Very disturbing. I have young kids now and I could not imagine what their lives would be like without a father, as so many others.... http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/10109579/A-million-children-are-growing-up-without-a-father.html
That shook me. I am a single parent - a father who has custody of two boys, soon we all hope to be three boys, if and when Kay and Kieran join us. Financially, the decision to be a responsible parent to my two sons has been an utter catastrophe - but at least they may have some idea of what "being a real man" should involve. The idea of leaving my two boys to their flyaway mother and her man of the moment never occurred to me for an instant. I have never stopped them visiting and staying with their mother and her "new partner" (sorry, could not write that without inverted commas) nor would I think of doing so. But there is a compensation - I am perfectly well aware that the main reason why a spectacularly beautiful woman who is young enough to be my daughter picked me was that I have "Good stepfather" written all over me! Of course, there are a great many Filipino children growing up without fathers - probably more than in the UK given the worse life expectancy and relative flightiness of the typical Filipino male.
I have not lived in UK for 25 years so I don't have a day to day feeling on this, but thinking back 25 years, I wonder what the percentages of fatherless children are, in relation to their ethnic origins ? I know in the 1970's and 1980's it was 'accepted practice' for young women of Afro Caribbean origin to get pregnant so they could get a council flat and be able to move out of their family home and escape parental restrictions. Young black men used to boast of their number of 'baby mothers' that is the women by which they had illegitimate children. If that is still so, then the methods required to combat the problem may not be as straightforward as some might initially think.
Over the past 25 years that habit seems to have spread beyond young women of Afro-Carribbean origin to young Englishwomen in general.
What has changed, I believe, is the number of fatherless children owing to divorce or seperation. That is the statistic that has changed, apparently.
I have a 27 year old daughter my name is not even on her birth certificate, that hurt me a lot, still does, I proposed marriage to her mother three times over a period of three or four years and three times she accepted then changed her mind after a few weeks, eventually I gave up trying in spite of the fact that I cared about my daughters mum a lot and of course about my daughter. To give some background we had a very limited amount of time as a couple over that 3 years. Most men in that situation would run away at some point and say enough is enough, a lot of them of course do run away when the family actually want them to stay around. Anyway, I stuck around, I had no other partners for 18 years and I did my best to see my daughter and to support my disjointed family, the cost was crippling to the point where I was once evicted from my home, we managed to avoid the CSA but by god that was hard and I was paying more than CSA rates anyway. Sometimes but not often my access to my daughter was restricted, I will not fault her mum, she was a great mother and worked bloody hard to look after my daughter, but there were times when our arguments spilled over and resulted in restricted access, only really happened very early on but we did have many arguments over the years mostly over money. I find it hard to write about this even now it brings back all the emotions, anyway my daughter is 27 graduated with a 2.1 from Durham and went into teaching, she is now changing job to work for a top end private school teaching Religion and Geography and I am very very proud of her. The guys that run away usually get caught out by the CSA or whatever it's called now (don't know what the current regime is in that respect) however the CSA was never designed to help families it was designed to punish absent parents and over the years it encouraged absent fathers to be unemployed as the burden imposed by their judgement's was so high that you could only afford them if you were a high earner and of course there was always the knowledge that every pound you paid to your family was a pound the government took back from your family's benefits. I hate those bas****s with a vengeance or rather I hate the politicians that brought in that vindictive system. We didn't get involved with the CSA and ironically it was because my name is not on my child's birth certificate, that actually helped in spite of the fact that it hurts me to this day. Luckily over the years my daughters mum was able to work or study and be able to allow us to avoid the CSA but they made her life a misery on more than one occasion, anytime she had to sign on for a short time it was the Spanish inquisition, evil evil system! Some of you know my story, I started a second family somewhat by accident about 9 years ago now, that has not been easy either as we had so many problems to solve and to be honest I am drowning in the problems right now part of the reason I am not posting here as often as I once did, right now my kids are missing me as I've not been home for 6 months but I have to play the role of OFW, even though I am not Filipino it feels like I am, I have to work in the UK to give my kids any chance of a life and education at all, I get home sometimes when I am lucky. The arguments in this relationship over so many things have effectively killed us, first time I've said that online here it's not been good times for us recently, but like last time I will not abandon my kids, I can't, but I am concerned about me getting old these days and whether I can manage another 15 years to get them both a good education and reasonable future. I am a very very stressed absent father right now.
So sorry to read about your problem, Jim. Your children realise how good you are to them. Hope things get easier for you as time goes on. Keep strong in the meantime.
I had the opinion that the Filipino nucleus was stronger than the UK one. To get another perspective, even a more negative one, is a shock to me.
Well, from the Filipino perspective, my wife's father sort of abandoned his family (mother and 3 sisters) and preferred to pish his money away that he earned as a lorry driver until he died from liver disease. Fortunately her mother, a very strong minded woman, was able to find long term employment and the rest is history. On my side of things, like Oss, the quarrelling between myself and my then wife just wasn't practicable and we ended up divorcing. My daughter was in her mid twenties by then though my son was only 7 when that happened. Basically my ex wife has brought him up on her own with the support of my daughter. The good thing is that my ex wife has been a good mother to her son and has steered him in the right direction. Like you Oss, we have never yet been involved with the CSA as I send my ex wife an agreed sum every month. He continues to do well at school and other various worthwhile pursuits.
On the other hand, my wife's sister's husband is away working in Taiwan for 2 to 3 years at a time with only about 3 weeks off in between. They have a young son.
Me too. I am sixty, I have an eighteen year old and an eleven year old son and I have taken responsibility for a four and half year old. There is nothing like making sure ones responsibilities are evenly spread!
It may be that I know the wrong Filipinos, but I know an awful lot of single mothers because of the relative unavailability of contraception, because they have split up or because they are widowed.
I'm mid Fifties and never been married John, had all the trauma of marriage without the bit of paper Good to hear that your ex was a good mother, things might get bad or hard but it helps a lot to at least know that your children are well cared for. Always very important to think a lot about the kids in these kind of circumstances
Yer a young lookin sixty Andrew I'm thinning a lot and getting pretty grey these days and I'm a good bit younger I do understand that feeling though, my youngest is 5 next month and I really want to be around for her in 20 years time but that is perhaps one of the selfish parts of having a new family late that we know we cannot guarantee that long term presence For me I just wish I could guarantee the short term presence a bit better because I am not succeeding at that currently!
