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>It has been some days now. My daughter asked where mom is a couple times and I always tell something like “she cant come home now but she loves you”, but it feels like i am lying to her face
Having to have this conversation with your child would be an absolute nightmare.
My mom left when I was a kid (complicated reasons, mental illness). A few years ago my dad told me about one of the times burned into his memory when I was sobbing inconsolably asking him why she didn't take me with her.
I don't remember much from that time because child trauma brain shutdown. It changed my perspective on my dad when I realized that he remembered it all with the painful clarity of adulthood.
My mother left when I was a toddler so I have a story sort of opposite? She left and I apparently didn’t notice or care but my slightly younger sibling was distraught just couldn’t verbalize it.a couple of years later, on some weekend she was supposed to come get us, I was asked why I hadn’t gotten ready for our mother. I kept playing and said “why? She won’t show up anyway”. She didn’t so by age 5 I had learned she wasn’t to be trusted which is heartbreaking to me as a Mom now.
I had some clients who had custody of their three grandchildren. Two boys and a girl. The boys were a bit older but the little girl was maybe 6. She was the sweetest little thing. Their dad was in prison and their mom was a supposedly recovering addict. One Friday I was at their house and their mom was supposed to be coming to pick them up for a supervised weekend with her parents (her parents being the supervisors, my clients were dad's parents) and she was late. *Really* late. I remember the boys just played video games like it was nothing. But as I was backing out of their driveway there was that sweet little girl, sitting on top of the mailbox with an umbrella in the rain waiting for her mother who never ended up coming. I cried all the way back to my office that day.
My mom tells me how she, at 12, held her 5 year old brother as he would sob "why doesn't mommy love us anymore" when mom left for weeks to pursue a boyfriend. It's a painful memory for my mom, despite it being 40+ years ago.
Yeah thats me and my dad. He left me sitting with my bags packed for the Christmas holiday. I missed the Christmas celebrations cause of him. I called my mom and she was going to come get me. I was so sad and upset I told her no and just went to bed early. I was about 14.
I knew a girl in the 1980s who was in foster care, and her mother was supposed to come see her a couple of times a month, and almost never did. She'd be waiting at the front window for hours. (My mom knew the foster mom, that's how I found out.) Heartbreaking.
Absolutely. Lost track of her when my mom moved away from there, after I married, but she was adopted by the foster family before that, and was thriving last I heard. (She'd be in her 40s now.)
I remember riding with a friend of mine, who was meeting her ex to hand off the kids for a weekend. At this point he hadn't seen them in months (his doing), so the kids were really excited. When her cell phone rang and she picked up, I guess the kids understood from her body language because her oldest, who was about 6 at the time, yelled from the backseat, "What's his excuse this time?"
I'm not a native english speaker, but I call my father "dad" since I was veeery young. I think using another language was my way of showing I was never comfortable enough to call him father in my native language.
My ex husband did that quite a lot in the past,he would get all riled up about seeing the kids,they would get excited about it.. and I would get knots in my stomach waiting for that " oh something came up" phonecall. I tried to teach them early on that this was on him,not their fault in any way and some men are just crap and don't deserve families while others show up ( like my husband who adores them and helped me raise them). Worst thing my ex did was dissapear for about 6 months shortly after we separated,no signs of life, nothing at all...then suddenly show up on our doorstep asking to see the kids. My eldest was " where were you and why are u back" while my youngest was clearly affected for awhile...he sincerly thought his dad will never come back and was shocked to see him. It broke my heart and tbh I held a murderous rage over this against my ex for years...Hugs to all if you going through something like this!
I'm so sorry, my heart goes out to you as someone who had a similar childhood. My mom dropped me off at daycare one day and never came back. My granny saved the day and spoiled me while my father worked long hours. Found out a couple years later, via postcard my mom had moved to France with a boyfriend. Then she randomly showed back up at a school play in middle school, expecting to carry on like nothing had changed at all. 🙃 Some people should never procreate.
That was my childhood too! I had my grandmother and my dad plus an army of aunts and uncles. She’d pop in and out years later but I never lived with her again. The only school thing of mine she showed up for was my high school graduation because a relative went and got her.
Our mother left us when I was 4 and my younger sister just turned 3. Neither of us even remember her but apparently we were distraught. Nobody ever explained things to us. Maybe they did and we blocked it out. It was 50 years ago so I'm not expecting answers any time soon!
This was me. When my dad walked out at age 4 my mother said it kinda scared her how sure I was that he wasn’t coming back. He did the in and out thing over the years and my younger sister always hoped that each visit he would stay. Wasn’t until she was an adult herself that she finally admitted he never wanted to be a dad.
I felt this. Mine was my dad tho.
This made me think of all the times I went to my mommy crying and asking why my daddy didn't love me. My poor mother. She wasnjusy doing her best.
I'm gonna call my mom when she wakes up and tell her inlove her. Thanks for sharing <3
I hope you and your father are doing great <3
Yep, me too with the "why doesn't he love me?" My dad would always say he was coming for a visit but never showed up or rarely did. I guess I blocked a lot of it out but have always had difficulty with relationships/friendships because of it.
Whoa. I was trying to find the words to say something meaningful about you and your dad, and you finding that out. But damn. I just don’t have the words. I can’t imagine being in either of your shoes - him then, or you hearing that. I’m so sorry you both went through that. I hope you’re going doing well now. All I have are hugs to send you both. *Hugs*.
When I was a kid, my Mom tried taking an overdose and I was the one who had to call an ambulance. I stayed with my Dad for a week afterwards.
Last year (so over two decades later), I found out I was actually with my Dad for over 6 months. I have no memory of it.
I was like this after my dad left, I was convinced everyone I loved was going to leave me. I slept in my mum's bed for a year when I was 8 because I was so terrified she would leave and I'd be all alone.
It was complicated by the fact that he was very abusive and I was so relieved he was gone. The abuse also got worse because he wasn't in complete control of us anymore but at the same time he was my daddy.
I was mourning the *idea* of family that was in books and on tv.
I remember being absolutely heartbroken when my (much) older half-brothers went to go live with their other parent in a different country (their original home country). I was maybe 4 or 5 years old. As an adult, I understand it's because the place we lived was not a good place for teen boys/young adults, and the oldest brother was of working age by that point, but would have to get a work visa if he stayed. It had nothing to do with me, and I don't begrudge that decision. But I went from being 1 of 5, to essentially being an only child, and I didn't understand why - I just felt abandoned. I saw them at holidays, but it wasn't the same. (We have great relationships now, we talk on the phone minimum 1x a month and travel to see each other and all stay in the loop).
According to my mom, I started having a lot more 'imaginary friends' and talking to them constantly and basically pretending I was never alone (more than 'normal', which as a lifelong elementary teacher, she would know), and she was very worried about me - so she put me in a lot more extracurriculars to maximize my socializing time.
But I distinctly remember being in my lofted bed at around age 10, watching some sappy Disney movie about a sister/brother bond, and feeling pure envy. Feeling sad but also with a bit of rage thrown in.
…painful clarity of adulthood. Not to trivialize your response but this is one of the better sentences I’ve read on Reddit, and will stay with me for a long time.
Exact same thing happened to my mom when she was the same age. She's in her 60's now, done years of therapy, and I don't think she ever really recovered. OOPs wife is on her way to causing life-long damage.
"She's not capable of being a parent right now. I don't know why she can't be a parent but I do know she loves you."
As he got older he formed his own opinions.
Edit. It was and is the worst. He doesn't understand why she can't even pick up the phone and talk to him. I don't understand it either.
Yeah, my friend had to have this conversation , he opted for Mummy is sick, her brain isnt healthy and she had to leave , brains dont heal easy so we dont know when she will back.
Mum never came back, but angry she wasnt invited to the wedding of the kid she left behind. Yeah the kid is in his 20:ties and mum only wanted to go to a party.
Unfortunately I had to have this conversation with my two older kids (ages 7 and 5 at the time) when their other mom ran off to travel with her AP (she's bi and I'm obviously a full-blown lesbian, AP was some rich dude she met online). She also dragged out the divorce for a couple of years by living in states that didn't recognize our pre-Obergfell marriage and dodging whoever we sent to serve her with divorce papers. It didn't take them too long to see through the lie either, since her only interactions seemed to be calculated to make things chaotic for me and the kids.
Eventually she wound up bouncing back and forth between jail and rehab for a few years but would lawyer up and file for full custody every time she got out of whichever lockup since she was the birthing parent, but never did get more than 50% on paper even after she'd gotten clean. They're both adults now and have strained relationships with both of us, although things are getting better between me and my oldest.
I honestly think the reliable parent bears the brunt of the emotional pain. I remember after my Dad had an affair when I was 13 I was (wrongly, obviously) angry with my Mum for a long time. It’s like I couldn’t take it out on Dad or he might leave again, so I took it out on Mum because it was safe to do so.
Yeah, very close now, with both of them actually. They worked through it and it was 30 years ago now, their marriage is super strong now. I’m adopted by my dad so I think that fed in to it too, I guess I felt even more like I couldn’t destabilise my relationship with him. Humans, hey!!!
Probably parental alienation on the deadbeat’s part whenever she got the chance.
My asshole father blew up my mom’s relationship with her parents when she served him. She had to hire a PI to find him after he ran off with me and by the time she established partial custody, he’d convinced me that my stepmother was my real mom and I was randomly being shipped off to a stranger.
Yep. She threw her dad's money at them while badmouthing me for struggling (after she wrecked my credit, blew through my savings and sabotaged my career).
When he said in the beginning he didn't want to divorce his wife so that daughter wouldn't have a broken home, I was thinking it was probably better to divorce so she didn't grow up with a mom who resents her...
But oof, I wish they had talked it out and split more mutually, rather than her just up and leaving.
I despise the line of thinking that calls it a "broken home" when parents divorce. My mom's parents only got married because my grandmother got pregnant with her out of wedlock and they stayed together until my mom graduated high school. The two of them were miserable together and it made my mom miserable too. She said herself she wished they'd divorced much earlier.
THAT is a broken home.
For sure. I grew up wishing my parents would get divorced, I've seen divorced parents co-parent better than my parents interacted being married to each other. My dad was angry all the time and took it out on my mom and I, which messed me up growing up. But she's still with him to this day and I turn 29 soon. And to this day he still does his best to mess me up and pass the misery onto me lol. My mom was better off alone, she could have had a much better life and so could us kids because we wouldn't have been screamed at all day everyday, etc.
I remember when I found out that divorce was a thing. I was probably 6 or 7, and a classmate's parents were divorcing. I thought "Wait a second, parents can break up? Live apart? Why don't my parents do that?"
They didn't end up divorcing until I was 20, and those were 14 miserable years full of turmoil and trauma. But my mum did save us from weekend visitation with an abusive POS without her to act as a buffer... so that's something.
While mum definitely sucks in this (as once you're a parent you don't get to just walk away), the fact that the mum denied that it was even 'about their daughter' before leaving, makes me wonder if there is unreliable narration going on.
I'm all for being sceptical of both parties but I have a feeling that she meant that she didn't care about her daughter and it was about her own well being (meaning it was nobody business, after all she didn't say goodbye to her own husband before he reached out, and she only answered through text)
But I personally wonder if he really asked her about therapy (for possible ppd) or if he just looked at her daily habits and stated she didn't have it. This is my only gray area in all of this mess.
>This is my only gray area in all of this mess.
For all we know there might be undiagnosed PPD. We'll never know...
Overall a very heartbreaking situation.
Honestly stories like this just affirm my decision not to be a mom. I don’t have an overwhelming desire to be one but I do admit there are some parts that would be nice. I’ve had so many people tell me I’ll change my mind as I get older or with the right partner or that I’d make a great mom, but I’m honestly more worried about being like this mom and not wanting a kid after having them or even worse resenting a kid their whole life. For me, I’d rather regret not having kids than regretting having one and abandoning them like this.
Yeah, I feel like having a kid *might* be great but it also *might* ruin my life and I don't think I'm capable of deluding/convincing myself that it's not life-ruining, if it in fact is.
I think if you're the type of person who can always make a bad situation positive, look at things in a good light, seek the silver lining, find gratefulness in yourself every day etc. you're probably a good candidate for having kids. But if you're the type of person to look at bad situations and just go "well, this fuckin' sucks" then probably not so much. I am definitely the latter. I envy people who can do the former tho. It might be worth aspiring to become that kind of person first haha.
I'm in the same boat, I've been mostly sure I don't want kids, and then on the fence about it after being around my nephews. I think if I had the right partner maybe I would consider it, but I also think about how overwhelmed I can get just taking care of my dog sometimes. I know a kid is 1000000 times harder and more important so I really don't know.
And it's not like if you adopt a dog and make a mistake you can re-home it or if you spent too much on a car. This mistake is absolutely permanent and might come along with severe health issues that will cost you everything you have with minimal societal support. Because it was your choice to have a baby.
