nixtress's Diaryland Diary

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Termination?

My sons are full of affection today. It's not even 11 am and I've been overrun with hugs and kisses.

Lovely.

How anyone could consider not wanting this in their life is inconceivable to me.

And yet that's one of the things I've been asked to consider. The termination of a father's rights.

In some ways that makes sense. If someone isn't involved in their child's life, if they've seen them only a few times since birth and now live several states away without any intention of making an effort to visit any time soon, if they don't contribute monetarily and are tired of being hounded by child support agencies, if they think the child will have a better life by NOT having the parent in it, does it make more sense to come to an agreement where that parent isn't a parent legally anymore?

Or is it letting them off the hook? Is it short-changing the child by legally shutting out half of what created him? And how do you answer those questions when they come? What spin do you put on words so that it comes off not as the child's fault but as the adult's shortcomings? How do you keep a kid from thinking it's their fault their dad didn't want them and that they weren't worth hanging around for?

I'm strongly leaning towards the termination. If I get hit by a bus tomorrow, the last person I want in charge of my children is a person who doesn't know them or want them. And honestly who am I to force someone to remain a part (even a distant one) in a person's life when they don't want to be? But I'm left with a lingering doubt as to whether that would be rewarding the jackass for abandoning something that didn't do anything to deserve being abandoned. And I'm wondering how to explain this decision in the future.

Because it WILL come, the day when I'll be asked why he's not around, or even just where he is.

And maybe that's just part of my job as a mom. To be there and take the heat for the decision I myself made, to choose this person as a prospective father. To be there to keep the pieces together and answer questions as best I can and help them to be better people despite my mistakes.

Yeah, I think that's it.

N.

10:31 a.m. - 2003-07-26

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