In 2019 I had my first daughter. Everything I do is to make sure I am providing her with the best life possible and the love and guidance a child needs. I pay for her full finances including her bills, medical expenses, food, former baby needs, toys, learning devices, clothes and everything else she needs.

I work full time and I take her to school every day and pick her up every day, I am the one who is always actively playing with her and teaching her and taking care of her while her mother either sits outside smoking cigarettes and weed or is running around getting drunk. I'm the one who takes her to playgrounds and pools and museums and state parks after school and on the weekends. Her mother has literally never sat on the ground and played with her or taken her to a playground alone. She doesn't give her any attention.

Her mother has been to jail three times for domestic violence against me and has been to jail for drug dealing and usage twice. A few months after my daughter was born I split from her because I was tired of being abused. I found out she was having my daughter sleep in a car while she went to bars. She was hanging out with heroin addicts and was selling pills. She would assault her mother who she was staying with in front of our daughter and her mother constantly said she would just leave the baby in a bouncer while she sat outside smoking cigarettes which is the same thing we did before she split.

Any time she would get mad that I didn't bow down to her she would keep my daughter from me and tell me I would never see her again. So If I called cops or courts I constantly heard "because you are an unwed man you have NO RIGHTS".

So I took her to court and it was an all female court, every time my lawyer asked a question her lawyer would scream "relevance"and the judge would prevent me from answering. But then when her lawyer would ask questions that had nothing relevant to the case and were intentionally made to create a different story the judge would allow this and would prevent my lawyer from speaking. My lawyer was a woman who took my case while I petitioned the court because she does not like how family court treats men, and after the case she said this is the sexist attitude which has ruined the family court system. So after all this I got an arrangement for 50/50 custody for a year.

Then she decided she wanted to come stay in my house again even though she wasn't on the lease and the cops told me I had to let her stay there.

So now the year is over and she has gained 100% custody again so if i want to keep my daughter safe i have to deal with her. She is constantly assaulting and abusing us but without videos nothing can be done because "woman don't abuse or assault men".

Why do men not have rights to be parents when it was a 50/50 effort to create the kid? Now the court is allowing a narcissistic abuser to stay in our lives and I can't just leave because then my daughter is in her custody and is unsafe.

I just want to know why as a man I don't have a right to be a parent to my kid when every time I go out to playgrounds or kid filled places all I see is men with kids and very few women parenting.

Edit: this post isn't at all meant to trash women or even the woman I am speaking of. I've not spoke about this situation much and it really bothers me all the time. I just can't comprehend how in 2022 men still aren't appreciated as parents and have to fight tooth and nail in any circumstance to prove they are competent parents. This is one of the many legal situations in this country that is highly frustrating, like why can't humans just respect each other and actually work to make things better for the next generations.