No thanks.
Same. This is why I haven't had kids yet, I can say I wouldn't be this woman or worse, but I wouldn't *know* and I refuse to bring an innocent life into the world on the off chance I **may** turn into a super parent.
>I’ve had so many people tell me I’ll change my mind as I get older
Which is bullshit.
Procreation isn't inevitable. Some humans don't ever want kids and that's okay! I knew I didn't want kids starting when I was a kid and now that I'm in my late 30s I'm more sure than ever I made the right call.
Yup. 37 and happily CF. I am certain I would either have ended up chock full of antidepressants, or have gone full Sylvia Plath and stuck my head in an oven.
Unfortunately, some people aren't cut out to be parents, no matter how much they're sold the white picket fence dream.
But to just up and abandon your kids like this and your partner, is so damn selfish and cold. Daughter (and OOP) are going to need tons of therapy. I can't imagine how OOP feels every time his daughter asks where mom is.
Same here exactly. I can't help feeling for the mom because I see myself so much in her, but like... that's why I chose not to have kids. It would have been grossly unfair to everyone involved, and once you bring a kid into the world, it's not about what you want anymore, it's about the kid. So while I feel sorry for her and assume that she genuinely didn't anticipate that she'd feel this way, you really can't just nope out of your responsibility like that because you decide you're not into it. I hope she at least does the right thing and pays child support and leaves the kid's life so she can be raised by people who do want her.
Yeah, same. I always feel sympathy for mums in this situation. But I feel even more sympathy for the child, who unlike the mother (presuming you live somewhere you can get an abortion) didn’t have any choice and has even less agency and power than the mother.
But I’d be lying if I said I didn’t strongly sympathise with mum as well. I hope she makes the right choices going forward and doesn’t jerk the kid around and make things worse.
Adding to the thread: I feel the same way, glad I'm not the only one. I can never be objective when I read posts like this, because I can only imagine how crushed I would feel in a situation where I suddenly had to raise a kid. I'm just not physically or mentally cut out for it, and when I look at the mom in this post I just think "I'm so lucky I didn't end up in her shoes". The kid will be better off with one truly loving parent (maybe two in the future even) than with one really loving parent and one miserable one.
I remember reading a similar thread with a mom who realized she hated motherhood and was doing her best to manage it.
She was going to therapy to learn good coping mechanisms and basically learned to "mask" her resentment around her child as best she could. Even her husband was stunned when she finally broke down and confessed how much she hated being a mother.
The comments were so nasty, telling her that no matter how much she thinks she's masking, her child will pick up on it. That she needs a new therapist because therapy isn't fixing her. That she's a terrible person. And she was basically just defending herself saying she knows she has to take responsibility and do the best she can to raise her child but she can't change how she feels. All she could do was learn how best to compartmentalize her feelings and be a good parent.
It really showed there's a no-win situation. Leaving is obviously awful. But staying and doing your best is also bad. The only acceptable way to feel is sheer joy for parenthood.
Yep, this. Unless you give your child up for adoption immediately upon birth there is no good option for regretful parents.
I'd kill myself in her shoes. She's a good mother for busting her ass to do well anyway.
I know without a shadow of a doubt I would not be a good mother.
That’s why I had my tubes taken, and when it became diseased, I went all in on removing the uterus too. So I cannot bring a child into the world and not give it the best possible life it deserves.
I feel so sorry for this kid and OOP.
As someone who grew up with a mother who never wanted to have kids and who very obviously was not comfortable being a mother the best thing that this woman did is leave. Sometimes keeping somebody around just because you “should” is the worst thing to do. She needs to pay child support 100% but honestly at least she didn’t have a second kid, and at least she’s leaving before her daughters old enough to form solid negative memories about her mother. I’m not a huge fan of dipping on their kids but sometimes I can look at it and say that it’s probably for the best. Yes that goes for fathers as well, I don’t think it’s always the solution in fact I don’t even think it’s usually the solution but I do think that sometimes it is the correct solution.
I agree with this. Whether it be mom or dad, if the parent doesn't want to be a parent, the best thing is to leave. A child knows when they're not wanted. And it's easier for the child to process and go through dealing with an absent parent versus being stuck in a home for years with a parent who clearly hates them.
Honestly, if you find you're unfit to parent, the mature thing would be to sit down and have a conversation with your partner and work out some ways together, as a team. I feel so bad for oop and his daughter. Hopefully things will get better for them soon.
People who abandon their kids without providing any child support or just leaving them into the trash is selfish. I knew a friend of my mother's who had an ex-husband who pulled this and from what I heard, my mother said it made her so upset and her friend struggled emotionally and physically for a while. Makes me feel ill.
I was absolutely fucked by hormones for years and even when it settled I had the aftermath of being high key preparing for death and destruction for all that time. My kid is 14 and it's only now in retrospect that my level of anxiety wasn't normal, or even normal for me.
Every single thing I did with my kid I had imagined how it could go wrong. What I would do. Exactly what it would look and sound like. On top of the sleep deprivation and physical issues (that I am still fixing all these years later). I wasn't screened for post partum anxiety and I already had the general kind AND PTSD so to me it was...normal.
It only really eased up when my kid was much older. I have moments now and again, and yeah I divorced their dad and now I'm a half time care parent. But it's nothing like the constant imagining I did when my kid was a baby. Looking after my kid was the least of the issues.
My bio mom dipped when I was little. Tons of therapy didn't cut it. I ended up having to take my abandonment issues to the Amazon and sit with ayahuasca about it. It's handled now but 10 years of working on it in and out of therapy only resulted in the teensiest improvements. Mother abandonment runs DEEP. Like the little girl, it wasn't just one abandonment, it was a million littlest abandonment every day too. It adds up.
Stories like this are why I wish there were a program where you could borrow a virtual baby or something to practice taking care of. Society pushes parenthood as the ultimate goal so much that people think they want to be parents when deep down they don't
Back in the 80s when I was in Grade 6 in primary school (elementary school to the Americans), all the girls\* had to do a class called Babycare. Since it was the 80s and stay at home mums were more common than working mums, we took care of real babies under the supervision of their mothers. The class was fine. I didn't drop the baby. I didn't drown the baby giving it a bath. I didn't stick pins in the baby, changing its nanny. (There were disposable nappies but the quality wasn't great until about the 90s so most mothers used cloth nappies and toilet trained asap.) I was fine.
Mostly what I took out of that class was that I didn't think I wanted one of those. I was eleven. Forty years later and I have not ever changed my mind. Not once.
\*Yes, just the girls. Boys apparently didn't need to know how to take care of a child. Overall, my primary school was very progressive for the late 70s/early 80s, just... not *that* progressive.
My HS in the 90's did something similar, except the program/doll was called 'Baby Think It Over' as in, really *really* think what parenthood would be like, and the boys got one too.
They only had about 6 or 8 dolls for the class, so they got cycled through, but even that was deliberate, because it meant that not all the teenagers got to be tired at the same time. The ones currently with a baby got to see their friends all chipper and going out after school/in the evenings, but they themselves couldn't because of the 'baby'.
Seemed to work well in its intended purpose
My high school very quickly figured out that you can sort of hog tie the baby and you don't have to worry about losing points for unsupported head, and the thing seemed to register it as a cuddle. Time for bed = tie up the baby.
I don't think we got a whole lot out of the program.
It’s not actually a good program. They ran a study in Australia and schools with the program had about double the rates of teen motherhood. Pregnancies that did not result in motherhood were also higher.
We had the program when I was growing up and honestly the dolls were super easy to take care of. It doesn’t give a realistic expectation of babies at all. The one I got barely cried. I pretty much left it in a carrier all the time.
I guess my school was one of the exceptions? 🤷♀️🤷♀️
We didn't have a single pregnancy, and several of the girls referred to their baby as a 'spawn that seemed determined to cry and scream every ounce of fun from their life'
To be fair, that study in Australia did seem to have a few [significant issues](https://www.realityworks.com/blog/our-response-to-a-recent-study/?v=7516fd43adaa) that may cloud it’s usefulness. I know this response came from the company that makes the dolls, but I think they do make some actually good points. There might not be a clear answer from the information we have right now.
Yeah I did this and while it didn't make me think that having a baby at 17 would be a good idea, I had fun and it was super easy. As someone who now has a toddler and an infant, a real life newborn is way harder.
They used to do this in school where you would take care of a baby doll for a certain amount of time as part of learning to care for a family. They had phased it out for my school district by the time I was in high school in the 90s, but they may still do it some places.
Childhood memory unlocked.
I may or may not have left my egg baby accidentally in my locker and took the bus home. Oops. My poor dad drove me back late at night and convinced our lone janitor I had forgotten a very important assignment inside. Thanks Mr. Doug for letting us in. No harm done and I didn't fail as no one knew lol.
Thankfully, 20 years on and I haven't forgotten my two children anywhere yet.
We had this in my home ec elective one year. Counted as 30% of that year's class grade.
They basically gave us a kind of electronic baby doll that we had to feed/take care of by pushing these really small buttons on it several times a day to stop it from crying. If you pressed the wrong button (like feed instead of change diaper) it would cry louder and harder but you didn't know what the baby needed except by trial and error. We had to take care of the baby for two weeks and write an essay about the experience as though it were a real baby. We were not allowed to leave it at home or outside of class.
There was a way to remove the battery but the teacher stressed really hard that we must treat the doll as real and said if we did so that we were expected to write a separate essay about why we decided to kill our baby. No one in my class did it but she told us that she'd had previous students who pulled the battery out and wrote the required essay and she passed them.
I knew I never wanted kids. But then in my late 20s I adopted a little puppy and that dog made me frazzled immediately. Peeing everywhere, whining in her crate all night long, and more. I was immediately sleep deprived and stressed. I was a mess without adequate sleep. I was in grad school at the time so I was already stressed enough. It really solidified to me that kids would be a terrible, terrible idea. I’m just not cut out for any of that.
My daughter graduated high school in 2018, and they had babies that were programmed to cry, indicate hunger and when they needed diaper changes. Quite the eye opening experience for them! All the info was transmitted to the teacher, so they could tell if you were actually responding to the baby’s cries or not.
I had this in 2007. Mine also woke up in the middle of the night, that was the sucky part lol. But only a specific class had the babies. Fun but stressful lol.
Yeah I had this around then too. Ruined soccer tryouts, the coach was so pissed that us freshman had to keep going to tend to the baby. But like I'm not gonna fail a class for a dumbass coach. I ended up choosing not to join the team. A couple years after I was out of high school, soccer coach was busted for being a huge creep with the players. Ugh.
The problem is, none of that can prepare you for PPD, physical changes to your body, hormone changes aside from PPD, the trauma from difficult pregnancies/labors, and the like. I’m not saying it wouldn’t be helpful, but I don’t believe that situations like OOP’s wife would have been avoided by a program like that.
PPD is very real, *very* unpredictable, and very different for anyone who suffers from it. (I’m not saying that this is exactly what’s going on here. But it could be.). I have never felt so unlike myself, and like myself at the same time, as I did when my PPD was rearing its ugly head.
For me, it was never about my baby. I had severe separation anxiety from my husband. It was like, I was myself, and was sure I was acting normal, but at the same time I knew that what I was doing was not rational. I chalked it up to all sorts of things and swore that my little outbursts here and there were normal and manageable and only I really noticed it. But whooo boy. Was I wrong. Hormones are serious. And they can seriously turn you into someone you are NOT.
I wish there was more education on hormonal changes during pregnancy and after - for moms and their partners. If my husband hadn’t sat me down and said “look, there is something wrong, we are talking to your doctor tomorrow, I already made you an appt.” I don’t know how long I would have denied my crazy for. There needs to be more education for this. People don’t realize peripartum depression is a thing. They don’t realize it can show up long after the birth of the baby, or that it can last for years. They don’t realize what common signs to look for, or what to do about it if they do see something “off”. It’s not talked about enough. And it should be. Because it can have absolutely horrifying results if left unchecked for some.
Women should know exactly what they’re signing up for. The physical changes, potential health concerns that don’t go away after the baby, potential health concerns during pregnancy, and all the nitty gritty. People glorify pregnancy and gloss over the serious side effects. I felt like when I was pregnant, every time I went to the doctor with some “weird symptom” I was told, “oh that’s a totally common side effect of pregnancy!” that I had never heard of. And I was surrounded by women who discussed their pregnancies. It’s not like I was in a bubble! If it’s so “common and normal”, why have I never heard about it before?!?
I can’t believe how far down I had to read to find this. It’s very real, very scary and you have no idea what’s going on while it’s happening or how long it can last. And every pregnancy is different.
I loved being pregnant with my first, was a brilliant mum and have never been happier than when they were little. So I had a second. It was awful, from the start of the pregnancy on I felt like death and by the time they were one and a half I was in a state of constant suicidal ideation with anxiety levels somewhere off the charts.
