Why is that men abandoning/not supporting their children is not taboo?

[CrapolaDeVille]

I was wondering this as I drove home today. When I was 19 I met a guy, at a mates house, who was in his early thirties with 5 children and three different mothers, he was single. Bleating on about how being a father wasn't for him, I did not hide my contempt and told him that if 'fatherhood' wasn't for him perhaps he should embrace 'condomhood' (I was very proud of this pun). He seemed to think it was okay to have kids and walk away as they were better off w/o him, as if that made him some sort of hero.

When did it become okay not to 'man up'? Is it just because women who have these children must all be slags and therefore these poor men haven't grown up and can't be responsible? (obviously not my opinion)

we pay income tax here aswell though SGM. or is it a different type of tax?

ok thanks. even so. i think there could be something similar here.

TBH I wouldn;t care how or why it happened here but it must happen. The demon single mother who is a drain on tax payers (which clearly she is not) wouldn't be so if the father(s) coughed up. I would like to see absent fathers having to contribute child care on top of maintenance too so that the mother, should she desire, can afford to work.

I'm a single mother, also currently on benefits. Exh left me when ds was a few weeks old and has never paid me a penny or contributed in any way to his upbringing.
I was at the job centre a few weeks ago and was told that all NRPs are now being forced to pay child maintenance, the money will be taken at source, every single NRP not paying maintenance will now have to. Am I the only person they told this to? as I've not heard any one else talking about it.
ExH has no money anyway, the jobcentre told me I'll be effected very badly from the cuts and the only way I'll be able to afford to stay in my (small 2 bedroomed ex social housing but private rented) house is through maintenance. So don't know what I'll do.
Also think xh will stop seeing ds in 'protest' at having to give me a few pounds a week.

Anyone who thinks fathers are held equally responsible for their children is living in a very lovely dream world, xh's life is back to how it was before he met me, in and out of work, down the pub and with a new gf. No one bats an eyelid.

I am 20 now, parents divorced about 10 years ago. We had shared parenting by agreement, completely 50/50 in terms of time. My mum and dad agreed that themselves. Whenever I tell anyone this most people say something about what a good dad I have (which is true) but never mention what a great mum I have (and she IS great).

I find it very annoying that people expect my dad to have just fucked off. It perpetuates stereotypes about men being incapable, and I always feel that there's a hidden message in there that my mum somehow failed or abandoned us. Shared parenting worked really well in our family, my parents just got on with it and were civil. I accept this wouldn't work for all families but I think it would definitely work with more than attempt it now.

Good thread and particularly interesting given the discussions we've had on other threads

I think the main reason is that this is the way it's always been historically. Because there are 9 months between the act and the consequence as far as men are concerned, they have always had the option of buggering off and leaving the woman literally holding the baby. In the past 'sowing wild oats' was practically considered a rite of passage. When you've had that kind of mindset ingrained for centuries, nay millennia, it's not surprising that we've not got very far with overcoming it yet. Doesn't mean we shouldn't be fighting it though as it is absolutely terrible.

The thing is though, even today in a happy marriage, you'll still find that childcare is still predominantly the woman's responsibility. This is why I always get really really cross with people suggesting that 50/50 residency is the way to overcome this. It is only an appropriate response if the child was having 50/50 care before the split. If men really wanted responsibility for the children they would fight for more paternity rights, for more flexible working, they would volunteer to make sure that they are the ones to leave the office on time to pick up the kids, they would be the ones remembering that DC1 has a playdate on saturday and DC2 has a dentist appointment on wednesday that they the father would take them to. They would be the ones sacrificing a career to SAH or manage a realistic balance between work and children. A lot of men only seem to want shared residency when they realise that they may have to pay extra maintenance as a result.

The way forward that is best for the child is for them to continue in life as close to what it was before the split. So if Mum was the one doing most of the care, that's who should have primary residency. The way to make this FAIR and to get men to realise that abdicating their responsibilities is NOT ON, is to insist that they contribute financially - just the same as they were before the split but this time without getting their socks washed for free. Paying maintenance should be enforced with the full force of law.

