Mothers, fathers, children and the family heirarchy

[Ormirian]

Thread obliquely about a thread. Sorry.

But as I read more I got and then and finally downright .

I have always thought that having children was a joint project. Both parents have as much invested in the child, both care equally about the outcome. I always beleived that was a given. With good decent men anyway.

When children are small they come first. Always. Simple logistics demand it for a start. The parents gets what is left over in terms of energy, time and affection. In a solid relationship with similar attitudes that is absolutely fine because it's temporary and for a worthwhile goal.

I have heard about fathers being jealous when a new baby arrives. I can understand that I guess - mother's do tend to get wrapped up in newborns, exhausted and emotionally drained. However I always assumed that jealousy of a baby (who also happens to be their child) is something that would be regarded with embarrassment and shame. Something a man would fight against and certainly not mention seriously to his partner. If he was jealous of his own child he'd do his damndest to sort it out himself and not parade his ego in front of his partner and demand she massage it for him!

Have I been suckered by the myth of the New Man? Do most men really feel as if their infant children are 'in the way' and taking up too much of their partner's time? How can you be jealous of the affection your partner shows to your child and the time and energy she gives them? And what happened to supporting your wife/gf in what is a hard time for her too? When she needs your support and love? When she doesn't need more demands?

[sunshineandbooks]

Mmm. Interesting. I didn't read Sakura's post like that.

I thought what she was saying that your relationship with your child is likely to be more long-lasting than your relationship with your child's father. Given the rate of relationship breakdown I'd have thought this was a statistical probability in fact, though I don't suppose there are figures available to see how many children are estranged from their parents.

On that basis, and given that the child/parent relationship tends to have more of an unconditional love element to it, perhaps it does make sense to treasure this relationship most. That doesn't necessarily mean you would expect your DC to reciprocate and put you before their own partners and children does it?

Then again, if you are in a happy, equal relationship then really you should never be in a position where you feel like you have to make that choice in the first place. I guess this is the most important point to remember about the whole argument.

How would this apply to blended families, which are increasing in number all the time? There are loads of posts on here where a woman is accused of putting her new relationship before her existing DC's happiness and things get even more complicated if she then has another child with the new man. That's not a rhetorical question BTW, genuinely wondering what people think of the dynamic in this scenario.

I think (unless I have misunderstood her) I agree that it is wrong to increase father's rights until we have made mother's rights equal.

How can we press for an increase in father's rights when we have not addressed those of mothers? I know we are not talking about separated families in this particular instance, but I think it is relevant to the argument. Women get a shoddy deal post separation. Not only have successive governments failed spectacularly to enforce child maintenance (3 out of 5 don't pay it) but the current govt is actively discouraging women for pursuing it by introducing charges to use the CSA. A feminist agenda would surely argue that this should be addressed before we start talking about father's rights?

Then again, I think one of the best ways to redress gender equality in the workplace at the same time as stopping men from abdicating domestic responsibility to their partners is by bringing in better paternity rights, and I think if more men were pulling their weight at home, relationships would improve anyway and relationship breakdown would decrease.

[HerBeX]

I don't know how you go from acknowledging that the relationship with your children is the closest bond you will ever have, to interpreting that as meaning that any mother who acknowledges that is destined to be a MIL from hell, Exoticfruits.

It's simply true what Sakura says; we love our children unconditionally but we don't love our husbands / partners in the same way; our love for our husbands may die one day, but our love for our children never does, even if our children turn out to be ghastly adults. Why are you uncomfortable about that truth? That doesn't mean we can't recognise that from the moment they start to become adults, we are far less important people in their lives, than they are in our's.

[exoticfruits]

I think that women get a good deal with separation-it is generally the father moves out. It is only now that father's rights seem to be addressed with joint custody rights.
I don't know why you would make the choice between partner and DC-it is almost as if there is only so much love to go around instead of it being infinite.
I promised to love DH 'until death do us part' and although I can see it it is conditional, hopefully I intend to be able to do just that.

