Short lived relationships & resulting babies

DotMH1901 I think for every man like your ex SIL there is a woman who decides she can do it all on her own and chucks the father out. She is then able to stop or allow contact usually as she chooses. It's the concept that personal happiness matters more than anything else.

There is evidence to show that early intervention with women who have been in care or have had bad parental relationships can turn around the next generation of ill-adjusted parents. I take the view that if we do this with fathers, maybe we would have the next generation of responsible fathers.
It is no secret that I firmly believe that a child should have an involved father wherever possible as long as it isn't going to impact adversely on a child. I think the state should be far more involved when the baby is being incubated so that mothers and fathers are aware of their responsibilities although, of course, in a perfect world they'd be aware before the baby was conceived.
I think it is quite natural for a woman to believe she is the most important person in her child's life because she has that relationship even before it is born. However, as a child who didn't know her father or any of her relations until she was 47, I can tell you that there are so many occasions when you need to know about your paternal side, not least medical history, security screening, etc. It can be crucial with some medical conditions to know your family history. Bowel cancer on both sides of the family or on Dad's side through the generations equals regular screening.
This is, of course, without even taking the emotional side into account. Abandonment often leaves you without good self esteem. If you are more like your father than your mother then you are like a square peg in a round hole.
There are just so many reasons why a child should have both parents wherever possible.

Anyone watch the series GPs behind closed doors. In a recent episode there were a couple of young girls in for some ailment. The GPs asked if they had boyfriends, both responded with a yes. Asking about contraception both declared they didn't bother. In this day and age, when there has never been so much information, education on the subject I could not believe their responses. Condoms are advised nowadays mainly to help prevent sexual disease and contraception to a very small degree. To me both parties have a responsibility, if no contraception on both parties part, then there should be no sex. Only if both act responsibly then both should have same rights and obligations as one another. May seem like the perfect world but people have to accept their responsibilities or suffer the consequences. Fed up with the "oh I didn't know, couldn't help it" attitudes.

Grandma2213 It is not possible for women to put the (possible) father's name on the birth certificate unless: the father is present at registration; the father provides written agreement to being named; there is a court order naming him : www.gov.uk/register-birth/who-can-register-a-birth. So it's pretty unlikely any 'named' fathers have been written in by the mother just for possible later financial gain.

my daughters paternal family cut ties with her aged 2 when her dad got a new girlfriend and she didnt want them to see her she even put 27 p in a birthday card as a pee take i always left the dòor open to them and the so called father until i met my husband who adopted her, social services contacted bio dad to ask for permission and he said yes and make sure she never contacts my family so not just women who prevent it

Good post ican

I tend to agree with PECS.
Personally, I believe a child should have a mother and father. Sadly, there are sometimes exceptions!

“Reams of social science and medical research convincingly show that children who are raised by their married, biological parents enjoy better physical, cognitive and emotional outcomes, on average, than children raised in other circumstances. "

Couples need to establish a good relationship and get to know each other well before even considering jumping into bed after a first date!
Sex is good and healthy but relationships should be built on love and not merely the physical side.

gilld69, you can lead a horse to water, you can't make it drink. My husband adopted my son as his father didn't want to know and it was my son's choice to be adopted. The sad thing was, when I met my ex, he'd had the same fatherless existence as me and I thought we were on the same page as far as parenting was concerned. Obviously not! However, I did keep up a relationship with his mother and family so we weren't completely in the dark about things. The difference with the situation was that we had children by design having been in a relationship, not with a very short relationship like the post is about.

I may be wrong here,so apologise in advance if so. I thought that the father of the baby had to be present at the registration of its birth to be recognised as the birth father and have more rights to being involved in its life, and sometimes be allowed shared custody. Some of the mother's don't always want their baby"s father included on its birth certificate and some father's are not given the opportunity to be so. It just seems nowadays with all forms of contraception so easily available that some people still don't seem bothered if they get pregnant.

I was one of those girls unmarried and pregnant in the sixties. The father and I did marry and it lasted 20odd years.
I agree there is much more availability of birth control now but things still go wrong. I think too much emphasis is placed on relationships now and not enough said about responsibility and how difficult it is to raise a child well. I'm not sure about the father thing, I never knew my birth father and feel no loss about this.

Sadly, it's still the case (at least in the UK) that the birth rate spikes alarmingly at the end of August/beginning of September - 9 months on from Xmas and the party season.

Careless over birth control? Too much to drink? Can the young ladies caught up in the debacle even remember having sex and who it was with?

My DD is a single mum through no choice of hers. Her partner of 5 years, to whom she was engaged, decided that he couldn't cope with the responsibility and was unhappy - so he left. There was a great deal of upset - but they are working through it. He sees his daughter weekly, and Face Times her most nights. They are both much happier apart, They tried so hard to make it work, but they were 'flogging a dead horse' as the saying goes. She has met someone else, who also has a daughter, and they are on the same page with their future plans and expectations. She so much happier. Ex has had a relationship that ended, because it got too serious, but has admitted he still loves my DD. He has excepted that they just didn't work though. They are both still pretty young. He is 25, she is 23 and DGD is 3. She grew up with the arrival of DGD, he just couldn't.

