My great-grandmother was abandoned by her husband. She was, at the time, 7 months pregnant with their second child: my grandfather. My grandfather never met his own dad. He's in his mid-80s now and still laments how this impacted the trajectory of his life, especially how hard it was for his mom.

A spouse who abandons the family when there are children involved is essentially robbing the kid(s) of BOTH parents. The children lose the absentee one, obviously, but also the one who remains — because now they have to work doubly hard to provide for the kids, so they're always at work and rarely around.

Fwiw, turns out that my great-grandfather had another child with another woman; this was during his existing marriage to the spouse he'd abandoned. Somewhere in marriage records for another state, I also found a certificate suggesting that he attempted to marry yet another woman during this time, but I've never found any further info on that; this would've been a bigamous marriage. However, I do know from cousins that he married once more after divorcing my great-grandmother, and he had a couple kids with her too — and was a fantastically involved dad and uncle for the rest of his life. Somewhere along the line, he changed for the better.... so change is possible. But the pain that my grandfather and great-grandmother have lived with for so many decades since is the sad reality of how this kind of behavior affects a family.

Thanks for bringing attention to issues like this.