Absent fathers and weekend dads can't be bothered

Are we all adults here? You get together and make a baby, something sadly goes wrong, you split and then the child is stuck in the middle. Try to be grown up about it and stop scoring points.

There is no monopoly from either gender as to who is the most feckless or useless - some people seem content to just do what is wrong and blame others. Just try to protect your children from that and never slag off the other parent in front of the child. It hurts and confuses them. They learn how to conduct future relationships based on how you do it now. Do it badly and they will have future problems.

Your main priorities are to keep children safe and secure, and to provide the CORRECT role models for them as far as you are able.

my Daddy was a widower and rared me extremely well great parent it is not that I have no experience I would be very lenient on single carers selfish men need penalised especially when they do not pay and bum and blow about going to the us masters how fair is that ?

well............. have u got kids of your own, well I had children and do work hard but have been unlucky in love and that it

Well where do I start, my daughter is now 12 and her father only came into her life last year. Since this time he has done nothing but try and ruin the relationship I have with my daughter. He has told her that I was going to get rid of her and he had to plead with me to keep her..... when in fact he wasn't even around when I found out I was pregnant. Still she is a smart clued up lil girl and she knows he is lying. Sometimes it is best to just put up or shut up, I decided I wanted to keep her, I therefore decided to be a single mum, so I just got on with it. Yes I needed handouts but soon as I could get into work I did. For the past 8 Years I'm proud to say that I have fed, clothed and kept a roof over our head without any handouts from the state or her father. Yet he seems to think that he has a right to see her still after all the nasty things he said to her. It turns out he also has another daughter, slightly younger than mine, lovely little girl and he does the same to her, emotional blackmail and mental abuse. Then I found out that he has a baby son, same story does not see him, does not pay for him. And last.... but not least... his ex found CSA papers in relation to another child, who is around 7/8 years old now. Hopefully he will get bored soon, he doesn't want to see any of the children, but he loves to cause us all hell and make sure he gets all he is entitled to.... I'm just glad my daughter and his other daughter have seen sense and will not have to endure anymore.
What annoys me the most is that to try and prove to them that his lies are truths he claims to have found the lord and uses this to try and make people believe his lies.
Karma is a wonderful thing and I can not wait for it to come around his way. Meanwhile I'll continue to clothe, feed and support my daughter.....without his help.

well my daughers dad sees them about twice a year, he constantly lets them down making promises he cant deliver. also he asks me to pay for petrol on the few occasions he does bother to see them. he is however suffering from seizures and is on medication for them. this has now been the case 5 years on, the doctors cannot cure him. I am sympathetic however it doesnt seem fair on my children to grow up without him. he chose to live 300 miles away from them close to his mother =( I am doing a degree atm to try and offer my girls a better future one day.

well my daughers dad sees them about twice a year, he constantly lets them down making promises he cant deliver. also he asks me to pay for petrol on the few occasions he does bother to see them. he is however suffering from seizures and is on medication for them. this has now been the case 5 years on, the doctors cannot cure him. I am sympathetic however it doesnt seem fair on my children to grow up without him. he chose to live 300 miles away from them close to his mother =( I am doing a degree atm to try and offer my girls a better future one day.

similar situation here. Ex wont pay but expects me to drop off/pick p which I did for 3 years but now wont. When he does have her he takes her to the local footy club til 1am and gets plastered. She has been badly injured on 2 occasions when he hasnt been capable of looking after her so now I want to stop him having her. he has become very abusive to me in fron t of her (shes 7) and she cries and says she hates him cos hes mean.......what the hell can I do?
It is such a hard situation but just hope one day (soon) she will see him very clearly for what he is. I want him to disappear forever

Tracy, I love the comment of yours that dads should be forced to look after their kids on a regular basis,

In Sweden, seperated parents have to live close to their kids school and each other as part of divorce agreements,

But sadly over here, the governments over the years have just looked after girl power mafia, and they can do as they please.

