Why do fathers leave?

Question

My dad left me when I was 10 (just after my mum died) and I havent seen him since. I know that Im better off with out him, and I never want to see him again..... But Ive always wondered how he can live with himself? I just don't get how he could walk away and carry on his life like I never happened....any ideas why men do this?
Id like so real insight please

Answer 1

Assertion: Modern culture is in the midst of a hidden epidemic of fathers leaving their families - usually around the time when the first child is born. Men leave their families in a multitude of ways. Even if they remain in the home, many fathers are often emotionally absent - through depression, workaholism, violence/aggression, physical or emotional abuse, or a retreat into addiction to substances, media, consumer goods, sports, food or sex.

Most men in the "developed" nations today never bonded (or very poorly bonded) with their mothers. Most people don't even notice how disconnected modern people are from each other, compared to cultures where the bond is still intact.
Yes, we talk of alienation and notice how much people in Mediterranean cultures touch each other, but we make no connection between these phenomena and how our bonds among people, with nature, and with the divine have been torn asunder. I propose that this unnoticed, silent epidemic of disconnection/alienation is the source of most societal ills. Fathers leaving their children and their families is only the tip of an iceberg.

As infants, most men in our culture have been bottle fed and subjected to other culturally-endorsed patterns of normative abuse, such as sleeping alone or being left to cry when their needs weren't met. Biologically, the male is the more fragile gender of our species and developmentally lags years behind females - well into adulthood. Instead of getting the extra nurturing needed to compensate for being the weaker sex, by age five, males in almost all cultures get far less nurturing than females. It's no surprise, then, that most of the unbonded boys in our culture grow into men who spend a good deal of their time unconsciously seeking (and fueled by advertising that prominently features the breasts they were denied) a mommy-figure to provide them with the nurturing they were denied as infants/children. Part of their survival mechanism is to learn to deny their feelings and project their unmet needs for nurturing onto substitutes, such as women, and other externals, the most common of which are consumerism, workaholism, and other addictions.
We unbonded men may manage pretty well in our marriages for a while, but when our "mommy" gives birth and suddenly turns her focus toward her newborn, we usually lose much of the nurturance we were getting from our partners. This is almost inevitable, given the state of disconnection predominant (but taken for granted) in our culture.


The northern European cultures, in the name of civilization and progress, have been gradually destroying the tribe/village/extended family/community for hundreds of years - replacing it with what has become the nuclear family disaster (NFD).


The NFD stems from a northern European aberration in how humans organize their living arrangement, beginning with the 16th century enclosure of the common lands. These lands were confiscated by the emerging upper class, who then spread their control rapidly to every continent but Antarctica, first via missionaries and territorial conquest, and now through the media and multinational corporations.


The NFD has been gaining ground for hundreds of years, but rapidly accelerated because of the mass migration into cities early in the last century.
This experiment in isolation and alienation, promoted in the name of 'progress' has immense consequences, most obviously the overwhelming pressures on parents, particularly women, who usually end up bearing the total responsibility of their children. Mothers cannot begin to get their basic adult needs for nurturance and support met, unless they are one of the rare few living in a tribe, close-knit community, or extended family.



It may take a village
to raise a child,
but it takes a
community to keep
the parents sane.
- Sobonfu Somé


At the same time, a father's sudden exposure to an infant who has not yet been fully 'trained' in the denial of her own needs, and is suckling at the breast, being lovingly held in arms, constantly in the presence of her caregiver, etc., - and readily expresses her needs, can be devastating. It will often stir up his suppressed memories of his denied needs as an infant and plunge him into deep pain - conscious or subconscious.

With the resulting increase in pain levels, new fathers often step up their adopted/chosen means of defending against their feelings - via medication, having affairs, rage, depression, addiction, or physical or emotional violence. This is the first level at which men leave. When or if the defense mechanism fails, because the real need is not addressed, many think the only thing they can do is to depart from the stimulus and leave their homes.


Girls in our culture also get far less nurturing than is required to optimize their well being and fully meet their needs, and as a result often suffer a similar experience of failed bonding. They have the opportunity, however, of recreating the experience of a secure bond through their unique ability to bond biologically with the fetus in pregnancy. If they are able to preserve that bond by resisting the cultural norms and raising a securely attached child, they are often able to heal much of their own unbondedness, but the father's witnessing this may simultaneously exacerbate the re-stimulation of his own primal wounds, trigger his defenses, and increase the likeliness of his leaving.


Since depression was my defense mechanism of choice, I understand that coping mechanism better than the others, but I believe the process I'm describing explains equally well why the other defense mechanisms, such as addiction and violence/aggression, similarly perpetuate broken bonds and the passing on of our trauma to the next generation.

