As soon as she gave birth, she told my son that she never wanted to have the baby. She said that her parents pressured her and threatened to throw her out of the house if she had an abortion. We thought they would go for adoption, but my son said he couldn’t bear to lose his daughter; he loved her too much to give her up.
Our granddaughter now lives with us. Her mother has not come to see her even once since she gave birth.
I must admit that it still seems unreal to us. We are proud of our son’s decision to raise her, but we are also scared for him. We feel very sad, as if we had failed as parents. We were always open about sex, but we emphasized how important it was for him to wait until he was mature enough. Because of that, we did not provide him with condoms like some parents do. I still wonder about that decision.
Sometimes we get very angry with the mother’s parents. If they had stayed out of it, my son would not have had this burden on his shoulders when he was so young.
We are very careful to ensure that our son does not experience these feelings. We want to support him and help him continue his education, so we take care of a lot of the childcare.
We love our granddaughter, but my husband is worried that we are doing too much for him, protecting him from the consequences of his decision. I don’t see any other way.
Are we doing too much? Or not enough?
— My teenage son is a single father
My teenage son is a single father: Well, those “consequences” are a person, so maybe you could gently suggest to your husband that it’s time to worry less about raising your child now and more about collectively raising this baby.
As to whether you’re doing “too much” or “not enough” in that regard, I can’t tell you. I can’t see what you’re doing from here, and I don’t have an objective standard of measurement.
There is one thing I can see more clearly from here, perhaps. You explain the complicated and heartbreaking twists that brought your teenager’s child into your care. You mention coercion and threats (horrible) and parental attachment (touching) and your parental doubts, all valid elements of a few normal rounds of “what ifs.” But when you’re talking about a baby, the how, the what, and the why are instantly irrelevant. The baby here. Now. Square 1.
So: What does the baby need? From here on, it’s incredibly simple. For all three.
In addition to the things every child needs (love, food, shelter, hygiene, medical care, more joy than sadness), this little girl also needs her young father to grow up as strong, mature and self-sufficient as possible. If that means you and your father have to do “too much” child care for a while, so be it.
There is no need for any of her parents to put extra bricks in her backpack as insurance: wonderful, stressful, everything else, she will be her consequence for the rest of her life.
He will be a baby in his deeply formative years, but only once.
Whatever you’re doing to ensure she gets the most loving care possible seems perfect to me.
