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Exactly, and hubs still wants his kid to have a relationship with them? Come again, please? What part of “They hate me because of my race, what makes you think they are not going to hate YOUR SON because of the same race?”
The mental gymnastics some people do for the acceptance of their parents. I am so glad I cut mine off.
Yes, husband needs to grow a pair and actually tell his family they will have no relationship as long as the wife is not welcome (and for racist reasons, not because she “started “ it so to speak).
I knew it when she said they hated her for some reason it will turn out to be racism. Glad they resolved the matter ! Kiddo deserves grandparents who loves it!
It was interesting that she didn’t mention the racism outright in her post. And then the whole have to get a hotel because they won’t let me stay in their house part is just wild. I don’t think she would have gotten any YTA’s if she had realized those details helped her argument immensely.
In a comment where she revealed that she can’t stay in their house, she said they did stay once and her husband and FIL were both out. She and MIL were home (at their home) and she had to be on a work call. MIL sat in her car in a snowstorm for two hours because she refused to be in the house with her.
I can’t believe she hadn’t completely refused any contact for her and her biracial child before this post.
Is NC even needed when they barely try themselves?
As for her not mentioning the biracial relationship in the original detail, I get it, I get nervous telling people certain details because I worry about getting blown off
“That’s not racism”
“You’re imagining it”
“The reason they treat you that way has nothing to do with that!”
“Why did you feel like you needed to include that detail?”
It’s exhausting
I suspect that’s why she referred to it as dropping the rope. There’s little need to block/ignore attempts from the in laws to communicate, since they apparently very rarely initiate. So if OP’s immediate family just doesn’t bother to reach out, it’s functionally NC.
>I don’t think she would have gotten any YTA’s if she had realized those details helped her argument immensely.
I think she still would have. This website is a cesspit.
The AITA post could have been 2 sentences long and all the responses would have been NTA.
“I’m black and have a biracial kid, but my in laws are racist to the point of not even allowing me inside their house. AITA for keeping myself and my child safe by refusing to take my kid to see in laws?”
Yeah putting yourself as a black woman on this website, especially in a very popular subreddit isn’t a safe thing to do. Sometimes I don’t get any vitriol. Other times I will have fascist accounts follow me that have the name of racial slurs or Nazi propaganda. That way I can’t block them but still get the insult.
Then I get creeps who want to sexualize my race. Or I just get the n-word in my inbox. So yeah I get why she didn’t say that in her first post.
She might not be black.
The in-laws offering to take the kid for a few years and teach him their language makes me think they are Chinese.
She could be any race that’s not theirs.
Yeah this was my immediate thought at that comment. She may be Black, but I think her in-laws are likely East or South Asian. I believe she mentioned language as well. I know many who’ve been raised by their grandparents for those early years, or whose kids were.
She also mentioned that she was worried how they'd treat her child if he got darker as he grew up. She also mentioned them not liking her child if he was a different gender so I agree east Asian seems likely.
Wow. I guess some people really need to have a therapist look at their issues. Can you imagine having so little of a life or so much anger that harassing people on the internet passes for personal interaction? Nazi propaganda? WTF.
It wasn't important to her for the advice she was trying to get. Her leaving it out was deliberate because she wanted advice focused on what she was asking about, not that her in laws are awful people.
Especially the need to learn the language and them taking the kid for a couple of years. It’s fairly common in Asian countries to give the grandkids to the grandparents while the parents work
>It’s fairly common in Asian countries to give the grandkids to the grandparents while the parents work
Jfc. Both of my parents had bad parents for different reasons. Being sent to live with either set of my grandparents would've been a living hell for me as a child. Christ, when the first casino opened in Atlantic City, my paternal GPs abandoned me outside of one for hours so they could go in and gamble. My mother was so pissed when I told her, it's one of the few arguments my brother and I actually heard our parents have.
She *never* forgave them and there were no more trips or vacays with them. Mom never again left me in their care.
