How common was this?

[Uell]

My parents divorced in the early 80s, when I was 2 or 3. My mum had sole custody (?) of me and we moved abroad with my step dad. I saw my dad at most once a year for a week.

When I read on here about EOW or 50/50 it makes me wonder if my situation was normal for the time.

My mum has a huge tendency to re write history (narcissistic tendencies??) and my dad died in my teens.

I didn’t see my dad much growing up, he was mostly absent, my mum and him were never together in a relationship, I don’t think your situation is unusual, my own kids don’t see their dad either, I don’t know anyone irl personally that has 50/50 with their ex

True- you do hear of a lot of absent fathers, I'm sorry you were in that situation.

I have to say I didn't know many people growing up who had divorced parents. I dont have the lasting impression that my dad was voluntarily absent - me being thousands of miles away made it so. Just pondering if this would have been sanctioned as part of the divorce- again I read on here all the time about separated parents not being allowed to leave the country without the NRP's permission.

EOW or 50:50 is a relatively new thing I think. Men weren’t expected to be hands on parents in the olden days were they?

When my parents divorced, my mum had sole custody afaik and we moved across the country for my stepfathers job a few months after my mum remarried. She didn’t even bother to inform my father and we were NC after that!

'Saturday Dad' was the norm after divorce until relatively recently. My parents divorced in the 80s and that was the arrangement. Same for other people I know.

Ah I think that’s quite a recent thing with needing permission etc, I could be wrong though, if that happened in the 80s/90s then probably she didn’t need permission

I'm struggling to think of a single person I know who's my age and had divorced parents as children and even now - I would say less than 10% of all friends/relatives/acquaintances I know currently in their forties are divorced!

Anyway it's really helpful to hear of others experiences, thank you.

Permission absolutely was a thing in the 90s. A friend's mum wanted to emigrate to Australia. Friend convinced her dad not to sign the paperwork. So she stayed in UK.

Perhaps what I'm trying to reconcile is how anyone can prevent their child seeing having a relationship with their other parent.

I wouldn't dream of doing that to my own children.

However as has been pointed out, norms were different back in the olden days!

Well if you needed permission back then then he would have had to give it, so why did he? Did you ever ask him about it?

No, I didn't ask, would never have thought to question. As a child you just accept the status quo don't you?