I always thought this was more for the child’s benefit. Rather than addressing them by what they are lacking addressing them by what they have might be gentler.
yeah I thought “single mother” was already a supposedly better replacement for “fatherless”, for exactly the reason you stated
I’ve never thought that term carried any stigma other than “this person is working harder than most do to survive”
Me too
I think this post is the one that will make me finally unsubscribe and leave this commmunity. It’s so many brigaders here now and it’s not fun or productive anymore. I might return some time in the future, but I fought the good fight and I’m ready to be done.
Open discourse is fine, but you can really only have a community like this work if enough people accept the core premise. I’m not sure Lemmy can support that kind of userbase.
Best of luck, everyone.
I get that totally, I’ve been thinking about doing the same thing. I don’t want to desert the cause though!
Notice the posts about witch stuff are largely ignored…
Since when is calling someone a single mother “blaming” them?
Politics. That’s when. Like I’m happy for you you’ve never heard it used that way but in politics it is almost always comes with blame attached to it. Particularly the last 40 years.
Cool slop bro
Why dont you contact the artist and discussing your your concerns with her?
The belt buckle is egregious. Either made by AI or the artist is trying to replicate slop
I’ve got a better idea. No
Fuck all that. I spent thousands on a lawyer just to get my kids 3-months a year. I’ve spent 10’s of thousands on child support. And I’m the problem?
Ikr? I had to fight tooth and just so I didn’t have to see my son in front of a government official.
Why? Because she was pissed at me for going to my exam during university.
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Being an anecdotal case with extenuating circumstances does not invalidate the criticism of an overall societal trend.
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You are not being an absentee father. You are actively trying to be a part of your children’s lives. This trend does not describe you.
It is best not to borrow offense when it isn’t aimed in your direction. It’s better overall for your mental health and allows you to understand better other points of veiw without unnecessarily feeling attacked.
The irony of this is, “single mother” aims no offense at anyone, and you’re advocating for an objectively offensive term take its place.
Let’s go over what constitutes a “child of an absentee father”:
- dead father
- deported father
- incarcerated father
- abused father
And that’s just the generalized ones.
Gee, I wonder why we simply use “single parent/mother/father”… maybe because it describes the situation most succinctly, and with as little offensiveness as possible? Couldn’t be! It must be the patriarchy!
“Unnecessarily”? The post attacks them by conflating single mothers with absentee fathers and actively blames the fathers
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I like that you post a lot, but I feel like there are some stinkers in there that don’t pass the smell test. There’s a plenty of single parents that actively keep past partners from their children. Often enough this is against their child’s and former partners wishes. Some even want to hurt their exes by removing their child.
That being said the stereotype does certainly exist, but reality to me is more complex with less gender related lines. And pushing conservative gender roles is a yikes.
It’s also sadly the case that many “absentee” fathers are in jail for victimless crimes and/or serving disproportionately long sentences, especially as the targets of racism.
Erin Patria Margaret Pizzey CBE (born 19 February 1939) is a British men’s rights activist and novelist known for her advocacy on behalf of both men’s and women’s rights and for her work against domestic violence. She is recognized for founding the world’s first and largest domestic violence shelter in the world, Refuge, then known as Chiswick Women’s Aid, in 1971.
Pizzey says that she has been the subject of death threats and boycotts because her experience and research into the issue led her to conclude that most domestic violence is reciprocal, and that women are as capable of violence as men. These threats eventually led to her exile from the UK. Pizzey has said that the threats were from militant feminists. She has also stated that she is banned from the refuge she started.
Pizzey is sus, cursory review of her own words immediately reveals this.
What I get out of it is she is the first one to fight for domestic shelters for women, she was the first to get one started. I am very sus of many aspects of the men’s rights movement after diving deep… there’s a lot of hate and discontent… but she was also the first to try and start a shelter for men… and one of the first to notice that often times abusive relationships are reciprocal… which doesn’t excuse anyone, but does seem to point to something…
Why are you assuming that “single mother” is a bad thing? Thats pretty fucking weird.
It’s because of fucking Reagan. He’s the dipshit who coined the term welfare Queen. Which painted a picture of single mothers that both Republicans and Democrats have held in their minds for the last 40 fucking years.
Liked but gentle criticism, we have been shaming single mothers for millennia. Even religious texts had to spell out that they’re just women with kids, not leprosy victims. Reagan just modernized the stereotype that if you were black it was automatically worse for everyone else.
You also can’t assume why the father is out of the picture. Sometimes, the father could be falsely imprisoned or even passed away.
Also also, why focus on the absentee instead of the person with the potential problem? Help first, blame later if necessary.
My first thought too. I mean it is true society has a fucked up stigma about single mothers, but the blame lies with society not the term single mother.
On the flip side you hear single father, and society’s immediate response is “aww, that brave man!” That is not to say being a single dad doesn’t actually come with its own set of weird societal day to day problems and prejudices, but the broad surface level response to the terms “single dad” vs “single mom” certainly seems to trend towards “what an upstanding man” vs “what an irresponsible ho.”