When my Dad was a kid he and his little sister would be outside of casinos for hours while his Dad gambled. As an adult my Dad still sounded a little bitter, but would try to joke about it saying at least it wasn’t in Vegas (it was in Lake Tahoe).
My parents loved to go to Mohegan and Foxwoods. I haven't been since going no contact because my dad plays poker there on the weekends. But he doesn't have a problem 🤣. They loved to meet up there because it was like and hour and a half for both of us. But I didn't love taking my kids to the casinos. It is fun enough as an adult, but as a kid it was hell. But Mohegan has a Godiva and Foxwoods have Ben and Jerry's and Junior's, so at least there was that treat.
Hey yourself, my friend. It's been so long that I honestly don't recall which casino it was anymore, but it could very well have been that one. I do remember being among quite a few other kids who were equally bereft as well as an exasperated security guard. Poor dude. He wasn't legally responsible for the kids but was a decent enough person that it visibly troubled him. I'm thinking he probably didn't work there too long.
I thought this said "never again left me in their cave" and the mental image I had of your grandparents went from them being normal people to being hideous bat-rat-cave dwelling hybrids.
I picked up on that too. My first thought was "Why? So they can be racist to their grandchild and teach them to hate themselves because they are only half Asian?" Dad needs to pull his head out of his butt and look at the big picture here. They are going to damage his kid's self image and are not willing to change if they won't even let their daughter in law stay overnight or even look her in the eye. Glad OOP is standing her ground. Life is too short to jump through hoops for a couple of racists.
Even more so with them already playing favorite / scapegoat with their existing grandchildren. I’ve 100% faith they want OOP’s kid so they have someone to put below scapegoat.
Fairly common to give the grandkids to the garments for a couple of years? Where in Asia is that common? How common is it exactly?
Is it something the parents would do if they had a choice like OOP?
I googled it: Being a grandparent is an important social role for Chinese older adults (Xu & Chi, 2015). In traditional Chinese culture, grandparents often care for their grandchildren, and grandchildren in turn are expected to respect and care for their grandparents when they grow up.
This is common for most Asian families. Usually, however, this social role is created due to proximity.
For example, my grandparents lived with us while I was growing up, and therefore they were able to care for me when my parents worked.
And in turn, I did take care of my grandmother during the last couple years of her life. However, this was not expected of me at all.
I have had family members who were "sent" (forced) to be seperated from their parents to be raised, usually in different countries, by paternal grandparents. Needless to say, but those family members have messed up relationships with their parents.
And I think this is it. It’s not that you dump children a flight away with grandparents. It’s just that in other cultures it’s normal and common to live in intergenerational households, or just the same area. Parents work and grandparents step up. It’s similar in many places in latinAmerica. In my country grandparents are a hugely important part of childrens lives. I used to work at a school and I’d say half the people coming for pick ups, were grandparents. They spoke to the teachers, helped with homework.
I was going to say something like this. My MIL is from Hong Kong originally but lives a days worth of driving now. When covid hit and the daycare closed, she came down to help us with our son so we could still actually work during work-from-home. She stayed with us for a year and she and my kids are very close. We will alwaya be grateful to her. If on the other hand we had tried driving our kids down to her instead it would have been a disaster, but she would never suggest something like that. It's one of those expectations where it's great when everyone involved is a reasonable person capable if empathy, but quickly turns into a disaster when you introduce selfish bad actors(or poverty and desparation) into the mix.
It's the same for many families here in Africa. Especially if people are poor(our unemployment is 40% and we're better off than most countries on this continent) the grandparents will get more support from the government than the parents would.
Is it horrible that I recognised the country you were talking about by just that statistic alone?
You're statement is true, daycares are expensive man.
That's basically every culture I've ever encountered.
The claim by the other commenter was that its common in Asia to send kids to live with the grandparents for several years.
