I spoke with her as requested by her ex-husband. She said to me, “He chose not to love me anymore; he chose to leave the union, and for that reason I will make sure I keep his children away from him until his memory fades completely in their minds and they do not recognise him anymore”

Their children were one-year-old twins.

And she did it.

Five years after their separation, the divorce case was still in court. She had changed the children’s school, changed her location, and ensured that he had no access to the children.

The husband went to court several times to protest. Eventually, the court told the mum to bring the children to court so that their father could see them.

Their father waited in court. She arrived with them, and his two boys walked right past him without recognising him. He also wouldn’t have recognised them if she was not carrying them.

He greeted the children, but they just stared at him with blank expression.

They didn’t know their father, and this was exactly what she had promised to do out of bitterness.

In response, the man concluded that the children were lost to him.

He impregnated another woman and moved in with her.

Even though he was still in court and the divorce was not final, he said he would rather have his children when he was still young and able to fend for them than wait for the court to finalise their divorce.

A year went by without any form of financial support from him.

She reached out to me. She needed help with her rent and also some support with the school fees.

Her husband had been providing for these all the while, regardless of her behaviour towards him, but she had effectively pushed him too far, and now she wanted to make it my problem.

I told her to reach out to her ex-husband and beg him. I told her to let him spend time with his children so that he could bond with them. Her husband had the means to cater for the needs of his children; it made no point turning them into a charity case.

Last weekend, she took the twins to him, and they spent the weekend with him. He paid their school fees on Monday.

I asked her if she didn’t consider that her choices in raising the children without his input while depending on him financially would eventually boomerang

She just looked at me like, “Really”

How dare I question the sacred modern narrative that a woman can be both mother and father (because, you know, that makes sense), provide every lesson, fill every emotional need, and raise a perfectly balanced child entirely on her own?

Some women don’t just raise their children without the father. They actively work to keep the father out of their children’s lives.

Let’s stop pretending that every father who isn’t present in his children’s lives simply abandoned them and rode off into the sunset. Sometimes, a father wants to see his children, wants to be involved, and wants to fulfil his responsibilities, but the mother has turned access to those children into a never-ending battle of emotional warfare.

And before anyone starts warming up their fingers to type an angry paragraph about how I hate women, let me finish.

Because apparently, we’re allowed to talk endlessly about deadbeat fathers, and no one would ever bat an eye at that, but the moment someone mentions mothers who deliberately make fatherhood unnecessarily difficult, everybody suddenly develops selective hearing.

Let’s talk about that.

A mother gets angry with the father. Maybe they argued. Maybe he disappointed her. Maybe he moved on with another woman. Maybe he refused to do what she wanted. Whatever the reason, suddenly, seeing his children becomes a negotiation with a woman who has appointed herself the Supreme Court of Fatherhood.

One day, the visit is fine. The next day, she’s furious, so the arrangements mysteriously change. He can’t pick them up because she’s upset. He can’t speak to them because she’s having an episode. He can’t make plans because she has decided that, today, he doesn’t deserve to be their father.

And tomorrow? Who knows! Perhaps the emotional weather will improve.

Imagine being a child whose relationship with a parent depends on whether that parent’s ex-partner is in a good mood.

What a lovely childhood arrangement. Nothing says emotional stability quite like having your access to your father governed by your mother’s latest disagreement with him.

And then, when the father becomes less involved, or eventually stops fighting through every obstacle, guess what happens?

“See? He never cared about his children!”

Oh, really? And what exactly did you do to make maintaining that relationship possible?

Did you encourage the children to spend time with him? Did you communicate about schedules without turning every conversation into a referendum on your failed relationship? Did you separate your anger toward him as a former partner from his role as a father?

Or did you make every visit so exhausting, every conversation so hostile, and every disagreement so emotionally expensive that being a father became an ongoing battle with you?

Because there’s a rather significant difference between a father who refuses to take responsibility and a father who has to fight his way through unnecessary obstacles just to maintain a relationship with his children.

And we need to stop pretending those are the same situation.

Your ex may have broken your heart. That does not give you permission to break his relationship with his children.

Read that again!

Your children will miss out on so many years with their father because you hate him.

You are allowed to hate him. You are allowed to be disappointed. You are allowed to regret the relationship, resent the way he treated you, and never want to see him again outside whatever communication parenting requires.

You do not have to forgive him. You do not have to become his friend. Nobody is asking you to invite him over for Sunday dinner and pretend the relationship ended because you both suddenly developed a passion for personal growth.

But if he is a safe, willing father who wants to be involved, your personal feelings about him should not become a weapon against the children.

Your children are not your emotional support system. They are not your messengers. They are not bargaining chips. And they certainly are not a convenient way to punish a man because the relationship did not end the way you wanted.

You broke up with the man.

Your children did not.

Why should they lose their father because you no longer want him as a partner?

Ladies, motherhood does not give you ownership of your children’s relationships.

You are their mother, not the gatekeeper of every meaningful connection they are allowed to have.