Women who leave their children

[sandyballs]

Not being judgemental here, just curious to have a MN perspective.

My brother has recently left his wife and two young children and moved in with a woman he describes as his soul mate. She is also married, has four children under 10, the youngest is 3, and she has left them with her husband to live with my brother.

I just find it incredibly hard to get my head round the fact that she has left her babies. I know my brother has done exactly the same but it just seems worse for a mum to do that than a dad.

My brother gave her the option of bringing them - it wasn't a "them or me" situation, he was willing to take them all on but she chose to leave them and now only sees them once a week.

I'm trying hard to get to know her because she has become so important to my brother and is obviously coming to lots of family gatherings, and I'm trying very hard not to judge her as I don't know what her marriage was like or how unhappy she was and I don't feel I know her well enough to probe just yet, but the thought of leaving my DDs and just seeing them once a week is horrific.

Has anyone here had any experience of this.
By the way, her mum left her when she was tiny - so wouldn't that make you think that she would try so hard not to put her kids throught he same thing. I'm very confused!

Oh susamnt, your post made me cry. I don't know what to say either except that you do sound like a lovely mum and you know you're not going to repeat your mother's mistakes. I'm so glad you've got your lovely dh and a therapist to help you through this. Big hugs from me too.

I couldn't leave my children either, in fact, I realised a long time ago that if leaving my marriage had meant leaving my son, I couldn't have done it. I do realise that this makes me a mean woman in some ways since ex dh wasn't given a choice - I took his son - but we were unhappy. He's lovely but wasn't right for me.

Sandyballs, I think I'd find it hard to be nice to her too, it's not as if she didn't have a choice is it? I'd settle for civil in your position I think.

message withdrawn

Susanmt, the very fact that you can post like this means you will never do to your children what your mother did to you. You have suffered so much from this, I hope there will be an end to it.

Galaxy, he won't he's got a stepmum who obviously loves him. Doesn't matter where the love comes from as long as it is there.

DP deserted by his mum at 12, dad not really up to raising three kids and no extended family to speak of. He didn't get that love and left home pretty much at 16 and stopped all contact with his family at 18. The thing about his situation was that he didnt have anyone to help him deal with the rejection and desertion and tell him it wasn't his fault. Your stepson will have that support and he will be fine.

I read this thread yesterday evening and didn't add to it as it opened some wounds, but consequently thought about it all night.
My M and D split when I was little and my db and I stayed with my M while my D moved in with my Step M and her children. About a year later my M decided that she couldn't cope with db and me and off we went to live with D, there was also a new baby brother on the way at this time. Db and I lived with them for 5 years and it was LOVELY, I really did not have any probs and loved the family life and regarded my step family as real family etc.
Then my D got offered a job a long way away and my M decided that she wanted us back - we had been seeing her every 3rd weekend for about 4 years.
My D fought her in court and lost and we moved back in with M and her new DH. Bad mistake as they were totally unused to kids especially teenagers and we basically had to become independant over night (many issues here too long to go into).
My bitterness towards my M did not really surface until I became a mother and my Dad's Mum told me how she had begged my Mum to keep us and even offered to help her look after us. She refused.
M and I have a good relationship but I resent her for what she did (ie put her social life before us) and when she relates stories of me as a child to DD's and DP I wonder how on earth can she possibly know????
Sorry, but this thread has obviously touched a nerve and I really needed to write this.

i was 17 when my mom left my dad for a pathetic excuse of a man, so altough i wasnt a child, i was still living at home.....it wasnt me who was affected though, my little brother was 13 when she left, which i feel is a very confusing time in a boys life (puberty etc)
she disappeard for two weeks and then decided to contact us, my brother was always a "mommys boy" so he missed her terribly.
she never came back home, moved in with the idiot and consequently left my dad with loads of debt ( she got my dad to take out a £7000 loan before she left saying she wanted the garden landscaping) she took the money from a joint account and put it into boyfs account leaving my dad with the debt.... sorry for rambling here.
i had intended to go to college but because my dad was struggling to keep a roof over our heads i decided to help out by getting a shitty job in a call centre.
anyway my brother suffered the most, me and my dad were working long shifts to keep a roof over our heads so there was nobody to tell him what he could or couldnt do and very rarely anyone in the house of a morning to make sure he got himself out of bed for school, he got in with a load of sh**heads off the estate and over the next few years our lives were hell.
to cut a long story short he ended up a heroin addict at @16/17, desperate for my mother to help him get off this drug, he asked if he could go to live with her to get him away from the estate where we live, she said he couldnt because her boyf didnt want the agro, which i felt was a bit rich coming from him seeing as i feel he was the one who was the cause of the agro to begin with.
this totally destroyed my brother, your mother is supposed to be the one person above everyone who can take the bad away and make things better, but she put her boyf before him, things gradually got worse, he obviously found comfort in drugs and was literally a bag of bones and im convinced close to death in may 2002, by now he had a crack habit aswell, heroin is bad, crack is 10x worse.
like most drug addicts he resorted to crime to fund his drug habits but thank god the police caught up with him at this time, he was sent to prison for 4 years.
please dont for one minute think that i feel that the way he led his life was an excuse for his drug addiction, i was disgusted at how he let his life become but he was stilll my little brother and i love him so much.
being sent to prison was the best thing that could of ever happened to him, hes totally clean and is gaing all the qualifications he should of gained at school, im so proud of him and when i visit him now im beaming inside, the day he was sent to prison was one of the worse in my life, he was like a little boy desperate for help, weighing 8 stone (hes 5'10", now he has put on about 4 stone and looks so much better.