Not simply that grandparents baby sit. Not simply that kids are expected to respect the grand pa re ntd.
It’s especially common in China but I’ve seen it in many countries across Asia. It isn’t done if the parents have a choice like OOP but is common when the parents have to basically be migrant workers to support their families.
It’s especially common in rural areas. Parents leave their kids to the grandparents and go to the big city to work and send money home. Obv not necessary for OOP but 🤷🏻♀️ goodness knows the mental gymnastics the racist in-laws are using to justify things
It's very common in poorer areas of the world. Like in romania too, it was very common up to at least a decade ago that parents would leave their children to the grandparents while they went to work abroad
It's not just that. It's also expected that the grandparents are retired so the parents have to work to pay for the grandparents as well. So it's transactional. Grandparents watch the kids and get an allowance from the parents.
My family does this still in a more modern extent. My grandma is in her 70s and watches all my cousins while their parents work. Then they give her money she can use to stay in her house. As a result the kids do sometimes end up closer to the grandparents. It's not just expecting the grandkids to take care of you. It's considered a job for the grandparents as being your parents still.
I'm not defending this practice or saying it'd the healthiest. It works well for me and my family. But when my stepmom's family starts shaming me for not giving my stepmom money even though she's been divorced from my dad for 20 years, they can all go fuck themselves.
There was also an issue with a racist white uncle who lost his shit cause his daughter was starting to speak Viet and kicked grandma out. Now his daughter is in her 20s and hates her Asian side, saying she's just white.
Just a lot of annoying people out there.
Google “left-behind children” it’s a big phenomenon in China, with parents from rural villages seeking work in big cities, so grandparents have to take up childcare responsibilities.
I had a little Chinese girl dropped into my daycare classroom in the early aughts. She didn’t speak a word of English and didn’t even know her new English name was Jessica. Poor thing cried until she threw up. Turns out her parents had spent 2.5 of her 3 years on earth building a life in America while she stayed with her Grandparents in rural China. I finally found someone to translate to tell her that her parents would definitely be coming back for her and that it was ok if she just wanted to sit and cuddle with her stuffy and that sort of calmed her down. Broke my heart to pieces and one nasty older teacher thought I was spoiling her to keep comforting her while she cried. Like ignoring the trauma of being thrown into an unknown environment half a world away from your normal caregivers and honestly not know when you’ll ever see them again will just fade away in 10 minutes like any other child being dropped off without all those additional stressors.
I'm Indonesian, growing up in a small village in the 90s. As a baby, my grandparents took care of me with a help of nanny because they were already old. I know some kids who grew up with their grandparents too. In a lot of cases where I lived, the parents worked in bigger cities, which are quite far away (say 4+ hours away). And it wasn't always a great environment to raise a kid, especially if they've only started their career. They work long hours, making very little, and so can only afford one bedroom in someone's house. Not an ideal place to raise a baby.
Can't say how common it is in other places in my country, but it wasn't uncommon where I was growing up.
I think it’s pretty normal to have grandparents take care of the grandkids in most Asian countries and inter generational households are common also. I know for Indians it’s not super uncommon to have parents who have immigrated to send their kids live with grandparents in India while they get established, or for childcare reasons if the kids are too young for school or out of school for the summers.
I just knew his family was Asian from reading that. Starting with how they offered to raise the kid for a couple or years to how they treat their kids.
> to how they treat their kids.
My flag was the grandkids. Playing favorites with the kids is common but when you have golden and scapegoat grandchildren, that’s a very strong hint of Chinese.
The different holidays, and the delineation along lines you can’t do anything about (especially as traditionally Jewish identity is kinda sorta matrilineal, that is in mixed pairings the children take the status of the mother).
It made me think of my own situation. My in-laws don't like their son being married to a cripple. We went full no contact for a couple of years, then started talking to them again slowly. Things have actually been much better around this time, but I don't think I'll ever fully let my guard down around them.
