A complicated story on Reddit’s r/AmITheA**hole has people strongly disagreeing on family dynamics and what parents owe the children they create. User u/accountForThrow223 posted that they were given up for adoption as a baby. Their parents were 19-years-old at the time. At around age 11, they were taken from their adoptive parents and put into foster care. When they turned 18, they received their mother’s contact information.
I can’t imagine how hard it must be to have so much disruption in your childhood and then suddenly have the temptation to find out more about your history and missing family. Of course, the OP reached out and discovered that their bio mother was actually married to their bio father. They attempted to message their mother on Instagram, after seeing both parents had public profiles there and on Facebook. The mother never responded so the OP tried their father:
I then tried to message my father who basically replied saying that he’s sorry but they would rather not have me in their lives. That it took them a while to grieve over giving me up and that they don’t want to go through all that pain again.
Well at this point I got pretty pissed because I think it’s kind of shitty they think they can prevent me from knowing the rest of my family.
The OP ended up contacting their grandmother and says they “really bonded” and she was happy to know another grandkid. But the OP held back on contacting the two younger siblings they discovered their parents had.
Well four months ago, I saw my father post of a picture of them at some Church event and say “my beautiful wife and our two amazing kids”.
This was on their church Facebook page. This was probably wrong but I replied with a comment saying “Don’t you mean three kids?”
I didn’t really expect the amount of people responding to that as I did. There were a bunch of people my parents knew that started asking questions. I freaked out and deleted my comment.
Then I started getting dms from people, including people I was related to. Later that day, my grandmother made a post confirming I was a child given up for adoption.
So now, I started making connections with some extended family and have been to a few family parties. My parents have been told they aren’t invited unless they accept me which they haven’t.
The whole drama has kind of messed with their lives and business. My parents are now apparently separated. I don’t really accept that as my fault.
AITA for doing what I did?
This is a hard one to answer. A lot of people though the OP was definitely in the wrong. You can’t force a connection where it’s unwanted, and there were a number of other ways to reach out to other family members besides exposing their decision to adopt out their child as teens on a Facebook thread.
Many felt the OP was simply lashing out in anger:
On the other hand, why wouldn’t they be angry? Their parents could know them now if they chose to, and it’s pretty understandable that the OP wants to be openly acknowledged, whether they have a “right” to it or not.
Lots of people who themselves were adopted didn’t agree with what the OP did, so maybe they are in the wrong. But families are often messy and complicated and include grief and pain as well as joy and connection. Whether it was right or wrong, it’s happened. Let’s hope that this family finds some way to heal from a rift that began almost two decades ago.
More best of AITA:
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