i dont agree with the things he did and it would be easy to say that he should never of taken drugs in the first place, there are so many things that he should/shouldnt of done but we cant change our past.

ive waffled a bit but the reason i wrote this was because i blame my mother for the way he turned out, i blame her for not being there when he needed her most and i still have difficulties with her beacuse she still doesnt feel that she was to blame for any of it, she doesnt even try to be a good mother now, she has never written him a letter while he has been inside.

i could never leave my boys, i would rather die and i dont know how any mother ever could.
god that was long.... sorry if i bored you!
xx

i didnt mean to put a "winking face" in there i hit a wrong button!

Tiredemma, I'm in tears reading that. Your poor brother! Best wishes to him and you,

xxx
dinosaur

Sandyballs I do understand why you feel this way and it is heartbreaking reading all these stories, however I am sure there must be more to it than it seems. I agree completely that it seems odd particularly as your brother would have welcomed the kids. but could it be a temporary thing. Perhaps they are settled in schools and stuff and taking them away might just make it worse. Maybe she felt them staying in the family home was important too - and since she was the cause of the breakup she wasn't living there.

Personally I would talk to her and try to understand her feelings and to explain yours. Perhaps then you will like her more and longterm it might be better.

Forgive me if this happened ages ago and there has been plenty of time to sort out long term arrangements, I just thought there has to be a reason and that it may not be becasue she is a cold hearted cow.

I know of someone who left teenaged kids with Dad but they chose to stay at home and she seest hem every day almost.

still find that hard really

ps crunch

coldhearted cow!!lol

There are such sad, sad stories here, yet they are also ones of immense courage and resilience. Your survival gives out such a strong message and makes me marvel at human nature.

Whilst I love my children without reservation and could never leave them, I do think this subject perhaps highlights something of a myth about the rosey picture of motherhood that is often painted. As we all know, being a mother isn't something you can 'try-before-you-buy' and I think that society puts great pressures on some women to fulfill a role that they aren't truly cut out for. Eg the pressure on a women to have more than one child, even though she doesn't enjoy being a parent, can be immense. Acknowledging that it hasn't turned out well ought to be something that we can address without condemnation and to ameliorate the results as best we can.

But at the same time as having sympathy with someone who really cannot help their feelings, I can't condone the awful things that are detailed here, that is just plain wrong, wrong, wrong. It's appalling to make a bad situation even worse.

I have no sympathy whatsoever for DH's mother who I mentioned in an earlier post.

Expanding on the story - mother left after saying she was going for a walk. No-one knew where she was/going. DH's dad, after a while, went to pieces and turned to drink. Met another woman with 2 children. DH's dad doted on these kids, whilst leaving his own 2 children starving and filthy - and I am NOT kidding when I say they were left without food. DH (now 9) stole some money from dad to buy food for him and sister. Worried he would get caught and punished - he ran away

He was picked up by a family (thank God it was a family!) along the M6. Police called/Social Services who then were organising taking them into care.

Mum was tracked down - and told unless she took them, they would be placed into care. She took them back.

However, now all these years later, she has "left" him again Their relationship has never been close - but now we've had letters saying that she doesn't need him/me & kids etc and we're basically down to no contact at all now.

