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?

My ex left me with a 2 and a half year old and an 18 month old

He'd been a controlling and abusive arsehole so it wasnt a loss

He saw having the kids,not as seeing his kids,but as another way of stressing me out/control

He dragged me through the courts as a loving father who was just desperate to see his kids

The truth is,it was about controlling my life/causing me stress-this prince has never paid a penny for his dc (now adults) and tried to get me to give him money to take them out/buy what they needed

He soon got bored-i made sure I had a life when he had them and he hated this,he tried every trick In the book to stop me going out while he had them or having any sort of life (he rang the police when I had a night out on my 30th birthday-they where at home with their aunt and having a ball)

When that failed,he just stopped showing up whole sniping that I stopped him but still spend his money on myself while bragging that he didnt pay as id just spend it on myself-in the same sentence

I didnt at all but thats his story and women fall for it

I ended up back in court and the judge said that deadbeats like him make up most of her cases while signing off on him seeing them

He never bothered going back to court (maybe because legal aid wouldn't pay or he couldn't be arsed-i'll never know)

But it will always be my fault in his eyes

I'd say most men do, not all but most of them. After my parents divorced my dad immediately got with another woman with a DC and stopped having anything to do with me and my sister. Raised that woman's child like his own and is still in her life as far as I know and we are now middle aged.

Most of my friends have ex's that are also absent fathers. And many of my friends that have grandchildren where the GC also has an absent father. I'm not the most maternal but I can't imagine abandoning my child. I know my dad only had children because my DM wanted them. I believe a lot of men go the same route, which is very selfish.

Yeah, but then he wouldn't have got all that lovely lovely sympathy over how hard done by he is would he.

Well, I wish you the best of luck with him for the future.

Yes - hence all the problems men have due to absentee fathers and lack of positive male role models.

Yes. the father abandoned the kids because he wasn't strong enough to stand up to his new wife who wanted nothing in her life from his previous marriage, including his kids. She won, kids from previous marriage were cut off. It was the traditional, old-as-time literally evil stepmother and the corresponding weak man.

Blinkered and misogonistic.

My dad did. Went to work one day and never came home. Set up with another woman and no one in his new life knew of my existence

I think many men don’t experience a change in their own identity or sense of self when they have kids. Most women (to generalise -not all!) experience a shift to being “a mother”. It’s why we get advice about not “losing ourselves” and becoming “just” a parent. I’m not the most naturally maternal and I felt that. I’m not sure DH felt the same and he’s a very involved and loving dad.

I don’t know how I’d stop being a mum. It’s part of who I am now. I think many men seem to be able to stop “being a dad” by not seeing their kids any more.

You can see a hangover of the old/traditional/stereotypical view by contrasting what “fathering a child” means to “mothering” one.

Some men do, some mums walk away too. It’s very sad. I know someone bringing up their grandsons because both parents walked away, at 68 she wasn’t expecting to be going to parents evenings or fighting for echps!

It's a bit of a thing certainly. Not all men I suppose but there is absolutely a pattern of men only bothering with the children of whoever they are currently having sex with.

Xh was married previously and has 2 much older sons that he hasn't seen since they were young boys (obviously, I should have ran for the hills!)

Since we split 8 years ago we have shared 50/50 custody, but I sort of forced it on him (in hindsight I should've let him go). He's been a constant for my dds, although now they're teens they don't necessarily want to be with him 50%, something that we're about to address

I know of someone who has 3 kids by 3 different women. He is an absent father to 2 of those and pretends he has nothing to do with the third. I think it may be that he now is an absent father to only 1 of the 3 kids and doesn’t see the other 2 at all. Anyway, where I’m going with this, he is recently married to a new woman and is all loved up and she posts endless boring photos of their happily ever after stuff on social media. Some recent events suggest they are heading down the trying for a baby route. She doesn’t seem unintelligent on the face of it. It seems batty to have anything to do with this excuse of a man.

My last two ex’s had 50/50 custody. In the last relationship he actually had his two teenage daughters probably 70/30 while their mum fucked off on yet another holiday with her millionaire boss-boyfriend. I don’t have kids at all, so have no skin in the game, but I couldn’t fault his parenting at all.

@Eaglemom but happens - a lot

This.
And sometimes,as in my Dh’s case, the dad moves heaven and earth, spends thousands of quid on court, has the children 45/55, attempts to communicate effectively with the mum and receives abuse back.Whilst the Mum goes around telling everyone he was/is abusive, doesn’t pay anything towards the children, doesn’t care about them etc etc.

DH got sideways looks for two years when he attend the DSS’s new football team games (new team because the Mums new boyfriend decided they should play there and not for the teams they had played for happily for 6 years prior to the divorce, so they were just moved without consultation).As he is a nice person he continued to go and try and talk to other parents on the sideline etc and some eventually warmed up to him. It turned out they had been told he was a cocaine addicted wife beater who didn’t pay any maintenance for his two children and who the mum had been forced to move an hour away from as he was ‘obsessed ‘ with her and was stalking her.

Weirdly the fact that she had two affairs which ended their marriage, walked away from it with 500 grands worth of equity and a grand a month paid in maintenance plus half of all other costs, and then decided to move an hour away to live with a man she met four months prior on the internet, and that we then ended up in court and got and have the kids almost half the time, despite huge impact on us due to the travelling now involved, and the fact that he was by then, happy with me, was never mentioned.

So I never believe what I’m told about ‘deadbeat dads’ until I see the evidence for myself.

Im Very sure they exist of course and they are disgusting. But I'm also sure there are a lot of dads who tried their best and had to give up on the end as it was costing them all their money and their mental health, and still more who are being very inaccurately portrayed.