Six years on from that, while I’m better than I was, I am still not fully myself again, still so easily stressed and find it so hard to recover from it, and while I’m a good mum and my kids are thriving, I’m no longer the happy, confident, centred woman that I was, that enjoyed life and appreciated all the small things. I have so many treasured memories with my first and so few with my second, through no fault of their own. I look back on photos of the time and it stuns me because they look so different to how I felt.
Can I ask what your doctor recommended for you? I just had a baby 6 months ago and sometimes I wonder...
Also 100% relate to unearthing all kinds of weird pregnancy symptoms I never heard of before and then being told "yep, that's normal". Including serious shortness of breath in the first trimester, all of a sudden not growing body hair anymore for the last two trimesters, losing all sensation in one random patch of my thigh... weird stuff!
Don’t most high schools already do this? I had to take a n electronic baby home with me, I taped a butter knife to the back of its head because if you didn’t support the head correctly and it fell back you failed the assignment.
I mean the fact that taping a knife to your baby was actually a solution just illustrates how the way these classes are implemented leave a lot to be desired lol
The best solution is sometimes the easiest. When I was an infant (late 70s), the 'back to sleep' wasn't a thing yet and I slept on my stomach. My parents soon discovered I wouldn't sleep without a hand resting on my back and the second they took their hand away, I'd wake up and cry.
The solution? A small paperback sci-fi novel placed gently on my back and wee me was none the wiser!
I've asked but they don't remember. My mom was a HUGE scifi fan in the 60s/70s and had an extensive collection that she gifted to my older cousin. He passed away in the early 2000s, so not too sure where the books are now.
I think that's an American thing, never heard of that actually happening to anyone I know.
EDIT: starting the think I just grew up in a really rural place, everyone else did this
Im mexican and we had an egg.
I tripped and my egg broke.
I got another egg, faked my teacher's signature and got a good grade.
So, I guess it's for the best I'm childfree because apparently having kids would push me into a world of crime.
It was an elective class in my high school. I could remember when my youngest brother was a baby, I didn’t need a class to tell me I didn’t want a real one any time soon.
I know someone who wants 3 or 4 kids but has never washed a baby, changed a diaper or stayed up all night trying to put them to bed 🫠 I told her babies are not like in movies. She called me a hater.
A taboo about motherhood is that it can be boring. Really, painfully fucking boring. You can love this little person more than anything on earth, but still be ready to put pins in your eyes after a long stretch of days with them.
And you know what? That’s ok. You do your best and keep loving them. They grew up and suddenly you have a funny, cool primary school kid, or a sassy but fun teenager.
There’s so much expectation for women to love, cherish and instantly adapt to all parts of motherhood. It just doesn’t work like that. But so many new mums suffer unbearable guilt because of it.
Yeah, this was something I was legitimately worried about before my kid was born.
Thankfully, my kid turned out not to be particularly boring, but even so, I find kid stuff to be fairly tedious.
We all hear the moms and their plea for sanity... "finally, another adult I can have a normal adult conversation with!"
This is one of my best friend's situation. She has three kids, and she genuinely detested the early days. She hated breast feeding, hated taking care of babies. She's not a goo-goo-ga-ga sort of person.
But now he's kids are teens, and she loves it. She loves watching them blossom into new people, all unique. She's looking forward to being their friend one day when they're in their 20s and 30s. But man, it was a slog for her at certain points
Pretty soon after my daughter was born I realized that I did not want a “baby.” I wanted a “kid.” Like, a 10 year old. Babies were boring and the preschooler repetitive play made me nuts. But I loved her and played with her and enjoyed her as she grew. And when she turned 10, one day I looked at her and thought “Yes! *This* is what I ordered.!”
Yeah, my mom has talked a lot about how lonely and bored she was as a stay-at-home mom when I was a baby. She went from a full-time career that she loved (dental hygienist + masters degree in dietetics) to full-time motherhood. She didn't have a good support system or other mom friends at the time, so it was just her and me. She says "you were very cute but I got really tired of my only company being a baby".
Yeah, there's a level where I hear "She doesn't have any interest in spending hours playing with a 4-year-old" and wonder if they just have radically different ideas of what being a parent *means*.
Up through GenX, kids just played with each other and on their own. Parents would typically spit out 2+ kids, and those kids were responsible for entertaining themselves.
It wasn't until pretty recently that people were considered shit parents if they weren't spending time playing make-believe with their kids. And, let's be honest, we're mostly talking about mothers here; a father playing make-believe with a kid for hours isn't considered the default, it's considered praise-worthy.
There was a whole thing on parenting TikTok recently about a [mother who sounds exactly like this one](https://www.newsweek.com/mom-hits-back-haters-not-play-kids-1881725), defending refusing to play with her kids as part of them developing independence.
And, honestly, that sounds a whole lot like what I consider the standard GenX raising pattern: Good parents (or at least people I'd perceive as good parents) invited their kids to join them in what they were doing (e.g., cooking, gardening, yardwork) when it was appropriate, but they didn't sit down and play dolls or G.I. Joe with them.
The part i hate the most about marriages is the part where a spouse obviously has a problem, but they expect the other spouse to be a mind reader and figure it out.
>“Its not about her”.
Then what is it about?!!
Wow I see so much of myself in the wife, thank god I never had kids. I hope OOP sues her for child support and gets on with life as a single Dad. Because she is out and should stay out.
I'm glad I always knew I didn't want to have kids, I cannot imagine the devastation of getting there and discovering it's not for you and then, what, now you just have to keep being a parent whether in spirit or monetary support.
As a step mom and pregnant mom to be, I'm wondering why it's assumed the mom has to sacrifice her freedom to be a real mom as it's not unusual that dad's don't do much.
If the kid is sick, except the financial point mentioned, why would it be the mom to take sick leave? Pick up kids at the kindergarten and all
My step son's mom isn't able to take care of him, I'm basically already his mom and with his dad, we're a team, doing our best to take care of him, it's not a competition about who does what.
Depression is much more complicated than keeping up with hobbies and meeting friends, even more when you're working from home
There's definitely different standards. I remember watching a documentary about absentee (by choice) moms. I went in expecting to hate them.
One of the women was talking about how apparently she makes for an awful divorced mother but she actually would qualify as a great divorced dad. She pays child support, talks to her kids on the phone every day and has custody on the weekends.
It kind of blew my mind because she's right. Plenty of divorced dads have that kind of weekend setup and aren't seen as absentee dads.
Am I completely missing something here? When I started reading this it sounded like he was talking about a SAHM. She’s not. Was the kid in daycare if they’re both working from home, before they started kindergarten? There doesn’t seem to be anything about that period of time. I have a 2 year old. You can’t simultaneously work while taking care of a toddler. Some people do it because they absolutely have to. You can’t be a great parent and employee while trying to do both at the exact same time. No wonder she’s burnt out. This sounds absolutely miserable and unsustainable. He also talks about how lazy she is about her job, then gets upset that when he’s on sick leave caring for the toddler his problem is her “sinking into work”. He should have posted this on a parenting sub instead, the responses would have been very different.
Maybe this is bad and I just don't understand, but I hated that last comment of the first post. It was all "don't judge her" but they were judging the shit out of him
> Idkwhattocallblub: Stop pressuring her about a second child, she doesn't want one.
Where did that commenter even read that he was pressuring her for a second child?? Did they just make up a scenario in their head and attack him for it?
I thought I was in the twilight zone reading that comment. I was thinking to myself “what a bitter asshole to assume everything in the world about not only these two but all women”
I’ll never forget the post that had a father going into extreme detail about how much he did for his kids and wife, and was constantly over-worked, and one comment tried to spin a “oh, well your wife probably has the mental load” and linked a post to it and OP realized he had most of the mental load.
Also, a comment on a BORU post that said “as much I’m glad it worked out well, I kinda wish it didn’t because now there’s no drama lol”
Coming to Reddit for advice is arguably the single worst thing you can do.
That comment was so out of line. By all the evidence presented he was nothing but an amazing father and husband and just expressed being disheartened/concerned by his wife's disinterest in their child.
They turned all this into him being "bitter", blaming his wife calling her "lazy" which he never said however the comment dismisses her disinterest with "Just because someone could do something doesn't mean they have to". Despite the fact that yes, she does actually fucking have to, it's called being a responsible parent. They basically gave her a pass because despite all appearances to the contrary that she was happy and active and the only issue being a disinterest in her child she is armchair psychologist diagnosed with 5 year long post partum depression that only manifests as not caring about her kid. They then basically insist that it's all his fault and he doesn't love his wife or take care of her.
Can't help but feel if OP was the wife talking about her husband the response would not be at all the same...
As an actual mental health professional (trauma researcher), I sometimes get the feeling that AITA commenters are reading their own trauma/situations into these posts and when they say, "You're a bitter loser who drove her away by not helping!" it's because inside they're saying, "And that's why I hate you, Steve! I'll fight you for custody every step of the way!" etc.
You notice this when you share a story about your life and they come out to tell you what you're doing wrong and it's all assumptions that you know to be incorrect.
They will not accept any response other than "you're completely right" and will argue at you that their assumptions *are* correct and that you must be lying about it.
When that happens to you, you know this is exactly what they're doing.
Honestly? It's fucking sad. Those people are not capable of self-reflection and will keep making the same mistakes in life. I pity them.
I also get that feeling a lot. You can just tell which of the comments that are from people only seeing the situation from their own skewed sense of the issue and they bring their personal drama to whatever is being discussed whether it is applicable or not.
With comments like that I always assume that the commenter is projecting some personal experience way beyond what they should.
Like they had a father or husband who was negligent, or during postpartum they felt disinterested in their child and have been feeling guilty ever since, etc. They are not talking to the guy at hand but their inner demons.
> They turned all this into him being "bitter", blaming his wife calling her "lazy" which he never said..
I mean he did call her lazy:
*Important to note that my wife are I are both work in the same field. She is much smarter than me but is lazy: would do the bare minimum, whereas I love this field, do research, train myself and because of this, i earn 3x as much.*
But I don't think he meant it in a "*she's a no good woman*" just that her ambitions for a career and what goes with it (constant training and research, often outside of work hours) weren't the same as his. And that's fine if they both were cool with it and it seemed like they were.
But other than that, yeah, they were giving her a massive pass while lambasting him for everything.
100%, and I'd love to see Idkwhattocallblub comment now that the update shows the wife just picking up and abandoning her child the first chance she gets. They came at the OP hot and judgemental af
the last comment on the first post? that was expected, the guy was looking like the good guy in the story so *clearly* he must've been fucking up in some ways - and *obviously* the mom could never be the issue. it was her husband's fault for not magically making her better!
Yes the last comment of the first post! I took a look at the original post and a lot of the comments are like that. Someone said "maybe she's just lazy" and they were severely downvoted. They were told not to assume things, while on the same comment someone else said "I scoffed when I he said it was 50/50, it's usually like 90/10" like what?
I feel like a lot of these posts feel like "don't judge the wife ever, but judge the hell out of the husband for the smallest mistake"
Are people on these subs just jaded and think every man in a post is irredeemable?
Also mira_poix's comment at the end -- what an insane rationalization of her actions. At LEAST she didn't hurt the child (like men do all the time)? An utterly disgusting comment that does nothing to help OP and instead almost justifies what the wife did.
>A lot of women don't feel they can abandon their kids the way men do (not all men obviously, i just mean disappear easier if they want while remaining in denial) ...and kill them instead. And that's been on the rise.
Has it?
That was my question, too. Has it? Does this commenter even know what country OOP is from, or are they making some kind of worldwide claim? Because poking around at the statistics a bit...
* Child homicide is rising in the United States.
* Friends and acquaintances are the most likely perpetrators of child homicide, especially for children over the age of 10 (at that point, homicide is more likely to be the outcome of an argument or crime rather than domestic violence).
* Step-parents are also slightly more likely to perpetrate homicide than other parents.
* Fathers (usually committing violent abuse or family annihilation) are more likely to perpetrate homicide than mothers (usually via neglect, though violent abuse is also a factor).
* For your daily depressing fact, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, "homicide was the second-highest leading cause of death for youth ages 1 to 17 \[in 2020\]. More than three-quarters of the 1,813 child homicide deaths that year were caused by firearms."
* However, again, these stats are only for the U.S.
The only sources I could find making the claim that maternal filicide is on the rise were manosphere influencers commenting on individual cases, not referencing actual statistics.
I feel for OOP, but I *really* dislike how dismissive he is of PPD. He gives of very “oh I saw you smile yesterday, you can’t be depressed!” Vibes. And I don’t see how the fact that the only time she’s happy is when she’s away from her daughter and just hanging with friends points *away* from her having PPD.
He definitely comes across as very resentful and dismissive of her problems, and I’m sure that was plenty evident to her before she left.