In a blended relationship your DC comes first-it is a question of 'love me, love my DC' and if they can't do that you walk away. An adult can cope with heartbreak but a DC shouldn't live in a home where they are merely tolerated. I agree that you can't force love but if my DH treated our DCs differently from his step son I wouldn't have it. Fortunately he always says he has '3 DCs' and doesn't differentiate.

People know what their DH is like before they have DCs.Mine could cook, iron, sew etc and still does. He could change nappies, bath etc.

If people didn't have a DC until they had sorted out the work and parenting ideas they wouldn't have the problem.

I think that fathers should be equal and ideally if they separate they should have equal access. Put the DCs first and leave themselves out of it. It is at that stage that women think the DH should be the part time, visiting parent.

[exoticfruits]

Of course our love for our DC never dies and it might for a partner. That doesn't mean that we don't set them free! We never control our DC, except as babies-by 'the terrible twos' they are exerting their will and personality. We can control our response, we can't control how they behave. They may think entirely differently, you may bring them up as a vegetetarian-there is nothing to say they will agree and follow-on any of your ideas.

[anastaisia]

I'm not convinced about the 'generally the father moves out'

I think it's certainly the spin on it but I know at least 3 women who left the family home with the kids because they couldn't have afforded to keep it up on their income. And at least 2 where both parents moved out of the family home to new places due to costs, in both of those cases the mother and children have ended up moving around rented property with little security.

I don't think that's uncommon? I think it's probably only, erm how to phrase this properly, women from certain socio-economic groups who could afford to take on a dual income home either through their own salary or a combination of income and maintenance?

[Ormirian]

"Then again, if you are in a happy, equal relationship then really you should never be in a position where you feel like you have to make that choice in the first place. I guess this is the most important point to remember about the whole argument"

Yes! Which was the whole point of the thread.

I love my DH. I appreciate is qualities. We rub along together very happily. We are yin and yang and all that stuff. My love for him is different to the love I feel for my DH. How could it not be. I grew them in my body. I'd shed my last drop of blood for them without a second thought. I wouldn't do the same for DH. Is that odd? Maybe. I just assumed that was what being a mother means.

[exoticfruits]

I think that generally mothers get custody and father is a weekend parent.I bet there are far more that way.

[Bonsoir]

Lots of men feel left out when they become fathers and, IMO, mothers do well to remember that. I happen not to believe that children come first - children grow up and leave home. Your long term relationship is with your partner, not your children. Enjoy them, but remember that you are first and foremost a couple.

[exoticfruits]

I would die for my DCs, I wouldn't for my DH, that doesn't mean that I don't love him and he is the one I will be alone with for 30/40 yrs (depending on how long we live). My DCs will form stronger bonds with their partners and DCs than me-which is how it should be.
People seem to have no time for men.I have 3 lovely DSs, I assume that future partners are going to be with them because they love them to death and can't imagine life without them and any DCs are a spin off-not that they are a means to a baby and a minor inconvenience.

[Ormirian]

"any DCs are a spin off-not that they are a means to a baby and a minor inconvenience"

What a crass thing to say.

I've been married for 19 yrs. Lived together 6 years before that. How can you assume that I view my DH as a minor inconvenience But when we (note the use of the word 'we') had children we made a decision to devote ourselves to them. Totally. We didn't have to go through a ceremony to tell people that - it was just a given. And if my DH (of, at that point 5 years), didn't realise that, he wasn't the man I thought he was. I married an adult - not a spoilt child.

[exoticfruits]

Exactly Ormirian-find out who you married first. Only have DCs
if he isn't a spoilt child and you love him to bits.
You get the partner first and he is central. Your DCs are a precious gift for a short time in your life. If you get it right they will come back all the time because they want to-and want their parents to have a loving relationship and not have the responsibility of the parent living through them.

[exoticfruits]

Both DH and I are devoted to our DCs-but we have equal rights.

[Ormirian]

Well that is all I was asking. Equal rights and responsibilities. And no one parent trying to behave like an extra child.

[Bonsoir]

I think it is frequently mothers who devote themselves wholly to their children and forget about their adult relationship with their partner who can justifiably be accused of being spoiled children.

[sunshineandbooks]

OrmIrian I am not directing this post at you because I never find your posts smug or self-satisfied and I think you show considerable empathy to other people's situations.

