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My mother married, had a son... and ran away with him, left him in a boarding house for a week in the "the big city" (Chicago) to run around and audition as a singer and model. His father went to the city and found him and took him home. My mother went back to their town several times trying to "kidnap" my brother, but the family always caught her and ran her off. She eventually married my father and had three children - I was the youngest. I grew up on stories of my mother's life where she was always the victim, always persecuted - nothing was ever said about her abandonment of my half-brother or the times she tried to kidnap him.
15 years ago my half-brother tracked me down. We were both very wary about each other; we both "knew things" about each other, none of which turned out to be true. We are now very close - far closer than my full brothers! - and talk all of the time. The different perspectives and the facts have at last brought him peace. He could never understand why his mother had left him, and of course schoolchildren and even family members can be very cruel.
When we first met, he would go on and on about how much he regretted not having a mother. Once he and I talked, long, heart-to-heart, and seriously, he realized that he was much better off without growing up in a house with a shrieking drama-queen whose only thoughts were always and ever about herself. We've actually joked about how much I envy him... My dear father was a long-suffering man, who made a rich life for my mother; he was locally famous, worked his way up from nothing into wealth and power, showered her with diamonds and furs and rich living - and she would purposefully humiliate him at every turn, in public with his powerful friends, to the point where he stopped taking her with him and left her alone to cheat on him and whine to other people about how abused and neglected she was.
Women who abandon their children rate about the same with me as pedophiles. Totally selfish and self-seeking, they should all be hung by nails through their private parts and left for dead. They only want children to enhance their own self-empowerment, and don't see them as people or human at all.
JMHO. (And yes I realize that if I got my wish, I wouldn't have been born!)
By the way, this was all 50 years ago. Human nature doesn't change.
It always amazes me how those people like your mother can lack so much and yet have other people figured out so well that they can lay on the charm and manipulate so many.
You try to figure out what makes them tick but when you do that you end up giving them more credit than you should, it just comes down to a very empty individual with no core values.
Because people have different value systems about different things in their lives.
Sometimes it is situational.
There are many people who dislike their previous co-parent so much that they would rather abandon their child altogether than have to be around their child and deal with the other parent.
On the surface it is easy to say the person is wrong but we do not know the entire situation on all sides.
These situations are one of the reasons I paid quite a bit and searched to get my vasectomy as early as I could. I knew I never wanted children and I did not want to be stuck having to be around some woman I may have disliked just because we had a child together.
It always amazes me how those people like your mother can lack so much and yet have other people figured out so well that they can lay on the charm and manipulate so many.
You try to figure out what makes them tick but when you do that you end up giving them more credit than you should, it just comes down to a very empty individual with no core values.
Check out some of the clinical definitions of psychopaths.
Or narcissists.
Because people have different value systems about different things in their lives.
Sometimes it is situational.
There are many people who dislike their previous co-parent so much that they would rather abandon their child altogether than have to be around their child and deal with the other parent.
"Dislike"??!! "Prefer"????
I can imagine situations in which leaving a child behind is the right thing to do FOR THE CHILD.
But because the parent does not LIKE the person that they made a CHILD with? That is a pretty **** poor reason IMO.
I don't know maybe you meant that the interaction between parents is toxic for the child? I might be able to buy that. But it would still be a hard sell. There are so many other options than abandonment.
Whenever I listen to the song Father of Mine by Everclear I realize that I can never REALLY understand the pain of being abandoned by a parent.
Quote:
On the surface it is easy to say the person is wrong but we do not know the entire situation on all sides.
These situations are one of the reasons I paid quite a bit and searched to get my vasectomy as early as I could. I knew I never wanted children and I did not want to be stuck having to be around some woman I may have disliked just because we had a child together.
Yah it always amazes me when people give the child free by choice a hard time. If you don't want kids, DON'T HAVE THEM. Good on you for knowing yourself.
Because the title is asking about mothers in general and not the specific mother in the original post, I'm going to respond to that. I dont' understand why it is "acceptable" for men to leave their families/children but it is not for women. It is automatically assumed that the mother is emotionally disturbed or heartless. Maybe the father is just a better parent and the mother knows the child will be better off. Maybe the mother is in to drugs/alcohol/dangerous lifestyle. Maybe the mother just decided that she is not cut out to be a parent. Men leave all the time and it is often for selfish reasons yet that is accepted in our society.
Just because someone gives birth does not mean that they will be a good parent or should be a parent. Look at all the recent stories about mothers killing their children. Those children would have been better off if their mother's left them with someone else.
I could never leave my children, but I hate how there is such a double standard for this.
I know of a family where the couple married very young and had 4 children in 4 years while living in a tiny apartment. The father was extremely sexist and didn't help out at all. One day when the kids were still pretty young the mom just left and hasn't really been heard from since.
While there is NO part of me that condones or accepts what she did and I certainly condemn her for it and I realize that she chose to marry and have 4 kids so quickly...there is a small part of me that can't fathom having 4 toddlers and a jerk for a husband. While I would never ever do it, I guess a very small percentage of me sympathizes with her decision and could understand why she wanted to just walk away.
I know of a family where the couple married very young and had 4 children in 4 years while living in a tiny apartment. The father was extremely sexist and didn't help out at all. One day when the kids were still pretty young the mom just left and hasn't really been heard from since.
While there is NO part of me that condones or accepts what she did and I certainly condemn her for it and I realize that she chose to marry and have 4 kids so quickly...there is a small part of me that can't fathom having 4 toddlers and a jerk for a husband. While I would never ever do it, I guess a very small percentage of me sympathizes with her decision and could understand why she wanted to just walk away.
No one knows what goes on in the privacy of someone else's home or mind.
I knew someone once. She met her husband when she was 17, he was in his 30s. She moved in with him. She worked minimum wage jobs, never got her education. When she was 18, they got married and she got pregnant. She had her baby at 19. Her entire life was dedicated to him and the baby.
Once the baby was a teen, she must have looked back and realized she never really had a 'life'. Moving in with a much older man at 17? Married at 18? Pregnant and having a baby by 19? No education whatsoever. She left. She just wanted "space" in her life and a chance to do something. I'm not sure when or if she went back. I know her ex-husband recently remarried. Their daughter is grown now and is doing well in a career. I have no clue what ever became of her.
Since I know her backstory, I won't judge her for leaving.
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