Caramella85

Hmmm. Guess your criteria for being a good parent isn’t very high. Also being a sweet and earnest person means that you are making people put up with your BS? Interesting

Absolutely! He has no business interfering. She has her own difficulties. Maybe she needs to time to get back up. Maybe not. We have no idea. But he has no right to hurt someone else without knowing their side of the story. If he wants to judge, okay. Go ahead and judge but he can keep his judgement to himself.

The difference here between me and the stupid man is that I know nothing about this woman. We only know that she lives elsewhere and sees her daughter sometimes. Considering the divorce and custody laws in Japan I know that this happens all the time. I'm not sure where your idea about my criterias of being a good parent comes from. I don't see the sensei as earnest and sweet. He is an adult relying on a kid to take care of his daughter. He did not learn how to do anything in the house without a woman, or someone else, doing it for him. That is a bullshit behaviour for a parent living with his kid. Hell, even for a single adult is a ridiculous attitude to life.

I completely agree with everything you've said. Sensei just irritates me. We're supposed to swoon over him because he's a hapless man who can't do a thing for himself - oh how cute, he never cooks or cleans because he's "bad at it" and ooh poor him, his wife left him?? No, no, nope, no. His personality is irrelevant to the fact that he's a totally useless adult and would have been a useless, infuriating husband.

Now, yeah he loves his daughter and keeps a roof over her head, but he still relies on others to do EVERYTHING else to look after both her and himself, instead of making enough effort to improve himself (as I say somewhere below). The sense of entitlement is breathtaking - he's comfortable just accepting someone cooking and cleaning and providing unpaid childcare for him.

For god's sake, he's a teacher, he should know how to fucking learn things. Learn to cook and clean, dipshit.

What can I say, I like my men like I like my women: with the baseline competence to keep themselves and any damn kids they have alive and cared for. Anyone who expects me to do it for them is trying to make me put up with their BS.

Any parent that belittles the other parent in front of their child is a piece of shit. A parent that abandons their child with their “loser” parent to sponge off their relative instead of doing the mature thing and coparenting in the same household until the get their life in order, is a piece of shit. I hope you never have to experience being a single parent desperately trying to support 2 people on a single income such as a teacher’s salary. Or the shame of having to beg any possible person to help you watch your child because of your job. But no, by all means look down on the man who give a damn about his students (I’m sure ALL your teachers supported you like Sensei does for his students) and would even want a piece of shit like his wife back.

So since she can’t both to be a parent you agree she’s a loser. Thank you for the support:)

Wrong - she actually does have the basic competence to look after herself, and her child, AND her husband, because she was doing it for years. I know women who have been in that situation, basically parenting their child plus a grown-ass man who can't or won't take care of himself like an adult. Those marriages don't last.
As people have pointed out, Japan's divorce and custody laws are set up so that one parent gets sole custody. We do not know the mother's circumstances or her side of the story (at this point - and she doesn't owe these strangers her story btw), so there's no logical basis for your hatred of her. The father is EQUALLY RESPONSIBLE for raising and caring for his child - and is essentially solely responsible now, since he has custody - which he is still failing to do.

PREACH THAT GOSPEL TRUTH

Fact: They aren’t divorced yet. If you think a good mother is someone who feels it’s okay to abandon their child because they’re fed up, well that would apply to every mother. And she obviously doesn’t feel he’s that awful because she has no problem dumping all the responsibility on him, and he still does not say one negative thing about her. So if you think it’s perfectly fine to cut and run when things get too hard Spoiler alert: adulting is hard. Don’t even bother having a family cause you’ll only end up fucking with everyone’s lives and they’ll be left trying to pick up the pieces, just like in this situation

You really don't seem to want to consider anything that doesn't suit your tunnel vision, so I'm not sure it's worth bothering, but:
They are separated. Social and cultural expectations related to divorce and custody still apply in this situation. Coparenting in the way you seem to expect (and I personally believe is usually a better way to handle things - not in the same house though) is not a thing in Japan, or very, very rarely. People are starting to agitate for change (see informative reply to my comment asking about it below) because the negative consequences of expectations and laws that make only one parent the child's guardian are being discussed more. But you are pushing your own ideas and expectations of separation and divorce onto a very different set of circumstances. Also, coparenting "in the same household" while they are separated as you suggested somewhere is laughable in this case - it would mean that nothing changes and she still has to do everything for him as well, because he is useless. He's nice and all, but he's also someone who uses people - he's comfortable letting his ex-student provide him with cooking, cleaning and unpaid child care, for god's sake. Not okay.

She left him, not her daughter. She still sees her daughter, and obviously her daughter doesn't think she's a terrible mother because she has no hesitation going to see her and talk to her. If anything, the fact that she didn't feel that she could tell her father that she wanted to see her mum doesn't speak highly of how he's handling things, unconsciously, but still.

Plus, your double standards are astonishing. You are approaching this character with the degree of unwarranted venom usually levelled at a woman who leaves a marriage and doesn't take her child, that men who do the same thing barely ever have to deal with. There is no rule that the woman HAS to take her kids when she leaves, apart from outdated sexist expectations. People don't automatically expect a man who leaves a marriage to take his kids, so why do you automatically call it "abandonment" if a woman does that?

I never said she's a good mother, I said that she's not a bad mother from anything we know at this point. I'll be disappointed if this turns out to be the typical "nasty yaoi woman" trope, but it could happen. We don't know yet, though, something you seem unable to grasp. You're jumping to massive uncharitable conclusions that say way more about you than they do about her. Spoiler alert, I AM an adult and adulting IS hard, but that's hardly the point, is it? You need to ask yourself why you're so biassed that you persistently ignore all Sensei's shortcomings and ASSUME the worst about his ex-wife.

Amen to everything that you've said so far! I'm not sure why she is so hell bent on painting this woman as evil incarnate and the sensei as an angel. I have yet to see her saying something critical of a dude unable to function as an adult.

Yeah the sisterhood really isn't strong with this one. The stubborn blindness to any fault in a man who basically wants a mother, not a partner and lover, because he lacks even the most basic life skills is baffling. And the pearl-clutching Helen Lovejoy "Won't somebody please think of the children?!" attitude - which seems to be the basis for thinking the ex-wife is a wicked, evil, bad mother for leaving - is ridiculous. Kids are resilient and adapt easily. Having separated/divorced parents is hardly the end of the world.
I'm going to laugh so much at all this "He's just a sweet nice teacher man who can do no wrong!" if, in the next chapter, she drops a bombshell like, "I'm not going back because he cheated on me. For three years. With my sister. And my brother."

Some heavy sexism going on here. Just because I’m female I don’t ignorantly rant about all men being pigs. No bigger truth than when your parents say just you wait and see. I’ll kick back with the popcorn

Ooh, I struck a nerve. You're not actually clutching your pearls, are you? Or are you nursing your seventh glass of chardonnay and trying to convince yourself that your life is fine, because every woman should be prepared to put up with a shit marriage situation "for the sake of her children," and any who don't are heartless bitches?

Not a single thing in your comment is relevant, or even makes any sense as a response to anything in this thread. If you're not going to engage intelligently in the discussion (even to disagree), just be quiet.

Oh, and if you truly do believe that it's fine for a husband and father to leave every single aspect of childcare and housework to their wife... and she should never leave no matter how unhappy she becomes, even if carrying the entire caretaking and mental load of the family has worn her down to the point that she has mental health issues, because that would make her a bad mother... I honestly hope that you don't have daughters. Because they deserve better than that. And it doesn't sound like you can be trusted to teach them that they deserve better.