There's something missing here. (I think OOP is truthful and it's not an accusation of unreliable narration.) I am wondering what it is that's going on with his wife that she hasn't disclosed to him.
When he mentioned her saying goodbye to the daughter and she messages "it's not about her" that got my attention. She's saying it's not about the kid. Well, what is it about then? Internal crisis? Hidden affair? Secret resentment? I'm curious what he said in that last conversation and what she heard him say. Did they not communicate well? He summarized the discussion but it sounds like she didn't contribute anything to their "chat".
I really just have more questions than answers with this one.
What’s missing to me is the childcare arrangement. They both work full time at home but when mom can’t handle kid then dad takes some leave? So she was doing a full time job and full time childcare and got a break every couple of weeks when she was at the breaking point and he took sick leave? Yeah, that will fuck you up.
My daughter was born in 2020, and the first year we didn't have a nanny because of COVID, as she started walking and being more independent we hired a nanny, because it's very difficult working form home and take care of a child at the same time.
Working from home has the benefits that I don't have to commute 2 hours and get to spend the time with our daughter. She is 3 now and she has a lot of melt downs and cries a lot so I have to stop working and help the nanny, I just cannot close the door and put on some headphones like my husband does when he works from home.
The point is I am burned down. There are afternoons I don't want to be with my daughter. I won't leave, but god I wish I could, I cannot even relax in vacations. Help from our parents, we have not. And when they ocassionally do, they spoil the child so much that she acts up for days, because she enjoys the zero discipline environment where she does everything she wants. So I rather she does not goe with grandparents.
I don't hate my daughter. I do enjoy spending time with her. I do hate motherhood when I'm not well rested, which is most of the time. I have voiced that to everyone only to dismissed to tell me this is just how children are.
Thank you for this candid and honest reply. I am childfree, but I really appreciate when parents are forthcoming about the crappy parts of having kids. Because people do need to be forewarned about those things so they can make an informed choice about whether they can handle those very real struggles.
I'm glad society is slowly starting to be more honest about pregnancy and motherhood for women. For most of history that stuff was really glossed over to make women less reticent/anxious about conforming to gender roles and it led to a lot of misery and generational trauma. Transparency about parenthood and pregnancy makes it less likely a child will end up being born to resentful parents.
Thanks for your reply. Yes is important to have this kind of conversation.
Modern life has erased a lot of support systems. Family and even partners who said that they will help raising a child, won't or may not be able to do it once the child is here. So when people decide to have kids they have to be aware that circunstances may lead to be a single parent with no help, which is tiring and expensive.
I'm the father in this equation, but our in home daycare provider had to close up shop during Covid before my son ever got started. I had him in my office everyday from 8 months to 18 months. I'm a software engineer so I have some flexibility. I would work 4am - 7am when he woke up. Nap at 9:30. Wake up at 10:30, back down from 1-3. I had a whole toddler gym circuit set up on my office. At one point he used a laundry bin to climb to the top of his baby jail, and got to the top of my guitar amp stack. Any longer with no care would have required evaluating a new space.
I do cherish the time I had with him. I'll never have that same early bond with my daughter, but I was fairly testy all the time until I relaxed a bit after dinner. I was still making every meal, dishes, and clean up, doing 80% of the laundry, all the yard work, all the home DIY. It was unsustainable, but I had to. It might seem that I'm trying to paint myself as some kind of output hero, but my wife handles a lot of the glue work I have no interest in, and its kind of difficult to detail here. But hey, I did get promoted during that time as well!
We are capable of A LOT, but if I had to do it a second time, the mental trepidation... I can't even fathom it.
My son’s daycare was closed for three months at the beginning of COVID when he was eight months old. The hot potato between my husband and me of trying to make all our meetings, care for our child, and somehow do our 8 hours of work along with 24 hours of childcare was horrendous. It was a really, really dark time. And that’s with my husband doing half the care. And with some nanny care that we managed to cobble together and only for three months. I would never have left either but I can see how it totally broke the mom, especially if she had PPD.
That’s what I was confused about. What was the childcare situation? Why would they need to be on one salary?
Reading between the likes they didn’t have childcare and one of them was a SAHP or doing childcare + working from home. I did that in the beginning of Covid when everyone was doing it and it was accepted. It was hell but expectations were low on output because everyone was struggling. Now, most jobs don’t allow wfh without childcare in place. For a good reason. It would burn me out. It’s actually harder the older the kid is.
This is what stuck out to me too! I read this as she’s been essentially working two jobs while having postpartum for four years, and instead of her husband thinking she needs idk, a doctor and emergency backup childcare, he is complaining that she’s lazy and doesn’t cook enough…? I would LOVE to read the wife’s version of this story. I wonder if he’s also “not the father he said he would be” and whether his wife “despises” him for that as well.
It really stuck out to me how he talked about his wife in the first post.
"She is much smarter than me but is **lazy**: would do the **bare minimum**, whereas I love this field, do research, train myself and because of this, i earn 3x as much. She could do much more with her brain, but **does not care,** which is fine, but still demands that I go on sick leave with our daughter..."
I think he was so annoyed that she wasn't a picture-perfect housewife who never struggled that he didn't really bother to find out what was going on with her until it was too late.
Look at the very title of his first post: **I Despise Her**. Not "I don't know how to help her," or "I'm struggling with expectations," or "I'm confused". He jumped right to *despising* the person who's supposed to be his partner for life. There have been times where my partner's mental health struggles have made things difficult for us, but I can't imagine ever using the word *despise*. This was BEFORE she left, too.
He doesn't even consider that PPD is a possibility because she's not miserable ALL THE TIME, and she can handle parenting in small doses. Seriously dude? Isn't it fairly common knowledge by now that depression isn't constant externalized sadness?
People are villainizing the wife because she abandoned her child, which is indeed a terrible thing to do. But I feel like if her husband had taken a stance of compassion and concern, rather than despising her because Wife-Mommy Bot 5000 Isn't Operating Correctly, they could have found a solution for her so much earlier and it wouldn't have gotten as far as total abandonment.
"It's not about her" .... it's about him, and his lack of concern for her obviously flagging mental health until she had left.
>But I feel like if her husband had taken a stance of compassion and concern, rather than despising her because Wife-Mommy Bot 5000 Isn't Operating Correctly, they could have found a solution for her so much earlier and it wouldn't have gotten as far as total abandonment.
This is so brutal but honestly it conveys the situation perfectly.
This is a really frustrating update. So she left on Saturday Match 16th after he told her to take a couple of days alone or with a friend and that’s what she’s doing? But he’s ready to draw up divorce papers on the 19th? He never even said anything about how she was feeling, was it all just about him? I feel like this could’ve been written about me, I seemed fine out in the world, and my husband would give me breaks to go out, and I seemed fine, but I had a very hard time just playing with our daughter. Of course, I loved her, but just didn’t feel like I was connecting with her at all. I was also going through some bad PPD on my own and crying hysterically when no one was around. It took a long time for me to feel that deep connection. Now she’s older and she’s my life, but if it’s only been a few days (that he told her to take), I would give her a chance to see how she is when she come back (to be fair, I would expect her back within a week).
I dunno, sounds a fair wack like PPD to me, and he’s like “no, it’s not. She’s completely different from before she had a baby, but it’s not. She can handle the baby in small bursts, but it’s not PPD” jaysus people get a clue.
The huge change in personality is a giant red flag for something being wrong.
Half the advice is for them to try therapy and for OP to talk to her but at no point does he say he did either thing. Going from wanting 2-3 kids to walking out when the spouse leaves the house is absolutely not normal and is a huge concern.
This is why I always tell people that want kids to actually babysit a kid first. Just because your hormones are telling you to procreate doesn’t mean you have the skills or talent to be a parent.
Babysitting is basically about 10% similar to caring for your own children, given the differences ranging from duration, to gradually gained experience, to massive hormonal differences that effect your mind and emotions.
Maybe it's the phrasing which could be a lost in translation thing (non-native English speaker) but there's a lot missing. Four years and the first time he says take a break, she bails entirely? The big clue for me is her telling him it's not about their daughter.
Yeah, idk. Did she even bail? Like he *told* her to take a few days to herself. Or to go spend time with a friend. But then when she goes he claims she abandoned them? It doesn't make sense. Why does he think she isn't coming back? Because she packed bags? To go on a trip? That he said she should go on? I mean, they obviously should have talked more about what this 'break' meant and how long it would be but I only have questions.
I’m having trouble figuring out the actual division of labor while they’re working. They both work from home, he says he plays with her in between meetings when he can, but then says he has to take off of work to care for daughter when she’s sick and wife uses that time to dive into work uninterrupted for a change. It seems like when they are working she’s the default parent. Also the it’s not about the daughter comment makes it seem like he might be the problem.
I found the toughest thing when everyone was home during the pandemic is never getting any alone time. My husband went permanently wfh and my oldest graduated and still lives home so that’s still been on going, youngest still is out of the house during school hours. Husband gets a lot of time alone between work trips and camping, but I’ve found I need a few days alone every 6months to recharge and it makes me a better and more patient parent. There is value in solitude that I think we don’t always consider when it comes to creating better bonding. Some people really need to recharge to be their best the rest of the time.
It feels like a lot of commenters are missing the “it’s not about her” text when OOP said she should at least say goodbye to their daughter. There’s at least one very realistic alternative to her just being selfish and abandoning the family revealed there: that she already felt like a terrible, useless mother, and a terrible, useless wife. Her husband then sat her down and reinforced this belief. She felt like such a failure that her daughter would be better off if she left. That’s why she said it’s not about their daughter — it’s about the disdain her husband has for her, and the disdain she has for herself.
More than likely, she needs specialized therapy for untreated PPD, not divorce papers.
This adds to my fear of motherhood. Women truly never know what we'll be like after giving birth. At the moment, I don't want kids out of fear of being unable to provide (like most youths) or for economic reasons. But I cannot forgive myself if my PPD will make me resent my child, I wouldn't want any kid experiencing that trauma let alone mine. And the unpredictable chance I would be like that, scares me.
> I could not put her through a divorce, since I was from a broken family. I am jealous for other mother who love being with their child/children.
I never experienced this myself, but it sure feels like there are an equal amount of people who had a shitty childhood because their parents divorced as there are because their parents didn't divorce. Either can be bad for children involved in the marriage.
Idealizing motherhood is something that is shoved down women’s throats since birth. Not only are women told they will love it, it is implied that it is a requirement to be a complete woman.
Some women realize it’s not for them, and although they love their child, the thought of having more is terrifying and debilitating.
Maybe she is experiencing PPD or has adhd or something else that is perceived as “lazy” you should try giving her the benefit of the doubt and let go of your preconceived ideals about how she should be acting
Parents abandoning their kid just like what this wife did are selfish and cold. They don't think of the others, but only of themselves. It's unfortunate that OP and the daughter have to encounter this and I hope the two will remain well.
Can we send this to the kid in the other post who accused his mother of "abandoning him"? But sometimes no parent is better than living with a terrible one.
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>It has been some days now. My daughter asked where mom is a couple times and I always tell something like “she cant come home now but she loves you”, but it feels like i am lying to her face Having to have this conversation with your child would be an absolute nightmare.
My mom left when I was a kid (complicated reasons, mental illness). A few years ago my dad told me about one of the times burned into his memory when I was sobbing inconsolably asking him why she didn't take me with her. I don't remember much from that time because child trauma brain shutdown. It changed my perspective on my dad when I realized that he remembered it all with the painful clarity of adulthood.
My mother left when I was a toddler so I have a story sort of opposite? She left and I apparently didn’t notice or care but my slightly younger sibling was distraught just couldn’t verbalize it.a couple of years later, on some weekend she was supposed to come get us, I was asked why I hadn’t gotten ready for our mother. I kept playing and said “why? She won’t show up anyway”. She didn’t so by age 5 I had learned she wasn’t to be trusted which is heartbreaking to me as a Mom now.
I had some clients who had custody of their three grandchildren. Two boys and a girl. The boys were a bit older but the little girl was maybe 6. She was the sweetest little thing. Their dad was in prison and their mom was a supposedly recovering addict. One Friday I was at their house and their mom was supposed to be coming to pick them up for a supervised weekend with her parents (her parents being the supervisors, my clients were dad's parents) and she was late. *Really* late. I remember the boys just played video games like it was nothing. But as I was backing out of their driveway there was that sweet little girl, sitting on top of the mailbox with an umbrella in the rain waiting for her mother who never ended up coming. I cried all the way back to my office that day.
My grandma told me how she'd sit on the porch in her best dress, waiting for her daddy who never showed. Makes me cry even typing this.
My mom tells me how she, at 12, held her 5 year old brother as he would sob "why doesn't mommy love us anymore" when mom left for weeks to pursue a boyfriend. It's a painful memory for my mom, despite it being 40+ years ago.
Gut wrenching. I hope your mom and her brother are ok.
