I’m the mother of two teenagers: a 19-year-old daughter and a 17-year-old son. I have been separated from their father for almost two decades after a mismatched, troubled relationship in our youth. I’ve since rebuilt my life — attending law school for a stable job to support the family, entering a healthy long-term partnership that has outlasted my time with my children’s father and cultivating hobbies, friends and strong bonds with the kids.
Their father, however, still harbors deep resentment toward me and has spent years undermining my efforts to provide structure and stability. While I was in law school, he refused to approve after-school care and insisted I take the kids directly to him every day. He scheduled trips during my designated vacation time, ignored parenting schedules and returned the children on his own timeline. He has never paid his full child support, he threatens to interfere with medical decisions and he often pulls the kids out of school for unannounced (and unilaterally planned) vacations. He has contributed nothing to their extracurriculars and derides any routines, while philosophizing about agency and authority.
My daughter has fared well, thriving in college. My son, more vulnerable with health issues, has severe school-attendance struggles, exacerbated by his dad’s view that smarts make high school unnecessary (after calling junior high a joke). He even urges my daughter to skip classes for partying, while I’m the one who covers all her university expenses. Drawing from my family-law experience, I’ve striven to maintain neutrality: highlighting his parenting positives and modeling ideal co-parent support to shield the kids from our conflicts.
Things escalated recently when he arranged treatment for our minor son without my consent, via a practitioner whose professionalism I doubted. My ex and the practitioner reportedly discussed my “abuse” as central to our family dynamic, with my ex diagnosing me with personality disorders. During his parenting time, but just before my son’s return to me, I refused to consent to this treatment, citing my concerns. He then confiscated our son’s devices, blocked contact, threatened to involve the police if I tried to retrieve my son and conditioned his return on my approval of the treatment. Ultimately, my son returned on time, unaware of the fight.
For almost two decades, this man has financially abused me and done everything in his power to undermine my career and my well-being. During this time, I have paid for everything related to the kids, been solely responsible for all extracurricular support, prioritized education and — oh, yeah — also put huge efforts into ensuring that my kids have the best relationship possible with this man. This felt right when they were young, but when does it stop? Am I justified in halting praise once both are legal adults? His subtle discouragement of healthy habits, like school or exercise, feels like soft abuse, and I’ve enabled him to use the kids as pawns against me. Legally, co-parenting prioritizes the child’s best interests until 18; after, that imperative fades. But what’s the pure moral obligation to a co-parent then, when “best interests” is less binding? Does it endure? — Name Withheld
From the Ethicist:
Your letter suggests that you may believe your children are largely unaware of the tensions between you and their father. But given that he feels free to criticize and diagnose you, it’s hard to imagine that the underlying hostility has escaped their notice. At the same time, the wisdom from child development and family psychology is clear: Children generally fare better when they’re not drawn into parental conflict or asked to reconcile competing narratives about who’s right or wrong. You did well to try to protect them from that, especially when they were younger.
Still, such protection can, over time, distort reality. As children mature, their emotional and cognitive capacity for complexity deepens, and so does their need for truth. The moral balance shifts: Respecting them means being straight with them. So while your restraint has been wise parenting, wisdom also means knowing when the purpose of that restraint has run its course. You can continue to avoid vilifying their father while acknowledging how difficult your dealing with him has been. At some point, shielding them completely from that truth risks undermining their ability to see their family, and their own lives, with clarity.
Readers Respond
The previous question was from a reader who was tired of shouldering the full burden of food preparation in her marriage, and wanted to suggest that her husband begin taking responsibility for his own meals. She wrote:
My spouse of 35 years has almost never prepared shared meals. … The responsibility for shopping, planning and preparation of meals and snacks has fallen to me. I also do a majority of house chores, though he is very good at sharing other chores when asked. (He is also excellent at doing major work on the house and cars — like roofing, painting and even replacing brakes — saving us a lot of money over the years.) We have both worked full time while raising a family. Now retired empty-nesters, we often have different schedules. I simply am not interested in food labor for another 25 years. My spouse can make his own breakfast and lunch. When I am not around to shop and make dinner, he will order takeout or eat unhealthy snacks. … Is it ethical to ask that I discontinue food-related labor for my spouse and suggest he do his thing and I will do mine? — Name Withheld
In his response, the Ethicist noted:
Retirement has a way of exposing all those settled arrangements from the working years. … In retirement, there’s time to see how unequal some of those bargains were, along familiar gender lines. … This can’t be a conversation just about cooking, then. And I suspect the answer isn’t to chalk up new borders but to renegotiate the old ones. Collaboration may serve you better than abdication. Rather than suggesting that you both begin fending for yourselves, invite your husband to join you in the kitchen. Give him a role, perhaps as sous chef and shopper. Maybe offer to help with the painting next time. You might also want to think about a couples’ counselor who could help you unwind the resentments that you (and maybe your husband, too) have built up over the years. Otherwise you should ask yourself whether what you really want is something more akin to a co-living arrangement than a marriage. My sense is that in most long marriages, meals carry meaning. … You’re checking in, rehearsing family lore, noticing each other’s moods, making plans. When you give up on breaking bread together, you start breaking something harder to mend.
(Reread the full question and answer here.)
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The advice to the letter writer to invite her husband to collaborate in the kitchen puts an additional burden on her. She must now coax him and most likely train him. What she wants is freedom from the meal planning and prepping after many years of carrying it. I have been married to my husband for over 30 years and we may sit down to a meal together once a week. We are doing just fine communicating and sharing our lives in other ways. — Anne
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Ethical relationships depend on mutual respect, not the indefinite continuation of unpaid service. The letter writer has more than held up her end. If she chooses to stop being responsible for his meals, she is not “abdicating”; she’s ending an unbalanced arrangement that no longer feels voluntary. He’s capable of feeding himself. If he chooses takeout or junk food, that’s not a moral emergency. If she would like to preserve some shared meal times out of sheer enjoyment, great — but that should be a choice made together, not a duty performed alone. Equality is not the enemy of intimacy. — Rebecca
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I was the “chief cook and bottle washer” for 27 years. I did it all, except for holidays, and worked a full-time job. In retirement, my husband and I negotiated new roles and responsibilities. To our surprise, we found that my husband grew to love grocery shopping. Eventually, he knew the names of the butcher, the produce manager and nearly every cashier. What began as a necessity grew into a newfound pleasure. You never know what could happen until you try. — Jeanne
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Unless the letter writer, too, is resorting to “takeaway and unhealthy snacks,” she is presumably still going to be cooking meals for herself. In that case it seems churlish to cook and eat a meal for herself while the husband looks on. In a similar situation with a noncooking but very handy husband, I did a simple calculation of the hours we contributed to running the house and asked him if he’d kindly like to cook a couple of nights a week, which worked well. — Sheena
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The letter writer is tired! She didn’t say she wanted to throw a grenade into the marriage. Her husband can make his own meals (or meals for both of them) and they can still sit down together. She might have to turn a blind eye to his food choices but there’s no reason this person should have to keep catering to a perfectly capable adult. — Kathi
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