I started this thread before I knew about that story.
I also wonder what the REAL story is behind her disappearance. I couldn’t imagine the life she ended up leading being less stressful than the idea of raising two kids on her own with very little money, which was the reason she gave. Look at what 11 years on the streets did to her, in the before and after pictures.
My sister, who’s >40 and was unable to have children, will not date men who have kids. Her issue is not with the kids, but having to deal with the ex and her family, or her family if he’s a widower.
I’ve not had this with an SO but one of my friends is raising a child alone because her ex’s new wife “feels like a second class citizen” when he used to have their child over for his visitation. When they divorced they agreed to a 50/50 split. Once he started dating the woman who would become his new wife it went more to an informal 80/20 split and about two months after the marriage he quit seeing his son at all.
My friend moved to change their agreement to include support since she was now essentially a single mom and the new wife left a doozy of a message on her voicemail calling my friend a money grubbing whore and taking food out of their mouths by asking for money. During the tirade she said “Women like you give independent women like me a bad name for making men pay you for babies.”
One of his relatives contacted my friend asking why she wouldn’t let the father see their child as this is the story he’s floating. My friend has begged him to see their child and he just won’t cross his new wife to do it. So he blames my friend (his ex) to everyone to look good all the while refusing to make his new woman mad. I’d like to flush both of them down a giant toilet.
One of my employees had four kids by a guy who… was questionable (Two were on purpose while they were married, and the twins were a result of a “pity F***”, her words, when he was in town to discuss child support). This guy had a child from a previous relationship, a kid with girlfriend while they were married, another kid that was born shortly after they were divorced, and last I heard another one the way. When she left my department, he had nine. I met him once, and I’ve got to say… if that he put half as much energy into curing cancer as he did being charming… there would be a worldwide surplus of chemo drugs.
Anyway, he was pretty flakey, and my employee stayed in contact with his mom so that they could swap stories on who he was involved with this month. He had a tendency to just disappear for months at a time, and she was in enough contact with the other mothers to know that he wouldn’t contact any of his Kentucky baby mommas, but would be in contact with his South Carolina ones, or vice versa, or none of them. He was minimally involved in any of the kids’ lives, and would bring birthday cards for the wrong kids, etc, etc. She didn’t bother seeking child support, because on the occasions he did work it was a minimal wage job. Most of his income was, ahem, untaxed (mostly running weed from Kentucky to other distribution areas).
She kicked herself regularly for getting involved with him (and, as much as she loved her twins… was not proud of the circumstances that caused them). For about two months, he was in jail on some sort of work-release program or something, and she got 4/9ths of his garnishment he had then…
Anyway, around when she was leaving my department she fell into a steady relationship with someone, and he adored her kids and was supportive of her dealings with her ex. I have NO idea what the Ex told the other ladies, although some of them knew about some of the other baby mommas, and they were a strange sorority of bedfellows. The one with the baby on the way told my employee that things were going to be different with HER because she was better and he was going to stick around because she was better. Ha! Good luck with that one, sister!
So, I guess some people DO tell their current one about their baggage, even sordid, and there’s some people who just really, really think that ninth try’s the charm…
Wow, it’s impossible to conceive a child without being married? That’s news to me. Not that it matters, since marriage is in no way required for a parent to be responsible for monetary support of a child.
My daughter’s father has never wanted any contact with her at all.
One of my sisters left her husband and 7 kids when the youngest was six weeks old and only started seeing a couple of the older ones (adults who have kids of their own now) about ten years later. As far as I know, she doesn’t see the younger ones at all and pays nothing towards them. She still considers herself a grandmother, though.
One of my brothers also doesn’t see his kids, and probably is not allowed to, but for very good reasons (he beat up the eldest pretty badly). He’s on disability (genuinely severely disabled) so I doubt he pays anything.
One of my other brothers didn’t pay anything towards his kids from his first marriage for years, despite being a great parent to the kids from his second marriage - this is not uncommon. However, he did start paying and seeing them eventually and the same after the second marriage ended (he’s on his third marriage and eighth kid now and seems to be a model father).
I have two cousins (brothers) who both abandoned their kids because they didn’t think child support was “fair.” They both dropped off the face of the earth and apparently are truck drivers (under the table) in the Mid-West somewhere. They missed their mother’s funeral, but their kids were all there. Other siblings in the family were profoundly embarrassed by their actions and have stepped up to help where needed.
Many people consider those laws regarding monetary support of a child one parent did not consent to being born unfair to the point of immoral and civil disobedience is the appropriate response.
