I don’t know about you, but spending time with Rosemary’s baby is pretty low on my list of birthday priorities.
Jesus to you too - do you have a brain, or is it that you flunked grade school English? Do you see those question marks up there? That means I was asking the OP questions, to get more information.
I don’t know where you live but here on planet Earth, we have women who marry only to get a sperm donor and walking wallet (hence the cliches). We also have people of both sexes who expect that simply becoming a parent will magically cause people of both sexes to suddenly become and act mature. Reading the OP, it looks like she did the first and is now mad that the second didn’t happen with her ex. She admits she knew the guy was a jerk, yet she went ahead and had a kid with him - I don’t know if she married just for the pregnancy (but then why else marry a jerk?) but she certainly knew he was a jerk at least by the time of the divorce yet she still expects him to care about this baby he hasn’t shown a heck of a lot of interest in yet.
I don’t know anything about this sort of thing - is he allowed to opt out of visitation altogether?
However, that isn’t really the issue here. The guy is a jerk and isn’t magically going to change just because the OP or you or the courts want him to. Far far too many babies are born to fathers that never wanted them and want nothing to do with them and quite frankly, if I was the mother in this scenario, I wouldn’t want to let him have the kid for visitation without me there, given his complete lack of concern.
This is an attitude I will never get. The man, who is obviously at the very least immature, is presented with a baby he doesn’t want and never did want. Yet somehow you expect that the birth will suddenly make him want and care for her? (Baby in OP is a her, right?) Not everyone automatically loves little babies, then adding having one forced on you tends to ramp up the resentment.
Why again is it a good idea to force this guy to parent this baby?
curlcoat, you make assumptions yourself, yet you call others out for making assumptions.
It’s not stated in the OP if the father wanted a child or not - my “father” wanted me, yet when my parents divorced he said he “couldn’t be a part-time father” and used that as an excuse for not paying child support or visiting his first child. Who happened to be a girl; he took good care of his sons.
to the OP, I feel for you. You are trying to do the best you can for your child. My recommendation - let him go. Make him call for visitation - don’t just expect him - and raise your daughter alone. Don’t let her spend weekends without plans because that’s “visitation weekend”. Don’t let her look forward to something that might or might not happen.
Don’t go into explainations at this age - I was in my late teens and early twenties before I really understood what a complete asshole my father was. My mother never bad-mouthed him; she let him show me what a loser he was.
It’s hard for you to raise a child alone. I’m glad she’s got you.
Do you really know that your father wanted you? I mean, the quotes around the word, his actions after the divorce - makes me wonder.
Now, please note - that is the same thing I did with the OP. I read the posts, had some - you can call them assumptions if you want - and asked questions that might clarify the situation. The difference between my post and that of MsWhatsit is she used her [del] totally idiotic [/del] assumptions to just take a cheap shot rather than do anything to clarify. Which is what folks like her do - “oh look, someone whose ideas and lifestyle I hate. I will devote my life to being a bitch to them”. Or something like that.
As for whether or not the father of OP’s child wanted her, it seems if he shows zero interest in her at a year of age, he probably wasn’t all that excited about her to begin with. But then, that’s why I asked.
Huh. Lots of that sounds familiar.
Actually, no, I don’t know if my father wanted me. His mother told me he did. My mother told me he did, but of course she could have been lying about that.
The last time I saw him, I was 8 years old. Somehow I just didn’t think to ask him about it at the time.
The quotes around the “father” indicate that, to me, he never fulfilled what most people thing a father should be - which is not just a sperm donor.
Actually, he was a great husband and father, until he lost his six-figure engineering job. After a year of unemployment, depression kicked in, and he now avoids his family (including his daughter, whom he desperately loves), because he is too embarrassed to face them.
See? Two can play the “I’ll just make up a back story and post it as if it were the only plausible scenario” game.
Again, men have a number of options available to them to make sure they can have sex without reproducing. They can wrap it up, and (perhaps even more effectively) have sex with women who they trust are using a backup method and who share their views on having children- including their ideas of what should happen in the case of an accidental pregnancy.
Women poking holes is condoms is rare. Men who like the idea of having a baby out there, but realize after the fact that they’d rather not actually have to raise that baby are not.
[QUOTE=curlcoat]
Which is what folks like her do - “oh look, someone whose ideas and lifestyle I hate. I will devote my life to being a bitch to them”. Or something like that.
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Well, I would have said “abject stupidity” rather than “ideas and lifestyle,” but apart from that, yep, you pretty much called it.
Of course. There’s no law that requires you to spend time with your child. He has elected to promise, of his own accord, to do so, and so he should live up to his promise.
If he doesn’t want to visit the child, he should say so and give up the right to visitation. He’s a big boy now and should act like it.
I don’t expect that. I am fully aware some men are scum.
And women have even more options to avoid being single parents. Women have more types of birth control. Men have only the condom. Condoms can break and leak. While women poking holes in condoms may be rare, women who like the idea of having a baby regardless of their male partners’ opinion and often against their male partners’ extreme wishes that there not be a baby are not.
I can think of another really effective form of birth control available to men. The abbreviation is DSYDITC.
Complete and utter bullshit.
It’s been extensively documented in the sociological literature that most single mothers chose to have their kids.
Find me some data that show single men - with the exception of hopeless ghetto thugs - want to father a bunch of kids with random women.
You know, at some point, we’re going to have acknowledge the fact that rampant bastardy is the source of most of our social problems. Call out the ignorant sluts for their socially destructive behavior.
That’s a joke, right?
Used correctly, condoms are 98% effective at preventing pregnancy.