However, for those posters whose tone of superiority is raging in their posts about how it all comes down to choosing the right man to have children with, can you please stop it? I am really pleased for you that you did, and I admire that you had the skills to do it, but some of us didn't and your thinly veiled talk of 'well it's your own fault really for choosing the wrong man' is really unhelpful and quite inappropriate on a feminist board I feel.

Besides which, none of it addresses the fact that while I may have made a bad choice of partner, I am also the one living with the consequences of that decision day in day out while my male XP gets off scot free.

And certainly my personal experience and those of every other single mother I know in real life is that they and the DC had to leave the house because they couldn't afford it. In some terrible cases, the XP deliberately witheld money in order to 'punish' the woman for having the temerity to leave.

[sunshineandbooks]

My point being that it is about MALE behaviour. It is NOT the woman's fault if a man is a lazy, uninterested jealous partner/father. I

Yes, in a good relationship a woman should NEVER be forced to choose between her child's needs and her partners, but that IS the reality for a lot of women, and even though the woman can be accused of bad judgment, it's her partner who is at fault for being a selfish idiot.

[Wellnerfermind]

I think the point is if he's selfish and lazy hes not going to change is he?

Once a twat usually always a twat.

[sunshineandbooks]

Why didn't I think of that?

A lot of men don't show you their true colours until you are in a vulnerable position. In my case, DV started when I was pregnant - that was after 6 years together previously.

[exoticfruits]

I can see that some women are with the wrong man but it still means that even though you have the storngest bond possible with your DC, you have to let them get on with their own lives as adults and accept that they have other people who come before you. If you go on 'being devoted' after they have their own family you will be deeply resented-you have to be there but in the background. If you are with the right man it makes sense to nurture the relationship because ,even if it is conditional love, he is the one there in day to day life. If he is the wrong one-don't stay for the sake of the DCs-it won't make anyone happy in the long run.

[sunshineandbooks]

I think the state of your relationship with your partners is completely independent of the state of your relationship with your DC.

I left my XP yes but even if I were still with him and he wasn't a twat I don't think I'd feel any differently about my DC or my priority to them. But I am a laissez faire type of parent who very much encourages my DC to learn from their experiences and to be independent thinkers. Putting your DC first is not the same thing as being unable to let them go.

[blackcurrants]

Sorry if my posts have sounded smug, sunshine - honestly not my intent, more that I'm musing on what's worked (and what hasn't) so it's kinda thinking out loud and rambly.

Sorry.

[sunshineandbooks]

blackcurrants I wasn't thinking of you. I didn't see anything smug or self-congratulatory about your posts at all. No need to apologise.

[HerBeX]

Exoticfruits, why are you so obsessed with mothers continuing to be devoted when their kids have grown up?

YOu seem almost disapproving of devoted mothers.

Like the men who invented boarding schools to stop that sort of nonsense. It's OK, most women are sane - they know their sons are going to love their wives more than their mums, they expect them too and are happy t hat's the case.

[HerBeX]

expect them to even

[sakura]

Yes, devoted mothers are kind of a joke in patriarchy aren't they. how many derogatory words do we have? Mummy's boy, wrapped up in cotton wool, suffocating, smothering etc.

I do think that there is a problem with women being unfulfilled (thanks again, patriarchy ) and that sometimes this manifests in a preoccupation with children and grandchildren... women need positions of economic, social and political power.. that will cure it, then they won't be unfulfilled will they! But that's not what I was getting at at all.

I was getting at the idea that the heterosexual bond is in no way as important as the mother-child bond no matter how hard the patriarchy tries to change that.

It probably boils down to men's jealousy of the mother-child relationship.. that's why so many societies have got hang-ups about breastfeeding

there is also preoccupation in the media of grooming children to leave you (especially daughters.. this serves patriarchy very well indeed because daughters are groomed to be "independant" which actually translates into "living without a support network" which in turn makes young women easier to manipulate, and they are more likely to get trapped in a relationship)

Kids do need to be independant, yes, they do need to beat their own path.. but there shouldn't be anything shameful about having a close bond with your mother or children!!!