So my youngest niece is having a second child. Don’t know if it was planned or not. What disturbs me is that her first child was basically raised by my brother and his wife. My niece divorced a year to two after he was born and moved back home. I didn’t see her a lot, but from what I’ve seen, she treats her son more annoying little brother than a son. I’ve even seen her Mom scold HER a few times she’s tried to discipline her son.
I highly suspect my niece will emotionally abandon her son and be overly attached to her new child. Why? I’ve seen this pattern before. My oldest niece was basically raised by my parents and spent way more time with them (they babysat her since birth) and my sister says she’s (my niece) emotionally detached from her, even to the extent of not being able to accept a hug from her Mom, despite hugging my parents all the time.
Her second daughter was ignored by my parents (who doted over her older sister) and my Mom outright said for her to be aborted when she found out, and she was babysat by my sister’s in-laws and understandably become close to them. My sister than had a third girl (all were oops) and she unspokenly implied that this was hers. She was sent to a paid babysitter. Don’t know how she turned out as I cut the all my family out of my life for 20+ years, only reuniting with my siblings a few years ago when my Mom was seriously ill and dying.
Another story is the sister of my friend, has (at least) three children by different Dads. Again, the the oldest left with her Grandmother (even living with her for a long time), the second was raised by her parents (and lived with them) and according to my friend, her sister has said that the third one was hers!
Is this real? Does anyone else know women, men or families like this? I can’t believe that I’ve seen it three times in my lifetime. Yes, I know everyone is different and it may just be my perception, but to see the same pattern repeated two, maybe three times? Hmmm…
Yes it happens all the time. I have 7 sibs we were all treated differently, not bad but different. I have 3 kids, I have different relationship with each. Not bad but different. I could see where it could go horribly wrong if one child is ignored or petted. Sounds like your niece is very immature.
Seen it a few times- notably in an ex boyfriend’s extended family, which was a mess. That family went beyond simple unequal treatment though, and featured some truly vindictive people who did stuff like manipulate their daughter into giving up her son to them to raise at theirs, because they’d wanted a boy and resented her for not being one.
It went on through several generations of screwed up, to the extent said ex decided he didn’t want kids simply because he was worried he’d do as terrible a job of raising them as everyone else seemed to in his family.
Since I’ve already opened Pandora’s Box, I’ll add another story about a parent/child relationship that’s sure to go badly.
My youngest nephew, is currently in jail for domestic assault and violating the terms of his parole for drug use. He’s threatened his Mom (my sister) and gotten in fist fights with his Dad (my sister and his Dad are divorced, but still see each other, because she acts as a buffer between father and son).
A few years ago, my nephew got a dog and I told my sister “He’s just doing that so someone will love him.”. She pooh-poohed the idea, but he soon had a fight with his Dad and moved out, leaving the dog behind. About a year later, my sister introduced me to her grandson (I don’t recognize the bastard child as my relation), and this was only because despite my nephew denying it was his, a paternity test proved it was.
I’m not sure if this was the girl he attacked, because my sister told me that there was another baby from another girl who claimed was my nephew’s. Again, bastard children have no relationship to me.
TL;DR
My nephew got to dog to love and love him, then abandoned it. Has at least one child whose mother he may or may not have attacked. Is currently in jail and may have another child from another mother. And I suspect he’ll keep having babies until he get’s one that he loves and loves him back. Well, at least until he abandons them too!
SIGH I’ve been accused of making some of the stories I tell here. But sadly, everything I’ve ever posted or said to someone is true.
Yes, she is. I hadn’t seen her for over 20 years (she was 2-3 at the time) and that allowed me to view her from the outside unencumbered by any familial blinders. I think she got married and had her son at 19 or 20. My brother told me she’ll be moving with her son soon (not sure if she’s remarried or not).
Naw, but Cluster B tends to run in families and that idealized relationship stuff along with the abandonment of people when they inevitably disappoint is classic BPD.
SIGH I knew my bastard comment would raze ire. As wrong as some of the the things my Dad told me may be, I’ll always keep hold to them the rest of my life. This is rooted in his response to my hypothetical question: "What if I went to jail?: “If you go to jail, don’t come home. You’re not my son.”. My nephew has been to jail several times and therefore as I far as I’m concerned, he and any of his children are no longer related to me by blood, which to me is not thicker than the disgrace he’s brought to our family.
