Are there really as many women as it sounds who deny ex access to children?

[Rainbow03]

I don’t personally know of anyone who has done this. But when you speak to people, especially men you always hear the story of the evil ex women denying contact or making it difficult etc.

My own partner says he has a friend whose ex only allows access if he gives her money.

Do women genuinely behave like this as much as you hear about and why is the story constantly being told.

It makes it difficult when you have actually denied contact to seem legit and I hate telling people in RL. In my case it was drugs and abuse but people probably think I’m one of those ex’s.

I doubt it. Deadbeat dads lie and they want to look like the good guy and ensure they don't put off potential victims, I mean partners

Well he could have not had an affair and tried harder for contact couldn't he? Instead they are letting these 'silly women' win.

Your utter misogynistic contempt is showing.

You sound a little bit foolish agreeing with these "silly women". Like you, you seem to think a parent having an affair is reason for them to be denied their children. The relationship between the parent and child has got nothing to do with how the parents feel about being cheated on.

You don't get to punish your kids because you can't get over your spouse cheating. That's not misogynistic, as you seem to be confused on the word.

Yes it is strange as I’ve never known of a friend do this, when we think of male friends/relatives where this has supposedly happened it’s always actually a lot more complicated e.g. him insisting on full custody or having 50% contact from birth or coming up with any excuse as to her ‘being unreasonable’ e.g. didn’t get invited to the scan and then deciding he’s not going to bother having anything to do with the child but it’s of course ‘her’ fault.

Definitely much more common!!!!

First ex has always seen the kids. He was so nasty and abusive towards myself but never to the kids, was an ok dad and has always paid maintenance.

Second ex wasn’t directly abusive but extremely neglectful plus financial abuse, he has crap parenting skills and doesn’t seem to want to do any better, possibly passively aggressively useless. He doesn’t pay maintenance. He doesn’t see DS anymore. It was partly the lack of maintenance and partly that I was totally fed up of the way he made DS’s behaviour much worse. DS is much more settled without him. The lack of maintenance alone wouldn’t have driven me to put a stop to it. The day I finally snapped was the day after he’d had DS and it was constant “I want…., I want…., I want….” with no manners, because he’d been given zero boundaries while with his dad. DS also had massive issues with running off when he was younger, because his dad would let him go wherever he wanted and just follow. Fine for a Disney dad day but this doesn’t work in real life and made my life 100% more stressful, not to mention dangerous for DS as he ended up getting lost a few times.

Totally THIS for me. It’s been so fucking hard and I’ve had to do it all on my own. He only wants so see DS on his terms and is unwilling/unable to actually parent him.

I don’t know any women who have denied contact. However I do know 3 fathers who don’t allow the mums contact. One mum was happy to share care of her one year old baby after breaking up with her boyfriend and he took their child 200 miles away and refused to bring her back. After a lengthy court battle it was decided the baby should stay with dad as she was settled. She is 11 now and mum is lucky to see her twice a year if she’s lucky. He makes things difficult for her. I also know of 2 women who are in abusive relationships but won’t leave for fear of losing their children sadly.

I've seen this from a few different perspectives/sides.

I have 2 ex's and had children with both. I always encouraged contact between my kids and their dads. First husband had kids half the time but this was later reduced when he moved a new partner into his small home. She had 4 of her own (wild) children and they only ever wanted to have my children when her children were there so that they had "time off"

Second husband, fun but irresponsible, unable to tell the truth if his life depended on it, had contact initially. This was in our home, that he left voluntarily (turned out he was living with another woman but didn't let on for months). He would "look after" our child there while I worked until window cleaner told me that our child (1 year old) was often left playing or crying by himself while ex slept or played on computer. I stopped this arrangement and began supervising contact for our child's safety. Ex husband was literally comatose while asleep so this was really dangerous. He also lied about passing driving test and his employment status etc....

After a time, he met a new partner, settled down and began having regular contact again. We would go to parents evening/football training etc together. His new partner was nice and made effort to get along with me and our son but ex could not accept that I then met a new partner and systematically turned our son against him. My son (now 19) now lives with my ex and his wife. He is not at school/university and.does.not work. He has not learned any responsibility since living with his father and I wish I had handled.things differently.

I am remarried now to the new partner mentioned above (together 17 years). He has a daughter who we had sole custody for when he first split from wife. She later restarted contact and then stopped us from having contact. We fought it and spent thousands maintaining contact despite her removing their child from country.

Finally, my grandson has no contact with his father. His was due to his father's abusive nature. Took a long time for daughter to break contact but was eventually done through court system.

I also work in a school. I have seen countless single parents denying the other parent contact with their child. All feel they have justifiable reasons I suppose. Plenty are just malicious, jealous exes with no basis but others have very good reason. Just because others don't know the reasons, doesn't mean they are not there or legitimate.

I've been on both sides.

My ex left for OW, wanted his own life, played games, late for pick up, abusive to me, wouldn't accept the routine of his contact, ‘no one was going to tell him when he could and couldn't see his own children, etc etc, but I stuck to it, maintained the positive, stood my ground and my DC’s have maintained a decent relationship with their DF.

My ex DiL - from the early days of marriage, didn't fully include us, didn't want to be part of our family, invited us to some events but made it clear we weren't really welcome. Some really poorly mannered behaviour which we tried to accept as ‘all families are different’ and not necessarily wrong.