Birth control pills are 99.7% effective. Normal people don’t lie about those things, and so it’s reasonable to assume that any woman who says she is on the pill but actually isn’t suffers from some sort of major personality disorder. Approximately 10% of the US population has major personality disorder. It’s a bit of a stretch to assume that everyone with a major personality disorder would lie about birth control, but for the sake of argument I’ll assume that.
40% of women over the age of 45 have had an abortion. Most women are willing to consider abortion as a option in cases of unwanted pregnancy.
The numbers are pretty far-fetched. The chances of a condom failing are already rather low (and generally men are the ones who have the best control of condom failure.) The chances of that happening with someone who is in the 10% known as “the crazy” AND the 60% (actually much much less) that won’t have an abortion under any circumstance is…well, pretty darn low. And this isn’t even considering that men have relatively good strategies for detecting the crazy and the pro-life.
In reality, men end up with kids because they A. don’t want to use condoms and B. don’t bother to know/care/think about/have an opinion of what their partner would do should they get knocked up.
People aren’t idiots. They know unprotected sex makes babies, but either they think they can beat the odds, or the on some level are okay with the possibility.
I am not taking issue with your larger point, but wanted to point out that the real-world effectiveness rate of condoms is more like 90% or so. (The number varies depending on what source you use, but it is significantly lower than the 98% “perfect use” rate.)
I usually just watch and laugh at these sort of arguments, but the bolded part made me go :smack: irl. They can get snipped surgically or they can keep it in their pants. There are also the ever popular AC’d underware. (I’d not trust them and the guys who wear them do it because they are riding Harley’s in the desert heat.) My point is that men have a lot of options.
Not to mention that in my part of the world, if a man doesn’t want kids, its easy for him to get snipped. Women have to have husband’s signature and at least a couple of kids. Welfare won’t pay for a mother of 7 to be fixed because that’s elective surgery. Men can get it done at Planned Parenthood for free.
Except your scenario fails to deal with the fact that the OP said at least twice that the guy was a bastard before she divorced him, and that he has never been even a good father to the child much less great. So, yours is made up and mine is based on the facts the OP has given us. Apparently, she is not interested in providing information on why she went ahead and had a baby sired by this guy she has been indicating hasn’t exactly ever show himself to be good father material. But yeah, you keep protecting her because god knows a mommy would never do wrong.
Yeah. Again, on planet Earth, it happens quite frequently that men end up siring kids they never wanted, which is why there is such an issue with deadbeat dads. Also, how many married men do you know who “wrap it up” unless their wives are unable to tolerate any of the more reliable birth control options? Remember, we are talking about a married couple here - or, maybe they weren’t. Maybe they married because she got pregnant? Dunno, I’m working from the assumption that the marriage predated conception but even if it didn’t they were probably in a committed relationship if they ended up married because of a pregnancy. So, rather likely that (as usual) it was just the woman doing the BC and even if not, it was her decision to keep the pregnancy and keep the baby.
Also, the CDC says that condoms can be as low as only 85% effective. These days, “wrapping it up” seems to only be a good idea when a guy plans to have sex with a woman he doesn’t know well enough to know if she has an STD. Or if he has one.
Read that three times and still not sure what you meant here.
Ah. Well, since he’s apparently been an unconcerned father prior to the divorce, I’m not sure why he agreed to visitation. Maybe so Grandma could see the baby?
Again, just because he’s an adult doesn’t mean he’s mature, and just because he should act a certain way doesn’t mean he will. I’m not sure why him being a jerk is a surprise to the OP.
You act like you do expect it since you keep saying he should honor his promise to visitation.
Many people marry someone who they love and trust, then LATER realize that he/she is a different person than who they THOUGHT they married. You ASSUME that the only scenario is that she trapped him with a child he didn’t want. And that is laughable.
[QUOTE=curlcoat]
Apparently, she is not interested in providing information on why she went ahead and had a baby sired by this guy she has been indicating hasn’t exactly ever show himself to be good father material. But yeah, you keep protecting her because god knows a mommy would never do wrong.
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Why would she provide any additional information to someone who is so judgmental and negative? I wouldn’t. And I’m not protecting her from anything. I’m merely pointing out the fallacy of your assumptions.
As long as we have these horrible women forcing poor defenseless men’s penises into their vaginas, we’ll continue to have deadbeat dads. It’s refreshing that finally SOMEONE is willing to take up their cause.
Curlcoat, My ex husband wanted this child when I was pregnant. He wanted to have a baby. I did not trick him into this or force pregnancy on him. Understand? If I would have known that i would end up divorced I would have used BC. Do you think its easy being a single mom? Stop making assumptions! My ex husband did not act this way when I was pregnant. He changed after I gave birth.
ANTIBOB, stop staying my thread isnt worth a pitting. nobody want to hear your rants either! find another place to pour your crap!!!
His reasons don’t matter. What matters is he agreed to a contract.
He made more than a promise; he established a legally binding contract. It’s his responsibility to live up to his contracts. It doesn’t matter what his reasons are, whether or not he’s a jerk, or what.
I do business with hundreds of people. Some of them - a small number of them, but they’re there - are total assholes, jerks, and doofuses. They still have to live up to their responsibilities. You sign a contract, you fucking live up to it. If you don’t like it, renegotiate.
Now, as a separate issue, IMHO a father has a fundamental moral responsibility to be a caring and dedicated parent to their children, whether or not they allegedly did or didn’t want them. In my opinion, a man who does not do this is a filthy peice of shit undeserving of my respect. However, again, that’s not the law, that’s just morals. It’s not relevant to the visitation agreement. The guy agreed to a visitation schedule and it is his responsibility to honor it.