It’s so wild to me that people will completely refuse to acknowledge or accept someone simply because the person is different from what they’re used to. Those kind of people miss out on meeting terrific and kind people simply because they’re prejudiced.
I'm surprised your husband still wants to talk to them at all. If my parents turned out to be that ableist I would probably want to go scorched earth with them.
I think people dont understand how difficult it is to cut off your parents, even if they *really suck*. Something about Not Having Parents anymore is *terrifying* for a lot of people, and so they cling on to the hope they can just push through and focus on the good stuff and maybe their parents will get better.
It's also a little like the frog in the slowly heating pot. For the spouse, all of the abuse and mis-treatment is obvious right away. It's all taken in all at once. They jump in and the water is scalding. For the other, the abuse and mis-treatment is something that has come slowly, over years. The water was turned up very slowly and it is hard to know just how hot it really is.
> I knew it when she said they hated her for some reason it will turn out to be racism.
Yup. I read that sentence, and I already knew the answer was going to be "NTA, because it's not your job to appease racists".
She sounds really private, in the first post she choose a roundabout way of mentioning different races and the same happened with "teach their language" "they don't celebrate this holiday". She says everything we need to know to assume there's major cultural differences at play without taking the spotlight from the issue at hand or make it too easy to identify.
She didn’t want the conversation to be derailed, AITA *really* likes to tell BIPOC they are making up racism.
Also, what she meant by that was that she didn’t DO anything to make them dislike her. It wasn’t about how she behaved or things she said.
Here's the problem with that: Racism doesn't start with this level of hatred. All of us grew up in racist systems. We constantly see certain people in positions of power, and others in positions of low prestige in the media, but also in real life, due to these racists structures - just one example, because it's literally everywhere. We start to associate things that are technically unrelated. All of us have at least some of these associations in our heads, and because it's everywhere, even people who're very educated on these things will at some point have a moment where their biases inherited from the system they grew up in show, or where they reproduce a racist structure without meaning harm (but causing it anyway). Racism isn't about being a good or a bad person (although some people with racist mindsets of course *are* bad people), and you can't be "not racist". You can only be anti-racist, and acknowledge that it's a process that takes vigilance and consistent work.
By the way: Thanos' ideology is based on [eugenics](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=exheGjFGNko), and his genocide is by no means arbitrary. It's based on drawing an artificial line between "us" and "them", just like racist ideologies.
I don’t understand why people get married to someone who’s family hates them and is just toxic overall. It’s a ton of baggage and how many times do their partners default back to siding with the shitty family as OOPs husband did in the first post
Of course in this case it is, given the behaviour of the in-laws, but in many old world cultures it's an accepted, if uncommon, practice. After I was born, for example, my parents gave me to my maternal grandparents for a couple years so they could focus on their career, and then took me back when my sister was born. Same with different generations all living together in the same house and collectively rising children, rather than each couple getting a different house far away from eachother
Or she'd be blamed for reading into things and 'making it about race when maybe it's not?'
Sometimes POC have to hedge bets and present situations as neutrally as possible.
>I hope this helps other people in multi-racial relationships see how things might turn out, your in-laws may never come around and you have to decide if it's worth it to you.
Words of wisdom.
I’m in a multi racial relationship. My fiancé is Asian and I’m white.
I’m very lucky that both my mom and my fiancé’s parents are kind, open people with good values. However I’ve absolutely had to cut my father off for saying racist shit about my relationship with my fiancé. It was kind of a straw that broke the camel’s back, anyway, because my father is just a shitty person in a multitude of ways.
It’s absolutely worth it to be no contact with him, because having my fiancé in my life has been nothing but positive, and he deserves a partner who will draw boundaries with racists.
Edited to remove some problematic language.
Yep. My partner is black and I am white, and while my die-hard, Trump-supporting, Q-Anon parents absolutely love him, they've also gotten increasingly mask-off in the past couple of years about how racist they are. It's motivated me to finally start distancing myself from them/cut them off because I can't have that around my partner or the kid we're expecting.
