My parents married at ages 18 and 19 because Mom was pregnant with me, and split up when I was barely 4. They had a verbal agreement that my dad would pay $50/mo in child support (it was 1975), but they didn’t officially divorce until I was 17 (because my mom wanted to remarry.) Mom estimates that during those 13 years she got maybe a total of $200.
Because there wasn’t any legal intervention, there wasn’t any official custody agreement. My father moved first up to San Louis Obispo, then up to San Francisco (Mom and I live in LA) and we saw each other…not very often. Once a year at most, not uncommonly it’d be 2 or 3 years between visits. Sometimes I’d spend Spring Break with him, that was nice. All of our contact was initiated by me or by Mom, never by him. He was a hippie, lived like it was still 1968 until the day he died in 2010.
He remarried after they officially divorced, and I didn’t know about it until afterwards. That hurt. His wife is nice, we get along, but…yeah.
Anyway. I always said that I had a father like some people have a canoe in the garage. You know in the back of your mind that it’s there, and it’s nice to have when you want to go canoeing, but you don’t really think about it much.
I was very much against me-having-kids until I was 35 or so. I felt like my mother had ruined her life by having me, and I didn’t want a kid to ruin mine, didn’t want to make the sacrifices I knew she had made. It literally DID NOT OCCUR TO ME until I was almost 30 that the father would hopefully be part of the kid’s life, would live with us and would provide help and income and all that - I saw parenting as being something that would be completely my responsibility.
My SIL’s mom walked out on her 4 kids and husband decades ago (while they were still young). Years later she resurfaced. I think 3 out of the 4 now have some sort of contact with the mom, including SIL. But it’s not a maternal relationship, more of a very distant relative you rarely see or speak about. Which is weird, because they seem to get along better with their maternal grandmother and aunt.
My cousin was “sort of” abandoned by his dad. The dad will still pay child support (which actually goes to my aunt, my cousin being a 20 year old man-child), but has very little contact with my cousin. I do not know, though, how much of that is the man’s own personality, or my aunt’s. I do remember she was trying to restrict the guy’s parental involvement years ago, and I wonder if he finally got fed up with the treatment and abandoned the son. A pity, my cousin could’ve used some other role model.
My own dad was a divorced father of 2 when he met my mom. He didn’t abandon my sibs, though, and they even met my maternal side of the family before I was born. We’re all a weird composite family.
Most parents don’t face the prospect of losing custody to both the biological parents, though, and not seeing the kids, but still paying for them. Essentially never being a parent in any way except financially.
Be honest - in that situation, even if you dutifully pay out like this bloke does and accept that this is how it sometimes works out, you’d expect your friends to be pissed off on your behalf.
Sad generalization I’d guess that the fathers who love their kids just don’t create much drama, and so they’re “under the radar” and you don’t hear about them as much.
I’ve heard about both men and women who essentially abandon their kids after breaking up with the other parent. It’s like these people feel that if they are not involved with the other parent any more, they are not obliged to be parents to the kids. It’s usually men who seem to do this, but I’ve heard about women doing it, too. In fact, my husband’s stepfather’s wife did this…just walked out of the marriage and left Bill’s stepfather with five small kids to take care of, and she never looked back. Bill’s stepfather was a very unpleasant, vindictive person, and I imagine that this was part of why she did it, but she never tried to get in touch with the kids, either when they were kids or afterwards.
It used to be a heck of a lot easier for people to just start over in another town or state, and not have to worry about child support orders. Of course nowadays most records are computerized.
This thread makes me so sad. My bio dad told my mom to get rid of me, too, in any way she could. He didn’t threaten her, but he dropped out of her life. As far as I know he’s never even seen me.
I have a LOT of problems with my adoptive dad but I will forever be grateful to him for taking on a daughter that wasn’t his, giving me his last name and respectability in my uptight Indian community (until I was grown enough to deal with it on my own). He never once cared that I wasn’t his.
I’d guess that the fathers who love their kids just don’t create much drama, and so they’re “under the radar” and you don’t hear about them as much.