Deadbeat Parents

Loser parents

Some people just do not deserve to be considered parents. Just because you managed to have sexual intercourse does not make you a mother or a father. It just makes you an egg or sperm donor.

Today I’d like to tell a story about a family I know. I am not going to mention any names, but this is a 100% true story.

This family is not what we consider to be traditional. Rather, they are what we call a blended family. Both parents had previous marriages and each parent brought a child with them into the new marriage. This particular family is a blended family success story. Although they have been through some difficult times, they love each other and have found a way to make to make it work.

Now, this story is not really about them. The stars of this story are their ex’s. Let’s get right to it.

THE EX-HUSBAND

The ex-husband is not a deadbeat parent in the way that we would  normally define that. He does “pay” his child support. Of course, he really has no choice in the matter, since the court takes it automatically out of his paychecks. All he really does is not quit his job to avoid paying.

No, this man (and I use that word loosely), is a deadbeat of another sort. He is an emotional and psychological deadbeat. Here’s a partial list of how this “father” operates.

• He has only seen his daughter, now 8-years old, one time in the last two years. The only reason he saw her then was because his mother took his daughter to his house and forced him to see her.
• He only calls to talk to her about once every four to five months. Even then, he doesn’t really have any interest in actually talking to her. These phones calls always last less than 10 minutes. Seemingly, the only reason he calls is to pump her for information and to make sure the mother knows he has spies watching her every move.
• At the time of the divorce, he lived less than 1 hour from his daughter. He willingly moved 7 hours away. Even though he rarely saw her when he was close by, the move made it quite obvious that she was not an important part of his life.
• Even though he doesn’t bother to see his daughter or be a part of her life, she still feels loyalty towards him. He took advantage of that by telling her that she is NOT ALLOWED to call her step-father “Dad”. It is common to hear address her step-father by saying, “Dad……. *pause*…….. I mean (step-father’s first name)” An 8-year old should not have that kind pressure on her.
• On the rare occasions that he does see her, he doesn’t bother to actually take care of her. A few years ago, after spending just 2 weeks with her father, she had noticeably gained a lot of weight. He just kept shoving food in front of her and letting her eat anything and everything she wanted.
• He has made a habit of not sending her gifts for her birthday or for Christmas. When she questions him about this, he simply tells her that they must have gotten lost in the mail. A couple years ago, when he actually saw her, her “long lost” Christmas present miraculously showed up.
• Recently he talked to her on the phone. Without her asking about it, he made sure to tell her that she would not be able to see him this summer because he “has to work”.

THE EX-WIFE

There’s really only one thing you need to know about this woman. She does not have custoday of her child. With the way the court system in this country works, that’s about as bad of an indictment as you can have as a “mother”. Here are some of her highlights.

• She lost the right to have custody of her son when she decided that getting laid by men other than her husband was more important than taking care of her son. This when he was just 3 months old. This earned her a conviction for child endangerment.
• Even so, she has managed to convince herself that she is the victim in this scenario. The way she sees it, this was all the husband’s fault and she was basically forced to do what she did.
• In the years since the divorce she has not bothered to get a job. Therefore, she has never paid a dime of child support. She has instead chosen to leech off the state, by somehow convincing them that she is disabled. She is not.
• In order to exact some measure of revenge, she falsely accused the step-mother of abusing her son. Despicable, but rather ironic at the same time.
• At one point, before the divorce was final, she went 18 straight months without seeing her son. She did this in hopes to convince the court that the father was withholding their son from her. It didn’t work.
• She recently told her now 7-year old son that she couldn’t see him on her allotted weekend, because “something came up”. What was so important that she couldn’t see her son? There was a local carnival going on and she wanted to be able to go without having to drag him around with her.
• Her son recently revealed to his father that when he is at his mother’s he sleeps at his grandmother’s house, while she goes to her boyfriend’s house. She can’t even bother to be with the son the couple nights a month she has him.
• When he returns from his mother’s, he always smells like an ashtray and during the summer he is usually covered from head to toe in bug bites. Several times, he has had bad nose bleeds the night after returning. When this happens, he wakes up with his entire body covered in blood. A doctor told the father that this is almost certainly due to the smoke exposure, but nothing can be done because it can’t be proven. When the father tried to talk to the mother about it, she blew it off.

Unfortunately, there are a lot of “parents” out there that are just as bad, or worse. The children would be better off if these people would just go away. For some reason, our courts and our society think that children must have a relationship with their biological parents. Often times, though, all it does is hurt the child.