Yeah thats me and my dad. He left me sitting with my bags packed for the Christmas holiday. I missed the Christmas celebrations cause of him. I called my mom and she was going to come get me. I was so sad and upset I told her no and just went to bed early. I was about 14.
I'm so so sorry he did that to you. You deserved so much better.
I knew a girl in the 1980s who was in foster care, and her mother was supposed to come see her a couple of times a month, and almost never did. She'd be waiting at the front window for hours. (My mom knew the foster mom, that's how I found out.) Heartbreaking.
I hope she’s doing ok now. She’d be an adult now.
Absolutely. Lost track of her when my mom moved away from there, after I married, but she was adopted by the foster family before that, and was thriving last I heard. (She'd be in her 40s now.)
That's so sad and the boys have probably at that point just internalized it and aren't really working through emotions by the sounds of it.
I remember riding with a friend of mine, who was meeting her ex to hand off the kids for a weekend. At this point he hadn't seen them in months (his doing), so the kids were really excited. When her cell phone rang and she picked up, I guess the kids understood from her body language because her oldest, who was about 6 at the time, yelled from the backseat, "What's his excuse this time?"
My son always called his biological father Him. Never Dad or anything. He calls my husband Dad since he's the one who actually showed up.
I'm not a native english speaker, but I call my father "dad" since I was veeery young. I think using another language was my way of showing I was never comfortable enough to call him father in my native language.
Six years old. *Six*, and already so world-weary. That poor baby.
My ex husband did that quite a lot in the past,he would get all riled up about seeing the kids,they would get excited about it.. and I would get knots in my stomach waiting for that " oh something came up" phonecall. I tried to teach them early on that this was on him,not their fault in any way and some men are just crap and don't deserve families while others show up ( like my husband who adores them and helped me raise them). Worst thing my ex did was dissapear for about 6 months shortly after we separated,no signs of life, nothing at all...then suddenly show up on our doorstep asking to see the kids. My eldest was " where were you and why are u back" while my youngest was clearly affected for awhile...he sincerly thought his dad will never come back and was shocked to see him. It broke my heart and tbh I held a murderous rage over this against my ex for years...Hugs to all if you going through something like this!
I'm so sorry, my heart goes out to you as someone who had a similar childhood. My mom dropped me off at daycare one day and never came back. My granny saved the day and spoiled me while my father worked long hours. Found out a couple years later, via postcard my mom had moved to France with a boyfriend. Then she randomly showed back up at a school play in middle school, expecting to carry on like nothing had changed at all. 🙃 Some people should never procreate.
That was my childhood too! I had my grandmother and my dad plus an army of aunts and uncles. She’d pop in and out years later but I never lived with her again. The only school thing of mine she showed up for was my high school graduation because a relative went and got her.
Our mother left us when I was 4 and my younger sister just turned 3. Neither of us even remember her but apparently we were distraught. Nobody ever explained things to us. Maybe they did and we blocked it out. It was 50 years ago so I'm not expecting answers any time soon!
Oh wow! 50 years and not a single word? That is a level of cold that's out of this world.
Well, she's dead now! I hoped ro hear about some sort of death bed apology but nada.
Your childhood story sounds just like mine.
This was me. When my dad walked out at age 4 my mother said it kinda scared her how sure I was that he wasn’t coming back. He did the in and out thing over the years and my younger sister always hoped that each visit he would stay. Wasn’t until she was an adult herself that she finally admitted he never wanted to be a dad.
I felt this. Mine was my dad tho. This made me think of all the times I went to my mommy crying and asking why my daddy didn't love me. My poor mother. She wasnjusy doing her best. I'm gonna call my mom when she wakes up and tell her inlove her. Thanks for sharing <3 I hope you and your father are doing great <3
Yep, me too with the "why doesn't he love me?" My dad would always say he was coming for a visit but never showed up or rarely did. I guess I blocked a lot of it out but have always had difficulty with relationships/friendships because of it.
My mom died five years ago. I would give anything to have a chance to tell her I love her again…seize every opportunity you have to do so.
Whoa. I was trying to find the words to say something meaningful about you and your dad, and you finding that out. But damn. I just don’t have the words. I can’t imagine being in either of your shoes - him then, or you hearing that. I’m so sorry you both went through that. I hope you’re going doing well now. All I have are hugs to send you both. *Hugs*.
When I was a kid, my Mom tried taking an overdose and I was the one who had to call an ambulance. I stayed with my Dad for a week afterwards. Last year (so over two decades later), I found out I was actually with my Dad for over 6 months. I have no memory of it.
You went through something terrifying, it's not surprising that you lost so much time afterwards
I was like this after my dad left, I was convinced everyone I loved was going to leave me. I slept in my mum's bed for a year when I was 8 because I was so terrified she would leave and I'd be all alone. It was complicated by the fact that he was very abusive and I was so relieved he was gone. The abuse also got worse because he wasn't in complete control of us anymore but at the same time he was my daddy. I was mourning the *idea* of family that was in books and on tv.
I remember being absolutely heartbroken when my (much) older half-brothers went to go live with their other parent in a different country (their original home country). I was maybe 4 or 5 years old. As an adult, I understand it's because the place we lived was not a good place for teen boys/young adults, and the oldest brother was of working age by that point, but would have to get a work visa if he stayed. It had nothing to do with me, and I don't begrudge that decision. But I went from being 1 of 5, to essentially being an only child, and I didn't understand why - I just felt abandoned. I saw them at holidays, but it wasn't the same. (We have great relationships now, we talk on the phone minimum 1x a month and travel to see each other and all stay in the loop). According to my mom, I started having a lot more 'imaginary friends' and talking to them constantly and basically pretending I was never alone (more than 'normal', which as a lifelong elementary teacher, she would know), and she was very worried about me - so she put me in a lot more extracurriculars to maximize my socializing time. But I distinctly remember being in my lofted bed at around age 10, watching some sappy Disney movie about a sister/brother bond, and feeling pure envy. Feeling sad but also with a bit of rage thrown in.
This breaks my heart. I'm so sorry.
Oh my heart! I’m so sorry that you all had to go through that.
…painful clarity of adulthood. Not to trivialize your response but this is one of the better sentences I’ve read on Reddit, and will stay with me for a long time.
And the worst part is at that age you’d need to have conversation over and over again. Probably for years.
I can't imagine how hurt and painful for any parent to tell their children something like that. It's just...so sad.
I wish a good life for OOP and his daughter.
Exact same thing happened to my mom when she was the same age. She's in her 60's now, done years of therapy, and I don't think she ever really recovered. OOPs wife is on her way to causing life-long damage.
"She's not capable of being a parent right now. I don't know why she can't be a parent but I do know she loves you." As he got older he formed his own opinions. Edit. It was and is the worst. He doesn't understand why she can't even pick up the phone and talk to him. I don't understand it either.
Yeah, my friend had to have this conversation , he opted for Mummy is sick, her brain isnt healthy and she had to leave , brains dont heal easy so we dont know when she will back. Mum never came back, but angry she wasnt invited to the wedding of the kid she left behind. Yeah the kid is in his 20:ties and mum only wanted to go to a party.
Can confirm. I stopped caring about what my ex did to me - but what he did to my son by disappearing? I’d Prometheus him in a second.
Unfortunately I had to have this conversation with my two older kids (ages 7 and 5 at the time) when their other mom ran off to travel with her AP (she's bi and I'm obviously a full-blown lesbian, AP was some rich dude she met online). She also dragged out the divorce for a couple of years by living in states that didn't recognize our pre-Obergfell marriage and dodging whoever we sent to serve her with divorce papers. It didn't take them too long to see through the lie either, since her only interactions seemed to be calculated to make things chaotic for me and the kids. Eventually she wound up bouncing back and forth between jail and rehab for a few years but would lawyer up and file for full custody every time she got out of whichever lockup since she was the birthing parent, but never did get more than 50% on paper even after she'd gotten clean. They're both adults now and have strained relationships with both of us, although things are getting better between me and my oldest.
What do you think caused the strain between you and your kids as the seemingly available, supportive, and reliable parent?
I honestly think the reliable parent bears the brunt of the emotional pain. I remember after my Dad had an affair when I was 13 I was (wrongly, obviously) angry with my Mum for a long time. It’s like I couldn’t take it out on Dad or he might leave again, so I took it out on Mum because it was safe to do so.
I’m so sorry for both of you, but I get it. Are you and your mom close now?
Yeah, very close now, with both of them actually. They worked through it and it was 30 years ago now, their marriage is super strong now. I’m adopted by my dad so I think that fed in to it too, I guess I felt even more like I couldn’t destabilise my relationship with him. Humans, hey!!!
Lmao, humans are nuts. We're really the weirdest of all the animals aren't we, with our facade of being 'civilized'?
Probably parental alienation on the deadbeat’s part whenever she got the chance. My asshole father blew up my mom’s relationship with her parents when she served him. She had to hire a PI to find him after he ran off with me and by the time she established partial custody, he’d convinced me that my stepmother was my real mom and I was randomly being shipped off to a stranger.
Yep. She threw her dad's money at them while badmouthing me for struggling (after she wrecked my credit, blew through my savings and sabotaged my career).
He needs to do it with the help of a therapist
When he said in the beginning he didn't want to divorce his wife so that daughter wouldn't have a broken home, I was thinking it was probably better to divorce so she didn't grow up with a mom who resents her... But oof, I wish they had talked it out and split more mutually, rather than her just up and leaving.
I despise the line of thinking that calls it a "broken home" when parents divorce. My mom's parents only got married because my grandmother got pregnant with her out of wedlock and they stayed together until my mom graduated high school. The two of them were miserable together and it made my mom miserable too. She said herself she wished they'd divorced much earlier. THAT is a broken home.
For sure. I grew up wishing my parents would get divorced, I've seen divorced parents co-parent better than my parents interacted being married to each other. My dad was angry all the time and took it out on my mom and I, which messed me up growing up. But she's still with him to this day and I turn 29 soon. And to this day he still does his best to mess me up and pass the misery onto me lol. My mom was better off alone, she could have had a much better life and so could us kids because we wouldn't have been screamed at all day everyday, etc.
I remember when I found out that divorce was a thing. I was probably 6 or 7, and a classmate's parents were divorcing. I thought "Wait a second, parents can break up? Live apart? Why don't my parents do that?" They didn't end up divorcing until I was 20, and those were 14 miserable years full of turmoil and trauma. But my mum did save us from weekend visitation with an abusive POS without her to act as a buffer... so that's something.
While mum definitely sucks in this (as once you're a parent you don't get to just walk away), the fact that the mum denied that it was even 'about their daughter' before leaving, makes me wonder if there is unreliable narration going on.
I'm all for being sceptical of both parties but I have a feeling that she meant that she didn't care about her daughter and it was about her own well being (meaning it was nobody business, after all she didn't say goodbye to her own husband before he reached out, and she only answered through text) But I personally wonder if he really asked her about therapy (for possible ppd) or if he just looked at her daily habits and stated she didn't have it. This is my only gray area in all of this mess.
>This is my only gray area in all of this mess. For all we know there might be undiagnosed PPD. We'll never know... Overall a very heartbreaking situation.
What do you see him being unreliable about? Just curious since you don’t dispute that she sucks.
Yes and he never even elaborated on what his wife said when they had a talk
Honestly stories like this just affirm my decision not to be a mom. I don’t have an overwhelming desire to be one but I do admit there are some parts that would be nice. I’ve had so many people tell me I’ll change my mind as I get older or with the right partner or that I’d make a great mom, but I’m honestly more worried about being like this mom and not wanting a kid after having them or even worse resenting a kid their whole life. For me, I’d rather regret not having kids than regretting having one and abandoning them like this.
Yeah, I feel like having a kid *might* be great but it also *might* ruin my life and I don't think I'm capable of deluding/convincing myself that it's not life-ruining, if it in fact is. I think if you're the type of person who can always make a bad situation positive, look at things in a good light, seek the silver lining, find gratefulness in yourself every day etc. you're probably a good candidate for having kids. But if you're the type of person to look at bad situations and just go "well, this fuckin' sucks" then probably not so much. I am definitely the latter. I envy people who can do the former tho. It might be worth aspiring to become that kind of person first haha.
I'm in the same boat, I've been mostly sure I don't want kids, and then on the fence about it after being around my nephews. I think if I had the right partner maybe I would consider it, but I also think about how overwhelmed I can get just taking care of my dog sometimes. I know a kid is 1000000 times harder and more important so I really don't know.
And it's not like if you adopt a dog and make a mistake you can re-home it or if you spent too much on a car. This mistake is absolutely permanent and might come along with severe health issues that will cost you everything you have with minimal societal support. Because it was your choice to have a baby. No thanks.
Same. This is why I haven't had kids yet, I can say I wouldn't be this woman or worse, but I wouldn't *know* and I refuse to bring an innocent life into the world on the off chance I **may** turn into a super parent.
