Children are the future, after all.
Grownups can take care of themselves.
Men used to get the meat or eggs in poor working class families. Women putting fathers before children is a real disaster. It makes them loyal to batterers and incest committers. It makes them acquiesce in all kinds of male privilege and violence and put up with all sorts of hell and excuse all sorts of male selfishness. Perhaps, at that moment, she was imagining starting a new life with your father and leaving you behind with the grandparents.