Men - whats more painful to have never existed in your lives?

[Amri997]

An absent mother

An absent father

Updates

+1 y

For men - whats more painful for you guys to never have?

Updates

+1 y

I've watched some documentaries where some people with an absent parent do get affected mentally. Say if you never had a mom and your friends are all doing things for Mother's Day. Im sure you might feel sad by it?

Also as you mentioned you never had your father in your life - has it affected you in any way? Like your mental health?

[Effably]

Pain is perhaps the wrong word. I think you'll likely turn out fine regardless.

If I was to venture a guess, an absent father seems worse. I base that on basic statistics of how many kids with single parents end up on the wrong side of the law (single mother), which are more likely to be subject to poverty (single mother) and then a bit on teachers at varying levels of education.

The basic assumption being that most teachers, for younger ages especially, are women. And so while not a parent, female role-models and influence is more often present than male ones outside the family. If we assume a balance is a benefit that lends itself to a missing father being worse. So my line of thought isn't that fathers are more important than mothers or vice versa but that our society, and women often choosing careers to do more with people, makes it easier for a kid to receive a motherly representative elsewhere than a fatherly.

Ultimately though, I think any parent that wholeheartedly does their best and sees to it that their kid is cared for and loved is doing great. We don't always have a say on the state of our family.

[Anonymous]

It is far more harmful to a boy, and the man he becomes, to not have a father in his life than to not have a mother.

It is also more harmful to society. There has been a ton of research on this subject, and when you look at the statistics it's clear that being raised without a father is extremely harmful to children of both sexes, and has very harmful affects on society as a whole.

https://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2017/06/18/533062607/poverty-dropouts-pregnancy-suicide-what-the-numbers-say-about-fatherless-kids

[Amri997]

This article also mentions that fatherless daughters are more likely to get pregnant as teenagers. This is not true because in my high school majority of teenage moms had fathers, they were not a fatherless. I use to see their father picking up them all the time.

I didn't have my father around much and I had my first child at 28 years of age... so I'm the complete opposite

[Amri997]

I'm sure that the parents were disappointed that their daughters had landed themselves with the baby as a teenager. I mean their parents were Young, I used to get jealous, when i saw their father pick them up from school.
Couldnt their mum and dad teach their daughters about contraception?

[BoopBoopBeep]

If they're absent how is it painful? Do you have a painful gunshot wound if you've never been shot?

[Amri997]

Not physically painful - emptionally

[Amri997]

Emotionally *

[BoopBoopBeep]

No, I understand, but my dad was never there. I don't give a ist. He was never there, what am I going to be sad about. Painful is watching a loved one die. Somebody you DON'T know NOT being there shouldn't mean ist to you.

[BoopBoopBeep]

Post updates. Might have missed father's day ball in the yard or something when i was little. then i'd throw ball with my mom and i didn't care anymore.

Much of the world doesn't have a father in their life but we're the only ones whining about it right up until we die. People are 40 years old still complaining that mommy didn't love them or daddy didn't love them when FFS it's a quarter century later... move on.

[Juxtapose]

Having an absent mother would be way worse. She's the only person in this world who loves me more than herself. Probably the only person who ever will!

[Amri997]

I always thought mothers are more important to the children as she is the one who brought you in the world and raised you

[Juxtapose]

To me, it's whatever parent isn't a total douchebag.

[Juxtapose]

I would probably be a kinder parent than a lot of moms out there.

[kappasan]

I don't fully understand the question. Do you mean which one would be more painful to be without off? (Mother or Father)

[Amri997]

Yes which one would be more painful to be without off -

[shades777]

Doesn't matter, i dont grieve on hypotheticals

[Wise4myage]

My absent father.