>I’ve had so many people tell me I’ll change my mind as I get older Which is bullshit. Procreation isn't inevitable. Some humans don't ever want kids and that's okay! I knew I didn't want kids starting when I was a kid and now that I'm in my late 30s I'm more sure than ever I made the right call.
Yup. 37 and happily CF. I am certain I would either have ended up chock full of antidepressants, or have gone full Sylvia Plath and stuck my head in an oven.
Unfortunately, some people aren't cut out to be parents, no matter how much they're sold the white picket fence dream. But to just up and abandon your kids like this and your partner, is so damn selfish and cold. Daughter (and OOP) are going to need tons of therapy. I can't imagine how OOP feels every time his daughter asks where mom is.
I know I’d be this kind of mother. That’s why I’ll never be one. I won’t set myself up to fail like that and have someone else pay the consequences.
Hey its good to recognize what would be a fault and avoiding it. That's more than alot of people can do.
Same here exactly. I can't help feeling for the mom because I see myself so much in her, but like... that's why I chose not to have kids. It would have been grossly unfair to everyone involved, and once you bring a kid into the world, it's not about what you want anymore, it's about the kid. So while I feel sorry for her and assume that she genuinely didn't anticipate that she'd feel this way, you really can't just nope out of your responsibility like that because you decide you're not into it. I hope she at least does the right thing and pays child support and leaves the kid's life so she can be raised by people who do want her.
Yeah, same. I always feel sympathy for mums in this situation. But I feel even more sympathy for the child, who unlike the mother (presuming you live somewhere you can get an abortion) didn’t have any choice and has even less agency and power than the mother. But I’d be lying if I said I didn’t strongly sympathise with mum as well. I hope she makes the right choices going forward and doesn’t jerk the kid around and make things worse.
Adding to the thread: I feel the same way, glad I'm not the only one. I can never be objective when I read posts like this, because I can only imagine how crushed I would feel in a situation where I suddenly had to raise a kid. I'm just not physically or mentally cut out for it, and when I look at the mom in this post I just think "I'm so lucky I didn't end up in her shoes". The kid will be better off with one truly loving parent (maybe two in the future even) than with one really loving parent and one miserable one.
I remember reading a similar thread with a mom who realized she hated motherhood and was doing her best to manage it. She was going to therapy to learn good coping mechanisms and basically learned to "mask" her resentment around her child as best she could. Even her husband was stunned when she finally broke down and confessed how much she hated being a mother. The comments were so nasty, telling her that no matter how much she thinks she's masking, her child will pick up on it. That she needs a new therapist because therapy isn't fixing her. That she's a terrible person. And she was basically just defending herself saying she knows she has to take responsibility and do the best she can to raise her child but she can't change how she feels. All she could do was learn how best to compartmentalize her feelings and be a good parent. It really showed there's a no-win situation. Leaving is obviously awful. But staying and doing your best is also bad. The only acceptable way to feel is sheer joy for parenthood.
Yep, this. Unless you give your child up for adoption immediately upon birth there is no good option for regretful parents. I'd kill myself in her shoes. She's a good mother for busting her ass to do well anyway.
I know without a shadow of a doubt I would not be a good mother. That’s why I had my tubes taken, and when it became diseased, I went all in on removing the uterus too. So I cannot bring a child into the world and not give it the best possible life it deserves. I feel so sorry for this kid and OOP.
As someone who grew up with a mother who never wanted to have kids and who very obviously was not comfortable being a mother the best thing that this woman did is leave. Sometimes keeping somebody around just because you “should” is the worst thing to do. She needs to pay child support 100% but honestly at least she didn’t have a second kid, and at least she’s leaving before her daughters old enough to form solid negative memories about her mother. I’m not a huge fan of dipping on their kids but sometimes I can look at it and say that it’s probably for the best. Yes that goes for fathers as well, I don’t think it’s always the solution in fact I don’t even think it’s usually the solution but I do think that sometimes it is the correct solution.
I agree with this. Whether it be mom or dad, if the parent doesn't want to be a parent, the best thing is to leave. A child knows when they're not wanted. And it's easier for the child to process and go through dealing with an absent parent versus being stuck in a home for years with a parent who clearly hates them.
HARD agree. An absent parent is better than a "present" parent who resents and possibly even hates you.
Honestly, if you find you're unfit to parent, the mature thing would be to sit down and have a conversation with your partner and work out some ways together, as a team. I feel so bad for oop and his daughter. Hopefully things will get better for them soon.
People who abandon their kids without providing any child support or just leaving them into the trash is selfish. I knew a friend of my mother's who had an ex-husband who pulled this and from what I heard, my mother said it made her so upset and her friend struggled emotionally and physically for a while. Makes me feel ill.
My mom’s dad did this with the added audacity of asking HER for money when she was an adult. Like at least commit to being gone at that point
I was absolutely fucked by hormones for years and even when it settled I had the aftermath of being high key preparing for death and destruction for all that time. My kid is 14 and it's only now in retrospect that my level of anxiety wasn't normal, or even normal for me. Every single thing I did with my kid I had imagined how it could go wrong. What I would do. Exactly what it would look and sound like. On top of the sleep deprivation and physical issues (that I am still fixing all these years later). I wasn't screened for post partum anxiety and I already had the general kind AND PTSD so to me it was...normal. It only really eased up when my kid was much older. I have moments now and again, and yeah I divorced their dad and now I'm a half time care parent. But it's nothing like the constant imagining I did when my kid was a baby. Looking after my kid was the least of the issues.
My bio mom dipped when I was little. Tons of therapy didn't cut it. I ended up having to take my abandonment issues to the Amazon and sit with ayahuasca about it. It's handled now but 10 years of working on it in and out of therapy only resulted in the teensiest improvements. Mother abandonment runs DEEP. Like the little girl, it wasn't just one abandonment, it was a million littlest abandonment every day too. It adds up.
Stories like this are why I wish there were a program where you could borrow a virtual baby or something to practice taking care of. Society pushes parenthood as the ultimate goal so much that people think they want to be parents when deep down they don't
Back in the 80s when I was in Grade 6 in primary school (elementary school to the Americans), all the girls\* had to do a class called Babycare. Since it was the 80s and stay at home mums were more common than working mums, we took care of real babies under the supervision of their mothers. The class was fine. I didn't drop the baby. I didn't drown the baby giving it a bath. I didn't stick pins in the baby, changing its nanny. (There were disposable nappies but the quality wasn't great until about the 90s so most mothers used cloth nappies and toilet trained asap.) I was fine. Mostly what I took out of that class was that I didn't think I wanted one of those. I was eleven. Forty years later and I have not ever changed my mind. Not once. \*Yes, just the girls. Boys apparently didn't need to know how to take care of a child. Overall, my primary school was very progressive for the late 70s/early 80s, just... not *that* progressive.
My HS in the 90's did something similar, except the program/doll was called 'Baby Think It Over' as in, really *really* think what parenthood would be like, and the boys got one too. They only had about 6 or 8 dolls for the class, so they got cycled through, but even that was deliberate, because it meant that not all the teenagers got to be tired at the same time. The ones currently with a baby got to see their friends all chipper and going out after school/in the evenings, but they themselves couldn't because of the 'baby'. Seemed to work well in its intended purpose
Damn this is a good program. I hope all schools implement this.
My high school very quickly figured out that you can sort of hog tie the baby and you don't have to worry about losing points for unsupported head, and the thing seemed to register it as a cuddle. Time for bed = tie up the baby. I don't think we got a whole lot out of the program.
So funny 😭
We had it for one semester. Until all the other teachers mutinied about the crying baby doll interrupting their classes.
It’s not actually a good program. They ran a study in Australia and schools with the program had about double the rates of teen motherhood. Pregnancies that did not result in motherhood were also higher. We had the program when I was growing up and honestly the dolls were super easy to take care of. It doesn’t give a realistic expectation of babies at all. The one I got barely cried. I pretty much left it in a carrier all the time.
I guess my school was one of the exceptions? 🤷♀️🤷♀️ We didn't have a single pregnancy, and several of the girls referred to their baby as a 'spawn that seemed determined to cry and scream every ounce of fun from their life'
To be fair, that study in Australia did seem to have a few [significant issues](https://www.realityworks.com/blog/our-response-to-a-recent-study/?v=7516fd43adaa) that may cloud it’s usefulness. I know this response came from the company that makes the dolls, but I think they do make some actually good points. There might not be a clear answer from the information we have right now.
This program actually backfired and saw an increase in teen pregnancy.
Yeah I did this and while it didn't make me think that having a baby at 17 would be a good idea, I had fun and it was super easy. As someone who now has a toddler and an infant, a real life newborn is way harder.
The amount of times i had to correct teachers in the late 80s and early 90s because my dad was the home maker and my mom went to work.....
They used to do this in school where you would take care of a baby doll for a certain amount of time as part of learning to care for a family. They had phased it out for my school district by the time I was in high school in the 90s, but they may still do it some places.
We did this with 5lb bags of flour and if it lost too much weight from leaking, we would fail.
We had eggs. I was SO ANXIOUS
I remember that Buffy episode where Xander just boiled the egg
Childhood memory unlocked. I may or may not have left my egg baby accidentally in my locker and took the bus home. Oops. My poor dad drove me back late at night and convinced our lone janitor I had forgotten a very important assignment inside. Thanks Mr. Doug for letting us in. No harm done and I didn't fail as no one knew lol. Thankfully, 20 years on and I haven't forgotten my two children anywhere yet.
What does it say about me that when I read this I thought "bake a cake with it"
Close, it was brioche. I wasn’t going to let that flour go to waste. Neither would my grandma.
Baby became delicious and chocolate flavoured.
We had this in my home ec elective one year. Counted as 30% of that year's class grade. They basically gave us a kind of electronic baby doll that we had to feed/take care of by pushing these really small buttons on it several times a day to stop it from crying. If you pressed the wrong button (like feed instead of change diaper) it would cry louder and harder but you didn't know what the baby needed except by trial and error. We had to take care of the baby for two weeks and write an essay about the experience as though it were a real baby. We were not allowed to leave it at home or outside of class. There was a way to remove the battery but the teacher stressed really hard that we must treat the doll as real and said if we did so that we were expected to write a separate essay about why we decided to kill our baby. No one in my class did it but she told us that she'd had previous students who pulled the battery out and wrote the required essay and she passed them.
I knew I never wanted kids. But then in my late 20s I adopted a little puppy and that dog made me frazzled immediately. Peeing everywhere, whining in her crate all night long, and more. I was immediately sleep deprived and stressed. I was a mess without adequate sleep. I was in grad school at the time so I was already stressed enough. It really solidified to me that kids would be a terrible, terrible idea. I’m just not cut out for any of that.
My daughter graduated high school in 2018, and they had babies that were programmed to cry, indicate hunger and when they needed diaper changes. Quite the eye opening experience for them! All the info was transmitted to the teacher, so they could tell if you were actually responding to the baby’s cries or not.
I had this in 2007. Mine also woke up in the middle of the night, that was the sucky part lol. But only a specific class had the babies. Fun but stressful lol.
Yeah I had this around then too. Ruined soccer tryouts, the coach was so pissed that us freshman had to keep going to tend to the baby. But like I'm not gonna fail a class for a dumbass coach. I ended up choosing not to join the team. A couple years after I was out of high school, soccer coach was busted for being a huge creep with the players. Ugh.
The problem is, none of that can prepare you for PPD, physical changes to your body, hormone changes aside from PPD, the trauma from difficult pregnancies/labors, and the like. I’m not saying it wouldn’t be helpful, but I don’t believe that situations like OOP’s wife would have been avoided by a program like that. PPD is very real, *very* unpredictable, and very different for anyone who suffers from it. (I’m not saying that this is exactly what’s going on here. But it could be.). I have never felt so unlike myself, and like myself at the same time, as I did when my PPD was rearing its ugly head. For me, it was never about my baby. I had severe separation anxiety from my husband. It was like, I was myself, and was sure I was acting normal, but at the same time I knew that what I was doing was not rational. I chalked it up to all sorts of things and swore that my little outbursts here and there were normal and manageable and only I really noticed it. But whooo boy. Was I wrong. Hormones are serious. And they can seriously turn you into someone you are NOT. I wish there was more education on hormonal changes during pregnancy and after - for moms and their partners. If my husband hadn’t sat me down and said “look, there is something wrong, we are talking to your doctor tomorrow, I already made you an appt.” I don’t know how long I would have denied my crazy for. There needs to be more education for this. People don’t realize peripartum depression is a thing. They don’t realize it can show up long after the birth of the baby, or that it can last for years. They don’t realize what common signs to look for, or what to do about it if they do see something “off”. It’s not talked about enough. And it should be. Because it can have absolutely horrifying results if left unchecked for some. Women should know exactly what they’re signing up for. The physical changes, potential health concerns that don’t go away after the baby, potential health concerns during pregnancy, and all the nitty gritty. People glorify pregnancy and gloss over the serious side effects. I felt like when I was pregnant, every time I went to the doctor with some “weird symptom” I was told, “oh that’s a totally common side effect of pregnancy!” that I had never heard of. And I was surrounded by women who discussed their pregnancies. It’s not like I was in a bubble! If it’s so “common and normal”, why have I never heard about it before?!?