I can't even begin to understand how my DH feels to be "rejected" not once but TWICE by his own mother. His childhood can reduce me to tears and it's amazing that he is such a kind, level-headed and wonderful man and is a doting father. Very occasionally, things get to him and he will often have a cry

I just don't understand some parents

In a weird way, I was reassured by this thread, because I have spent so much time pondering how my xp can be so strange and unpaternal towards our ds. My mother keeps on saying to me that he is one in a million and his behaviour is outside the range of what normal men do, and I won't meet someone like that again. It must be right: some men and also some women just don't find it in their hearts to be parents, but most of us feel a parental drive very strongly, and don't understand those persons who don't. Perhaps there is some evolutionary reason why such people are driven to reproduce anyway, like cuckoos, and perhaps they subconsciously pick more parental partners, whom they know will do their best when left holding the baby? Needless to say, I was upset to read some of your posts. I am really impressed by people who learn to parent their children in a different way from how they were brought up, and to move on from their childhoods like that; so much of what I do as a mother is just copying my parents.

My dp's mum went to the shop when he was 6 and never returned leaving my dp,and his sister with a father who although well meaning was totally irresponsible and just lived a life of wine women and song My dp is none the less a fab loving partner and father and has no contact with her at all.To see him so loving to our son is lovely.My parents were emotionally absent and my mother to this day boasts that she isnt maternal and seems almost proud of it.Thank god dp and I have not carried on this type of parenting.Sometimes you just have to lower your expectations of your parents and appreciate your own life

My husband said he could never love someone that could do that. Neither could I, what if they had kids and she did it agian!

that is exactly what my dp's mum did.She left one boy behind when she met my dp's dad then left him with dp and his sister,then had another boy who by all accounts has suffered at her hands aswell.Some people should never have kids ever

These stories are so sad. Susanmt, emma, momof2 etc - thanks for posting them.

They've made me think really. Sometimes, after dropping dd off at nursery or wherever, I feel an immense sense of freedom and relief (and subsequently feel guilty about it). But the very idea of being without her or ds for any length of time is completely beyond my imagination. And I guess it's just luck really - I can't help thinking that something went wrong with the bonding process or something in these cases,or at least that other factors (mental instability etc.) were behind them.

Susan, I really hope you do come to terms with everything that's happened to you.

This is an incredibly moving thread--as I mentioned before on other threads, my DH's Xwife abandoned her children. I met my DH eight months after she had gone. We have been together for 10 years now and it has been incredibly difficult at times and the boys have struggled so...my older step daughter left 3 years into our marriage, went to live with her mom and became pregnant at 15. The boyfriend (father of her baby) moved in with the Xwife and her now 3rd husband. We have been through lots of counselling. I could never understand how she could leave her children either, but I have had to keep quiet in the background and wait for the boys to judge this for themselves in the years to come. Very, very difficult for me to imagine leaving my DD-no excuse seems to be extraordinary enough. Thank you for sharing your experiences here.

Wow, what a response. Thank you all so much, I've found all your responses very interesting and very moving. I haven't got time this evening, but I hope to come back to this over the weekend.

I too have been thinking long and hard about sharing my story with you. I have decided to as I wanted you to see that it is not all sad endings.

I was the eldest of 3 (aged 5) when my dm left me. She moved far away and my wonderful dad and, eventually, dsm, bought us up. I only saw my mum probably once a year. It wasn't easy for my dad to get custody as they wanted to put us into care but he fought through the courts and won.

As an adult, I had to deal with the abandonment and had physiatric treatment to come to terms with my past.

However, now that I am married and have kids of my own that is exactly as I see it MY PAST. I have rebuilt my relationship with my dm and my kids have a wonderful g'm - okay she wasn't there for me but why should my kids have to suffer just because of something in the past. I really do love my mum and it's nice that she is now a part of my family. Having said that, she knows (I have told her) that I could never forgive her.

I do know that, as a mum I could never, ever leave my kids. I do have occasional flashbacks looking at my dd1 and realising this is the age that my dm left. In fact, there are tears running from my eyes, reading back how awful my childhood must seem to you. It wasn't - just different. It was just that my dad was a single parent rather than my dm.

My dm left her first dh to be with my d (not a good mwas move) who was also her brother in law. He had 3 kids and she had 2 at that time. My ds kids stayed with mum and were okay but my ds and db were not. He was 3 and she was around 10. It was about 30 years ago and they were nearly put intocare. My dm wanted them desperatly but my d did not want them at all. Their dd got custody and my dm got to see them school hols. It didnt help that she moved 300 miles away. my ds is fine and very independant and has no issues to deal with but my db has never recovered and he is nearly 35 now. He was 3 and had bad asthma and excema made for worse by the stress. He was a mummies boy and really suffered. Poor interaction etc at school, shyness etc led to no exams and he has only ever worked partime doing cleaning jobs. As a teenager and uptil now he has selfharmed, nearly went to prison and had problems with drink. About 8 years ago he started to visit various christian churches and eventually became a very strict jehovah witness. He's never really had a girlfriend as he cant deal with such closeness. He knows he has problems but has never once said anything to my mum. His df wasnt much cop unfortunaltly. My mun is consumed with guilt and blames herself for his problems. Yes he's an adult but if she hadnt have left who knows....
Their father was a good husband, she only left because she was in lust with my father and then ended up leaving him 24 years later. (good move though) but to me db it makes the initial leaving pointless.

