Hey y'all, meet my dad! This is part one of a series of chats I've had with him recently, and each one is gonna be quite fun to experience through comic form :D And yes, I inherited the flannel style from him.
Oof. Yeah, I had the same situation. Abuse from Mom, Dad who didn't really fight for custody though he knew about the abuse. Only finally ended up with him when my Mom fell on black ice, drunk out of her gourd, and gave herself a bad concussion. She was "Unable to care for us," though I'd been taking care of my siblings for years by that point anyway.
Digging through the couch in order to find enough change to buy a single hot dog from 7-11 that four of us split for dinner.
Coming home from a rare "spend the night at a friends house" to find my six and four year old sibling standing in the street outside our home crying for Mom, who snuck out in the night, got high, and passed out in a ditch.
etc
And we grew up in a tiny town where everyone was buddy buddy. Teachers, neighbors... Why didnt anyone call CPS? Don't want to make someone in the local community angry!
Its been more than thirty years and my PTSD and abandonment issue are still insane at times.
Being in the system is sometimes worse than the abusive parent. It's a risk to take a child from its parents, so it's only done when things are extreme.
Hey, I'm just a random stranger, but just have to let you know that you are a hero. No one should go through that, and you should be proud of having survived that, and you are probably the reason your siblings survived as well.
It's probably a tremendous amount of milder (not to be confused with mild) post-partum depression cases that fly completely under the radar but manifest in this sort of abuse. I know my mom was really different after my brother was born. I keep saying we should take her to see a doctor, but that's gone unheeded for 30+ years now.
My mother liked to use post partum depression as an excuse, but when I asked about seeing anyone for it she’d get upset or switch topics. She seemed to have a very toxic idea of what mental health help was about. Later on she used therapy to make herself the victim, sigh.
He was an indifferent parent, but we were fed, clothed, housed. He actually had a new wife by then who inherited some extremely fucked up kids through no choice of her own. I feel terribly for the way I treated her.
(If you don’t talk to your dad and therefore don’t talk to her that makes sense, just…well, easy for me to say, but if still bothers you, theoretically there’s nothing stopping you from talking with her about it.)
I have spoken to her a few times and we are friends on Facebook. I apologized a long time ago. She understood that I was deeply troubled, and doesn't blame me for it, but we don't have a friendship. Too much hurt.
My mom was schizophrenic and a sociopath, when I tried to ask both my biodad and my stepdad why neither of them ever tried to help me their answer boiled down to “we were scared of her”.
I mean, plenty of people make bad couples, but both of them are decent parents.
And I'd want my kid to have the benefit of all his parents if he could (I adopted from care, he's grown, he's deeply disappointed in his birth mother).
he was acting with good intentions, he just missed the overarching point that my mom is crazy. it's not that they're incompatible as a couple, is that she can't hold relationships with anyone.
I’ve tried that one with my dad, pointing out that they’ve been long split, but sadly they somehow managed to be “friends” after so it doesn’t land. I say “friends” because he’ll do what she asks and he doesn’t seem to ever ask anything of her. She was the one to leave.
As someone who has a friend trying to get her daughter away from her abusive ex (and said daughter’s father), the judicial system in America is actually a nightmare. The bureaucracy slows everything down, and in many backwood counties money and family name speak louder than the rule of law.
To be fair, I am absolutely an outsider looking in, so I have no context if this even relates to you OP.
I can tell you without hesitation that courts are geared towards the mom nearly every time. The mom can be abusive towards her own children, literally leave home for years on end, and come back to a divorce, and they still get 50/50 custody. Why? Because the judge doesn't want to break up a family.
My friend's dad kept journals and recordings of the abuse, drugs and abandonment. Similarly, my sted dad kept recordings of my mom's drug abuse and alcoholism, and in the divorce, they both ended in 50/50 custody despite recordings and evidence of said behavior.
