I’ve been dating her for 3 months and recently learned that she has two young sons from a previous marriage. She basically relinquished her duties as a mother and decided that motherhood wasn’t right for her. They are cared for by her ex-husband and his family. They didn’t push her away and she never fought for her kids. I don’t necessarily fault her for any of this but I also learned that she has never done anything for them. She has never sent them money or at least find some way to let them know that their mother loves them but due to a difficult situation she couldn’t be there for them. She’s treating this almost as if they never existed. While I haven’t made up my mind about her, this does bother me.
I believe this is the point where you should “forget” to call her back.
Seriously, I would find this to be a very unsettling discovery. Especially if you’re hoping for a family someday.
Leave it be. I can see a mother admitting that she’s not a good mother and turning her children over to someone who can care for them. But no contact? No acknowledgment at all? Something’s wrong.
"She has never sent them money or at least find some way to let them know that their mother loves them but due to a difficult situation she couldn’t be there for them. "
Is this YOU talking/projecting? Hard to tell.
LOTS of people should never have been parents and are incapable of being decent parents, but most do not have the self-knowledge ahead of time. If someone’s willing to do the right thing for themselves and ultimately the kids, I don’t know that others are in a position to judge. It would not help for her to have contact under such circumstances.
If the father wants-needs child support, he’s been in a position to seek it.
Rather obviously, if you want kids and the type of relationship you are seeking involves kids, it’s time to cut ties.
By the way, it’s worth noting that there are also plenty of men who abandon children and go on to have other kids to whom they are decent parents. There’s the very human coward factor, among other things, when it comes to making no attempt to do right by the abandoned children. Presumably, it’s viewed as “too hard”.
It all depends on what you want from the relationship. If it’s mostly great sex I don’t see the problem.
I’m not sure that someone who is incapable of being any sort of decent parent at all (phone calls, Christmas gifts, postcards - as opposed to a bad parent - abusive) is someone capable of having any sort of decent RELATIONSHIP at all.
There is something to be said for “I can’t handle day to day parenting” - but there is nothing to be said for “I had kids, and now ignore them.”
What is wrong with someone agreeing to have no contact with kids?
More than once people have mentioned that the true “parent” of a child in cases of adoption or parental death isn’t necessarily the biological parent but rather the one who raised them. Part of that, I think, is hokey, feel-good stuff, but part of that is true in that you are defined a lot by how you’re raised rather than whose genes you share. In this case, the kids are being cared for, its not like she threw them out on the street. The kids have a parent and a family support structure, the bio-mom is unnecessary, especially if it was a mutual agreement with the other parent. I don’t consider it abandonment any more than a mom putting her kids up for adoption is abandonment. She knows she would not be a fit mother for one reason or another, that’s fine.
It’s a huge risk, though, to start a family with someone with that kind of track record. Not letting the kids know she loves them isn’t something to fault her for if she doesn’t, in fact, love them. She just might not be cut out to be a mother.
My mother wasn’t; when I was little, I was in my aunt’s care quite a bit of the time, but my aunt and uncle lived in the same city. Then, they moved to another state, and I slipped into a depression (albeit it, I didn’t know enough to call it that at the time); my relationship with my parents, and my mother in particular really deteriorated, and finally they sent me to live with my aunt and uncle when I was 14. For some reason, they were still OK parents for my brother, and he turned out just fine. I have no idea why, other than he just has a very different personality from mine.
But none of that was planned out, and none of it should have been. Really, my mother knew she didn’t like children, but it was the 1960s, and she gave into social expectations, family expectations, and what my father wanted.
My parents did give money to my aunt and uncle, but honestly, I believe they would have taken me if my parents hadn’t been able to pay them. They didn’t make me feel they loved me in spite of the situation, but I felt loved by my aunt and uncle, and I didn’t care what my parents felt.
So, IMHO, the OP’s reaction should really depend on what he wants with this woman. If he wants a long term relationship that includes children, he should forget that in short order. If he doesn’t, then he should consider he other qualities. A woman can be a valuable person without being a mother (or even while being a bad mother). My mother is intelligent, and good at a lot of things. She had a very successful career.
I don’t know the OP, though. If he has such an ingrained expectation of women that they be good mothers, and he can’t get past it, he should let this women find someone who is better for her.
Dangerosa, I think you might be on to something. There are things about her apart from this that I find questionable such as a kind of aloofness. She is quite beautiful though. I’m torn. I’m not quite sure what I want, I haven’t ruled out having children but that’s not my focus at the moment. My concern is that I’m not sure that she is an especially good person. That’s important to me. If anyone else has an opinion or a similar life story please share.
I dated a lot of women who had… baggage, issues, quirks. The only one who completely creeped me out, to the point where I cut a second date short, was a woman in her late thirties who had married her church buddy, had kids, done missionary work, lived the house-hubby-kids-and-dog routine for ten years… and then suddenly throw them all over because she felt she’d made a mistake.