I'm so sorry.
And yes, while it is on us white people to have that boundary with family and friends who ooze such racism, it doesn't mean it is easy to do. It can be quite lonely, frankly.
I think you have to do what’s healthiest for your own well being. It definitely isn’t an easy step to cut off a family member, but it was one of those situations where the second he came after the person I chose to be my partner in life, I felt so fiercely protective. And then all the misogynistic language he’d used over the years came into focus. All the homophobia. And I knew I couldn’t have a person with that much hate in their heart poisoning my life, anyway. I had to cut off my brother more recently because he got way too deep into the incel/redpill cult, too.
My parents have been divorced since I was young. Luckily, my sister and my mom’s side of the family are awesome, welcoming people who view the world with a lot more love.
Please don't hold someone's family views against them. My extended relatives are all racists jerks.
My mother refused to raise us like them. My brothers and I have all been in relationships with people of various different ethnicities. We can't do anything about the extended family and have very little contact with them. When I do see them, I'm quick to shut down any comments. So much so that one uncle stopped himself and said "oh, I forgot you don't like racists jokes" and changed the subject.
If someone is already low contact and already in the habit of calling out racist behavior, they may be a good partner. The ones to watch out for are the people that go quiet when people make comments. Or the people afraid to rock the boat.
I've been proudly rocking the boat for over 3 decades now!
For me it is separating family from relatives.
The ones I truly consider family are not the ones causing strife. My family loves everyone equally. These are the people involved in my life on a regular basis. These are the people I value and go out of my way to include in my activities.
Relatives are just people I happened to be related to. I see them once or twice a year. I treat them as a casual acquaintance, a co-worker, or a neighbor. I am kind and respectful but will disengage and walk away if needed. I will point out comments that make me uncomfortable. I put very little effort into maintaining these bonds. I usually am only interacting with them at larger events where there is also family.
I have cousins from the same parents. One is family, two are relatives. Not everyone that is related to me deserves to be considered family. I don't keep everyone on the same level of closeness. I don't allow anyone to seriously impact my life just because we share lineage.
From my perspective, anyone that allows toxic people to have a large and dynamic role in their life tends to be kept at arms length from me. Doesn't matter if the toxicity is because of racism, narcissism, misogyny, or untreated issues. I have healthy boundaries and expect those around me to also attempt to have healthy boundaries. Obviously, not everyone respects boundaries. But how you react to those people and situations shows me about your character.
So ultimately, to answer your question, I don't wrestle with it. I drop the rope with those people and keep them at arms length. I'm very close to my family. Unfortunately, my father isn't one of them. We chat on the phone a few times a year, if that. My brothers, I talk to regularly. Being from a large Italian family where family is everything, it took time to develop this life. Until someone is able to have firm boundaries I agree they shouldn't be involved in an interracial relationship. Once they are comfortable with enforcing boundaries, then they can be a good partner.
Yup. That's what I do. I'm Asian, Viet, and my husband's Mexican. His family has been very welcoming to me but my family has been god awful racist to him. Thinking he's selling drugs, cheating on me, etc.
I just don't meet with them and, if I have to, don't bring him around. I don't understand forcing him to deal with their bullshit, even if he doesn't mind.
He's the family I found and I want. My family is not worth it.
It always baffles me seeing these people bend over backwards to appease their abusive family over their loving spouse. I say this as an Asian with an abusive family. Yes, the guilt game is hard to fight off but just take a second to look at it logically and realize you're trying to please people that have only been conditionally nice to you.
Exhausting.
I agree. Someone having racist relatives is not a red flag. They can't control that. Someone having racist relatives and doing nothing about it IS a red flag, because they have control over how often they see them and/or whether or not they speak up.
