Is a rubbish dad better than no dad

[MamaLeen]

Yet again my dc has been let down by her dad today.
We have legally agree weekly visits for them but she is lucky if he turns up once a month.
I am fed up of seeing my dc angry and dc is starting to refuse to go but as it is court ordered she must.
My dp says a it's better than nothing at all.
I agree and it would take a lot for me to refuse contact as everyone needs a father.
I just dont know how to deal with this situation.
Anyone have any advice?

Sounds like she'd be much better off treating your DP as her dad

But you only get one dad. It's an awful shame that the dad in question doesn't think about this when deciding whether or not he can be bothered to turn up to see his child.

I agree with previous posters that you should go back to court and get contact reduced so she's not looking out of the window every Saturday afternoon, wondering what time, if at all, he'll turn up. From personal experience, that's not easy to deal with at all. Once you know for definite that you won't be spending the afternoon with a man who is rapidly tiring of playing at 'dad', it gets a lot easier.

No parent is better than a shit parent.

No, my son waited by doors and windows for his deadbeat dad to appear, now 15 years on he still remembers it and remembers the excitement almost always followed by sadness.

He doesn't deserve to have that effect on your children, they shouldn't question their worth because he has none.

All of the research into this very question says no dad is better than a crap dad.

Obviously two good, stable, invested parents are better for children than only one and children growing up with one parent and not the other because they are crap obviously still have issues of the 'why didn't you want me enough to be a good dad?' Kind but the kids that do worst of all are the kids who are continuously exposed to crappy parents.

That's the basis for the state removing care from parents after all.

We had a watershed moment with XP and his flakey parenting a few years ago. I said to him 'if you don't want to be a dad then let h adopt them. If you don't want him to adopt them then be a dad' and he has been consistent ever since. He's never been to parents evenings etc and he doesn't parent them or spend much time with them, still books holidays for him and his wife in his time, still promises them exciting things and doesn't do them but he gives notice of his holidays and hasn't just not turned up since then. Their relationship is much stronger with h and he still does all the parenting stuff for them even though we have now split.

I stopped telling my children when their Dad was supposed to come. He just let them down too much. I would only tell them if I spoke to him or heard from him to confirm an hour before. They gradually stopped asking and he barely sees them now. When dd draws pictures of her family, she draws herself, her brother, me and the dog. It's sad but he's a very difficult man anddribks a lot. They're better off.

Oh and we had court orders for a while but he broke every single one despite me saying every time 'pick a time that suits you we will fit around any time' and in the end the court dismissed his application saying it was vexatious and I had never stopped him seeing them.

I agree with everyone else.
Go back to court and request contact is reduced.
There is no excuse for not turning up.
No matter how 'ill' I am, I still have to parent my child.
He is a total disgrace and your DD deserves better.

This crap of a bad dad being better than no dad only works if there's a good mother to pick up the pieces.

OP you are wise to point out you cannot refuse contact and breach the court order. You can keep a diary of events and consequences, such as your DD being treated for anxiety, then apply to the court for a variation to the order. I agree he is doing more harm than good.

I have/had a crap dad (I truly suffered second-handly from his neglect) and I have to disagree that no dad is better than having a dad. Over the years my relationship with my father has changed as he's grown and matured. It's still not perfect, but occassionally he trumps up at the most unexpected times. I was down recently and he was very encouraging and had my back 100%. Due to not having had a traditional father daughter relationship, he can be very candid in a way that can be difficult to take, but also good sometimes. He can tell me things about my relationship from a man's perspective which helps. There is and will always be a certain amount of underlying resentment, but its not all bad.

My half brother on the other hand has had no contact with his dad since quite young, after he was wishy washy with his visits and my mother told him to just stop visiting altogether. That has serioysly backfired. My brother has very low self-esteem, has a huge amount of pent up anger, serious depressive episodes, has tried to commit suicide, and has struggled to find his way growing up as a man mostly surrounded by women. He's getting better but he's had questions he can not get answered, as well as discovering more siblings his father has had since, which he had no knowledge of and has had no contact with. He would see our father turn up, intermittently, but still turn up, whilst his never did. I really felt for him.

Compared to my full brother who has sized everything up, asked questions, and decided of his own volition to only have minimal contact with my father, having made this decision through exposure, his own assessment etc. He's happy with his choice, and is determined to be as close as possible to his own dd and not repeat our father's mistake.

I think it is for a child to judge and choose what relationship they have with a parent bar something extremely serious. If a parent is wotless, they can later weigh up for themselves where they want the relationship to go or not. Relationships can also change and improve with time and from experience, those I know with rubbish parents often learn lessons and do better with their own children. People I know who don't know their father's are left feeling like a piece is missing. They don't have anything to place in context.

Father or no father BOTH are bad. But ime the former is better.

No father is better.
The damage it does to a child when a father is in and out of their lives is awful.

I find it strange a man can get a court order for contact and not abide that court order, yet the woman doesn't abide by it and she gets dragged into court and the book thrown out at her.