I know dead beat dads my son lived with his dad 4 3 and a half year now he has a 19 year old girlfiend who is pregnant he is 37 my son got dummped on my doorstep with nothing but the clothes on his back luckily I had had him every weekend in the time he was at his fathers so have a good relationship with him but we have both found it hard to adjust his dad dosent see him I think it is high time the courts made a law that fathers should be made to have the children on a regular basis obviously only in circumstances where no problems have arose other than dead beat dads

Bat bunny, so in the short two weeks that you were back together, you made baby number two, planned or not, I as a taxpayer will no doubt be paying for it,

£100-00 a week income tax,
£ 30-00 a week national insurance,
£ 30-00 a week driving taxes,
£ 15-00 a week council tax,
£ 10-00 a week VAT on various things,

That should cover your free lunch whilst the child grows up, unless you are going to go out to work full time.

tom you are so sick and I hope you never become a father yourself

I am in a simmilar sittuation except my ex partner has not paid a penny towards his daughter and I am pregnant again by him. he would not want anything to do with our daughter if he was with someone and then when he wasnt he would want me back and so in the end I took him back because I loved him. he left me after 2 weeks for someone else and I found out I was pregnant. since then he has not been bothered about contacting me to see our daughter or even to find out how the pregnancy is going. I know that he has met someone new who has a 4 year old that they do not have custody off and he lives with her after not even an hour. how do I tell my children that their dad is not bothered about seeing them unless I contact him but even then he does not want to see them. he slanders me on facebook too and I still love him will it ever stop I say it will if you just cut him out your life because you have to do whats best for yourself and your daughter

tom you are one sick individual and you should be locked up.

For all of the men out there, this situation is not about the money. If a father moves away. he should make an effort to do transportation. Money is needed to raise a child, but many father's do not chose to see their kids very often. My kids see their Dad 4 nights a month, if one of them gets sick, I am the one who deals with it. He sends all the dirty landry home to me, and is not involved in their school. I feel sorry for him, he is missing out. They are growing up fast, and he can never get this time back. When a woman decideds to have a child, she should always think about the fact that at some point she may become a single parent, and most if not all the responsibility will fall on her!

reffering to the post left by ''daddy'' I couldnt agree more. im a single mum myself but this is something I chose to take on when I split form my ex.
i ahte the way women AND men moan about theyre ex's and how hard done by they are, how they wont share money, parent duties etc....why on earth do you marry these people n the first place? you are makin your childs life hell! in my opinion its always a good idea to makesure BEFORE you have a child that you can afford to pay for this child for the next 18 years WITHOUT anyone elses handouts! if your lucky enough to recieve payments from the absent parent then great, if not -put up an shut up! you chose to have children to that person now deal with it!

dads who dont bother with there kids... where do I start?
i was in a relationship with my ex for 5yrs, I already had a 3yr old who he took on as his own at the time I thought great, we also had another child and everything was fine. when we split he repetedly told my oldest daughter that he was never her dad and that he felt sorry that she didnt have her own dad thats why he said she was his then told her he never wanted anything to do with her which hit her very very hard.
he moved in to a place where he could have our daughter on the weekend to start it was all weekend then went to drop her off at lunch time pick her up at lunch time sunday then it went to having her for 4hours on a sunday,
now he has moved to a place where he cant have children at all and he doesnt see any of them, he moans if I ask him to have her for me as I have my work cut out with my oldest daughter having adhd and asspergers syndrom he has never given me an explination as to why he is behaving like this I just dont contact him any more I gave up.

i think the point was he sounds like he is trying to make time. though no matter how hard you try you cant put a 25th hour in the day. splitting the doctor appointments does sound fair, but at the end of the day having to take time off for a child's sickenss and doctors appointments is just one of the things that comes from being the full time parent. when your not quite so "new" at parenting you might realise this.
though I do stand by my previous point that all she seems to care aobut is money.

and Tom, your idea's are sick! she is not going to kill her daughter so she doesn't have to take her to her dad's house! You sick freak!

If he can't make the time to see his daughter, then he shouldn't be able to. If he wants to see her, he can collect her from YOUR house and you should split the doctor appointments in half.

My daughter's mother is like you, all she cares about is money and the cost of this and that. Surely your daughter seeing her father is more important than money or the cost of a bit of petrol to get her from the child minders? I mean your child minder cant lvie far away, otherwise it would be a bit pointless her being your child minder. maybe she gets upset about seeing her dad because of your negativity towards him? woman like you make me sick, you never see it from the father's side, you only ever have your own considerations in mind, I mean out of that whole article, you mention once about how your child is in all this. Bit self-centred, anyone agree?
He'll probably pay regular maintanance when he can (e.g. once he's worked he's month in hand or whatever) and if he can't then there are routes you can take to sort it out, CSA etc (which there aren't for fathers!!), but bear in mind, you go through the CSA YOU lose out as they reap god knows how much in "admin costs" rather than that money going to you.
As for taking time off when the child is sick, for doctors appointments etc, that's just something that comes from beign a parent.
Talking to your manager about taking time off on a friday is fine if you've been in the role for a longer period of time but, as you said, its a new job, he isn't going to be able to arrange something like that until he has been in the position for a while.
Just remember stuff like this before you start griping.
xx