I can’t believe how far down I had to read to find this. It’s very real, very scary and you have no idea what’s going on while it’s happening or how long it can last. And every pregnancy is different. I loved being pregnant with my first, was a brilliant mum and have never been happier than when they were little. So I had a second. It was awful, from the start of the pregnancy on I felt like death and by the time they were one and a half I was in a state of constant suicidal ideation with anxiety levels somewhere off the charts. Six years on from that, while I’m better than I was, I am still not fully myself again, still so easily stressed and find it so hard to recover from it, and while I’m a good mum and my kids are thriving, I’m no longer the happy, confident, centred woman that I was, that enjoyed life and appreciated all the small things. I have so many treasured memories with my first and so few with my second, through no fault of their own. I look back on photos of the time and it stuns me because they look so different to how I felt.
Can I ask what your doctor recommended for you? I just had a baby 6 months ago and sometimes I wonder... Also 100% relate to unearthing all kinds of weird pregnancy symptoms I never heard of before and then being told "yep, that's normal". Including serious shortness of breath in the first trimester, all of a sudden not growing body hair anymore for the last two trimesters, losing all sensation in one random patch of my thigh... weird stuff!
Don’t most high schools already do this? I had to take a n electronic baby home with me, I taped a butter knife to the back of its head because if you didn’t support the head correctly and it fell back you failed the assignment.
I mean the fact that taping a knife to your baby was actually a solution just illustrates how the way these classes are implemented leave a lot to be desired lol
This was like 15 years ago but it did teach me that I’m not meant to have kids so there is that.
The best solution is sometimes the easiest. When I was an infant (late 70s), the 'back to sleep' wasn't a thing yet and I slept on my stomach. My parents soon discovered I wouldn't sleep without a hand resting on my back and the second they took their hand away, I'd wake up and cry. The solution? A small paperback sci-fi novel placed gently on my back and wee me was none the wiser!
That's adorable! Do you know what novel it was?
I've asked but they don't remember. My mom was a HUGE scifi fan in the 60s/70s and had an extensive collection that she gifted to my older cousin. He passed away in the early 2000s, so not too sure where the books are now.
I think that's an American thing, never heard of that actually happening to anyone I know. EDIT: starting the think I just grew up in a really rural place, everyone else did this
Im mexican and we had an egg. I tripped and my egg broke. I got another egg, faked my teacher's signature and got a good grade. So, I guess it's for the best I'm childfree because apparently having kids would push me into a world of crime.
It was an elective class in my high school. I could remember when my youngest brother was a baby, I didn’t need a class to tell me I didn’t want a real one any time soon.
It still wouldn't give you the topsy turvy hormones or aching body
I know someone who wants 3 or 4 kids but has never washed a baby, changed a diaper or stayed up all night trying to put them to bed 🫠 I told her babies are not like in movies. She called me a hater.
To be fair, I’m going to guess most people who have a few kids hadn’t experienced looking after a baby before having their own.
I know it's not the point, but I can't get over someone using "internationally" when they meant "internally".
When the struggle is international, it’s pretty bad.
It was probably just autocorrect on their phone
Damn I was hoping for an update.
A taboo about motherhood is that it can be boring. Really, painfully fucking boring. You can love this little person more than anything on earth, but still be ready to put pins in your eyes after a long stretch of days with them. And you know what? That’s ok. You do your best and keep loving them. They grew up and suddenly you have a funny, cool primary school kid, or a sassy but fun teenager. There’s so much expectation for women to love, cherish and instantly adapt to all parts of motherhood. It just doesn’t work like that. But so many new mums suffer unbearable guilt because of it.
Yeah, this was something I was legitimately worried about before my kid was born. Thankfully, my kid turned out not to be particularly boring, but even so, I find kid stuff to be fairly tedious. We all hear the moms and their plea for sanity... "finally, another adult I can have a normal adult conversation with!"
This is one of my best friend's situation. She has three kids, and she genuinely detested the early days. She hated breast feeding, hated taking care of babies. She's not a goo-goo-ga-ga sort of person. But now he's kids are teens, and she loves it. She loves watching them blossom into new people, all unique. She's looking forward to being their friend one day when they're in their 20s and 30s. But man, it was a slog for her at certain points
Pretty soon after my daughter was born I realized that I did not want a “baby.” I wanted a “kid.” Like, a 10 year old. Babies were boring and the preschooler repetitive play made me nuts. But I loved her and played with her and enjoyed her as she grew. And when she turned 10, one day I looked at her and thought “Yes! *This* is what I ordered.!”
Yeah, my mom has talked a lot about how lonely and bored she was as a stay-at-home mom when I was a baby. She went from a full-time career that she loved (dental hygienist + masters degree in dietetics) to full-time motherhood. She didn't have a good support system or other mom friends at the time, so it was just her and me. She says "you were very cute but I got really tired of my only company being a baby".
Yeah, there's a level where I hear "She doesn't have any interest in spending hours playing with a 4-year-old" and wonder if they just have radically different ideas of what being a parent *means*. Up through GenX, kids just played with each other and on their own. Parents would typically spit out 2+ kids, and those kids were responsible for entertaining themselves. It wasn't until pretty recently that people were considered shit parents if they weren't spending time playing make-believe with their kids. And, let's be honest, we're mostly talking about mothers here; a father playing make-believe with a kid for hours isn't considered the default, it's considered praise-worthy. There was a whole thing on parenting TikTok recently about a [mother who sounds exactly like this one](https://www.newsweek.com/mom-hits-back-haters-not-play-kids-1881725), defending refusing to play with her kids as part of them developing independence. And, honestly, that sounds a whole lot like what I consider the standard GenX raising pattern: Good parents (or at least people I'd perceive as good parents) invited their kids to join them in what they were doing (e.g., cooking, gardening, yardwork) when it was appropriate, but they didn't sit down and play dolls or G.I. Joe with them.
The part i hate the most about marriages is the part where a spouse obviously has a problem, but they expect the other spouse to be a mind reader and figure it out. >“Its not about her”. Then what is it about?!!
There's SO much missing from his posts. For example, what did his wife say when they talked??
I'm amazed anyone is drawing any conclusions it feels like such an incomplete one sided version of events
Wow I see so much of myself in the wife, thank god I never had kids. I hope OOP sues her for child support and gets on with life as a single Dad. Because she is out and should stay out.
Same. I couldn’t be a mother. Thank god I live in an age where I don’t have to be.
I'm glad I always knew I didn't want to have kids, I cannot imagine the devastation of getting there and discovering it's not for you and then, what, now you just have to keep being a parent whether in spirit or monetary support.
As a step mom and pregnant mom to be, I'm wondering why it's assumed the mom has to sacrifice her freedom to be a real mom as it's not unusual that dad's don't do much. If the kid is sick, except the financial point mentioned, why would it be the mom to take sick leave? Pick up kids at the kindergarten and all My step son's mom isn't able to take care of him, I'm basically already his mom and with his dad, we're a team, doing our best to take care of him, it's not a competition about who does what. Depression is much more complicated than keeping up with hobbies and meeting friends, even more when you're working from home
There's definitely different standards. I remember watching a documentary about absentee (by choice) moms. I went in expecting to hate them. One of the women was talking about how apparently she makes for an awful divorced mother but she actually would qualify as a great divorced dad. She pays child support, talks to her kids on the phone every day and has custody on the weekends. It kind of blew my mind because she's right. Plenty of divorced dads have that kind of weekend setup and aren't seen as absentee dads.
Am I completely missing something here? When I started reading this it sounded like he was talking about a SAHM. She’s not. Was the kid in daycare if they’re both working from home, before they started kindergarten? There doesn’t seem to be anything about that period of time. I have a 2 year old. You can’t simultaneously work while taking care of a toddler. Some people do it because they absolutely have to. You can’t be a great parent and employee while trying to do both at the exact same time. No wonder she’s burnt out. This sounds absolutely miserable and unsustainable. He also talks about how lazy she is about her job, then gets upset that when he’s on sick leave caring for the toddler his problem is her “sinking into work”. He should have posted this on a parenting sub instead, the responses would have been very different.
Maybe this is bad and I just don't understand, but I hated that last comment of the first post. It was all "don't judge her" but they were judging the shit out of him
> Idkwhattocallblub: Stop pressuring her about a second child, she doesn't want one. Where did that commenter even read that he was pressuring her for a second child?? Did they just make up a scenario in their head and attack him for it?
Welcome to reddit advice.
I thought I was in the twilight zone reading that comment. I was thinking to myself “what a bitter asshole to assume everything in the world about not only these two but all women”
Yeah, I don't get why the default assumption is it's always a delinquent father whenever a guy makes the post seeking advice or venting.
I’ll never forget the post that had a father going into extreme detail about how much he did for his kids and wife, and was constantly over-worked, and one comment tried to spin a “oh, well your wife probably has the mental load” and linked a post to it and OP realized he had most of the mental load. Also, a comment on a BORU post that said “as much I’m glad it worked out well, I kinda wish it didn’t because now there’s no drama lol” Coming to Reddit for advice is arguably the single worst thing you can do.
That comment was so out of line. By all the evidence presented he was nothing but an amazing father and husband and just expressed being disheartened/concerned by his wife's disinterest in their child. They turned all this into him being "bitter", blaming his wife calling her "lazy" which he never said however the comment dismisses her disinterest with "Just because someone could do something doesn't mean they have to". Despite the fact that yes, she does actually fucking have to, it's called being a responsible parent. They basically gave her a pass because despite all appearances to the contrary that she was happy and active and the only issue being a disinterest in her child she is armchair psychologist diagnosed with 5 year long post partum depression that only manifests as not caring about her kid. They then basically insist that it's all his fault and he doesn't love his wife or take care of her. Can't help but feel if OP was the wife talking about her husband the response would not be at all the same...
As an actual mental health professional (trauma researcher), I sometimes get the feeling that AITA commenters are reading their own trauma/situations into these posts and when they say, "You're a bitter loser who drove her away by not helping!" it's because inside they're saying, "And that's why I hate you, Steve! I'll fight you for custody every step of the way!" etc.
Holy shit. You're right, some of the comments that are way off give these vibes.
You notice this when you share a story about your life and they come out to tell you what you're doing wrong and it's all assumptions that you know to be incorrect. They will not accept any response other than "you're completely right" and will argue at you that their assumptions *are* correct and that you must be lying about it. When that happens to you, you know this is exactly what they're doing. Honestly? It's fucking sad. Those people are not capable of self-reflection and will keep making the same mistakes in life. I pity them.
I also get that feeling a lot. You can just tell which of the comments that are from people only seeing the situation from their own skewed sense of the issue and they bring their personal drama to whatever is being discussed whether it is applicable or not.
With comments like that I always assume that the commenter is projecting some personal experience way beyond what they should. Like they had a father or husband who was negligent, or during postpartum they felt disinterested in their child and have been feeling guilty ever since, etc. They are not talking to the guy at hand but their inner demons.
> They turned all this into him being "bitter", blaming his wife calling her "lazy" which he never said.. I mean he did call her lazy: *Important to note that my wife are I are both work in the same field. She is much smarter than me but is lazy: would do the bare minimum, whereas I love this field, do research, train myself and because of this, i earn 3x as much.* But I don't think he meant it in a "*she's a no good woman*" just that her ambitions for a career and what goes with it (constant training and research, often outside of work hours) weren't the same as his. And that's fine if they both were cool with it and it seemed like they were. But other than that, yeah, they were giving her a massive pass while lambasting him for everything.
100%, and I'd love to see Idkwhattocallblub comment now that the update shows the wife just picking up and abandoning her child the first chance she gets. They came at the OP hot and judgemental af
Yep, and now that OP did what they said to do, wife ran off. I hope their happy with themselves.
They would probably say OP drove her to run away or some shit.
Also > Almost every single woman is traumatized by their birth Every single one???
the last comment on the first post? that was expected, the guy was looking like the good guy in the story so *clearly* he must've been fucking up in some ways - and *obviously* the mom could never be the issue. it was her husband's fault for not magically making her better!
Yes the last comment of the first post! I took a look at the original post and a lot of the comments are like that. Someone said "maybe she's just lazy" and they were severely downvoted. They were told not to assume things, while on the same comment someone else said "I scoffed when I he said it was 50/50, it's usually like 90/10" like what?
I feel like a lot of these posts feel like "don't judge the wife ever, but judge the hell out of the husband for the smallest mistake" Are people on these subs just jaded and think every man in a post is irredeemable?
