For those without fathers do you think being raised either alone or by siblings and mom you came out as a better man than your father?

My mother and father divorced when I was very young so I never really knew my father.

I’m sure I would have benefited from whatever experience he might have been able to share with me, but to say I’m a better man than him?

That’s a real stretch.

What criteria would I use to make such a determination?

I’m a better man than either my biological or stepfather. I took on their responsibilities and supported the families they created but didn’t responsibly take care of. One of the fallouts of having people not come through for you is that you know very keenly how important a trait that is and you value it in yourself and others.

I don’t really know how to answer this, because I wouldn’t know how I would be if I had grown up differently. I turned out great because of my mother and family members. I don’t know if I would be even better with a father figure in the picture. Most of my friends have father figures, and the difference I see is men that are better with their hands lol.

My biological father was a one-night stand with my lesbian mom who wanted a kid. I never met him, personally. He was freshly released from prison for auto theft, and had a heroin habit. Even though I’m a chick, I think I can safely say that I’m still a better man than my father. :)

I can also safely assume that my life was probably better growing up without that element around.

Oops…Sorry! I didn’t mean to cut out the women in this one….But! Thank you @laureth But this goes out to the women too, did you come out as a good…I guess…wife or mother without the mother figure being your model? Sorry ladies!

I have seen both sides, and I have to say that the absence or presence of a father does not insure a better or lesser man. The behavior of the person as an adult is largely due to the way he/she chooses to respond or react to their experiences. That is influenced by a variety of factors.

I had a father in the house when I was growing up. He wasn’t so bad, but he did a bit of the absentee thing. Working all the time and never spending that much time with his kids. At least, not as much as he should have. But it’s hard for fathers to be good fathers, even if they are around. Obviously not as hard as if they aren’t around.

One of my best friends raised her son as a single parent. When she found out that she was pregnant, it came a shock, as her doctor told her that after a cancer operation, she wouldn’t be able to have children. She and the father decided to marry. A week before the wedding, he told her that he wanted to call it off and was going back to his ex-wife. She moved on and has raised her son on her own.

The son has some good male role models hanging out in the sidelines (two of his uncles), but it is basically just he and his mother. The young man is now about 22, is well-adjusted, and just graduated from a reputable college. He knows who his father is, but they don’t have any contact with each other.

On the flip side, there is my uncle and aunt who had four children. The uncle was an alcoholic, abusive, a womanizer and eventually drained all of their finances. While I don’t want to lay all of the blame on him, it created a lot of emotional damage, especially with the two older children. They would have been better off if their parents had split up.

ZING! @YARNLADY

Once you become an adult you can CHOOSE to be the BEST man/woman you can be. Forget deadbeat dad/mom….decide what YOUR IDEAL self/parent/husband/wife/lover/dog owner/ etc. is…and just DO IT!

BE IT!

It’s simple, really!

Crying over spilt parents is a waste of time. INVENT yourself in your best image!

I can only answer this one indirectly, as the daughter of the “better man,” the “better father.” I really don’t know much about my grandfather, he died when I was two and he and my grandmother separated when my father was 7 and his sister was 9. My grandfather’s basic problem was that he was a drunk and lost his job with the railroad because of his drinking, the final straw was him running his train into another train … but I suspect there was more going on than than that, more to the break up of the marriage than that. I don’t think there was necessarily physical abuse and my grandmother was a straight up woman who didn’t put up with a lot of crap, but still, it was 1930 in a small town in West Virginia and it usually took more than your husband being a drunk and a man who couldn’t keep a job to make you walk away from a marriage.

When my grandparents separated my grandmother moved back home to a household that included her father, an unmarried older sister and brother and eventually another sister and brother so my father and his sister were essentially raised by his mother and his aunts and uncles. He didn’t talk much about his father, it was very painful for him, I think. I think that environment helped him be a better man, a better husband and a better father than his father ever was but I also think that he made a conscious decision to be a better man, a better husband and a better father than his father was but he was. My father was certainly not a man without flaws, but I couldn’t have asked for a better father than him and I couldn’t have asked for a better model of what a “good man” is than him, but, well, this daddy’s girl to the very end might be a little biased, I don’t know. He died in 2007 and I still miss him every day.

I can only say that not having a good father isn’t the end of the world and as this question points to can sometimes motivate someone to be a better man and father than otherwise but I am and always will be grateful that my parents remained married and that I had a good father who was an extremely important element in my life. I was lucky to have the father I had and to have the relationship with him that I had. My wish would be that every child, every person could have that but I won’t go as far as to say it is an absolute necessity and certainly, divorce isn’t the end of the world, sometimes it is what’s best, I just can’t imagine my life any other way than the way it played out and that was with two good, though certainly not perfect, parents who managed to have a good relationship, a good marriage, though not without it’s ups and downs, for 47 years, which is how long they had been married when my mother died.

As a father, I can honestly say that every fathers only wish in life is that his children turn out to be better then he, (be it with or without his help).
And in so doing you have succeeded.

I stayed with my kid his whole life so far, Which is a shitload more than my old man did, so..yeah.

My father is (was?) a paranoid schizophrenic who put my mother and I through a few years of Hell. I don’t remember most of the first few years of my life or know where he has been for the most of the rest of it, but I somehow think that I am better off that he ever was.