Why are men so bitter about paying maintenance?

[bidoofisgod]

Just that really. Why do they get so resentful about paying for their kids and then expect us to be so grateful for getting their measly money whilst they complain about it?
I get £25 a month. And it's thrown in my face every time we speak, and then when I offer to help with childcare over half term as he has to work on days he has the kids (im a TA so will be off anyway) he says no because he doesn't want me using it to demand more money from him, and would rather pay someone else for childcare. How does that make any sense? All the while he's out living his life whilst I'm left with the kids and the dog which he wanted but now "can't have" and I have to shoulder the financial burden off.
All the same time whilst saying he doesn't want to divorce and wants us to work it out. Really selling yourself here and making yourself so attractive. Ffs

Sorry, rant over

Unfortunately and speaking from my own experience irl this really doesn’t put women off at all.

It doesn’t in mine either

My ex now has 7 children by 3 women, my girls are the eldest so maintenance isn’t a thing anymore, but he has no contact with any of the children and has to be repeatedly dragged through CMS by his other exes.

He did recently have one girlfriend who was horrified when she discovered his actions. He thought she was on his side and he drunkenly bragged that he hadn’t told CMS or the two exes about his new job and payrise. So he was still paying at the level of a pandemic supermarket delivery job. She took a photo of his new payslip, dumped him and contacted the exes. His CMS doubled and he’s fuming.

However in the last couple of weeks there’s a new girlfriend. The social media posts of how wronged he is. How lovely he is and how bad it is that nasty women can keep children away from their loving dads have begun.

Every time. New girlfriend. He’s very convincing and very charming so they fall for the narrative. He often even goes so far as wanting access to his children, he even took me to court (even though I hadn’t actually prevented him seeing the girls!), and they are the centre of his world while he plays doting dad. Then when the relationship ends the interest ends until he charms the next one

But doesn't this just become cyclical? Boys growing up with rubbish fathers and males in their life.
Children often grow up and adopt the behaviours that was modelled to them no matter how hard we try to fight it.

Yeah, one of the things I've found so weird on MN is how often women come on here and seem to buy the reasons why their new bf shouldn't be paying or whatever. It's bizarre.

@Holidayhell22 I think your argument is weak. I don't know where you get the 40% figure from but it's just random and irrelevant. The problem is that lots of men want to be fathers, they just don't want or appreciate any of the effort that parenting brings or think that it's relevant to them. They want the glory and the fun bits, without the endless slog and financial restrictions. See, for example, the classic trope of "Disney Dad". Such a man wanted kids. He will tell everyone his kids are his life. He genuinely enjoys having a fun time with them. But he also honestly has no idea or interest in any of the day to day hard slog.

I agree. So many girlfriends want to buy into their new partner’s sob story that he never wanted the three kids he had with his wife and so why should the poor lamb be made to pay for them.

Very few men were pinned down and raped by their wives/ partners to get sperm to make the babies. 99.99% of these men chose to make these kids. They just think that once they are bored with marriage / being a dad / paying the bills, that it’s someone else’s job to raise these kids and pay for them.

Its just bog standard male entitlement .

@coxesorangepippin

If only, my American friend has struggled to get a penny out of her ex despite him working at a very high level in a major tech company. Yes he gave her the house as a divorce settlement but his lawyer seems to think that money will bring up 3 kids, health, college costs etc. seems to be no equivalent of cms being separate from the divorce settlement.

This. Some posters on here claim that many men don't want kids, and 'it's the woman who wants them.' That's a load of shit. In many cases both the man and the woman wanted them. Yeah maybe there are a few cases where the man isn't fussed and the woman mithered him to have them, but similarly a number of men mither women to have kids.

I know several couples right now (in their early 30s) where the man 'encouraged' the woman to have a baby. 'Before it's too late...' and moaned at her and mithered her til she caved. Have a guess whose life and career has been upended by them having a baby? Hint: not HIS. And have a guess who does 90% of the childcare and domestic duties and life admin? (Again HINT.. not HIM!)

IME, many men want to have kids so they can prove their balls work. It makes them feel more masculine and validated if they have managed to create a few pregnancies. A neighbour of mine just got pregnant with her 4th child. Her partner shouted 'am I a fertile fucker or what? GO DANNY'S SPERM!' Yes he really fucking did.