I don’t know that I thought any less of her than the men I’ve known who’ve done much the same thing, but I do think there’s something more wrong with a woman who can do this than a man. (Maybe that’s because I have very little expectation of getting emotionally/maritally involved with a man; getting a little too close to such a mind/set was disturbing.)
How do you know she hasn’t refused any contact because, while she may know in her heart she did right by her kids, that’s it’s still in some way torturous to her?
How do you know she hasn’t chosen this way because she knows she can’t keep it up and, in the end, will only be a continuous disappointment to them?
How do you know she didn’t decide, early on, it would be less confusing for them if she was completely out of the picture?
Would you have the same feeling about a woman you’re dating telling you she put a child up for adoption? If not, why not?
I think I’d need a lot more info before feeling comfortable making any kind of judgement about her character. Maybe that’s just me though.
RivkahChaya, I already mentioned that I don’t judge her for how life can play out sometimes but I do fault her for not at least trying unless you think it’s best to stay away altogether. Maybe it is.
Well, if you’re enjoying each other’s company, why not let it continue? On the other hand, if you’re looking for a long term serious relationship, I’d look elsewhere.
Would it have made a difference if she had given them up for adoption when they were born?
I’d be worried if she wants to have kids again.
Honestly, if you’re not sure she’s even a good person, my advice would be that you shouldn’t be planning on a long-term relationship here.
I’ve known four women who have abandoned their children to their fathers or father’s families.
I thought it was only two, then I remembered another one, and then another one.
I also know one father who has full custody and the mother doesn’t care, just don’t bring the kid around her.
What I know of all of them, I’d tell you to run and don’t look back.
All of them will tell you it was the best thing they could do for their kids, and that is the truth.
Every single one of them is selfish, narcissistic, and does what feels good at the time without any thought of the consequences. They use the men they are with, and every one of them lies, cheats, and manipulates. They don’t care about anybody but themselves and they don’t care who they hurt as long as they get what they want.
None of them are women I’d want to be friends with. I am polite and civil, I can even enjoy their company in small doses, but I’d never want any of them to get too close.
If it were me I would take a hard pass. Everything you’ve written so far gets a nope. If I add them all up it’s a super-nope.
My best friend from childhood married a woman who abandoned her kid. (I believe the child is being raised by the woman’s mother.) My friend has always made poor choices when it comes to women (because he honestly has no ability to see past what his dick wants), but with this woman in particular it’s hard not to think less of him. Other friends of ours have said the same thing to me. It’s kind of sad.
Trying to do what? It sounds like you have an idea in your head of what she should do, and without knowing enough details to know what is the best thing for the children involved, are faulting her for not doing it. That’s really no different than faulting her for not being their custodial parent because you think that’s what all mothers should want.
I would have been better off if my mother had thrown in the towel a few years earlier and packed me off to my aunt and uncle’s, instead of me suffering through some very lonely, unhappy years. I was doing very poorly in school because I was so unhappy, and my parents and I were fighting all the time about my grades, and I was being punished a lot for them, in ways that did nothing to improve them. Not to mention, my mother got a research grant for a sabbatical during this time, and so for eight months, wasn’t even in the US. The time she was here, though, her solution to my pining for my aunt, who’d done a lot of the care of me when I was little, and my mother had been working on her Ph.D, was to try (very transparently) to drive a wedge between us. It didn’t work in the least, and just made me resent my mother even more; she didn’t seem to want me, but for some reason didn’t want anyone else to have me. It was crazy-making.
Perhaps this woman’s children need to be free to bond with someone else as their mother, whether it’s a stepmother, and aunt, or a grandmother. If she knows she can’t get it right, it might be like dangling something attractive in front of them, just out of their reach, to try to be a presence in their lives.
The only part that really bothers me is the non-financial part, but we don’t know her ex-husband’s point of view. He may have been the one who initiated the idea of a clean break, and said he didn’t want any money from her. Unless you know she’s actually ducking responsibility, I wouldn’t judge her on this either.
I also wonder if she’s always been aloof, or if it’s new, since she’s come to realize that you have strong opinions about things which really aren’t your business (at least not yet-- if you married her, you’d better find out if, for example, there is any outstanding order for child support).
But I wouldn’t plan a long-term future with her, if you want children. And I wouldn’t put aside a wish for children just to be with her. That sounds like a bad idea.
Kind of a rewrite of what I already said, in light of the following posts: I think there is something genuinely wrong with a woman who can abandon her children. We all make mistakes, we all grow up into different people, we all have burdens we’d like to leave behind… but in all but the most extraordinary circumstances, a woman who will dump her kids and then look for another relationship is fractured in ways no normal partner would want to deal with.
“Never eat at a place called Mom’s. Never play cards with a man named Doc. And never sleep with a woman who has more problems than you do.” And, only semi-relevant, but: “A woman who will cheat with you… with cheat on you.” Don’t ever count on this woman’s dedication when times get rough, is all I’m saying.
Move on. IMVHO.