Society is so fucking weird about present fathers! Taking the kids to the park “oh where’s mommy right now?” Handling a tantrum from the youngest while the oldest is asking for something “oh I see daddy’s on parent duty!”
I just want to parent my kids man, you don’t have to make it weird! Of course that’s also not addressing the subset of people who are convinced that the only men who want anything to do with kids must be pedophiles and couldn’t possibly just be present fathers
To me, single mother/father isn’t negative. It’s simply a way to explain their situation; that they are raising a child by themselves and for whatever reason they don’t have a partner.
Honestly the first time I’ve heard someone think of it in a negative way. Mostly I hear people say single mother/father with sincere respect as they know raising a kid is difficult, and can’t imagine doing it by themselves.
*Quick edit to affirm the fact that single fathers are relatively rare as we live in a patriarchy.
Even the idea of “raising a child by themselves” is variable. Separated parents often collaborate very well in raising children “together”.
The term “single mother” (or single father) doesn’t even really indicate custody. It’s a hangup on not being in committed a relationship.
one of my mother’s more unhinged rant topics was women intentionally keeping children away from their fathers as revenge for him breaking up with her and that if they don’t have the maturity to get married and stay married then they shouldn’t have children etc etc. She also talked mad shit about people who take government assistance to care for their children when my disabled sister has always been on as many benefits as my mother could get approved (she had good reasons though, unlike those lazy “other” people… 🤔)
ime I have seen mothers use their child coercively but it’s not usually by keeping them from the father, at least not successfully. It turns out family court actually favors fathers if they bother to pursue custody, which few do without a strong reason, either good or bad. It’s usually been women using the children to coerce family, friends, or a new partner into staying by getting them to bond with the child then being able to actually remove the child from them since they have no legal rights to the child. And I think the only reason I haven’t seen fathers do it more is because, as stated previously, many don’t pursue custody due to either internal or external expectations that childcare is the mother’s job.
I was raised by a single father. He definitely “took us” from my mother with spite in his heart. Pretty rare yes. I think I was 8 years old when I heard him call her a whore the first time.
He got arrested when I was a teen for, being a shitty parent. Such a shitty parent, he got a ten year sentence, served 8. Should have been longer.
He fought “so hard for his kids” and then just completely dropped the ball. We had like 3 good years before it all turned to shit.
My mom’s dying this week. I … don’t know what I feel about it, but the wrong parent is suffering. I hated my mom for a long time in my youth because to me at the time, I couldn’t understand why she couldn’t be the superhero single mom you’d hear about all the time. She knew the bad stuff that was happening to us with our father, and yet claimed, she was powerless to help us.
Anyhoo, men who fight for custody usually get it, and it was very easy for my father (adopted step father technically) to spin my mother as crazy and unfit. Divorced 1993.
Damn, I’m sorry you have such a negative experience on the topic. It’s really awful to have a batshit insane mother, isn’t it? My parents were also a bit fucky, and it’s something I think I’ll have to deal with for a long time still.
I suppose the mother coercing people is perhaps more of a stress response and navigating the fear of raising a child by themselves. Like indirectly asking for help.
I certainly agree that the courts favour the fathers, as they are basically the hub of anything patriarchal.
oh, no. The women I’m remembering were straight up abusive. One of them was too high to properly bond with the older male child when he was born so she really only wanted the younger girl but she refused to give up custody of him because she could get money out of the grandmother in exchange for being allowed to see him. Kid was like ten showing up to my friend’s mom’s house with handprint bruises talking about beating hookers and they couldn’t get CPS to remove the kid. Fucking sad. I don’t talk to that friend anymore for unrelated reasons but last I heard her sister had at least gotten back with the kid’s dad and was at least treating my friend’s nephew better in front of his biodad.
also idgaf if it is a stress response. It really damages the kids to not have consistent caregivers and to be constantly told that people who were positive influences in their life were actually bad. It’s gonna fuck up their ability to set healthy boundaries for the rest of their life. If they can’t “ask for help” without fucking a kid up for life then they are an unfit parent. Those women were just uniquely awful people whose kids might have had a better life if mom taking the kids in the break up wasn’t the societal default.
Well, he could have died. Just sayin.
That’s entirely his fault though.
/S
Why does she have a colostomy bag?
It’s AI slop. Look at the belt buckle.
Looks like a dude 69ing with a frog
Hey, I’m not here to kink shame anyone.
ah, so it is.
fucking ai slop bullshit
I was trying to figure out the fuck her pants were doing and figured “ehhh it makes little enough sense it’s probably some lazy AI generated bs”
I thought it was a 69 belt for a second, but couldn’t find the other person’s head. AI is getting better with fingers, at least.
They aren’t the problem, they’re the one getting the recognition.
It’s not uncommon that people choose to be a single mother. So saying that it’s a problem is bad.
This kinda feels like right wing propaganda they are obsessed with “the father not being around”
I am not denying there are fathers who don’t take responsibility for having a child
I feel like a widowed mother might not appreciate this
That absentee father outline is 100% Will Smith.
That’s not the only odd choice. This woman dressed as if from an 80s sci fi movie where robots kill anyone over 25.
I’m pretty sure it’s Billi Eilish too.
That belt buckle skirt situation is intense.
