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Mumsnet has not checked the qualifications of anyone posting here. If you need help urgently or expert advice, please see our domestic violence webguide and/or relationships webguide. Many Mumsnetters experiencing domestic abuse have found this thread helpful: Listen up, everybody

Original poster

Why oh why do the fathers walk away?

124 replies

KayOwe123 · 03/08/2015 18:32

Please help me to understand why a child's father would decide to walk away from his relationship with his child. As mothers, you are probably well aware of the hurt your child experiences when their father leaves but when happens, long term, if he just doesn't want to know.

Was it another relationship? Was it work? Was it drink, drugs, gambling etc? Was he just a child himself? Is it just because the relationship was too toxic and one of you decided to end it and continuing contact would be too painful for both of you?

Are there any men out there who can explain to me what went wrong and how you feel?

Please help - I'm trying to make sense of absent and disaffected dads because maybe there's another side to the story...........

OP posts:
butterflygirl15 · 03/08/2015 21:48

I think ultimately they consider their own perceived future happiness more important than their duties as a father. Pure selfishness probably. And then they dress it up anyway they can to justify it - was never happy or in love with the mother, lost the spark, only stayed together for the children, etc...

The excuses are rarely original or justified. The damage they cause to the DC they leave behind - well who knows how far reaching that could be.

I think a shiny new life with a new woman can turn some away from their children. They can reinvent themselves, make new children and hope they don't make the same mistakes with them they did with the ones they left behind.

britneyspearscatsuit · 03/08/2015 21:57

My ex owes me £46,080 in unpaid child support technically. He;s never given us a cent and I never bothered to fight.

I made a huge effort to get him to see DS, but we'd often travel a whole day to get there for him to say he felt ill or was busy.

DS phoned him in 2010 for the first time, he said he was just out of the shower and would call back.

Still waiting...

Arsehole.

TheFormidableMrsC · 03/08/2015 22:03

Funny thing is these men never have a problem finding a new woman to create another family with

This.

That is what I will never understand. My husband claimed he "couldn't do it anymore", I have to presume the difficulties of having a young child, yet has happily taken on OW's son. I guess the difference is, that child is ultimately not his responsibility. What I will never fathom is how he could have left his own, I really can't. He discovered my MN threads about our divorce and decided to post Hmm. He said amongst other pitiful self serving shit that he knew he had "failed his son", yet he continues to fail him every other bloody day, emotionally and financially.

At the end of the day, they are just selfish. They want all the excitement of new romance, they don't want the difficulties, in my case, of having a child with additional needs, they just want to be Disney dads. They don't want to pay maintenance because they believe they deserve a "lifestyle". What they fail to realise is that they will just continue on perpetuating the same tragic pattern because sometimes, you just have to stick with things and get on with life! WTF would they do if we "walked out" for a "new life"??!

TheFormidableMrsC · 03/08/2015 22:04

Britney Flowers for you and your son. Arsehole indeed.

Ihavemyownname · 03/08/2015 22:04

think children are pay per view service.

StaceyAndTracey · 03/08/2015 22:21

Hi Kay and welcome to Mumsnet

Why don't you tell us about your own situation and why you are asking ?

Flashbangandgone · 03/08/2015 23:44

Some men it seems are just incredibly selfish and immature... It's strange though how different they are to most 'normal' men who, for all their imperfections and issues, and even selfishness, don't just abandon their kids. Probably a mixture of nature and nurture but I'm not sure... What's equally baffling to me is why women can't see through this before they have kids with them, even more so the men who've already proven themselves with estranged kids.

HelenaDove · 03/08/2015 23:48

Formidable that is reproductive coercion. Hes a massive bastard.

scallopsrgreat · 03/08/2015 23:51

Because they can and society doesn't judge them for doing so and offers no recrimination either morally or financially.

And childcare is wimmin's stuff innit.

LineRunner · 03/08/2015 23:51

What you up to, OP?

wafflyversatile · 04/08/2015 00:09

Why not ask fathers who walked away? Might make the article more accurate.

TheFormidableMrsC · 04/08/2015 00:11

HelenaDove...I have never heard that term before, but I guess that is exactly what it is. Massive bastard indeed. Thank God he's has a vasectomy...

notrocketscience · 04/08/2015 00:25

F4J journalist perhaps?

Offred · 04/08/2015 00:38

Ha! That would be really sad and desperate!

Muldjewangk · 04/08/2015 03:19

My DB phoned his DD every week, he paid for her air flights every year (her mother had moved them away after the breakup). His exP wouldn't tell DB for two years where they lived. He was allowed to phone his DD which he did every week. When DN was five her mother mentioned to my DB that she was thinking of allowing her to go and live with the neighbours who were moving away. DB said he would have her live with him, he was told he wouldn't know how to look after her.

When she was twelve her mother didn't want DN to live with her anymore (she had done the same with her eldest DD from another relationship). DB finally got to have his child live with him. DN's mother then married without telling her and had two more children.

