but something else was more important. Had another good member of the American society been in the Yelena’s place, that person would have telephoned the social service at the first step away from the front door, and the outcome of all this would have been a matter of doubt. Yelena didn’t call anyone, of course, instead she gave me a lecture (lecturing people is very American) that my parenting style was child abuse and something to not afford here.
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This makes me bitter.
During a very tough time in our family’s life, my 16 year old daughter had to shoulder some of the everyday tasks, make supper, and drive (I gave her a vehicle of her own with a gas card) her 2 teen sibs to their appointments and generally keep an eye on them while i worked the 50 to 60 hours per week to catch up financially (no I had not other options at that time).
I had promised my daughter that if she got us through the next year and a half, until her brother started driving, I would pay for her 4 year tuition at the local college.
My daughter’s friend’s mother, and my daughter’s father both worked on her that she was doing too much and that she was being “used.” and that this was child abuse. My daughter walked out about 6 months later to live with her friend’s mother. And her father, thus ending his child support to me (at the peak it was 720 per month for 4 children).
Our relationshp has never been the same, she carries resentment that I used her, when I tried to explain that this is what happens sometimes in families and that it could have been so much better for her if she had let me follow through once I had caught up.
I had been brought up that families work together to shore things up if they go south.
We have no relationship now. Sad.
This a very sad story, and I feel sorry for you. Your daughter and husband would be booed in Russia. Though divorces do complicate things.
I’m sorry that happened in your family-it is far too common...
I walked out on my cub’s biological father as soon as I knew I was pregnant-moved back to the ranch and my family-it was obvious that I’d been naive-he was a spoiled., well off college student who wanted nothing to do with having a child and couldn’t quite grasp why I was totally against abortion.
Getting the monthly child support from him was no longer an issue after I married my 1st hubby-he adopted the cub as his own, and he was a wonderful dad. We had fertility issues and were not able to have other children, so she was very precious to us...
I believed it was still proper for her to spend time with the man responsible for her conception after she was about 10-11 years old-but the few times in my daughter’s life that she spent time with her father, he spent the time telling her how mean her daddy and I were to make her do chores, follow rules, etc.
There is still a small rift and resentment on her part there between she and I that comes from those visits, even though she is has long been an adult-in retrospect, I should have been a bitch and forbade the contact altogether instead of doing what I believed was the Christian thing...