Sourcing the Pain

I was born in the farmlands of western Ohio in 1943. Like most babies born in those days, I was drugged (via my mother's general anesthetic, which took weeks to wear off), dragged out of the womb with cold, metal forceps, grasped by sticky rubber gloves, and plunged into bright lights - instead of being gently greeted with warm hands in subdued light. I was doubtless held upside down to drain my lungs (I'm not sure if I was slapped or not, but that was the norm of the day). Stinging silver nitrate was put in my eyes. I was wrapped in cold, scratchy fabrics instead of being allowed to mold my skin against the warm skin of the person with whom I'd been intimately connected for nine months. A little while later, I was taken to the nursery where I was placed in a plastic box beside Carol D., born earlier that day. I spent my next 10 days there (the norm for the early '40s). I was given a cold, rubber nipple with a bottle of a fatty, antigenic substance instead of the miracle food that three million years of evolution had prepared for me.


Then, a day or so later, I was immobilized on a board and the majority of the most sensitive nerve endings of my penis were amputated. Then followed the standard "normative abuse" parenting practices of the 1940s:


1) artificial baby milk - probably Carnation or Pet Evaporated Milk,
2) a four-hour bottle schedule (I got hungry every three hours and cried that last hour, until I learned it was no use and made a decision about the world that is so basic to my brain's neural organization that it still impacts almost everything I do - Asking for what I want doesn't work - my needs will never be met.),
3) restraint in a crib or playpen,
4) deprivation of the continual movement of being carried in-arms,
5) sleeping alone in a separate room.


Most of these 'improvements' were devised by men propagating, in the name of 'modern child rearing practices,' untested 'scientific' ideas, all of which have since been proven to be destructive to human bonding. I don't blame my or other parents of that age: they naturally followed the cultural winds, and the promise of science and technology to cure the world's ills was, in 1943, still an untarnished vision.

From the very beginning, I used depression as my primary defense against recognizing my inability to get my nurturing needs met. While my primary defense appears outwardly as depression - closing down my senses and feelings by withdrawing into my head - it's just one of a standard set of defenses that unbonded children/adults cling to in their attempts to escape the pain of the early needs deprivation that still eats away at them. Other defenses include addiction, violence, chronic illness, and ecocide (destruction of the environment) - symptoms of what James Prescott named Somato-Sensory Affectional Deprivation Syndrome (SSADS) in his early bonding research.


I created a "safe" world in my head that allowed me a sense of control (since I had no control over being fed, touched, or held). The fact that I was disconnected from the matrix of my life by being isolated from others, most especially my mother, limited my ability to express my needs and get them met - hence the periodic depressions. No one recognized my depressions, including me, until I was in college - people just thought I was "quiet."


My condition is not atypical of most men alive today who were raised by 'modern' cultural standards. One friend, though raised in California, was fortunate in that his mother was from South America. He was breastfed well past age two and has always seemed happier than any other person I know.

My Stroke Supply

Having never experienced a nurturing mother, I've subsequently spent most of my life looking for a replacement.


I thought getting married and becoming a doctor would somehow fulfill me, so at age five I blindly set on a course of 22 years of schooling that would handle the latter, and assumed somehow the right "girl" would magically appear about the time I became a doctor. Although I had few social skills, I wasn't deterred in my belief that she would appear.


Much to my surprise, marriage midway through medical school didn't suddenly make my life better, just more complicated. My feelings of emptiness got worse as my depressions deepened. After three years of marriage and several crises, my wife said we had to have a baby or split. I thought I had to comply, since divorce wasn't an option in my family. Reluctantly, in 1972, I became a father.
It was great at first, the excitement of a new being, but then the reality hit - I was a lot lower on my wife's attention list. I began to get more and more depressed, leading eventually to our getting into therapy. There I learned I actually had feelings, and could express them, though with great difficulty - even to this day. We began learning about the unconscious patterns we'd been playing out in our symbiotic marriage, but seemed relatively powerless to change them. However, my experience with this reparenting therapy group became the basis for my pioneering work in wellness and, later, my observation that failed bonding/attachment is the primary impediment to well being and fulfillment as an adult.


Despite learning a great deal about my inner workings, I still was depressed most of the time. When our daughter was two and a half, the pain became so great that I realized I had to leave in order to keep my own sanity. I was sometimes close to being suicidal. So I abandoned my first daughter, with whom I had never really bonded - clearly out of my own inexperience with this natural phenomenon.