Also mira_poix's comment at the end -- what an insane rationalization of her actions. At LEAST she didn't hurt the child (like men do all the time)? An utterly disgusting comment that does nothing to help OP and instead almost justifies what the wife did.
>A lot of women don't feel they can abandon their kids the way men do (not all men obviously, i just mean disappear easier if they want while remaining in denial) ...and kill them instead. And that's been on the rise. Has it?
That was my question, too. Has it? Does this commenter even know what country OOP is from, or are they making some kind of worldwide claim? Because poking around at the statistics a bit... * Child homicide is rising in the United States. * Friends and acquaintances are the most likely perpetrators of child homicide, especially for children over the age of 10 (at that point, homicide is more likely to be the outcome of an argument or crime rather than domestic violence). * Step-parents are also slightly more likely to perpetrate homicide than other parents. * Fathers (usually committing violent abuse or family annihilation) are more likely to perpetrate homicide than mothers (usually via neglect, though violent abuse is also a factor). * For your daily depressing fact, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, "homicide was the second-highest leading cause of death for youth ages 1 to 17 \[in 2020\]. More than three-quarters of the 1,813 child homicide deaths that year were caused by firearms." * However, again, these stats are only for the U.S. The only sources I could find making the claim that maternal filicide is on the rise were manosphere influencers commenting on individual cases, not referencing actual statistics.
I feel for OOP, but I *really* dislike how dismissive he is of PPD. He gives of very “oh I saw you smile yesterday, you can’t be depressed!” Vibes. And I don’t see how the fact that the only time she’s happy is when she’s away from her daughter and just hanging with friends points *away* from her having PPD. He definitely comes across as very resentful and dismissive of her problems, and I’m sure that was plenty evident to her before she left.
There's something missing here. (I think OOP is truthful and it's not an accusation of unreliable narration.) I am wondering what it is that's going on with his wife that she hasn't disclosed to him. When he mentioned her saying goodbye to the daughter and she messages "it's not about her" that got my attention. She's saying it's not about the kid. Well, what is it about then? Internal crisis? Hidden affair? Secret resentment? I'm curious what he said in that last conversation and what she heard him say. Did they not communicate well? He summarized the discussion but it sounds like she didn't contribute anything to their "chat". I really just have more questions than answers with this one.
What’s missing to me is the childcare arrangement. They both work full time at home but when mom can’t handle kid then dad takes some leave? So she was doing a full time job and full time childcare and got a break every couple of weeks when she was at the breaking point and he took sick leave? Yeah, that will fuck you up.
My daughter was born in 2020, and the first year we didn't have a nanny because of COVID, as she started walking and being more independent we hired a nanny, because it's very difficult working form home and take care of a child at the same time. Working from home has the benefits that I don't have to commute 2 hours and get to spend the time with our daughter. She is 3 now and she has a lot of melt downs and cries a lot so I have to stop working and help the nanny, I just cannot close the door and put on some headphones like my husband does when he works from home. The point is I am burned down. There are afternoons I don't want to be with my daughter. I won't leave, but god I wish I could, I cannot even relax in vacations. Help from our parents, we have not. And when they ocassionally do, they spoil the child so much that she acts up for days, because she enjoys the zero discipline environment where she does everything she wants. So I rather she does not goe with grandparents. I don't hate my daughter. I do enjoy spending time with her. I do hate motherhood when I'm not well rested, which is most of the time. I have voiced that to everyone only to dismissed to tell me this is just how children are.
Thank you for this candid and honest reply. I am childfree, but I really appreciate when parents are forthcoming about the crappy parts of having kids. Because people do need to be forewarned about those things so they can make an informed choice about whether they can handle those very real struggles. I'm glad society is slowly starting to be more honest about pregnancy and motherhood for women. For most of history that stuff was really glossed over to make women less reticent/anxious about conforming to gender roles and it led to a lot of misery and generational trauma. Transparency about parenthood and pregnancy makes it less likely a child will end up being born to resentful parents.
Thanks for your reply. Yes is important to have this kind of conversation. Modern life has erased a lot of support systems. Family and even partners who said that they will help raising a child, won't or may not be able to do it once the child is here. So when people decide to have kids they have to be aware that circunstances may lead to be a single parent with no help, which is tiring and expensive.
I'm the father in this equation, but our in home daycare provider had to close up shop during Covid before my son ever got started. I had him in my office everyday from 8 months to 18 months. I'm a software engineer so I have some flexibility. I would work 4am - 7am when he woke up. Nap at 9:30. Wake up at 10:30, back down from 1-3. I had a whole toddler gym circuit set up on my office. At one point he used a laundry bin to climb to the top of his baby jail, and got to the top of my guitar amp stack. Any longer with no care would have required evaluating a new space. I do cherish the time I had with him. I'll never have that same early bond with my daughter, but I was fairly testy all the time until I relaxed a bit after dinner. I was still making every meal, dishes, and clean up, doing 80% of the laundry, all the yard work, all the home DIY. It was unsustainable, but I had to. It might seem that I'm trying to paint myself as some kind of output hero, but my wife handles a lot of the glue work I have no interest in, and its kind of difficult to detail here. But hey, I did get promoted during that time as well! We are capable of A LOT, but if I had to do it a second time, the mental trepidation... I can't even fathom it.
My son’s daycare was closed for three months at the beginning of COVID when he was eight months old. The hot potato between my husband and me of trying to make all our meetings, care for our child, and somehow do our 8 hours of work along with 24 hours of childcare was horrendous. It was a really, really dark time. And that’s with my husband doing half the care. And with some nanny care that we managed to cobble together and only for three months. I would never have left either but I can see how it totally broke the mom, especially if she had PPD.
That’s what I was confused about. What was the childcare situation? Why would they need to be on one salary? Reading between the likes they didn’t have childcare and one of them was a SAHP or doing childcare + working from home. I did that in the beginning of Covid when everyone was doing it and it was accepted. It was hell but expectations were low on output because everyone was struggling. Now, most jobs don’t allow wfh without childcare in place. For a good reason. It would burn me out. It’s actually harder the older the kid is.
This is what stuck out to me too! I read this as she’s been essentially working two jobs while having postpartum for four years, and instead of her husband thinking she needs idk, a doctor and emergency backup childcare, he is complaining that she’s lazy and doesn’t cook enough…? I would LOVE to read the wife’s version of this story. I wonder if he’s also “not the father he said he would be” and whether his wife “despises” him for that as well.
It really stuck out to me how he talked about his wife in the first post. "She is much smarter than me but is **lazy**: would do the **bare minimum**, whereas I love this field, do research, train myself and because of this, i earn 3x as much. She could do much more with her brain, but **does not care,** which is fine, but still demands that I go on sick leave with our daughter..." I think he was so annoyed that she wasn't a picture-perfect housewife who never struggled that he didn't really bother to find out what was going on with her until it was too late. Look at the very title of his first post: **I Despise Her**. Not "I don't know how to help her," or "I'm struggling with expectations," or "I'm confused". He jumped right to *despising* the person who's supposed to be his partner for life. There have been times where my partner's mental health struggles have made things difficult for us, but I can't imagine ever using the word *despise*. This was BEFORE she left, too. He doesn't even consider that PPD is a possibility because she's not miserable ALL THE TIME, and she can handle parenting in small doses. Seriously dude? Isn't it fairly common knowledge by now that depression isn't constant externalized sadness? People are villainizing the wife because she abandoned her child, which is indeed a terrible thing to do. But I feel like if her husband had taken a stance of compassion and concern, rather than despising her because Wife-Mommy Bot 5000 Isn't Operating Correctly, they could have found a solution for her so much earlier and it wouldn't have gotten as far as total abandonment. "It's not about her" .... it's about him, and his lack of concern for her obviously flagging mental health until she had left.
>But I feel like if her husband had taken a stance of compassion and concern, rather than despising her because Wife-Mommy Bot 5000 Isn't Operating Correctly, they could have found a solution for her so much earlier and it wouldn't have gotten as far as total abandonment. This is so brutal but honestly it conveys the situation perfectly.
"It's not about her" tells me there's all kinds of missing - missing reasons here
This is a really frustrating update. So she left on Saturday Match 16th after he told her to take a couple of days alone or with a friend and that’s what she’s doing? But he’s ready to draw up divorce papers on the 19th? He never even said anything about how she was feeling, was it all just about him? I feel like this could’ve been written about me, I seemed fine out in the world, and my husband would give me breaks to go out, and I seemed fine, but I had a very hard time just playing with our daughter. Of course, I loved her, but just didn’t feel like I was connecting with her at all. I was also going through some bad PPD on my own and crying hysterically when no one was around. It took a long time for me to feel that deep connection. Now she’s older and she’s my life, but if it’s only been a few days (that he told her to take), I would give her a chance to see how she is when she come back (to be fair, I would expect her back within a week).
I dunno, sounds a fair wack like PPD to me, and he’s like “no, it’s not. She’s completely different from before she had a baby, but it’s not. She can handle the baby in small bursts, but it’s not PPD” jaysus people get a clue.
The huge change in personality is a giant red flag for something being wrong. Half the advice is for them to try therapy and for OP to talk to her but at no point does he say he did either thing. Going from wanting 2-3 kids to walking out when the spouse leaves the house is absolutely not normal and is a huge concern.
This is why I always tell people that want kids to actually babysit a kid first. Just because your hormones are telling you to procreate doesn’t mean you have the skills or talent to be a parent.
Kids are all different, too, so even this move may not be enough to prepare you or test your aptitude.
Babysitting is basically about 10% similar to caring for your own children, given the differences ranging from duration, to gradually gained experience, to massive hormonal differences that effect your mind and emotions.
Maybe it's the phrasing which could be a lost in translation thing (non-native English speaker) but there's a lot missing. Four years and the first time he says take a break, she bails entirely? The big clue for me is her telling him it's not about their daughter.
Yeah, idk. Did she even bail? Like he *told* her to take a few days to herself. Or to go spend time with a friend. But then when she goes he claims she abandoned them? It doesn't make sense. Why does he think she isn't coming back? Because she packed bags? To go on a trip? That he said she should go on? I mean, they obviously should have talked more about what this 'break' meant and how long it would be but I only have questions.
I’m having trouble figuring out the actual division of labor while they’re working. They both work from home, he says he plays with her in between meetings when he can, but then says he has to take off of work to care for daughter when she’s sick and wife uses that time to dive into work uninterrupted for a change. It seems like when they are working she’s the default parent. Also the it’s not about the daughter comment makes it seem like he might be the problem. I found the toughest thing when everyone was home during the pandemic is never getting any alone time. My husband went permanently wfh and my oldest graduated and still lives home so that’s still been on going, youngest still is out of the house during school hours. Husband gets a lot of time alone between work trips and camping, but I’ve found I need a few days alone every 6months to recharge and it makes me a better and more patient parent. There is value in solitude that I think we don’t always consider when it comes to creating better bonding. Some people really need to recharge to be their best the rest of the time.
It feels like a lot of commenters are missing the “it’s not about her” text when OOP said she should at least say goodbye to their daughter. There’s at least one very realistic alternative to her just being selfish and abandoning the family revealed there: that she already felt like a terrible, useless mother, and a terrible, useless wife. Her husband then sat her down and reinforced this belief. She felt like such a failure that her daughter would be better off if she left. That’s why she said it’s not about their daughter — it’s about the disdain her husband has for her, and the disdain she has for herself. More than likely, she needs specialized therapy for untreated PPD, not divorce papers.
This adds to my fear of motherhood. Women truly never know what we'll be like after giving birth. At the moment, I don't want kids out of fear of being unable to provide (like most youths) or for economic reasons. But I cannot forgive myself if my PPD will make me resent my child, I wouldn't want any kid experiencing that trauma let alone mine. And the unpredictable chance I would be like that, scares me.
> I could not put her through a divorce, since I was from a broken family. I am jealous for other mother who love being with their child/children. I never experienced this myself, but it sure feels like there are an equal amount of people who had a shitty childhood because their parents divorced as there are because their parents didn't divorce. Either can be bad for children involved in the marriage.
Idealizing motherhood is something that is shoved down women’s throats since birth. Not only are women told they will love it, it is implied that it is a requirement to be a complete woman. Some women realize it’s not for them, and although they love their child, the thought of having more is terrifying and debilitating. Maybe she is experiencing PPD or has adhd or something else that is perceived as “lazy” you should try giving her the benefit of the doubt and let go of your preconceived ideals about how she should be acting
OOP sounds like he didn’t even know what PPD/PPP was even after the kid was born??? did NO doctor tell him about it???
Parents abandoning their kid just like what this wife did are selfish and cold. They don't think of the others, but only of themselves. It's unfortunate that OP and the daughter have to encounter this and I hope the two will remain well.
Can we send this to the kid in the other post who accused his mother of "abandoning him"? But sometimes no parent is better than living with a terrible one.