Encouraging the Involvement of an Absent Parent

I have been single for nine years with two children (now 10 & 12). It has been a good thing that the other parent has not been really involved though I wish they did have their life experiences. There is less double-standards because of this. I do wish they had the role-model that is missing though, as I had two great ones when I was growing up.

My CHILDREN CONSIDER ME MOM AND DAD AND i don’t have a problem with it, but I know my sons want their father involved in their life. But I CAN’T FORCE HIM.

It’s really sad that it would even have to come to this! Shaming them will NEVER work. If garnishing their wages doesn’t, why would a commercial do it? Do they think these things have never been stated before? Im with the other women as well, as much as I would like my son to have a positive fatherly influence in his life, his father aka sperm donor would be TOXIC to him. He has my dad as his “strong male role model” and that is all he needs. Although, I agonize daily over what will come the day he asks the big question, “why don’t I have a daddy”, I still think this is best and that bridge will be crossed when we come to it.

I am a single dad & I actually have the problem of MOM not participating in our daughters life! It’s not always DAD’s! My daughters mom moved over an hour away to be with a guy and rarely has anything to do with her. Its sad because my daughter is loves being with her mommy, but never really gets the chance!

I am raising 3 alone and the dad lives just 10 miles away. I think the ads are great. I don’t know if it will help any, but, it will be a constant reminder of his children and his lack of participation in their lives. I do think the ads should include white children. It is not only black daddies who abandon their chilldren.

I know that shaming them into being a parent will not ever work but I still liked veiwing all 3 of the ads. It reminds me that my children and I are not the only ones in our position. And I do believe that I will email these litttle bits of wisdom to their father right now! If nothing else it might make him think for a minute about his children and the fact that they still need him. Until my children are old enough to stand up by themselves for what they deserve I will be there to do it with them! No matter how hard it is for me to call their father month after month so that he might hang out with them for a day, I feel that that’s part of my responsibilty as their mother!

I don’t think these ads amount to shaming. They amount to truth. Shaming would be like saying “how can you be such a useless sack of ish?”

I also think it’s PC run rampant that anyone could be offended by something like this. It doesn’t take anything away from mothers to say that every child deserves a father. I was raised by a wonderful single mom, and there were some things she just couldn’t help me with. It would’ve been nice to have someone who’d “been there”.

Finally, I also think we send a mixed message to men who do want to be fathers. We deride inactive fathers while simultaneously pushing men away from their families – whether in family court or in the media.

- single dad of 3

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I’ve struggled with this for some time. I never intended to raise my children alone and it hurt everytime I watched my children particpate in a play or sport and was surrounded by couples. It hurt everytime my children did something amazing and I had noone to share this with. I felt bad for my children, because they only had me in their lives. The question of where is Dad would come from other children or adults, but never really from my children. When my youngest child was 3 years old her pediatrician asked about her father and she replied matter of factly “I don’t have a father” she was not sad when she replied it really didn’t seem to bother her. At four years of age I decided to reach out and try to establish a realtionship with her father. He was and still is a drug addict. He came into her life and completely turned it upside down. He brought drug addicts around and took both my children with him to cop drugs. He stole from them and put them in danger and all the while I kept trying to help him so he could be a parent. I got him out of our lives more than a year ago and now my youngest child who is now 6 misses him and talks about him. My other child a teenager knows the truth and is completley okay, but again my youngest is not. I believe you don’t miss what you don’t have. Had I not tried to bring this dead beat drug addict father into my children’s lives they really would have been fine. Having a parent that really shouldn’t be a parent is far worse then raising children on your own.

I am begining to see more and more single mothers (like myself) that are strong willed, motivated and independent. I personally think that its amazing to show where we as women have got. But at the same time I am starting to think that these absent “dads/ fathers” are intimidated. And to an extent that they believe that since we mothers don’t need the deadbeat that their child(ren) don’t either, but it is completely the OPOSITE!!!! These absent fathers, my own and my sons, need to realize its not the mothers who are needing you (or you’d probably still be in the picture…) its the kid you brought into the world that DOES need you!!!! I’m trying to get past what my sons father said about both my son and I, and all the things he has done… I want my son to have his father and it breaks my heart completely that his father wants nothing to do with him… ITS NOT MY SONS FAULT!!! sorry just had to say it…

I am an absent father. My ex wife is raising our son, Zack, who is 10 years old. There is not a day that goes by that I don’t wish things had turned out differently. My alcoholism had become so destructive that I could no longer function as a husband or father. My ex did what she had to do and I harbor no resentment for her, in fact I hope she is happy and loved. When I talk to him I tell him that I have always loved his mother, that I never loved anyone like I loved her, and that he is part of me and her and I loved him before he was born. Till the day I die I will regret visiting the sins of my past onto my son. I daydream about showing him how to fish, or ride his bike, or skateboard, or hack computers or work on a car, or swim in the ocean, or finish a triathlon, or safely handle a gun, or how to ask a girl out, or weld or a myriad other things that will die with me never having passed them on.

It wasn’t supposed to turn out like this.

I divorced my ex husband 3 years ago. In those 3 years he has seen the children maybe a total of 20 times. He has forfited visitation, and hardly sends child support. It is usually 1/6 of the amount he should be sending. He has played mental games with the children and now they speak to a physcoligist every two weeks! He doesn’t call them, or email, yet claims I stop communication and visitation. He had done this with his eldest son for ten years, and gave up his rights to the second eldest. I have remarried a wonderful man, that would love to adopt the children (and they have asked him to), but my ex wants to stop everything we do to improve our lives and the childrens. He still wants to control me like he did when we were married. My son said if he could ask him one question it would be WHY?
I don’t call it shame, I call it truth. These men and women made a choice to have these children and have made the choice to walk away. I say keep walking. Don’t come in and out of the childrens lives when you feel like it. This causes a lot of problems for them while they are growing up, and can put them in the same type of releationships when they get older.
Children are what they learn. So love them with all you’ve got, listen even when you think they aren’t talking about anything important. You might be surprised at what they have to say. Spend time with them, no matter what. Yes, I know it is hard to be single, but it is even harder to be a “single married mom”. I had no help from him durring the marriage, so why would I have it now?
Stay positive and strong.
Teach your children no matter what happens in their lives you are going to be there for them. You are their rock, security, and unconditional love.

I am a single mother of a 12 yeard old girl. Her father disowned her at birth, raised by another man whom she called her daddy left her at age of eight years old as things didn’t work out between us. His girlfirned couldn’t accept her, she made him choose between her or my daughter. I was in a 10 year relationship with a man I thought would be there, until I caught him with another woman. Now my daughter’s father had come back into her life and now he is gone again. I really think I shouldn’t have let him back in her life, but she wants to be so loved by him. My daughter has been smoking weed, expertimented with drugs and last but not least with hairspray. I have researched on a absent father and drug awareness.

All I can say is that I was a great husband and dad. My wife found a new lover while I worked hard to provide. When you are cut down to the point where extreme depression is a way of life you have to put yourself first, even if it means no contact with the kids. I am just done fighting and begging. I gave up. It is better for a man to live in a desert than with an angry wife. I move to this desert and am not leaving anytime soon. All the co-parent stuff is BS. I didn’t sign up for that and I am not alone.