The cycle began again with another intense, three-year relationship. I was still unconsciously seeking the mommy I never had, and while I reveled in the attention I received, it wasn't enough, and my new partner felt drained by my neediness. It was around this time that I first heard of the book Magical Child and author Joseph Chilton Pearce's efforts to reframe children's needs for the breast, constant presence of the mother, etc., as legitimate nurturing needs rather than mere 'indulgences' apt to 'spoil' a child. But I didn't think it had any applicability to me. Subconsciously I didn't want to stir up my painful, well-repressed childhood recollections. I tried to learn to love myself and follow the tenets of self-responsibility I was helping to promote at the time, all the while struggling with my chronic depression. I was only marginally successful. Deep down, something always felt wrong.


A year later I met and fell in love with an Australian, Meryn Callander. As our love blossomed, we were often challenged in our new-forming relationship, but we managed, and a year later, married. Meryn and I also began to work together professionally, first with authoring books, and then creating authentic community, especially for helping professionals who are often lonely and unable to connect with peers on an emotional level. It was through Meryn's studies of feminist spirituality that I became aware of the estrangement rampant throughout western culture leading to the authoritarian institutions that surround us, like medicine, law and the educational system. I had been struggling with aspects of this phenomenon in my work with our Wellness Resource Center the previous seven years, but had no understanding of the bigger picture.


I thought I was gradually overcoming my depressions through continued work on myself in growth-oriented seminars I both led and participated in. Friends who had known me a long time could see a difference - years of hard work on painful issues were paying off.


One of the things that fed me the most was lying in bed at night in Meryn's arms, usually watching TV, and having my head, chest or tummy stroked. We spent an hour several nights a week, doing that before going to sleep, and 15 minutes or so in the morning, alternating who would cradle whom. Unlike the common male stereotype of always thinking about sex and wanting more, what I wanted most was nurturing attention from a mother figure, though I was only dimly aware of this. I would sometimes think something must be wrong with me for not being more sexually interested. Being held and stroked was the lifeline that kept me going, though I didn't fully understand how desperate this need was until I lost most of it.

Taking the Plunge Again

Like most of our friends at the time, Meryn and I assumed we would not have children, but after 10 years, in her late 30s, Meryn's biological alarm went off. I couldn't imagine reopening the painful experience of being a father again. At the urging of a friend, I read Jean Liedloff's The Continuum Concept. I suddenly saw the estrangement that we'd been studying was not innate to "the human condition," but a direct result of how we isolate babies and young children. Personally, I could also see how the old wounds I thought I had handled in therapy were still there. I also thought I might make up for my greatest failure in life (being a father) and get it "right" this time with a new approach.


Until then, I had lived a pressured life of deadlines (self-imposed) using adrenaline to make myself accomplish things, always feeling like some unknown but dreaded thing was gaining on me if I didn't have something concrete to show myself at the end of each day. I gave lip service to focusing on love and relationships as my highest values, but I was driven by the need to do something to earn my keep. This is still far truer than I would like, but in my better moments I think I've made significant progress.


For four years, early in our relationship, Meryn and I lived a life of "voluntary simplicity" in the mountains of Costa Rica. When we returned to the United States, we both longed for that simpler life. Along with our decision to have a child, we sold our big house, cut back on the seminars we'd been facilitating, and bought 40 acres in a remote part of Mendocino County, California, seven miles past the end of the power lines.


We became homesteaders. I set about turning an unfinished cabin into a solar-powered home. We read and wrote intensely on attachment parenting. We prepared to give birth to our daughter at home with a midwife, complete with a warm water pool provided by a friend.


The birth went well, and while I thought I was now better prepared for becoming a father, I had no idea of the depth of pain and envy that would be opened up from constantly being with someone who knew what her needs were, expressed these needs, and got the nurturing every infant needs and thrives on.


And, as I should have expected, Siena's arrival supplanted much of my nurturance, but I kept busy, as I had not yet finished the construction of our cabin on 40 remote acres of rural northern California.


Within a week of her birth, we realized the "in-arms" attachment parenting we were attempting was designed for an extended family, not for our NFD. Bringing Meryn's mum over from Australia to live with us helped, but it often seemed we still had an arms shortage - given our commitment to Siena being "in arms" in those first months.


While we provided her with a degree of physical nurturance unknown to most children in the West today, and she blossomed from it, our relationship got more and more strained. I went deeper into depressions, alternating with periods of hyperactivity to keep us afloat financially and make up for the downtime of my crashes. It was unsustainable.


I tried to meet my own needs on a number of fronts: building, men's groups, therapy, and spending time in nature - all to no avail.


