Member-only story
Frat Boy Fragility
I Wrote About Men, and It Pissed Them Off
I recently wrote a piece about the high number of what are typically called “deadbeat dads,” and referred to them in the framework of not just men who don’t pay child support, but those who tend to opt-out after divorce. I noted fully that there are tons of great dads in the world, and I even remarked that it’s not all about money, that much of the distancing is brought about by the difficulty some guys have in seeing their exes, the challenges of co-parenting, and even the harshness of feeling isolated post-divorce.
I cited many, many sources, and then I went on to note, again, that there are women who fall into the deadbeat category, too.
And yet…the only people who commented about horrible mothers who abandon their kids, waste support checks on drugs, and who shouldn’t be getting knocked up in the first place were — you guessed it — men.
One commenter went on a long diatribe and even pointed me to his own writing, a lengthy commentary on the ins and outs of his recent divorce, how he tried and tried to make it work but in the end, his ex-wife became his estranged ex-wife, spiriting away his sons. No matter how many times he wrote that he held his wife blameless, there were as many repetitions of the blame he laid on her for everything from not enough attention to intimacy to overspending…
