Parents who abandon children

[Roseredwine]

I am struggling to understand what has happened to a family in the last few weeks.
Dad leaves without notice and moves abroad. Mum scams an old lady to pay for air fare and follows her husband. Grandma is now looking after the children, probably forever. How does that happen? What is going on in their heads that they can do this?
Does this happen and I just didn’t know?

My DH was abandoned by both parents as an early teen and fended for himself in a house that was eventually repossessed.

He was lucky that an older friend took him under his wing otherwise I dread to think what could've happened.

I still can't get my head round the fact they both left.

Why are they worse than the parent who left initially? The first to leave had the easier job, another co-parent there, and couldn't hack it.

Many people put their own desires above their children. Men abandon kids all the time and women stay in relationships with horrible abusers who are damaging the children because they can't bear being without the man.

A lot of people see their relationship with their children as transactional. They think their kids owe them and they'll bail when the deal, as they see it, isn't being upheld.

My DH M, did this,he was 7, brother 6,sister 8,went off with another man. He didn't see her for nearly 20 years. We were told,you mustn't mention it.....you might upset her! She told me, she was bored with 3 kids under 3, didn't actually want any. It was her DH fault for not "being careful". Guess what, she then had a baby with the other man. She treated him like dirt,is a very hard bully. We haven't spoken for 15 years.

Forgot to mention,it gave him serious mental issues, phobias meaning he was unable to go out years of treatment. Trust issues

There are so very many people who, for various reasons, shouldn’t have children but do and this is the result. They don’t know how to put a child’s needs first. Some people just don’t have the resilience or capacity or intelligence to carry out the most important responsibility in life, raising an infant to adulthood. Some are too selfish or unwell or even stupid- yes, I said it. The few parents I’ve met who’ve abandoned their children were quite dim.

I know a lady who left her baby with her parents and moved away. 17 years later that daughter arrived at her Mums house, knocked on the door handed over her baby daughter and walked away.

Thankfully that little girl went onto have her own family and broke the cycle. She calls her grandparents Mum & Dad and is referred to as sister by her half uncles and aunts. She is a wonderful mother to her own children. There is still a lot of hurt, feelings of abandonment and insecurities.

My grandmother did this to my dad. He was the youngest of 5, my grandfather ran off with his Secretary leaving my grandmother with all 5 kids. She managed to get the older 4 married or to boarding school but my dad got kicked out. I'm not sure of the timing but he moved home and started in a local school, and soon after my grandmother packed up and moved 2 hours away to be with a new man leaving my dad as a young teenager to sleep in his car in a New England winter. Luckily his best friends parents took him in and he lived in their basement just like in That 70s Show (if anyone remembers that). Amazingly my parents have several friends from high school with very similar stories - parents divorced and both went off with new people, leaving sofa-surfing homeless teens behind. This would have been in the years 1968-1974.

I think my grandmother was from a generation where the need for a man always took priority, even over existing children. She probably also felt that having sorted 4 of her 5 kids out as a single "abandoned" mother she had done as much as could be expected of her. The fact that she was leaving behind a teenage boy to fend for himself is just shocking to me but her priorities were always "her man". My dad never seemed to allow himself to blame her and would just say it wasn't great, or it wasn't ideal.

The irony is she showed great favouritism towards her sons (including my dad!?) and my brother over my aunts and me and my female cousins. My other grandmother on the other side was the same with favouring the boys so I think that might have been generational too.

This. It’s dreadful either way but for fathers it’s more socially normalised than it is for mothers. My own father left and while we didn’t speak for many years and managed to form some kind of relationship later, I think he has little understanding of the impact of his actions. He remains very emotionally immature.

My parents stuck around because they enjoyed being abusive twats.

I eventually left them, although sadly not till my late forties.

I used to wish they would both disappear or get killed in an accident.

Did they give themselves airs about being parents? Did they think it automatically bestowed some sort of higher status?

Sometimes it's none of these things and the parent/s are just selfish horrible people. I know of a parent who met someone on FB who lived in another city. Went off to visit, leaving children with grandparents, and decided to stay. Grandparents now bringing up young children.

That makes the most sense to me in terms of what has happened. Thanks

Happened to my DH at 15. Mother fucked off abroad with younger siblings and abusive new boyfriend.
Father wasn’t interested, paid for him to live with an old lady until he was 16 and then that was it. They stopped paying his school fees though so he we went from very expensive public school to a rough comp in his GCSE year. He took no exams and got beaten up so stopped going.