It was only after a year of soul-searching, moving across the country to Virginia in 1996, and finding an intentional community that appeared to fulfill many of the ideals for which we'd searched during the previous 20 years, that I found some peace with my process and began to write about it. Despite half a lifetime of therapy and personal growth work, I still struggle with my barely suppressed rage, which usually shows up as depression, a chronic clenching of my jaw, and a knot in my stomach.


Even now, over eleven years since my second daughter's arrival, I am struck by the contrast between witnessing her needs being expressed and fully met, and how most of us were treated. Siena was never left alone. For most of the first nine months, when she was not in Meryn's or Meryn's mother's arms, she was in mine. And I spent over 1000 nights lying in the bed near her while she nursed.


All of this gave me a new awareness of my own subjugated oral needs around which I've spent my whole life and career trying to compensate.


While being with my daughter still sometimes activates deep and painful places in me, I see her as a spiritual teacher, challenging me to continually deal with the years of walled-in pain that keep me disconnected from the family/tribe/planet that is my birthright.

Conclusions

My personal journey reveals just one of the many ways that failed bonding can show up in a family dynamic. Fortunately, it's within our wounds that our gifts may be revealed. Certainly my work in wellness has been strongly influenced by my pain, and without seeing this in the larger perspective of a personal journey, I think I'd have just gotten lost in the suffering. If you have not found the gift in your own wounding, please keep looking. I believe it is there.


A word of caution: after observing myself and others who have worked with these issues for over half of our adult lives, I am no longer certain that the childhood wounds of not having a secure bond (or what Jean Liedloff describes as feeling worthy and welcome) - now popularized by euphemism: low self-esteem - can be healed beyond the fast temporary relief of the latest breakthrough therapy or confusing a newfound awareness of some aspect of the problem with a resolution of it. Regardless, I do know we can learn to better manage our pain and be less controlled by it. A more realistic goal of management can relieve a lot of the shame that often results from peoples' feeling powerless to break free of these hardwired brain circuits of fear, anger, and depression.


Depression is currently one of the largest public health problems in our culture. This, along with addiction, violence and chronic disease account for many of our culture's problems - all symptoms of failed bonding. The reactivation of this pain in our attempts to create a family of our own is a serious condition to reflect on before the birth of a child. I had, and continue to have, a difficult time with it, so I don't think it's easy for young people who naively enter into parenthood unaware of their own wounding. Forewarned is forearmed.


To prevent perpetuating this failed bonding among our young (that is further exacerbated by dysfunctional nuclear families - themselves an artifact of the authoritarian cultures) we need to recognize what a secure bond looks and feels like, and begin challenging the normative abuse of detachment parenting we see everywhere.


We see and hear these myriad symptoms of alienation and failed bonding every day in the news, but we never hear about the real cause: how we treat our babies and children. If we look closely, we can see these symptoms in our own lives, understand the real cause, and begin to get our own needs met with the support of self-awareness books and classes, support groups, therapy, and open honest communication with our family and friends, rather than being blind to and driven by our unmet childhood needs. Applying the wisdom found in publications like Compleat Mother is a good start.


As more men become aware of the dynamics between their own unmet needs and seeing their children's attempts to get theirs met, the widespread denial of this problem will come out in the open. I believe men will then be better able to comprehend, appreciate, communicate, and cope with their issues instead of denying, hiding, inflicting them on others or medicating them - and hopefully, their female partners and friends of both genders will better understand them. So supported, men will then be able to help society understand and own the wounds of unbondedness that have not only reached epidemic proportions in recent generations, but are also perpetuated by cultural and economic agendas. By re-creating communities, extended families of choice, and other as-yet-undiscovered ways of supporting each other in providing the nurturing we never got, we can break the cycle of abandonment and separation inflicted on children in the form of medicalized births, bottle feeding, circumcision, early day care and the like.


When we men face and accept our own wounding and when we can open our hearts to tend to our own needs and support each other in this process, we will unleash the compassion that gives us the strength to remain with our families and create a world that nurtures everyone.

Answer 2

1

Answer 3

I'm not sure why this happens. I can tell you though that I am a father, a single dad, and I would never leave my son no matter what happens. A good friend of mine however grew up without his dad. His dad left his mom when he was very young (3-4 I believe). On the flip side of things, I do know of mothers whom have left the child with the dad. I think these people (whether they be moms or dads) either believe that they are not fit to raise a child or they are simply selfish and don't want the responsibility (which is a terrible thing that I cannot understand).