But yeah, as has been said, that is where it ends, and they don't see looking after the kids as their job - only the Disney Dad bit where he takes them to the cinema, or the park, and plays video games with them, whist mum does every fucking thing else!

And yes to men telling a shitty tall tale to his new squeeze about how his ex forced him to have 3 kids, and how it's taking SO much of his money now to keep these kids he didn't even want. Apparently it's all her fault, coz she got herself pregnant ya know. I have even heard men - and their mother - deriding a woman who got pregnant by him/her son, saying 'she got herself pregnant.' What a fucking genius, and what a MIRACLE!

/

Yep you see it even on this thread “he didn’t really want kids” “he just had them for the woman” this is the narrative that these women believe irl also, didn’t really want them, she tricked him into having 2/3/4 children, he just went along with it, “she’s the problem!” I was talking in another group how my ex only pays £6.72 a week for our children and I was told at least that’s £6 extra for shopping and I should be grateful because it’s better than nothing, this was from another woman.

Well it goes back to that thing if there being 2 sides to every story. My ex has two grown up children and he split with his ex wife when they were teenagers. He used to brag to me about how he was this amazing dad who paid £2K a month in CM.

I now know that this was almost certainly a lie. So that probably explains why women get with these men - they rewrite history to make themselves sound like super dads.

@CherryPiePiePie

I was talking in another group how my ex only pays £6.72 a week for our children and I was told at least that’s £6 extra for shopping and I should be grateful because it’s better than nothing, this was from another woman.

£6.72 a week?! That would be funny if it wasn't so repugnant and sickening!

And another woman was saying 'that's better than nothing!' God help us all!

They definitely think the money is for you to live it up. That’s what my dad always used to say to my mum during the divorce.

Yeah she said would you rather have nothing, it is nothing, it pays for nothing! I don’t even notice it coming in.

Lets say only 40% of men want a child. I really don’t think it’s higher than that.
If it was then far more men would be parenting their children and financially and emotionally supporting them
@Holidayhell22
I wonder about the reasons that men want children, what are the underlying motivating factors for men?
I think there are men who genuinely want to be parents, who want to nurture and rear their children.
However, I think that for many men the purpose that is fulfilled by having children is to do with increasing their status in the world, advertising to other men their ability to capture and subdue a woman such that she is prepared to bear children for him and then be his servant.
Children also provide men with extra levers with which to control women, they are aware that she is much more emotionally attached to the child than he is and so this can be used to blackmail bribe and control her.

Gloriosaford I think that’s true on some level too.
I absolutely do think the majority of men only have a child to appease their oh. What would they do if she told him that she would not be having children? The majority don’t leave do they? They stay. They go along with it.
Again society friends upon the childless.
Even men have to deal with this bs.
So I guess in the end they succumb to the pressure.
I know a woman who’s 2nd husband had never been married or had dcs. He had had girlfriends a plenty but never met anyone who he wanted to have a child with or marry. Until he met my friend. The number of people who commented to me saying “What’s wrong with him?” Was unreal. There isn’t anything wrong with him. That’s how strong the pressure is to settle and reproduce.
Sad really.

I think the issue is men imparticular don't realise what a child actually entails. Unfortunately for women our position is very different in many ways. I think many men like the idea of a baby/child but the reality of the sheer hard work it takes is quite another!

I'm actually interested in this too - I know a few men who actually wanted to be dads but I'd say 50% do seem to give off the "I was tricked" vibe. I think a lot of men don't realise that kids come first for a lot of women and the relationship will have to change. I actually think a large amount of men resent their kids for getting more attention from their mum. Therefore the punishment is to leave her with them but unable to treat them to the life she wanted them to have; they become her burden because she should have loved HIM more.

I so wish someone, somewhere would commit to a practical, achieveable plan for tackling child maintainance evasion and proper enforcement. It’s just inexcusable and a key reason why intergenerational poverty and unequal outcomes for women, persists.

It’s under-researched, politically unsexy, and never been a focus of any UK Government, ever. Why is that? Because it disproportionately affects disadvantaged women and their female children.

Grim.

