For those of you who had fatherless homes, how did it affect you negatively?

Barneysparky · 2022-10-02T01:41:23+00:00

Poverty does not have good outcomes for children.

Just being able to afford that zip code that comes with any decent schooling at all never mind not drug addled neighbourhood is out of reach for most of the demographic of single mons living beneath the poverty line, who are most often housed and given food stamps, compared to their homeless men folk.

So that skews the demographic. Women single because of outright abuse the kids grew up seeing skews the numbers.

Non- abusive men more likely to get custody while the norm is mutually abusive households the woman gets the custody (if they are both slinging dirt and foster care is the alternative the parent less likely to kill them gets them).

Who doesn't know this?

2022-10-02T02:02:48+00:00

For context I am white. I also grew up before welfare was gutted. So, I was born under President Carter.

I am sure I have problems. Back then it was strange to have no father. Yet I did. He was a junkie. I learned that way that junkies disgusted me. Men on drugs disgusted me. I wanted to be loved badly but had no idea how. But I never chased after distant men on drugs. A win? I don’t know.

It seems like you only want negative stories. I don’t know what to tell you. I have low self-esteem. I also understand more than my coddled peers that life may be a lonely slog.

Edit: I realize I didn’t provide the details. My parents divorced when I was 2. My father had no fixed address for years and paid no child support. Occasionally he would break in to steal things and take my piggy bank for drug money. We are fairly sure he stole my first bicycle for drugs too. That’s not even the worst of it but that’s as much as I’m getting into now.

Apprehensive_Cut_146 · 2022-10-02T03:11:56+00:00

I grew up having a father, but he was not one in the real sense of the meaning. He was an alcoholic narcissist, a violent and impulse hypocrite - example: he once attempted my life, other two times he said to leave the house if I do not wished to happen again. But these days he calls me "daddy's girl" and how he wished I'd visit more often, how he "wants" (yes, he wants) me to give him grandchildren etc.

To say I do not think men are wonderful is an understatement, I became desensitized to men or their issue(s), I do not think "family is all that matters", I do not trust religion or "tradition", I do not hate men but I also see them as a threat and keep away from them. So yes, I have not become a misandrist by political choice, but by the need to survive.

Drinking (even "socially"), smoking or doing drugs are deal breakers for me.

EulenWatcher · 2022-10-02T03:08:11+00:00

I think outside of having no good reference for having a partner and having good romatic relationship, it didn't affect me negatively. I was a sheltered kid and had it better than a lot of friends from full households, as where I lived a lot of men suffered from alcoholism, some were abusive etc. Having no reference wasn't a total downside, at least I didn't witness a shitty relationship nor bring up shitty relationship patterns intoy own marriage. I guess the main thing that concerns me is that my mother has only me, although we do have a huge and close knit extended family. I feel enormous responsibility to be able to provide and help her when/if she ever needs it. I'd feel more secure if she had a partner and they could take care of each other.

GolcondaOni · 2022-10-02T02:07:07+00:00

Anger issues. Had to learn shit the hard way. Most men know which women to avoid instinctively or at a young age through a dads word. Most bitter men didn’t understand the dating strategies of women until later in life. They usually took things as face value and rebel when they realize the nature of women to be different than what they expected.

I fell in this category until 26z

neutralhumanbody · 2022-10-02T02:16:45+00:00

I’m white but from one of those households that had a father but was basically fatherless due to him being absent all the time. My mom made more money and did all cooking, cleaning, and child rearing. I only occasionally saw him.

Once my dad left the house, everything was far more peaceful and successful. We didn’t have the added stress of a family member who was unwilling to do anything except add stress. Also, I developed a far better relationship with him once there was some distance.

Edit- forgot to add: The negative effect it had on me was that it caused me to assume all men were that way, incapable.

saraimarsena · 2022-10-02T03:16:56+00:00

i grew up middle - upper class, and technically my dad was physically and financially present, but there’s never been an emotional connection there. it feels almost fatherless when as an adult, you feel as if your father has no interest in knowing who you are as a person outside of whether or not you have a good job or not.

i feel it has affected me emotionally in terms of how desperate i am for the approval of my partner. i come off clingy. i need a large amount of affection to fill a space of intimacy. i get insecure very quickly. i’m codependent in many ways.

bryansodred · 2022-10-02T01:49:18+00:00

Been dealing with anger issues all my life up until recently 😂

thegr8profiter · 2022-10-02T05:28:54+00:00

Fatherly figure is a must for boys. Lack of it affects them throughout their life.

anonymous-platypus1 · 2022-10-02T12:23:58+00:00

My dad wasn’t in the house but he was in my life. Talked to him everyday and visited every summer and every holiday. I’m happy he and my mom were not together because they hated one another when they were younger.

