially supporting your children be prosecuted as child neglect.