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By Jack Beresford
Senior Reporter
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A single mom has been hailed for telling her teenage daughter exactly why her absent father is "not a nice person."
In a Reddit post upvoted over 15,000 times, a woman writing as u/Any_Care4207 described how her ex left her during college when she got pregnant and she had to raise their daughter alone.
Now their daughter is 16, and the dad wants to have a relationship with her. However, the mom has decided she could not let that happen without telling her "the type of person her father is."
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As a result, the teen has now decided against meeting her dad. It's a development that has left him furious, and the absent father says his ex has "ruined" his chances of forming a bond, according to the post. Yet many commenters said they felt the dad has only himself to blame.
According to the Census Bureau, an estimated 18.4 million children in the U.S., or about 1 in 4 kids, are living without a biological, step- or adoptive father in the family home.
Fathers can be absent for any number of reasons, some complicated and occasionally controversial. One dad drew fury online after abandoning his kids to start a new family with another woman. Another got an angry response from commenters after his partner rejected his slovenly lifestyle. A third simply "chickened out" when it came to picking up the tab as a dad.
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That latter example is not unlike the situation faced by the single mom who shared her story to Reddit. According to her post, when she got pregnant in college at 19, her ex reacted badly.
"He refused any contact with my baby or responsibility," she said. "He took things further by telling my friends and his family that I planned the pregnancy to trap him, so they wouldn't judge his actions. This was untrue."
The dad paid the minimum mandatory child support in the years that followed. But contact between them was minimal until recently, when the mom received a message from him on Facebook saying he wanted "to be in his daughter's life."
"He's married now," she wrote. "I did some stalking online, his wife has frequently posted about her infertility struggle." This and the fact that he's had "no part of [their daughter's] life" were "red flags" to the mom, who was skeptical of his motives.
"Now he's finished partying, now he's got his degree and job, and his wife can't give him kids to complete his picket fence life, he wants the kid I raised for him," she wrote.
When she expressed these concerns to her ex, he responded bluntly that she "chose to have the baby, not him." Increasingly doubtful, the woman decided to give her daughter a blunt assessment of "the type of person her father is."
"I told her he has nothing for her, and I was honest about the fact his wife is infertile so he is reaching out," she said. "I told her everything." As a result, the daughter has since decided she does not want to meet her dad.
This left the father furious, while the woman has been criticized by her own family. Her mother told her the experience may leave her daughter feeling "rejected all over again."
But Victoria Riordan, a licensed professional clinical counselor at Thriveworks who specializes in relationships and parenting, applauded the mom's approach.
"It's incredibly important to be honest with your children," Riordan told Newsweek. "Children learn by observing, so when parents are open and honest, they learn to be the same. It also teaches them that they can trust you as their parent."
Riordan said it was important to offer up as objective an assessment as possible when discussing the past. "It is important to stick to the facts when talking to your child, keeping the information objective to prevent your own opinions on what happened from creating a biased perspective," she said.
However, she praised the mother's approach in this instance. "This mother being honest with her child makes her child aware of the facts and allows her to make up her own mind about what she wants," Riordan said. "She can weigh the pros and cons effectively, and, if she chooses to reengage, she can be prepared in case her father repeats past mistakes, so she can balance giving him space for mistakes while also standing up for what she needs."
That praise was echoed by many commenters. One Redditor told the mom: "You are protecting your daughter from a potentially traumatizing and harmful situation."
A second said: "He didn't give a darn for 16 years, and what he did when you were pregnant is indefensible."
A third simply asked: "What benefit could the daughter get from going into a relationship with this selfish, cruel man without knowing the truth?"
Newsweek could not verify the details of the case and reached out to u/Any_Care4207 for comment.
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