What effects does abandonment have on children when they become adults and have their own relationships?

Children learn to not trust. They learn those closest to them will let them down.

Children also become people pleasers and take this into their adult relationships looking for approval.

They haven’t been taught what healthy attachment looks like and become codependent in their relationships.

Due to being abandoned as a child, in their adult relationships, they push away the very people they want in their life, subconsciously punishing others who were not in their life before the abandonment took place.

These children grow up with shame which is internalised as low self-esteem and low self-worth. It may also show itself as anger and aggression.

A British Psychologist followed 10,000 boys up to adulthood who were abandoned by their fathers and it was recorded 100% of these boys never reached their full potential in life.

They all suffered from mental health issues, suffered from various addictions, could not hold down a job, were in and out of relationships and had failed marriages.

The study resulted in the findings that it is more detrimental to a boy to experience abandonment by his father, (including ongoing rejection from the father), than it is to be abandoned by the mother or be raised by a single mother.