DN after years of problems with her mother decided to go NC after DN heard her mother tell DN's husband he could do better than DN. Confused

Some people are complete and utter morons and lack feelings for their children and it isn't always just men, though you do hear about men more often. I also know another man who was denied access to his child, he talked about it all the time. If he phoned his son his exW and her h would listen in on their conversation. When his DS turned 18 and had finished school he moved in with his father and refused to speak to his mother because she had kept him apart all his childhood from his father.

Canyouforgiveher · 04/08/2015 03:52

I also know another man who was denied access to his child, he talked about it all the time. you actually know nothing about this man's situation except what he told you.

Your brother's situation you do know about - and your brother did not abandon his child and he ultimately had that child living with him. nothing to do with fathers who leave their children.

I am amazed at how many fathers leave their children with hardly a backward glance (see other threads on here especially the how much maintenance are your owed thread) and equally how many women seem to think this is not a "thing" and women are callously depriving fathers of the responsibilty of rearing their children - if I was a betting woman, I know which side I'd bet on and it wouldn't be on wholescale men wishing they could have more responsibility for child rearing but awful women stopping them

lighteningirl · 04/08/2015 06:49

Why is the OP not posting?

StaceyAndTracey · 04/08/2015 08:14

I'm guessing because this is her first post on Mumsnet . Interesting first post

Offred · 04/08/2015 08:46

XP told everyone I was stopping him seeing the DC, he even took me to court over it.

The truth was that he had left me for OW shortly after raping me and getting me PG and was scared and keeping away. During the court case it transpired that he didn't even want access to DD. He knew she was his, he knew when she was conceived because he made comments to me in court implying he knew he had raped me around the time of her conception.

The court date was originally set for her due date, I had to attend the first hearing when she was under 1 month old and argue for her being allowed to come because she was breastfed and they wouldn't delay the case any further and I couldn't express to leave her with anyone.

He never bothered to see DS all through my PG, was not interested in coming to scans etc even though I kept him updated and he STILL told everyone I was preventing contact. At the court case DD could have been added to the claim as she had been born but he still didn't want access to her. He claimed she wasn't his but had signed her birth certificate and not made a legal claim so no-one really could do DNA. The court made an exception when I DID refuse to allow him to see DS and not DD on the basis that she is his and it would have been horrendously damaging for him to pick only one of his children to be interested in.

His claim was that despite DV meaning I was never allowed out to be able to cheat I must have cheated when I took DS away for the weekend with my best friend to go to a Santa train in Wales for his first Christmas. XP didn't want to come (because he wanted to spend the weekend shagging OW in my bed).

The legal stuff took 3 years to resolve fully with him not bothering to turn up to every court order of contact that was made, usually with me saying he could pick whenever he wanted because I was a SAHM. DD was of course his so he had to accept her too.

Eventually the judge gave a judgement that the case was spurious all along, he didn't believe I had ever denied contact and that XP had used the court to say 'some of the worst things you can ever say about a woman never mind the mother of your child' about me and they demanded he apologise. They didn't feel it appropriate to make any ongoing order because I was not denying contact.

Despite all that going on he, as a man of the people Hmm, has managed to convince so many people that the reason he doesn't see his kids is because I stop him. I have very little input into it because as an isolated SAHM dealing with the effects of his abuse I have better things to do.

I've always said yes when he asks to see the DC (within reason) and he has got better now they are 8 and 10 and has been having them to sleep over every other Saturday night but until he married a couple of years ago he could barely cope with 2 hours on a Sunday.

Literally everyone, including my own parents believed and possibly still believe that I am one of those women.

SerialBox · 04/08/2015 08:50

The OP isn't posting because he/she is most likely a journalist. I would stop posting unless you want your personal story to possibly end up being published.

Offred · 04/08/2015 08:51

The guy who founded f4j was similar I believe - brought court cases to get contact orders that he didn't bother with then founded f4j.

Not every guy who claims to be being alienated from his DC is lying, obviously! But some are, some are saying that as a way of further abusing their ex partners and DC and people should be very careful at taking claims just at face value because they can often be a part of ongoing abuse.

Offred · 04/08/2015 08:52

I'm not so paranoid tbh. If you are suspicious report the thread, if it's a journalist it will go poof.

SerialBox · 04/08/2015 08:55

I had already reported it.

simplesusan · 04/08/2015 09:01

My ex h said he wanted more to life than to be a husband and father.

He has now married a woman with several dcs.

They do it because they can.
Because they are selfish.
They look after the second wife's kids because that goes with the territory, not because they want to. When that relationship ends they do the same again.
Society accepts this from men.

MustBeLoopy390 · 04/08/2015 09:11

Because it's much easier to play happy families with another woman and her DC, if he follows usual form he'll be leaving her soon because she's due to give birth in a month. For her's and her children's sake I hope he has changed.