|
WHY I’M SICK OF PARACHUTE DADS – Sept 28th 2006 By Tess Stimson
They drop in, spoil the kids rotten, then leave their ex to pick up the pieces…
y friend Natasha spent the last six months working two jobs to pay for a half-term trip to northern France for herself and her four young children.
Their father walked out on the family two years ago, and they haven’t been able to afford a holiday since. But Natasha managed to find a good deal online for a week in Normandy, and was determined that the children should finally get the break they deserved.
Last week, she rang me in floods of tears. Her ex-husband had turned up out of the blue with an armful of expensive presents, and tickets for the children to spend half-term at Disneyland Paris.
‘It’s so typical of him,’ she cried. ‘Don hasn’t even phoned or seen the children for four months. When our 7-year-old son had problems with bed-wetting, which started when Don left, he didn’t even bother to come with me to the doctor.
Now he turns up and acts like Father Christmas. The children are thrilled to bits with the thought of going to Disneyland, and it makes my week in Normandy look pathetic. I’ll have to let them go with their Dad, though – it would break their hearts if I said no.’
Never mind that it breaks Natasha’s heart to have her hard work and effort trampled underfoot. Her ex goes home filled with a warm glow, thinking he’s being a generous, responsible father, which is what the over-the-top gesture is about.
Another friend, Lucy, has struggled to parent two teenage boys since she split up with their father five years ago. A working mother, she tries hard to set boundaries and provide discipline, but every time she feels she’s getting somewhere, her ex-partner undermines her.
‘He works on an oil-rig, so he doesn’t see the boys too often, but when he does, he always whisks them away to some exotic destination – it was Barbados last time – and lavishes money on them.
He lets them stay up until 3am. He doesn’t care if they brush their teeth or do their homework.
I’m the one who has to get them back into a routine. I’m fed up with always having to be the ogre.’ These fathers are typical of Parachute Dads – men who drop in on their former families, overwhelm them with ostentatious displays of largesse, and then vanish from their children’s lives again the moment any real parenting needs to be done.
Meanwhile, it is the mothers, often struggling on a fraction of the income of their ex-husbands, who have to ferry children to football practice and ballet class, deal with sibling bickering, ensure homework is completed and sit at home unable to afford a babysitter.
When my ex-husband and I split up seven years ago, his job as an international news correspondent meant he was only able to see our sons three or four times a year.
He’d arrive laden with gifts costing hundreds of pounds, and took them on one exotic trip after another. He got to spoil them rotten, while I was the one who roared at them for leaving their rooms a mess, and dragged them out of bed on cold mornings to go to school.
When the turmoil of the divorce died down, he realised if he wanted to build a genuine, long-lasting relationship with the boys, the Santa Claus parenting had to stop.
Now, if the boys come home with bad school reports, their father gives them extra homework, not expensive remote-control cars.
He makes a huge effort to see them regularly, and does ordinary, father-son things with them, like fishing and eating popcorn in front of a movie.
There are many responsible fathers out there, who make great sacrifices to see their children. But all too often, in the aftermath of separation – and with custody of the children usually awarded to the mother – many fathers are happy to cherry-pick the ‘fun’ parts of parenting, and leave the boring chores and responsibilities to their ex-wives.
Much has been made of the rights of divorced fathers in recent years, with protest groups – whom I shan’t give the oxygen of publicity by naming – pulling outrageous PR stunts to get their message across.
ut after the journalists and TV crews have gone home, and the fathers have climbed down from their lofty perches atop cranes and national monuments, the real stories have emerged – tales of fathers who weren’t the least interested in their children until access to them became a cause celebre.
Being a good parent is a great deal harder than being a bad one. No-one wants to be the bad guy.
It’s a thousand times harder to stick to your guns when the other parent, who should be shoulder-to-shoulder with you in the trenches, is handing your children a get-out-of-timeout-free card.
I believe a child is better off with no father in the picture, than one who refuses to act like a responsible adult and indulges himself along with his children. Children need consistency and routine, not part-time fathers who spoil them out of guilt.
If a man is prepared to take on his full responsibilities as a father, that’s great. If not, he shouldn’t be allowed to just pitch up at Christmas and birthdays and take the children off to Disneyland simply because he feels like playing Daddy for a day or two.
That creates a confused, unhappy child who will grow up to equate extravagance and material gifts with love.
In the end, all of us will pay, in damaged lives and another generation of broken homes.
|