FWIW, I think with the exception of conception, pregnancy, birth and lactation, men make just as good parents as women and I would like to see more of them doing that, but they have to fight for the right to do that WITHIN a relationship first before they seek to gain residency when a relationship breaks down.

Increasing paternity rights and making non-payment of maintenance punishable by prison would do so much to address sexism in this country, but it will need men and women to pressure the politicians into it as it is such a departure from the status quo.

sunshine, I have never been against single mothers....just a little selfish and would like some recognition for staying at home!!

sunshine - don't you find that a lot of the 'fathers' rights' campaigns over the last decade or so has been about exactly that - fathers asserting their 'rights' over their children, with very little mention of their responsibilities towards them.

I remember reading about Louis de Bernieres a year or so ago, complaining about how the courts had denied him access to his children and how utterly outrageous it was, and thinking that he'd probably had very little to do with them before he'd split up with his partner. Sure enough, a friend was quoted a week later saying how his former partner had done everything for the children and LdB had barely changed a nappy in 7 years.

His 'outrage' about being denied access was much more to do with how much money he was being asked to pay now that he no longer resided with them.

Agree about the rights & responsibilities points.

This reminds me of the thread the other day where a family were moving away and the dad who had never shown any interest in the child or paid anything towards him offered him to go and live with him, if he didn't want to move as far away from his friends.

The overwhelming response on the thread was that she should just cheerfully say goodbye.

I really struggled to understand it. It does seem to me - the opinions on that thread - that most people think that a father doesn't have to do anything to have a "claim" on his children, while a mother has to earn it. Basically it is her job to look after the children, pay for them, bring them up and all that, and if the man wanders back in she is expected to cheerfully hand them over. I don't get it.

When my ex fucked off with a newer model i remember saying to him,what makes you so sure i want to stay here and rasie your children?Of course i was bluffing but a good point i felt.
He has been able to start a fresh,make a nice new family and pretty much disregard the dc's he already had pay no money for them or even send them a birthday card and yet when the most recent child was born he announced it on fb and was getting big congrats from people who knew he had 4 others he never bothered with.
It has taken me 4 yrs to re settle our dd who reacted very badly to the break up,my ds's are left without any decent male role model and wehn they all recently left home it was my now dh who helped them move ad "put up[ shelves"
By contrast i used to work with a lady who had left her marriage but her teen dd's wanted to stay in the marital home,she still had them to stay all the time and paid for them too but she was hated by many of our colleagues cos "she left her kids"

I think it is something to do with the way adulthood and parenthood is defined for men and women.

Adulthood for women is very often defined as marriage or motherhood - leaving unmarried or childless women being looked at as not quite adult. And motherhood for women means doing the mother role and actually functioning properly as a mother.

Whereas adulthood for men, simply means having grown up and left childhood behind. Fatherhood enhances adulthood but it's not a necessary part of it and fatherhood isn't defined as functioning as a father, it's just defined as reproducing. The very verb, to father a child, versus to mother a child - one is about reproduction, the other is about nurture.

A bit meandering, but in short, I think it's about the fact that men are not expected to embrace fatherhood and see it as an integral part of their identity in the way that women are expected to embrace motherhood. So when they dump their kids financially, it is not perceived as a moral outrage.

Oh and I also agree that 50 50 residency should be the norm after the breakdown of a relationship, when 50 50 parenting has been the norm before the breakdown of the relationship. (I also suspect that if it were, there would be fewer relationship breakdowns to begin with, but that's another thread.)

Because we live in a misogynist society.

Yes, that too

Chuckling at the idea that men who abandon their children are routinely shunned. All such a man needs to say it their ex is "mental" and lots of people shrug (and perhaps mutter their sympathies) and move on to the next topic.

Oh arent they always 'mental' !

whenever i hear that excuse i jut think 'yh sure'

The whole 'hero' single dad thing is crazy too, cue lots of aaahs!
yet a single mum is just wrong by default.

If any of my sons abandoned their offspring id be thorughly ashamed of them [i dont think they would]

If i hear that a man i know of doesnt bother with his children i cant take them seriously after that.

I think everyone here has covered off any point I wanted to make...so just wanted to add..yes absolutely should be made taboo

Until then, if you are not making the same effort emotionally, physically and financially then don't complain about being denied rights.