I really take exception to this idea that men are somehow tricked into parenthood because women are demanding it.

Don’t want a child? Talk to your partner and take appropriate precautions. If you really, REALLY, don’t want a child, get a vasectomy or avoid penetrative sex with a female.

What is often happening in these situations is men want the trappings of a family life but without the 25-30 year legacy that comes with being a female who is raised to care, nurture and support.

All they need to do is fund CMS properly and have the bosses actually encourage the staff to use the tools available.

I say it all the time of threads - I worked there briefly and during training I asked about a couple of powers I knew they had due to dealings with my ex. The trainer had no idea they had those powers.

I also got a bollocking for being overly aggressive when I refused a man’s demand to give him another chance before setting up a DEO. Apparently he sounded very willing… he’d been dodging paying for four years

If a government changed the attitude at CMS changes would be vast and very quick.

There’s a reason that “speak to your MP” comes out on CMS threads. The team that deal with MPs are not discouraged from using their power because bosses don’t want the hassle. cases are dealt with as a priority. If every MP made plain it was a priority in every case the numbers of non payers would soon change.

my boris loving MP wrote on my behalf to the minister for DWP. not only did they 'find' the £800 arrears they lost, they actually 'found' £4000 arrears according to my records but struggled to prove were lost.
MP's do have influence if they choose to use it.

@YetMoreNewBeginnings Completely agree. It’s about political will, not technical solutions and legislative powers.

CMS are, I’d imagine, largely blameless. They can only focus on what they are mandated to focus on. If someone told them to prioritize debt recovery and enforcement over being kind to the (mostly) men, the whole picture would change so quickly.

Yeah, they're happy to have a child whilst the woman is also his skivvy, cook and provides sex for him.

With my ex it’s resentment plus ignorance of how much children actually cost.

This is outing but in November last year I remortgaged and took ex off, transferred him £100k to buy him out of the house. Then just before Christmas he suddenly stopped paying maintenance. I opened a CMS claim and got a letter back saying he didn’t have to pay anything because his income was coming from benefits. Turns out he quit his job and has gone self employed, and is on a start up period with UC where he gets to build up his business and doesn’t even have to look for other work. He gets his rent paid by UC.

He was paying £280ish a month for two dc, before, which isn’t a fortune, and in the past he hasn’t always been consistent with maintenance, but it’s considerably better than getting nothing. And because CMS have told him that he doesn’t HAVE to pay, he won’t. I’ve managed to persuade him to pay for ds1’s school meals (ds2 still gets free ones) and I’ve been made to feel grateful for that.

Somehow, though, he has managed to buy a brand new MacBook, and various other expensive pieces of equipment, for his “business”. I asked my solicitor about the whole thing and she said that the £100k is counted as capital not income so the CMS can’t even make him take maintenance out of that.

I worked hard (and had some luck of course) to get to a professional reasonably paid job. Not because I particularly want a high flying job but we live in an expensive area and I want to be able to afford a reasonable quality of life for my children. I got married to someone who I thought was a nice responsible guy. Both of our children were planned. Turns out he was only nice when he was getting regular sex from me.

There is no sense of responsibility from him, if I didn’t have money coming in I would get a job doing ANYTHING. He doesn’t feel the same obviously.

My dc are boys and everyday I wonder how I can bring them up to be more responsible than this. I try and instil a sense of taking responsibility for their own actions as much as possible. Sadly I was brought up with low expectations of men because my dad wasn’t much different. I don’t regret the relationship because of my dc. That being said, I think the one of the only long term answers is ensuring children have a sense of responsibility, a good work ethic, and, as they become adults, a high bar for their own relationships.

Sorry to hear that. I've also noticed on Instagram and TikTok a great trend of mothers posting how they are helping women by teaching their sons to be better. I follow a couple but payalforstyle is one of them and pretty good. Sometimes she hits on things that you'd not think of but are female mental load jobs, like checking the family calendar or how they can celebrate each other so the woman in their life doesn't end up with a husband still competing with his brother in adulthood...

@cadburyegg so terrible. I feel for you. It may be a long wait and I know it is when you need money now for the kids. I would always keep your CMS claim open as you get yearly reviews and you can see increase/decreased earnings.