I know that one day my story will, for me, have a happy ending - I know I can beat this, incorporate it into my life so it is 'just' my past and learn to live with it. I don't think it can ever go away, it will always be part of me, be one of the things that drives me, but I can use it and make it a positive thing.
In the meantime my children are lucky enough to have extra grandparents who love them, I have 3 brothers I would never have had (and also 2 nephews) and a little sister who would never have been born.
I'm very sure that things do work out in the end. I don't even know if this would be troubling me as much right now if it wasn't that I am a new mother again. I have been spending time with my (fab) psychiatrist looking at how I reject parenting from anyone nowadays, even when I need it, like now, when I have just had a ghastly pregnancy and am seriously depressed. I need to try and let people look after me, stop trying to do it all on my own.

I think, I truly beleive, that you can be healed even from such a traumatic experience. I have a great Dad who cares for me so much (and though he has never said it, I know that he knows that this is at the root of my problems). I've made a point since dd2 was born in telling him just how fantastic a Dad he was, because he was also a Mother to me. I have 3 amazing kids, bright, intelligent, gorgeous and seemingly totally unaffected by what I am going through - little children are so resilient and hopefully I will be better soon enough that it wont affect them.
And, to top it all really I have dh. One of the things that keeps me going in all this is a story he told me about what he thought about me when we were still teenagers (we met at 18 and 19). We'd only been going out for a couple of weeks and were in my room at Uni in the halls of residence. I was reading him some poem out of a kiddy poetry book I had and he said the thought went through his head 'this is the woman I want to be the mother of my children'. Of course at the time he was freaked out by it, but I think about it now and realise that he must have seen something in me, back then when he knew so little about what I had been through, that made him think I would be a good mother. That thought sustains me as it must be in there somewhere, the ability to be a good Mummy to my kids.
Hey, I've rambled again, but this is truly doing me good.

Thanks for all your good wishes. I don't think I'm especially brave or special, just a survivor, like the rest of us.

This is an incredible thread and I am so moved by how many of you have bravely shared your stories.
Like everyone else I can't imagine how a woman could ever leave her children and go off with another man.

However I have been giving this a lot of thought, combined with watching what a friend is going through and this is what I have come up with.
Perhaps a women trundles through life, just coping with the demands of raising a family and paying the bills.
Her marriage is not happy and she goes through all the usual dilema about whether to stay married or put her family through the disruption of divorce. This dilema goes on for years . She realises for the sake of the kids to put up and shut up, which she does, all the time feeling more and more depressed.
Then, out of the blue she meets a man and gradually falls in love with him. (Bear with me folks, I am not condoning any of this)
It was the last thing in the world she ever thought she would do.
Now she has a new dilema.
The new man is wonderful and wants to be with her. He supposedly loves her in a way her dh has never done. She is racked with guilt and does not want to hurt her children, but in a very real way she literally CAN'T go on the way things are going. She cannot go back to her old life without her alleged soul mate, feels terrible about devestating her husband, and does not want to disrupt the kids' life.

This is the situation a very good friend finds herself in. I feel as though I am watching a car crash in slow motion. She is still in the marital home but completely tortured and I dread a phone call from her hursband to say she has killed herself ( she has talked about this before)
She is the last person in the world you would expect to get involved in this sort of thing. She adores her children, is a wonderful mum, a very clever woman and an all round fantastic person but has got herself into this terrible mess.She has broken up with the new man several times but seems to be completely unable to function and always caves in.
Her new man would happily take on her and the children but she says she would never want to take them from their happy home and could not do that to her husband.(who incidentally is a wonderful man) Although she has not yet said so I think there is a possibility she may move out.
Needless to say I am very worried about her and in fact think she is mentally unstable at the moment.

Susanmt, I have to disagree with your last sentence.
You are most definitely special. You are a very thoughtful, insightful and intelligent person who has the capacity to use the written word to convey your experiences in a way which touches the reader. You have had me in tears twice tonight!
You are a devoted mum and are blessed with a lovely husband.
As Tamum said - I salute you