No dad ***is ***a million times better than a bad dad, but of course it’s still vastly inferior to a good dad.
Just as a data point, my daughter has never made a thing of not having a dad, and frankly I think that’s at least partly because I didn’t. Of course it came up, but she never seemed upset about it, and I never said or did anything to give her the impression that she got screwed on the parent front and should feel sorry for herself.
For seventeen years, when he came up, I’d tell a funny story about him, and say that he was a good person who wasn’t ready to be a father, and that I ultimately decided that absent was better than unreliable, because the one thing a parent absolutely needs to be is reliable.
My daughter met her father when she was seventeen, and formed her own conclusions. She was, by and large, unimpressed. But I’m glad that she went into the situation with minimal baggage, and an attitude of “Hey, if we hit it off, that adds something to my life, and if we don’t, well… been good without you, will continue to be.”
Jesus Christ. AmericanMaid, the thing to remember is that it’s just wrong and selfish to have kids until you’re married and financially secure, but you’d better wrap those up by the time you’re thirty, or else you’re risking their health, and that’s just wrong and selfish. Welcome to motherhood, where your personal needs and desires cease to have any importance, and every nimrod with an opinion thinks you need to hear it, for the good of the chirren.
Seriously, one reason to have a good support system in place is that it takes a village to hold you back and calm you down when people start telling you how to parent.
The only suggestion I can give you is to rethink the roomate with a child idea. It might be a fabulous idea, but it might not. Are you good with roomates in general? Does sharing things bother you? What if she has fundamental differences in raising her child? What if her ex is causing problems?
Of course, these are all what ifs. I know for me, a roomate is not a good idea at all.
I may be completely out of line here as well, Alice, but would it help for you to go together with your son to volunteer somewhere where all the other kids don’t have dads, either? One of those programs for at-risk kids or something like that? It could show him that he’s not some weird freak and there are others just like him, and that if they can be strong and move on with their lives, he can, too.
I know how you feel. My daughter doesn’t specifically say that she is upset because her dad isn’t around much, but I know she is. She has some fairly serious anxiety and anger issues and I’m sure that is a large factor in it.
I got pregnant with her when I was 17 and I was happy about it, even though I knew I would never want to be with her dad long term. I, too, thought that it would be good enough that I’d always be there for her and that her dad would be there separately (and he was, for the first 5 years, just not the second 5 years).
I wouldn’t say nobody should ever become a single mother by choice, but I do believe that pretty much every resulting kid is going to have some issues with it, and you can’t know in advance the severity of them. And I feel so, so guilty about it all the time, which isn’t something I would have been able to foresee happening. Maybe if I’d adopted a kid who had few other prospects besides foster care or an orphanage or something, I could rationalize it to myself, because there are certainly worse things than having one loving parent. But to create a child knowing what they’re in for is another matter.
As a matter of fact it IS irresponsible and self-absorbed to intentionally have a kid if you aren’t finacially able to take care of it, and it is also pretty selfish and thoughtless to make a decision before the kid is even born that it doesn’t deserve a relationship with a father. Being married isn’t a requirement, but the notion that a child should be deprived of a relationship with one of its parents (absent any abuse or other types of behavior which could be injurious to the kid) is definitely self-centered and not really grounded in any concern for the child. A child is not a cat. It’s not something you just go out and purchase as an accessory.
This is true of fatherhood too. Anyone who approaches parenthood without this basic understanding is doing it wrong.
Well, I wouldn’t go that far. Of course when you’re a parent there will be times you have to put your child’s needs ahead of your own, but to become a complete martyr and deny everything about yourself? Who is that helping?
When you parent a child that way, you’re not just showing them that you love them so much that you put them first, you’re also showing them that they should put themselves last later when THEY have children.
They should. I WANT them to think that. It isn’t martyrism, it’s just basic responsibility. The kids’ needs come first. That is not to say that making this priority means that a parent’s life is all ascetic self-sacrifice and obesience to every whim of the kid. That’s a strawman. There is a difference between what a child needs and what a child wants, and thereis also a difference between saying a parent’s desires come second, and saying they need to be abandoned all together.
ETA I should also add that part of tending a child’s needs means teaching them self-reliance. It doesn’t mean a parent should be servile, just responsible.
A child doesn’t ***need ***a father. Millions get by fine without them. They also don’t ***need ***a mother, see above. It is, of course, best if you can provide them with both of these things, but there’s no reason not to have kids just because everything’s not perfect.
I’m not a single parent, but have several friends who chose to have a baby alone or adopt as part of their life plan. All three have regretted it, but that’s not to say that you would. Each one of them wishes that she hadn’t been so rigid in their planning. That said, if you’re the type who really needs a plan and really needs a kid, I think you can successfully parent on your own, but you definitely better have a damned good support system.
As mentioned earlier, what if you get sick? What if there are complications that prevent you from taking care of the baby? I had eclampsia and was discharged anyway at four days thanks to my insurance policy. My blood pressure at the time I left was so high I had a migraine for two weeks afterward and was incapable of eating and drinking. He was nursing but not getting anything. By the time we got him to his two week appointment, he was peeing crystals (as first-time parents, we couldn’t tell what was normal and what wasn’t) and I was just on the cusp of being hospitalized again. I’m not trying to scare you, but if you go it alone, you’ll need more than just friends to help you in the event of an unforseen issue.
That is true, there is a big difference between a child’s needs and wants. But parents are just humans. Even if they WANT to do every single thing they can for their child’s needs, which in some cases necessarily means neglecting their own needs, that doesn’t mean they’ll be able to do it, especially on an indefinite basis. I think parents need to acknowledge and be honest with themselves about their own limitations. We all have them. There is no parent in the world that would be able to singularly cope with any possible issues that could ever be thrown their way.
A child doesn’t need all four limbs either. Lots of children do fine with a missing arm or leg. That doesn’t make it a responsible choice to cut one off for no reason. You don’t have a right to make that decision for the kid. We are not talking about necessities, we are talking about cutting a kid off from a parent completely gratuitously. For no good reason, but the self-absorbed whim of the other parent. That’s not beginning the kid’s life with its own best interest at heart.
To the OP: this may have been asked already, but why do you feel you need a baby?
I think I’m a little confused about the idea of a life plan like that. It was one of my biggest challenges with understanding my friends’ decision. Could you elucidate?
But there’s all kinds of good reasons for not wanting a person in your child’s life, even if they happen to be a genetic donor. For instance, I’d prefer my daughter not learn to be smug and self-righteous, so I’d like to keep smug self-righteous people away from her.
True. But also no poor parents, parents where one or both are abusive, parents where one or both have substance abuse issues, parents who are together but clearly can’t stand each other, etc., etc., etc.
My point isn’t that anyone who feels like it should just have a kid and forget everything else, but just that nobody’s situation is perfect. There are a lot of factors that need to be taken into consideration for anyone, and partner or lack thereof is certainly a huge one, but it’s far from the only one. And most of us are not meeting all of the major standards (if no one had a kid unless they did, our species would have died out a long time ago).
If a single person is dying for a kid and has everything else going for her/him, well then, the kid could do a lot worse.
My daughter doesn’t specifically say that she is upset because her dad isn’t around much, but I know she is. She has some fairly serious anxiety and anger issues and I’m sure that is a large factor in it.