He is incredibly messed up by it and LC with them both. They still don’t think they did anything wrong. Absolute dickheads the pair of them.

These were not poor people, upper middle class. He hasn’t had contact with his siblings since.

I will be glad when they are both dead, they bring so much stress to our life.

I might get flamed but does anyone understand why it’s not illegal?!

I would agree that your disgust in this situation is because the mum left not the father. It’s certainly common for fathers to leave and society doesn’t view this with a fraction of the stigma that mums who leave face.

Why?

Whenever a parent chooses to abandon their child it’s like they’re jumping ship shouting ‘SEE YA LOSER THEY’RE YOUR PROBLEM NOW’ (whilst children are obviously not a ‘problem’ let’s face it the early years are incredibly hard, laborious and often tedious grunt work- I have two toddlers, one with severe autism- my life is hard) and the other parent is just supposed to accept taking on twice the responsibility, workload and finances with open arms? One parent does not have the right to decide that the other parent should take full responsibility - there is no opting out of parenting! I always ALWAYS view the first parent to leave as the one fully to blame, whatever the second parent does (whether that be staying or leaving) is a direct result of the situation they’re forced into my the first parent.

In the 1920s one of my Grandmothers was an identical twin. Obviously there was no scans etc so by all account, she as the second twin came as a surprise. My great grandmother took the eldest twin home and left my grandmother with her husband's mother for 5 years. Her relationship with her mother and sister never recovered.

One of my grandfathers was born to an unmarried mother at the same time. He was raised entirely by aunts and only found out who his mother was when she decided she wanted to be a grandmother to his children.

My mother walked out more than once returning to the UK and leaving me with my dad (who given the nature of his job farmed me out to whoever would look after me).

In the depths of my postpartum illness, I could easily have left dc1.

I think it probably happens more often than people realise.

Because it is better than the parents killing the child(ren)

Totally disagree. Any parent who abandons their children is the worst. It's not ok because you manage to get in there and leave first!

@usernother

That what be first on the list - abandonment

Helpmethanks
I might get flamed but does anyone understand why it’s not illegal?!

Because it is better than the parents killing the child(ren)

They're not all child killers who avoid the opportunity.

They don't deserve their children though.

I think you’re right to question whether it’s worse for the first parent to abandon or the second. I guess the first can tell themselves that the kids will be ok with the other parent but the second parent can’t pass the buck, and in my head should buckle down and get on with it. I realise that’s inherently unfair. I’m glad it’s pointed out to me, I’ve been struggling to understand the whole situation and think I’m applying my assumptions to what’s going on.

This happened to my husband, he was sent to boarding school abroad when he was eight and looked after by a nanny in the school holidays, he was flown home for christmas and made to lie to the extended family, so they all thought he was home for all the school holidays.

When he was a young adult they decided they now wanted to be parents, so they had another child, they would then regularly tell him how pleased they were to finally have the child they had always wanted (alluding to their new child not having a disability). The novelty however wore off, and they were also sent to boarding school at eight and they’re also looked after by a nanny in the holidays.

He now spends a lot of the school holidays with us, its important he gets to experience normal family life and sees that actually some people do care for him and value his worth, he hopefully knows he has a safe placehe can always go to once he is 18 and leaves boarding school.

My 'friends' did it. They both had kids each side, she had 3, and he had 2. They got together quick, got married, she desperately wanted another child for the perfect family, then they decide to move to New Zealand leaving all kids behind apart from their new child! Abhorrent.

Omg what happened to the kids? Who took them in. This thread is so sad, it's a crime to me to do this to innocent children😭

I worked in a school for a few years and it was really eye opening. Some of those teens (generally the ones who play up) had such a crap experience of being raised. One I’ll never forget was being raised my his grandmother and his mum kept turning up to school to get him to go with her. She was a heroin addict and had many different men in her life. Her son was naughty a lot. One day I saw him at the school gates in tears begging her to go to the police station and she was calling him a “fucking waste of space” because he wouldn’t go on the run with her. Suddenly I understood why he behaved how he did. I wanted to hug him take away the pain he was feeling.

you honestly never know what goes on at home for these dc.