Annsixty, I think someone should go above the young woman's head and tell her mother. She is scared to do so herself, but I am 99% sure will be very relieved once it's been done. I have heard of girls committing suicide because they think (wrongly) that their mothers will "kill" them. Not having experience of being mothers themselves they are not aware just how supportive their mothers will want to be, after the initial shock. It's therefore best to tell the parent without the young girl present, so there is time for the shock to subside and the caring instincts to kick in.

Grandma 2213 a mother can only register the father on a
Birth Certificate if they are married. Unmarried couples must both be present to register the father's name.

Frankly, it shocks and annoys me that young people don't stop to buy contraceptives! It is no longer shameful to do so, nor are unmarried women turned away from GPs or clinics, as we would have been /were in our young days.

Condoms also have the advantage over other forms of contraception that they protect against the HIV virus., syphilis, chlamydia etc. etc.

Certainly love or lust can overrule years of training, but perhaps a new campaign for planned parenthood would be a good thing.

My daughter's husband left her at Christmas. They have a 7 year old and a nearly 2 year old. He went on dating sites and found someone he preferred to my daughter. She never expected to be a single parent. He did the same thing to his first wife too, leaving her with three children. I'm disgusted with his behaviour.

Plenty of fathers who were married to the mothers don't want to take any responsibility for their children. And that's not restricted to the younger generation, it's our generation too.
And as for courts favouring the mother - really?

PECS asks if we (individually &/or societally?) are 'training' our young people about the consequences of sexual intercourse and resultant pregnancies - I suspect not but as most of us, am swayed more by my own experiences than statistics that don't agree with what I see in the real world.
However, I do suspect we all need to address our attitudes in the round, not just picking out the physicality of sex but how emotions can hijack moments in time that affect more lives than the 2 engaged in that 'moment'.
If young people were 'trained' in alternative 'emotion, thought, action' scenerios (akin to mental health CBT) before deciding on risk-taking behaviours, there might well be 'pause for thought'.
Is this a parental responsibility or an establishment/societal one as PECS suggests? A lot more of both, perhaps?
It needs us all, GN'ers, to not just wish it different but to do something about it. That brilliant series 'Icons' is showing that individuals really do make a difference.

Trisher
The only women I know who threw him out, and decided she could do it all on her own were either with drunks and men who abused.

wellwalked yes, but I wonder if these young people really listen to their parents and don't just think they are too old to know? I remember listening to one DS talking to his younger brother about drugs etc and putting it brilliantly including 'you won't listen to parents'. Pretty sure it was much more effective than if I had said the same things. I suppose we need people nearer to their age to talk to them, perhaps those who feel they got it wrong?

In many schools they have a virtual baby that can be programmed to act like a real baby. The girls often get to take baby home for weekend. That teaches them to use contraceptives. Boys should be sent home with virtual baby too. They would learn useful skills. Baby wakes up about 4 times each night and takes 15 mins to sooth if picked up if just left cries continuously.

I read that, in this age of casual sex, it is with the presumed assumption, on both parts that the girl/woman will "take care of it" either by ending the pregnancy or taking care of the child. Young people look at sex, pregnancy, and marriage with a different set of values than 50 years ago. And, society permits it.

Newnanny, my son actually did bring home one of these virtual babies for a week-end. It was for a class, something to do with 'Families', some sort of what would have been Home Economics.

My adopted daughter's Mum was 17, and engaged, when she fell pregnant in the 60's. Her family broke up the relationship and made her have her daughter adopted. 50 years later it grieves me to think that they probably still mourn for their much-loved child. I wonder, too, if the father renewed the relationship, and perhaps they may have married and had more children.
My daughter has learned from this. When my GD started a relationship she took her to the doctor's for 'the pill.' She also allows them to share a room, as do his parents. In my old-fashioned way I find myself disapproving, but realise that times are different now. At least she won't suffer an unwanted pregnancy, or a lifetime of regret for a lost child, as her 'birth Granny' has done.

Hm999 you have lived a sheltered life. There are many instances where a woman will decide before the baby is born, soon afterwards, or when the children are in school that she doesn't need the father around anymore. I don't think this is wrong providing they make adequate provision for the father to see and care for his children, unfortunately some women take the attitude that because they now dislke the man who fathered their children he should have no rights over them. It takes a really dedicated and strong father to stand up and keep insisting that he has contact no matter how difficult the mother makes it. Imagining that there aren't sometimes faults on both sides is so wrong.
I have a friend who was married to a man who was abusive, she left him but always kept her children in contact with him. So it can be done.