I don’t expect male parents to contribute to the raising of children. I mean, it would be nice, and I know it happens… it just hasn’t been part of my life experience.
Wow, that’s really sad. Most men I know, even the divorced ones, love their kids as much as the moms do, and most divorced women want the kids to have a good relationship with their dad even if she doesn’t get along with him.
I have a friend whose son died when he was 14, and several women said to her ex-husband, “I bet you’re really glad he died because now you don’t have to pay child support for him any more.” :eek: :smack: :mad: Not one man said anything like that to him, and they must not have known that the boy literally collapsed and died in his father’s arms from a sudden and tragic illness. The ex died about a year ago; this woman and her daughter are both on Facebook with me, and the daughter posted a memorial to him there and said, “He was a great father” and her mom liked the comments.
Are you a man or a woman?
A woman. And I like men. I just grok that kids, for the most part, aren’t their thing.
:dubious:
I don’t know what kind of women this man hung out with, but I’m having a hard time believing that even one person would say this to another, much less several. That’s pretty bizarre.
I’m sorry you feel that way, but I think what you don’t hear about are the guys who are involved in their kid’s lives.
Honestly I can see why guys slowly just leave after awhile. It can be a real pain when the mother just doesn’t want to deal with the father at all. Just this week I was told the wrong time and place for a talent show my seven year old is in. I found out because someone else told me. I didn’t even know for sure if she was going to be in it or not as they had to try out.
This isn’t an isolated instance either, this happens with almost everything. There was a birthday party the other week, she knew for a month, yet didn’t tell me until a few days before. I’m taking my daughter on vacation, and in order to save hundreds on the flights I took a mid week flight there and back, it went over ‘her’ weekend, which I’m allowed to do. She got very upset and told me we would switch weekends, of which I agreed. Soon after she tells me that her and her husband’s family are all going away over what would be my weekend. That’s in two weeks, as of yet she hasn’t told me even if we’ll switch weekends. If she doesn’t want to let us switch I will not see my kids for a month.
There are times when I go home and cry when I take my kids back to their mother’s house. And yet I hear that I don’t do enough for them, or as has been said a couple of times in this thread, guys just don’t want to be dads. And to that I say bullshit.
So yeah, I can see why guys don’t want to do it, there’s a lot of crap, and no matter what you do you get told it’s not enough. Hell there have been times when I’ve wanted to just say the hell with it, but then I remember my girls and just solider on.
I have known plenty of individuals, male and female, capable of making the same remark. When you have a friend or acquaintance absolutely hates having to support a kid they never wanted to exist, especially if the loss of that money basically destroys that person’s life (prevents them from getting higher education, starting a business, helping their own family, etc.), it makes a lot of sense.
Yeah, well, you also support killing pregnant women if they refuse to abort a fetus that is unwanted by the father, so I’ll take your opinions and experiences with a grain of salt, if you don’t mind.
IIRC, they were people he worked with.
Many years ago, I worked with a woman whose daughter had multiple birth defects, and lived in the hospital for most of her 13-month life. You wouldn’t believe how many times I heard people say, “So, if your daughter dies, are you going to have another baby?” How cruel is that, anyway? She also had two sons, and I don’t remember anyone asking her if she was going to have another baby if they died.
I had a neighbor in the early 1980’s who literally packed her suitcase and left her four children and husband. Not for a lover, just because. Packed her bags, left a note and caught a cab to JFK to start her life over.
I dated a man who had an ex-stepdaughter that he still doted upon and helped support even though he was under no obligation to do so. I though he would make a great father. Then I learned that he had a child of his own to whom he had not contributed a penny of support or a minute of his time. I ended that relationship right then and there.
I believe you. I understand that it’s hard to keep up those ties after a divorce. It makes me sad that men miss out on their kids, for whatever reason.
Not my SO, my aunt’s first husband. My cousins idolized their absent father, blaming their mother for the breakup and for never seeing him - until that day when one of them ran into him (he lives five blocks away from what used to be the conjugal home and is now my cousin’s, about half a kilometer), she ran to him calling out “Daddy, daddy!” and he growled “I don’t have any daughters!” “
I’m sorry, aren’t you [her dad’s full name]?” “yeah” “so, I’m your daughter!” “the fuck knows who that bitch made you and that other bastard with”.
Yeehaw, dear ex-uncle… such a lovely man, not.
Don’t forget she supports killing the baby after it is born, as well.