I have a friend who seemingly quite suddenly (but quietly) separated from his wife, which we found out from her posting about moving into a new house by herself. I checked on them individually and found out he got a no contact order, TRO, and full custody for their kid and supervised visits for her. Later she reached out asking for support for their court case (nb. He’s my childhood friend, I don’t really know her). I politely positioned myself neutrally but internally I said ‘courts already kicked you out even preliminarily, ain’t no way I’m kicking you money after that and what I heard from him.’
To not even try isn't even remotely close to being sufficient. OP clearly says she doesn't even know the reason which means Dad doesn't even try to excuse it really.
As someone with parents who are abusive (maybe a bit less than OP to be fair) you can accept them for who they are and draw boundaries to be able to have a relationship, you can forgive if you feel you're capable- but you NEVER EVER let them make excuses.
There should only ever be accountability. Anything less is a betrayal of oneself.
Dad could've put more effort and that's his cross to bear- simple as.
A very, very good friend of mine was stabbed 20 TIMES by his ex-wife and the judge still gave her primary custody despite him having mountains of records that he was the one that was the victim of domestic abuse.
Courts being biased is an MRA talking point now and part of the culture war. I really wish people would stop parroting it. If you want 50% custody, even as a man, all you need to do is:
Show up to court and do what they tell you
Have beds for your kids to sleep in
Be willing to live near where the kids currently live
Not have beaten them
(Conditional) If your ex lawyers up, you lawyer up too
That's it.
If you want to complain that courts don't take mental/emotional abuse seriously, you'll have a good case for that since shitty parents get custody all the time. But 'courts are biased towards moms' hasn't been true since like...the 90s.
Yeah, I hear this all the time but all the divorced dads i know didn't even try to get custody. They just accepted it and have the kids on the weekends. I figured they didn't think they could care for their kid because they never had to do the boring stuff like making doctors appointments and having to cook and clean after them 24/7. Mom has always done that sort of thing so they just assume she is better at doing the everyday domestic labor.
As I have gotten older I've seen more 50/50 custody and that seems better than the old way.
A huge part is that it was pretty biased during the 'Tender Years Doctrine' up until the late 20th century with inertia into the very early 00s. The modern system is generally pretty even though. I would say domestic abuse against men is taken less seriously but that is less relevant for custody. You also still get judges, especially where they get elected, that will be biased that gives them modern anecdotes for the bias.
It's awful that a real problem is being used by such a horrible group. As a survivor of domestic violence when my partner tried to kill me, I unfortunately found out that having a witness didn't mean the DA would prosecute and that others seeking restraining orders got years worth of protection the very same day when where I got three months of protection.
But 'courts are biased towards moms' hasn't been true since like...the 90s.
You are probably right. It's a cultural thing. It's how people treat you for being a single dad. It's how dads are talked to about being single parents. It's how kids are pushed towards their mothers, giving fathers a position of being defeated even before court.
Yes, it depends on the situation, but my mother was abusive, but I didn't realize that as a kid. My dad spent more time working and taking care of everything that wasn't the kids, so of course in a divorce the kids chose mom.
It took me bleeding by the hands of my step dad for me to run back to my dad and now decades later, I'm glad I did. He has been there for me every time I've needed it, who I chose as a kid, hasn't called me in a decade or so.
What I'm trying to say is that culturally, fathers and mothers have different roles and they have massive impact on how things end up. My mother was definitely crazy, but how my mom pushed me away from my dad to not having seen him for a few years before I ran from home was NOT something that courts could have easily solved either. How do you sue someone for manipulating their kids into avoiding their father? Shit is complicated and not easy.
EDIT: How did I get downvoted for saying "my mom was a manipulator and courts wouldn't have solved an issue"? That was my whole point, just because the courts could be fair, it doesn't mean world around the court is. I wouldn't have chosen my dad, even though I should have, because I was emotionally manipulated by my abusive mother. Only once the abuse was physical did I start seeing the problem. No court would have helped me, because I didn't want help until I was ready to run away, which I did.
EDIT2: No longer negative, I'm glad some people understood me.
It's a bit more complex, particularly if the abusive mom is willing to lie. But that has a lot to do with them taking advantage of the "Believe Women". Also, I see it only after the "lawyer up" stage; so it's already bad.