Would my father have forgiven him? Probably. But given that he was immensely angry at my oldest sisters three unplanned pregnancies (and oddly discussed with my mother and myself whether she should abort her first pregnancy, which in hindsight had nothing to do with my sister’s ultimate choice to have my niece), I have no doubt he would be upset with my nephew and his situation.*
Thankfully, when she got divorced, my second sister refused to change my nephew’s last name (if that’s even possible) to our family name. This is of immense importance to me because despite my estranged relationship with my siblings, despite our family name being very common in Hawaii, there are only five blood relations remaining with our name left.
*BTW, my father never visited my older sister’s home because of her husband. Even though my sister’s husband is long deceased, I’ve never and will never visit her home either for the same reason. Hmm…maybe smartaleq if right about BPD being passed down.
One of my uncles never spoke or contacted my paternal grandparents after my grandfather forbade his marriage to a white woman in the 1940’s. My uncle moved to New York in the early 1950’ and refused to meet my grandfather when he went to visit him (my uncle) in the 1960’s. A monumental flight back then. It was only after my uncle’s death that one of his daughters came to Hawaii to meet my Mom and sisters (I don’t know if my surviving uncle attended the dinner or not and my Dad was long gone). She told them that she when asked about his side of the family, he said: “You can see them when I’m dead!”, which is what she did.
You will cling to things you know are wrong for the rest of your life cause that’s what your Daddy said? You’re kidding, right?
Nieces and nephews are cut from your family for their parent, (not them), going to jail?
And any child born to your unmarried siblings, also dead to you because of their parent’s choices?
Wow! The way you tell it makes it sound so, southern Christian, like a cliche in a movie! Ha ha ha!
I’m sorry but it seems to me that abandoning your nieces and nephews for the above reasons isn’t exactly a giant leap from abandoning a child that, through your own neglect, has attached to another caregiver.
Yikes, I sure hope you’ve overstated these things, for effect.
Sadly, no, I never purposely overstate things purposely. Everything I post is (at least at the time I post it) what’s true to knowledge and beliefs. And yes, I see the irony in my feelings towards my nephew, which in hindsight is part of what prompted my starting this thread and bothers me so much about the topic.
Fortunately, I don’t have any children and the possibility of having any is vanishingly small. I even tried to get a vasectomy in my late twenties to prevent the possibility of having any children. If someone were to appear at my door with irrefutable proof that I was their father, I would stop the conversation at the door and send them along their way and blank our conversation out of my mind.
My one solace is that at nearly sixty and being the youngest (other than my other nephew who has no children yet) in my family, this legacy of anger and abandonment will hopefully end within the next few decades.
You’re missing out on the joy that your nieces and nephews could bring to your life. Not to even mention you could maybe, just maybe stop the cycle of child neglect that’s happening all around you. Your Dad was wrong and you need to put that aside.IMO
As I’ve stated in some of other posts, I can’t bear to hear or see babies or children. I find them extremely annoying and have to walk away from their presence to avoid yelling at them. I completely ignore my niece’s son, despite my siblings fawning over him since he’s the first and currently only one of his generation. This is pretty easy, since we currently have meet once a year in remembrance of my parents.
The way I look at it, I ignored my nieces and nephews for over 20+ years because of my estrangement from my siblings and figure if I do that which my nieces children, I’ll be dead at the time of my end of snubbing them.
As one of my (few) friends and I have discussed many times, sometimes the sins of the father does fall upon their children. Such is my chosen legacy.
BTW: One of my male cousins and I were very close in our teens and vowed never to have children. IMHO, he broke that vow by having a daughter and I haven’t spoken to him in decades. Yeah, I’m messed up with regards to children! A lot of it is because of the severe beatings my father gave me when I was young. Detailed in a child abuse thread I started.
I know it’s difficult or impossible for some people, especially those that have children to understand or accept people like me, but we’re out there, I’m just “outing” myself on these forums.
I told the story about how my friend and I went to visit her friend who recently gave birth (don’t even recall if it was a boy or girl). My friend (who was strictly platonic) spent the two+ hours there with the baby in her arms while I happily gave all my attention to the two dogs.
Am I harming my nephew and his child/children by not having any contact with them or even acknowledging their existence? I don’t see how as unseen and unknown is better than my being seen and known and my being bitter at them.
Oh, BTW, even my Mom had her fill of my nephew when the police once came to our house looking for him (he and my sister were living with us for a while prior to that). After she told the police (honestly), she didn’t know where he was at, she turned around and said: “Hmmph, they SHOULD put him in jail!”. I don’t know why they were looking for him, but for my Mom to say that it must have been something really bad.