Once divorced with a small DC, she destroyed the father/son relationship, frustrated the court agreed contact, repeatedly, blocked/unblocked family members, ignored celebrations. Eventually the court agreed that given the time that there had been no contact it was more damaging for the relationship to be re-established.
Even when we sent gifts to our grandson, we had no response, not even a thank you. Eventually this has been message to ask us not to send anything else as our grandson only knows us as a ‘name on a card’ and this Christmas had a near breakdown at the mention of our names…

There has been a sense of inevitability, right from those early days, that she wouldn't support our grandson to have contact with his DF or extended family.
Very sad that any person grows up with half of a family missing.

Not in my experience.

I as protective mother said, the children can see you/their father whenever they wish -
it wasn’t true that I was turning them against me/him at all, he achieved that himself over years of DV.

Neither was I influencing them in any way, my insouciance was commendable.
We all breathed a sigh of relief knowing we were safe now in our own home
Then! he wanted to come and spend time with them in OUR home, children
said no, I enforced this, to Court we went.

Who knows what he was telling the new woman about how awful I was- it didn’t matter as her opinion was valueless to me.
I have met women who weaponise their children for perceived fiscal gain - how they generally feel is disempowered, hapless, despairing, realising the man is still jerking the reins.

Quirkygirl, your last line is an exxcellent summary.

I tried not to as this is serious, but your illuminating comments made me laugh, thanks, succinct, brutal, truthful.

I don’t know any men who don’t see their children but blame their ex.

I know one woman whose ex doesn’t see much of his children and probably blames her for it. He’s a serial father though, she was probably too young at the point they got together to see that it was in fact, not great, that she was what facilitated him seeing his children from a previous relationship. She knows all too well now they have separated and he equally can’t be arsed with any of his children.

Yep. My brothers ex. He can see them when it suits her, if she wants a night out, to go away with her OM etc.

as pp they’re “her” kids. Initially she did “discuss” decisions with him, which translated to her telling him and expecting him to back her up, even if he didn’t agree. He asked one too many questions so she stopped telling him stuff, got him removed from school and GP etc contact lists so he couldn’t “interfere”. She wouldn’t tell him about parents evenings etc as she went with her new man and didn’t want him knowing.

as the kids got to teenage they chose to spend more time at his as they had a mutual hobby. She saw this as them preferring him to her and stopped it, saying they couldn’t see him because they had too much homework.

now kids are adults and she doesn’t need a babysitter she’s gone full out and told them all sorts of crap like he left them, he had an affair (he didn’t, it was her sleeping with someone else), he took all her money and left her with nothing- he didn’t, she emptied all the joint accounts and even remortgaged before she kicked him out and moved OM in the same night. She even got the house signed over to her in court as she couldn’t afford the mortgage on her own and the kids were so young.

the kids don’t speak to him at all now.

It's poor parenting to tear your family apart through an affair and pretty sure giving up on contact isn't considered great parenting. These men are making poor choices for their children and blaming women for them doing that IS misogynistic.

I am ashamed to say I was one of them in the beginning. Ex at the time had a new gf every other week and was constantly job hopping to avoid paying maintenance. He also never actually spent any time with our son when he was meant to. Every weekend he had him, his mum actually looked after son so he could socialise. I got the the point where I was like what's the point? He then disappeared off the face of the earth for 6 years or so to go travelling but I maintained contact with his parents. He's 14 now and still stays with grandparents regularly. Every half term. I'm happy to facilitate. If ex is there that's great but we make alternate plans with that side of the family because we can't rely on ex to be present.

Oh you again. You're ss wasn't even granted any access from the courts.

@AarlowDK AarlowDK

I'm not sure you understand my point. Your responses indicate you don't. I can't explain it any more simply.

In 4 cases I can talk about

1 the guy claims this but the x makes them.available she just won't allow visits in her home. He won't take them anywhere. In this case the children go stay with Paternal grandparents every 3 weekends and have a loving relationship with p grandparents. Dad never shows for the weekends they are with grandparents.

1 after 5 years of court back and forth the child ended up living with the father as by order due to how obstructive mother was being. Child was primary age

1 The child hit preteen and became very adamant they wanted to see their father where mother had been obstructive. Mother finally relented. They ended up with a very good coparenting relationship mother even apologised years later. This is a old case the "child" is now in 40s

And 1father claims mother won't allow him access but he never is available at their allocated times and then want to change to time that suits him sometimes with 1 hour notice. When mother stopped facilitating this and simply stated. Your next time is x date i will not be changing this. He stopped bothering.

I do want to point out if you read mn regularly around October time you every year will see mother's who go on about how horrid their x is being as he wants Christmas with their child. She had it the year before but can't possibly be without them. That is a early stage of this and frankly far.to many men end up without having Christmas memories with their father as mother was not ok with not having Christmas without "her" children. That may only be 1 day but that is a form of alienation imo.

I don’t understand your post?

I understand your points exactly. You are blaming women for the poor choices of men.

Man has an affair and the woman is understandably upset. Man claims woman is waging hate campaigns with the children when he can't be bothered and therefore gives up citing HER unreasonable behaviour.

No, I'm blaming mothers who deliberately poison their children against their fathers.

I don't condone affairs. I find cheaters disgusting. The impact of the affair naturally affects the whole family. But you can still be a shit husband and a good father

Many of the women I work with, are committed only to making their children hate their father, because she hates how he treated her. Often the men could fight harder, but there comes a point with a lot of the cases I see where she so determined, he sees it's completely futile as she will never relent. There's no "claim" about it. They are full on hate campaigns.

Wouldn’t you say to your partner obviously he should be able to see his children but didn’t you ask him but mate, aren’t you paying any support? I mean, you can moan about not seeing them but if all you have to do is see them is pay what you should be paying then this seems very black and white to me. Support your kids, you dick.