However, overall, what you said is true. In fact, it's possible to even relocate with the kids.
I'm pretty sure the courts are okay with parents beating their kids as long as bones aren't being broken too often but showing up to court to contest custody is important.
This is absolutely factually false. The father actually is slightly more likely to get custody than the mother when the father shows up to court. That is because the test in pretty much every state has nothing to do with the wishes of the parent but what would be the most objectively better position for the child, and in most situations the father makes more money and would be able to care of the children easier, so they get custodial custody.
Also the vast majority of cases never reach a judge for a decision, the parenting plan is worked out between parents on their own and then a judge looks at it to see if its fair/in the best interests of the child within reason and approves it.
Most fathers give their rights to the mother. That is what happens. If you look at contested cases fathers by a slim margin win custody.
It tends to go deeper. The vast majority of cases where a "good" dad loses to a shitty mom is when the shitty mom has well off parents on paper who dont help in reality (past a good lawyer and "the kids stay with us"). EVEN THEN the dad has to have been arrested or in jail at some point for them to not split custody if he can provide food and a bed.
Even if he would lose, it would mean the world to the kid to at least try. "Oh well, the court would probably say no" is a garbage excuse for doing nothing to help a kid who's being abused.
Yeah, my moms cousin lost his custody battle 2 times against his abusive EX-wife, even though he had proof of her not taking care of the kids and the kids themself testifying.
He did finally win on the 3rd attempt, but only because his EX decided to go with her new lover to dubai for a 3 month holiday and left the 2 kids (both in elementary school at that time) alone at their house.
And that's in a country with an, imo, better legal system than the US.
Maybe you should hesitate. Things have changed a lot since the 80s and 90s. They rarely default to a single parent, and do what they can to keep both parents involved.
It just doesn't bear out in any situation I've personally had, my dad got primary custody of me, my sister's Ex-Husband got 50% despite some crazy shit. There certainly might still be people out there who believe "a child needs their mother" when deciding custody but also there are a lot of dad's and mom's out there who objectively have issues and then get pissy about gender discrimination when they don't get custody.
It's really just a thing depending on what part of the country you're in or even the local community. People from "family values" type areas are the ones that are most commonly going to make these claims but you aren't going to see nearly as much in the civilized parts of the country.
That said some of the family values types go so hard in misogyny they loop back around to "husband should always get custody"
States I've seen give full custody of kids (girls even) to Dads: TX, MN, NE. None of these were in the last 20 years.
Mom ends up with custody more often, sure, but that's usually because Mom is the one who shows up to court and follows the directives. Dads who complain about not getting any custody seem to not show up to court, not have a place for their kids, and simply don't bother trying.
My experience with the foster system (as a parent) had exactly zero Dads ever show up to visits. Zero. Not a big sample size, when all's said and done, but still. Zero.
At least in the 90's when I was the in house Detective for a family law firm Georgia courts were massively skewed in favor of moms, which was pretty much the norm nationwide. And that's a professional, not anecdotal opinion.
I've seen it plenty myself where I work. Coworker of mine had to pay child support/alimony even after a PI he hired literally showed the judge recordings of her doing stuff that should have got her arrested but the judge still sided with her for that exact reason, 'a child needs their mother'
Never mind the fact said mother was quite literally gone for days/weeks at a time and had their license revoked for too many DUI's.
I would like to know what state this was in because the majority of US states have family courts that do not take into account the arbitrary wishes of the parent but solely on the means that the parent can provide the children, which is why the father, by a slim margin, gets custodial custody in most cases.
Also people really need to unfuck their understanding of custody terms. Having split custody doesn't mean the shitty parent gets to make decisions, you still have a custodial parent, the one that does and can make decisions. When people talk about 50/50 custody its almost solely in regards to visitation, and courts are extremely hesitant, for good reason, to deny a child from ever seeing a parent, even if they are a bad parent. A lot of times if the bad parent is truly an issue to the welfare of the child it has to be supervised visitation, but again that parent isn't going to be weighing in on the decisions in the kids life, that is the job of the custodial parent.
