I know a woman who did this. I get the impression she got a lot of gruff for it because she just walked away and never even made any efforts at keeping a relationship with the kid. I could understand divorcing your spouse, or putting a kid up for adoption, but walking out on a child is something I wouldn’t personally find palatable. I’m sure she had her reasons though, she isn’t willing to talk about it.
I am a man, and a single father of three whose wife walked out on him (and them) 3 years ago. I would take your statement to the pit if I didn’t feel pity on you for whatever life experience has led you to that way of thinking.
Being a father is THE defining role of my life. And call me an optimist, but I think most father’s love their children as much as I love my own. Sure, there are plenty who don’t, but I have a hard time believing they are “the most part”.
You grok wrongly.
My friend’s father disappeared from her life when he broke up with her mother. They still saw him out and about from time to time. He would speak to her mother, but ignore her like she didn’t exist. He treated her brother the same way. The day he moved out, he appeared to decide they no longer existed.
Through sheer coincidence they’ve ended up living near each other more than 100 miles away from where they started out. When they see each other, in the supermarket or around town, they act like they don’t recognize each other. He’s never shown an interest in her daughter either.
My late husband (gurujulp) was a single dad when I met him. He had full legal and physical custody of his daughter since she was around four but he had been raising her on his own since she was around three. The birth mother just up and left one day. She didn’t show up to her court dates or show any interest in visitation after he was given full custody.
Then after his recent death she showed up at our front door wanting to take the child. She hadn’t seen the child in a few years at this point. I had already initiated the guardianship process as stepmom. I am now her permanent guardian since yet again she showed no real interest in wanting to reunite with child and didn’t show up to the last court date. She was looking at the child as a meal ticket because one of her first questions when she surfaced years later was if there was a will in place and was the child left any money. She hasn’t contested the guardianship and I doubt she will.
Nobody spins it as “I wasn’t feeling parenthood so I abandon my kids.”
I’d imagine in some cases they tell future SOs they they “aren’t allowed” to see the kid, and spin a good yarn about unfair custody trials, onerous child support orders, etc. Since the new SO probably isn’t going to consult with the ex, it’s not like they are going to see any other side of the story.
It’s not uncommon for custodial parents not to seek child support at all or to eventually just give up. In this case, the abandoning parent may not bring it up at all, or may bring it up as something that happened in the distant past. It’s also possible to go underground enough that it never comes up.
Call me old fashioned, but I think ejaculating inside a woman’s vagina is proof of consent to potential fatherhood.
My ex had custody of his two children the years we were together. The last time their bio-mom saw either of them, they were eight and twelve. The twelve year old refused to see her.
The kids are 31 and 35 now and they have no idea if she is alive or dead. Even though their dad and I went our seperate ways years ago, they still consider me a parent and by extension, a grandparent in their worlds.
It can be a double edged sword. On the one hand, even with well adjusted children, they will question their culpability in the parent’s disappearance at some point. Even if it’s just a little, there can be a sense of “Would she be proud of me?” when life’s milestones and celebrations come about.
On the other hand, there was only one set of rules and, in our case, two parents who were a united front and no having to juggle visitation and the like.
Some kids luck out and find someone to fill in some, if not most of the gaps. Others are left with a permanent parent-sized hole in their worlds.
My biological father told my mother to abort me when she informed him that she was pregnant. When she refused, he threatened her life. He’s never had a thing to do with me. My mother has contacted a few of their mutual friends on and off throughout the years, always to get shot down, and it honestly embarasses me that she even tries 
Much like the other examples in this thread, my biodad had several stepkids with his wife and raised them as his own.
I dated a guy with a child, and after that blew up I promised myself that there is no way, no how, I am doing that again. It wasn’t the kid – it was the ex. I can’t handle having a third adult involved in my relationship that I am not sleeping with. If I met a guy who was raising a kid and his ex was dead or, say, serving life in prison or something, and I could step in and become the mom, I would go for it.
