How can a Mum Walk Out? Missing Mum Found After 20 Years - Went Shopping then Disappeared

[HK04]

https://amp.charlotteobserver.com/news/state/north-carolina/article314794103.html

Feel really sorry for her now grown up kids. There may be an explanation (illness, breakdown, affair etc) but the not knowing turmoil all those years and not wanting her location to be disclosed, must be so traumatising.

How can a Mum walk out on her kids?

Absolutely. Why wouldn't you?

According to my mum, it's because she thought we'd be fine with our dad. And a big shrug when told we really weren't. She left when I was 8 (the oldest) my brother was 7 and my sister was 4. Heard from her once in seven years for her to reappear to show off her new baby then disappear again.

Same here...I was five my sister seven.
We knew where he was but never saw him again.
He did request to visit me at a holiday camp I was working in when I was seventeen....I left before he had a chance to turn up. He died the week before his grandson was born...his loss.

I agree.
Any parent who walks out on their children and makes a life without them, is selfish and frankly not fit to be a parent, ever....man or woman.

Some reason as men do?
Wanting a life to herself?
I never had children, because I knew since the age 13 (now 46) that I'm absolutely capable of walking out of people's lives, if they encroach too much. Doesn't matter who they are, when you reach this stage, you are done. I think men are just inherently more careless. Hope the explanation helps.

Would you leave them not knowing what had happened to you for the rest of their lives too?

My grandmother (mum’s mum) walked out on her and her siblings when mum was 3. My grandfather (v v unusually for the 1950s) tried his best to bring up 5 children on his own, but after a year, the children were split up (children’s homes and relatives).

Mum didn’t see her mother again until she was 16. GM’s reason? Her new man and his daughter. It really fucked up my mother. She’s 78 now and still suffering; she was a strange mum, sometimes really really clingy (to the point of turning up in the pubs when I was 18/20!) and sometimes really cruel.

I think we tend to be more censorious when women do it as we’re seen as the default care giver, whereas when men do it they are just ‘being men’.

I do feel for those children. They may be adults but the damage has already been done.

Exactly, if that story was about a man, this thread wouldn't have been started. Apparently it's more acceptable for men to do it

The story isn’t about a mum who just walked out.

Her children lived most of their lives knowing she was missing, and in this day and age people don’t just start new lives.

They likely believed in those 20 years that she was dead, murdered even. The not know what happened - you cannot even move forward and grieve the loss.

The trauma of inflicting that kind of thing on your child goes way beyond walking out.

The only people perpetuating any gender bias are those defending this woman.

Certain people, definitely.👍

Your own children?

I don't have children.....

You said earlier on 'it doesn't matter who they are', thank goodness you never did have children. because then it surely would matter.

I don't think loads of men do walk out on their fnaikies and completely give up their entire lives leaving all their family thinking they're likely dead. It's more than just being absent but the kids knowing he's out there somewhere and his other family keeping in touch. Everyone, kids, husband, cousins etc. didn't know what had happened. That's incredibly cruel whoever you are

The discussion is about children.

I don't agree than many more mothers only stay because they fear judgement. As a single parent to two kids, one a toddler, it is fucking hard and exhausting, but not one bit of me would wish I could walk away, even on the worst days. Mum's don't tend to feel that way like men do, we're biologically connected to our children in ways that men aren't. Hence why people get talking about Mum's who do it, whereas it's just the norm for men.

Men do this all the time though.

It's hard on the family - but you are heaping all the criticism on a woman for doing it because it is rare. Men do it all the time.

Yes but why is it assumed giving birth suddenly makes women perfect, women are who they are before and after having children

Heaping criticism because irs a disgusting thing to do. Would ne disgusting if a father did it also.

It was a despicable act from a mother. The fact a father may do it too doesnt make it any less despicable.

It isnt just the abandonment, its the disappearing on the way to the shops and leaving your children to wonder where you are for the rest of your days.

Awful for both a mother or a father to do.

There you go.

In that case I'm surprised the police didnt treat him as a suspect in her disappearance. And why would he report her missing anyway if he knew she had walked out?

My maternal grandmother walked away from her 4 young children. She fell in love with another man and left my grandfather. But she also left her children so that she could start again.

She did start again. She had more dc with her new man. I believe they stayed together until he died.

My gf divorced her and raised their 4 dc by himself until he remarried. My mother never truly understood how her own mother could just leave her. She was a toddler at the time. It had life long repercussions which has permeated down the generations.

When I say leave, I mean leave. No contact, no letters, no cards, no visits. Nothing. She disappeared until I did a bit of investigating via births, deaths and marriage certificates.

I don’t think people are assuming women become perfect mothers because they’ve given birth.

Just that many women would find it too distressing to leave their children- even if they are unhappy or finding motherhood very hard- the fact that we grew and birthed them and in many cases fed them from our own bodies, means we feel an incredibly close bond. I relate to this. I have been a long way off a perfect mother and I have often not enjoyed parts of my role as a mother. But I feel intensely connected to those two children in a way that’s impossible to explain.