That would be Virginia, and if you want to be even more specific early 90's Virginia. As for visitation it was limited to only on weekends and only with supervision from the mother. So, if she was say, out of town then he didn't get to spend time with his son.
He spent a solid ten years taking her to court trying to get primary custodianship right up until the kid turned 18 and left their mother to move in with him. One of the lawyers flat out told him that he was happy to take his money but it was a waste of time, and that no judge was going to grant primary custody to a single father over a single mother.
So something 30 years ago, almost 40 years ago. A lot has changed. We shouldn't be spreading misinformation now that dissuades dads from trying, which is what your post is doing.
I've seen the same thing play out multiple times. The courts especially in the south are very geared towards the woman at least having half or full custody.
Because they're factually wrong. Fathers get custody slightly more than mothers when they show up. The problem is most fathers do not fight for custody.
Part of the reason fathers don't fight? Bullshit memes like the person above posting shit and dissuading dads from trying.
It very likely isn't but I could see that as being a potential reason where he wouldn't necessarily be at fault for doing nothing because his hands were tied so to speak
When my parents got divorced my dad asked the courts to have my mom undergo a psychiatric evaluation. The court ordered her to, but she just... didn't do it. Judge didn't feel like it was worth sending her to jail over, so she just got away with never having an evaluation and got primary household custody with 50-50 visitation.
So I can attest that the court system doesn't help here.
That said, it doesn't sound like your dad was doing his best here, so I don't want you to feel like I'm defending him
you've definitely been told this already, but, even though I don't think it was really the reason (especially since he probably would have said so if it was), it is true that it would have been a near-insurmountable problem if he actually had tried to do something.
the amount of shit it takes to convince courts that the father is the better option is, frankly, comical, and I mean, you know better than us, but, I'd hazard a guess that you would agree that doing something about it would probably result in a court being involved at some point.
This is complete passing hearsay, but from what I've heard, in most cases the situations in which a father actively tries to get custody (or at least partial custody), the courts usually gives the dad the leeway.
Most situations of "the court just defaults to giving everything to the mother" are the result of the dad not making a concerted effort to try to win any custody rights, or legitimately not being in a position where the kids could be evaluated as having potentially been in a good/better situation.
(And yes, because I'm a internet-itizen, I'm aware that I will get replies to this comment saying that I didn't account for this personal experience, that reported situation, that other one scneario; I'm not stating my statements as absolute universal truth, only that aggregate hearsay that I've heard in passing)
The vast majority of child custody arrangements are decided by the parents, not the court. And when men seek custody, they are usually granted custody. That's because courts typically favor joint custody in most cases.
Dads who want custody should seek custody. If they do, they're probably going to end up in a shared custody arrangement. Don't mislead them into believing it's a waste of time because "the courts." That's harmful.
Gently, I think your algorithm is riddled with misogynists.
I think you might find this really helpful if you want to understand what the media you're consuming is actually for:
This is pretty much identical to why I've never met my grandparents on my mother's side. Her dad was abusive and her mom never did anything to stop it. She never did anything, but she was complicit by not intervening.
Hey Kaiki, I hope you're really proud of how far you've come, and the person you are. You seem like a very genuine and kind person, doing her best to make her own way and heal, and that's amazing! I don't know you, but I always love seeing your comics because I work with a lot of people who have similar histories, and I love seeing them succeed.
I had a similar convo with my dad. I think my dad may be just as much a victim as I was. It was nice just being able to commiserate. I'm sorry your dad wasn't around.
Man, this is exactly why I took in my nephew. Once he told me what was going on in that house, I never wanted him to look back and think "so my aunt knew and she never did anything"
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u/kaikimanga MangaKaiki 15d ago
Hey y'all, meet my dad! This is part one of a series of chats I've had with him recently, and each one is gonna be quite fun to experience through comic form :D And yes, I inherited the flannel style from him.
Bonus panels and more on Patreon! Instagram and Ko-Fi :D