BTW, before the thread gets derailed thanks to ZPG Zealot’s… unique perspective on things, I encourage anyone headdesking over her comments to read this thread. I’m not accusing her of anything, but some of her arguments are, well… puts finger to mouth bibble noises
My ex hasn’t…completely abandoned our daughter yet but he’s walking a fine line. But in relation to this thread, he has told me on multiple occassions that no one outside of his immediate family knows about our daughter. At times he tells me that the failure of our marriage ‘shames’ him (he’s Japanese) and that he’s too embarrassed to talk about it. But at the same time, he’s mentioned before that it’s ‘cool’ to have a ‘secret’ American daughter. That when people find out about it, they’ll think he’s so cool to have a kid over here. Which…makes no sense and really illustrates his priorities clearly. So I wouldn’t be surprised that whoever he ends up with next won’t find out about our daughter for quite a long time, if ever.
That sounds remarkably similiar to the anti-abortion movement’s mantra that a woman allowing a man to ejaculate into her vagina is proof of consent to potential motherhood. Both genders have a right to choose whether or not they will be parents.
Everyone, lets keep this well worn “debate” contained. This is not the topic of the thread.
When my brother divorced his ex was shocked that he wouldn’t just abandon his kid. It was what her father had done to her. It was what her two previous husbands had done to her daughter (one bio, the other adopted her because of the bio dad’s abandonment.
It’s really sad. She kept trying to get full custody over and over for years because she could not grasp that her son was better off with both parents in his life. Son now lives full time with his father and won’t speak to his mother. he’s 15.
It’s just sad that my brother wanting to be a part of his son’s life after the divorce was considered “weird” and “wrong.”
There are people who believe that children are rarely better off with their fathers in their lives after a divorce. The most surprising thing is how many of them have sons. How would they like it if their sons got divorced, and they lost their grandchildren for no reason except that they were related to him?
There IS a situation in my extended family where the biodad and his extended family are not in the picture at all, and all anyone will tell me is that it’s for the best and that I should not be sorry. Since it was the kids’ decision, I’m inclined to think that they are right.
My brother married his high school sweetie at 18. By the time he was 22 he had one kid and a serious inclination to get some strange, because he “married too young and didn’t get to sow any oats”. Within a year he knocked up his wife again, as well as the girl,they were renting the attic to. His VERY Catholic, quiet, hardworking wife threw all his shit on the lawn, and her large, rich family all told him in no uncertain terms to pay child support and never contact his ex or their child again.
He married the attic lady, and produced more kids. I know he WANTED to be in his boys life, but he was far too ashamed to push it.
My sisters ex remarried almost immediately , to a woman who already had 4 kids. They added a couple more, and for a while my niece and nephew were part of their family. But there was some serious abuse, stemming from the probably-literally insane new wife. Kids ended up back with my sister, he remarried again, has a new family, and has decided to focus on making that one work rather than try to patch up all the other broken relationships. I can see his point, but the kids really do kinda hate him for it.
Um, I respectfully submit that “sperm hitting a vagina” isn’t necessarily the same as “sperm fertilizing an egg”. I further claim that there’s no bio-dad until the latter happens.
Many years ago I worked for a guy who had in his youth entered into an affair with a woman who had two children. At the time the affair started, she was married and was living with her husband. She left her husband and secured a divorce and then married the guy I worked for. For whatever reason, he adopted her two children and she nearly immediately left the guy I worked for and resumed living with her first husband. Since the guy I knew had adopted her two children, he paid child support until both of them were grown. In this guys case, I wouldn’t have blamed him if he left town, changed his name and ran away to join the circus.
The "she’ in this story remarried her first husband.
What so you think adoption means? It is a lifelong commitment to the kids.
Yeah, but that particular situation doesn’t sound like one where he’d get to actually be a parent to the kids, since they have both their biological parents living with them.
Losing custody is a risk that every parent faces.