My mom had a good job, my dad had a great job and my grandparents were also well off when I was growing up. So I definitely think it’s poverty causing the issues and not necessarily single motherhood.

Most of my issues came from other kids. Weirdly enough there were not a lot of only children in the area I grew up in. I was like one of three kids in my school that didn’t have siblings and I think that played more of a role in my upbringing than my dad not living in the house.

My dad lived in a different state so it wasn’t like he could just pop up to help out. And he didn’t have to pay child support because he got me full-time during the summer and on holidays: my mom didn’t struggle financially, I was spoiled by her, my grandparents and my dad. So I don’t think not having him in the house made that much of a difference for me.

bunnakay · 2022-10-02T04:43:24+00:00

My dad was in my life, but I don't remember ever living with him (although I did until age 5). Other than being teased by other kids for a while, I don't think it mattered much. Other than buying me shit and donating some sperm, he was and is irrelevant to my life.

AstronautLoveShack · 2022-10-02T06:59:24+00:00

My parents were divorced due to my dad’s infidelity but they remained close. My dad lived close enough for us to walk over whenever we felt like it and we saw him several times a week. I also had a stepfather. My dad was invited for all holidays and birthdays and such. He remained part of the family. Even now when my dad visits our old home town, he stays with my mom and stepdad. It’s not too bad.

On the other hand, my daughter’s dad was not nearly as involved. He was always welcome to but he has his own issues to work out. She’s mostly forgiven him but now they are at a stage where he wants to be a more active part of her life but she has spent the last 20 years without him and can’t quite relate. It causes some tensions between them but she’s an adult and I let them deal with their own shit. But he is always welcome to come to family events. And he and I text pretty regularly. We’ve settled into a friendship which is a lot better than a lot of the adversarial divorces you hear about.

gabishes · 2022-10-02T05:45:37+00:00

my dad is a diagnosed narcissist. My mom and i were kicked out of his house when I was 7. I started getting molested at 9 when I was there on the weekends. (not by him but he knew about it). at 12 he just decided not to pick me up for his weekend and I never saw him again. he fought for custody of me when my mom filed for child support but i never saw him. I’m 20 now.

I have a tendency to date bad men. I am with a good one now (i hope) but I used to be used and abused. I dated a man who raped me, and I stayed with him because he acted in a way that “felt like home” and I had never had that level of stability. What he really did is act like my father (ex/rapist has ADHD). Now I’m terrified my current boyfriend will leave me. I’m afraid he’ll get bored of me. That I’m not doing enough for him to stay. That I am not good enough. That I’ve deserved everything thats ever happened to me.

I feel like I would have turned out happier with a stable home life growing up.

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14ers4days · 2022-10-02T15:10:16+00:00

It absolutely negatively affects your self worth when half of your family, literally half of "YOU" doesn't care enough about you to bother being there. Anyone who says it doesn't is lying.

gate18 · 2022-10-03T09:59:23+00:00

I am white, I grew up with a father but he was an alcoholic. He was never around. Mom did everything.

Reading books like The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America by Richard Rothstein and the like it's clear that all we had to deal with was poverty (which due to my mom's amazing budgeting things were fine)

Someone here wrote about gender being a social construction. I learned about this only a few years ago but deep down I believed it just by seeing how my father acted.

If he wasn't an alcoholic life would have been easier but, now, in the long run, I realized his actions made me realize how this gender stuff is all bullshit.

My mom did everything (after all she was able-bodied) and my dad took the credit in public (even mom played along to save face).

I'm from the Balkans. When I moved to UK around 11 y/o I was a sexist homophobe. No one had ever called me on my sexism, and no one back home ever spoke of LGBT.

Now that I think about it I am amazed at how quickly my sexism and homofobia slid away.

I really think it was all because of my father. All that "manhood" didn't help him at all. In fact, it fucked him up.

Now in he's 60s is a changed man and regrets the shitty life he has lived.

2022-10-03T22:50:09+00:00

37M, East Europe. My father died when I was 11yo after two years of horrible disease.