In any case, I am sorry to hear you had to go through this yourself and I hope you are able to find peace it. We may never understand why some people do the things they do and maybe they don't understand why they themselves do what they do. We can only pray that they will recognize their mistakes and learn from them. Do the best with what you do have control of in life and for the stuff that you cannot control, let it be.

Answer 4

Sorry that your dad left you at 10. I was also that age when my parents separated and I know the anguish it can cause. You state that you are 'better off without him', but are you sure this is definately the case? He has the answers to many questions that have been eating away at you for years and maybe you would benefit from meeting him. I'm not suggesting you would become best friends, and I know you're very angry with him, but you have to think of what is best for you and maybe a brief meeting or telephone conversation would help you to start healing. As for it being men who behave like this, well that isn't necessarily true. Many women leave their families but I agree that it is more often men. Men are not instinctively 'homemakers' like women and they can often feel trapped and overwhelmed by responsibility. This may have been the case with your father because, as your mother had died, he was solely responsible for you. Its a horrible fact of life that some people simply can't cope with it. Good luck with whatever you choose to do.

Answer 5

Sometimes people don't know how to deal with reality.

Considering your mom died before he left you, he probably didn't have the courage to go on.

You may have reminded him too much of your mother. And he couldn't deal with that. The pain just got too much for him.
Perhaps he didn't want the responsibility of caring for a child on his own.
Maybe something happened to me and he just had to get out of there.

The problem with this type of situation is that there are so many answers... There are so many reasons why people leave. And it actually does depend on the individual.

What i can tell you though is that it's not your fault. You were ten. You couldn't have affected him in such an extreme way directly. He most likely just wanted to take the coward's way out.
Don't blame yourself or anything like that.
It seems like you turned out alright :)
And you're right, you don't really need him considering you've lived this long without him.
But everyone deserves to have their story told. So if he ever does come back or if you ever do manage to find a way to communicate with him, ask him why he left.

And then move on.

Sometimes people just.. leave for any reason. And they don't pay attention to what they've left behind. That's their problem, not yours.

Just try to move on... i know it must be hard but what else can you do?

Answer 6

I honestly do not know the answer to your question. I vividly remember the day my first daughter was born, how utterly wonderful I thought she was. I remain very close to her, and I would never leave her or her sister. She's 13 now, and her little sister is 8. I love them both beyond the power of words to describe. I have been married to their mother for 20 years.

If I had to guess, I think men leave because, 1) biologically, it's just so easy to become a father that there is potentially very little investment, and 2) too many women let men have sex with them and get them pregnant without a strong, long-term commitment (marriage).

Answer 7

I don't think that 'Fathers' do leave do they; I know I could certainly NEVER even contemplate leaving my children, whatever the circumstances (I'd rather die). That said, Arseholes leave their children because they are arseholes and even they know that everyone would be better off with-out them.

Your case is both sad and extreme, but I think that in normal circumstances, alot of fathers leave because of a lot of mothers.

Women get to a stage where they want children at any cost, and pick the first arsehole to come along, they want different things and the cycle starts again!

Answer 8

Unfortunately, many chlidren have and are growing up in society without their fathers and some without their mothers. I am sorry for your loss of both of your parents. Maybe your father was not emotionally able to handle the loss of your mother and the responsibility of caring for you. Hopefully, one day he will give you an answer, however, do not let this keep you from being the best you can be. And society has made it almost acceptable for men to walk away from their children. There are some good men in this world who are very responsible fathers/mothers. And then there are many who are not. I pray that you will continue on in life and be the best human being you can be, and take these life lessons to ensure you will be a better parent to your children than your father has been to you. I personally grew up without my father he left when my parents divorced when I was 2 years old. i did not have a relationship with him again unitil I was 36years old. I have found room to forgive him. however, I think now he suffers at the loss of a relationship. I cannot bring myself to give that to him after I felt the loss my whole life, I now do not desire to have one. He went on to raise another family with another women and they did not even know that I myself or my sister existed. Good luck and God bless

Answer 9

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Answer 10

It's not just men that do it. I guess they have their reasons, and I can't imagine it's easy for them and they no doubt think about their decision every day.

I think that mothers and fathers who leave their children get too much of a hard time to be honest.

Answer 11

The never gain a real attachment to the children, otherwise they wouldn't be able to leave...A lot of times they will start a new family and the 1st family will kind of be 'out of sight, out of mind'

And children are really expensive, so a lot of financial burden is taken off of them when they leave if they are not ordered to pay child support...So leaving is a relief to them

And even though it is not as common...Women do leave also, there are plenty of cases where the women will abondon their children with the fathers, especially if they meet somone new or are drug addicts. Just irresponsibility