The main thing was that there was no one to protect me from my mother. I needed to be well behaved, protect her reputation in public so that no one accuses her of being a bad mother, listen to her problems, watch her relationships with men she didn't love and humiliated, and somehow manage to do normal child/adolescent things like growing up, figuring out friendships and dating, school. I got used to always placing my needs last, because I was a "man". She indoctrinated me with all those gender roles of how a man should be, i.e. a robot who provides, always knows what to do, listens, is fun and never has any problems. Only when I didn't manage my shit (problems in school, problems with police, addiction, smoking) did she start playing this perfect mother and suddenly asked me if everything "is ok" and that she loves me (only after hitting me, crying and threatening that she'll kill herself). I told her "yes, everything is OK" because I didn't want her near me playing this perfect parent for all the people to see. I knew I was noticed only when people were talking because sth I did, so I kept mostly quiet and low-key.

The absoluuuutely worst part: Every time you try to tell somebody, they answer you with this shit about her being a widow and brave mother and having all those burdens. Every fucking time it was: YOU must help your mother, YOU - a child.

I felt alone and drowning, with no escape. I felt outside of human community. The person I could rely on was my grandfather who was a wonderful man, but of course, had to work abroad to send us money, because that is what men must do, according to women. He died 4 years ago from cancer that he developed at his workplace. He got me into training and taught me how to take care of myself and my health. There was also my mom's boyfriend who liked me very much and taught me how to repair things, shave, drive a car, have fun in life, do dangerous shit when needed and be brave :). He is now an alcoholic, lonely and a wreck. My mom destroyed this man - I know, because I saw it happen. It makes me angry how genuinely good men suffer and slowly die, and are still able to help others, while evil men get all the good things in life, esp. from women - I saw this happen many times.

I had a bad start in life but I managed to fight off depression, loneliness and financial problems. I'm now in a good place, stood up to my mother and grandmother so they finally treat me with respect and we get along pretty good. As I aged I rebuilt this family, put in a lot of work. Life is good now. Have a decent job and stable situation.

I guess the biggest thing now, after all those years, is the fact that I had a rough start so I am late when it comes to assets, house etc. I feel like everyone is ahead of me in life because I wasted so much time dealing with my mental health. Loneliness seems to be a fixture in my life, no matter what I have achieved. I got used to it, learned to manage it healthily. I doubt whether I'll find love or be able to love a woman. It might sound arrogant, but I feel like women I date will never understand me and what I went through, and I date a lot of different women. Had some LTR's but most of them were a drain and a setback, where I gave and gave and gave. It is like women treat you pretty bad when they learn you grew up without a father, like they found "one of the good ones" and they will just use you to get their life straight and then find someone else. My last ex even told me, that she found a wonderful guy, and one of the first things about him was that he had a nice dad. She didn't even notice how it hurt me, even though she knew how painful this topic was for me - I guess this was that famous empathy at work. Anyway, fuck her :P

This was long, but you asked for it :)

JoeRMD77 · 2022-10-02T13:01:25+00:00

I took a peek at these posts and everyone that posted had a father around in some way. So, I'll give you an actual post from someone who literally didn't have one.

My dad died at 6 and I'm not really sure if it affected me or not. The earliest memories I have of him was raging around the house all drunkenly - I'm sure I didn't mess much.

I would say, without having a male father figure in the house just leaves boys to raise themselves and determine what it is to be a man.

I used to challenge guys who were bigger than me, always taller than me, and sometimes I wonder if it came from not having someone around to toughen me up - I basically toughened my own self up by getting my ass beat a few times.

I definitely became a mama's boy though, I would say, because I didn't have anyone else to cling on to. Even now later in life, I think women get this feeling about me and it's not hard for me to connect with women at all.

I've struggled with addiction all my life and I'm just now starting college at almost 40 - that's how long it took me to get my crap together.

Would I have fared better in a nuclear household? Hard to know. I don't think my father was a great guy so I might have been better off without him.

That's why I'm really skeptical of of what this next generation of young men is going to look like being raised by a single mother. But it doesn't seem like women really care about the outcome of their children, they're just more worried about pumping them out and letting them fend for themselves, which is exactly what they're going to have to do because mama can't solve every problem for them.

I pray single mothers are aware of the challenge they face.

Title	For those of you who had fatherless homes, how did it affect you negatively?
Author	ShiNoKikai
Upvotes	18
Comments	26
Date	October 2, 2022 1:25 AM UTC (3 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/PurplePillDebate
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/PurplePillDebate/comments/xtbucv/for_those_of_you_who_had_fatherless_homes_how_did/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/PurplePillDebate/for-those-of-you-who-had-fatherless-homes-how-did.1133173 https://theredarchive.com/post/1133173

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