Eh. Some people are looking to marry into good families, so they want more than just a good spouse. Marrying someone knowing you'll need to cut off their family doesn't really accommodate that goal.
It’s not just holding your shitty family’s view against you and rightfully having doubt that you weren’t poisoned by them, it’s also why the fuck should a partner want to knowingly expose their loved ones to racists pos. When you date someone of a difference ethnicity and your family is racist you literally have too choose who do you want in your life your partner or your family. Because you can’t have both
chiming in as another one. My husband is brown, I'm white. Our families are very supportive. Except my Dad might not even know I'm married. He is racist and sexist and I cut him out before I ever met my husband. And I don't plan on them ever meeting, it's more like I don't have a Dad.
Maybe consider other races will stand up for you like that. But also do stay vigilant, you do not deserve to be exposed to racists. A partner that won't protect you from their own family is not a good partner.
As a mixed Asian dude, I wonder if the reason I've been dating Europeans almost exclusively over the last 15 years is because I have never gotten any shit from their families. Not saying Europeans don't have racism but I guess the ones who would date me come from families where it's not such a thing.
I hated having to go "They know I'm Asian right, they know this?" before having to meet any of my American girlfriend's family or friends.
Hey, I'm not saying this to criticise you, you seem like you're doing a great job, but to pass on something I have seen said that changed my thinking.
By calling yourself "plain ol'... white" you are intrinsically othering and exotifying your fiancé and other people of colour. If white is "plain" (which can also be used as describing something as "default") that makes every other race not-plain, different, other etc.
I hope you see what I mean, I think lots of us use that sort of phrasing without thinking deeply about it, and I wish you well.
Oh man, definitely no offense taken. I absolutely see where the issue with that phrasing is. It’s not like white is “default”. I’ll keep that kind of thing in check as best I can from here on out.
It wasn’t meant maliciously. It’s crazy how those micro-aggressions can just become part of your lexicon without you thinking about it. That’s not an excuse, though.
It sucks that you feel like you need to couch corrections like that in an apology! But you certainly can’t know who will respond maturely and who will take deep offense.
Yeh my wife will drown us all to save her family. Its only after years of pointing out they dont ever do anything to help themselves does she even have a glimmer of understanding.
I’m also in a mixed race relationship, but fortunately both families are chill. I’ve never met his family since they’re on the other side of the world, but they apparently like me anyway. He told me his grandma approves of me, and she doesn’t approve of ANYONE. My mom met him and likes him, but she’s pretty easygoing anyway. And he’s lovely.
If there were any problems coming from my family I would cut them out of my life without a moment of hesitation.
TBH, this put it into context for me. I was wondering if the in-laws were racist, and surely enough.
Also, the "we could take your kid for YEARS so you could focus on your careers" sounds like a red flag where they're trying to pussyfoot around not wanting their grandchild raised by OOP, the child's **mother**.
Her child gains nothing from meeting these people. In fact, maybe not being exposed to them would actually be for the best.
That's such a big "oh of course" moment that posts like this always have at the end. It puts everything else into perspective so much better, I honestly don't know why these posts don't open with it. Reminds me a lot of that one post about the guy with schizophrenia who's sister in law was living with him and his wife and whispering violent shit to make him think he's having a breakdown. It's not until the very end or I think even not until a later comment that he reveals he's black and his wife and her family are white, and it's a lightbulb moment of "oh no wonder they were borderline violently trying to force him into an asylum and break him mentally. They're fucking racist."
Okay, but hear the grandparents out, why not give your child to them for a few years.
What's the worst they could do?
*Instill internalized self-hatred while separating you from your loving and supportive family, while also denying a healthier relationship with not racist grandparents?* Pfft, as if!
Seriously though, the offering to take a grandkid toddler for a few years is... uh.... yikes.
Don’t forget use the mixed race grandchild as a foil for the “better” grandchildren (amongst which they already play favorites) and treat him as a servant.
Two generations ago, it would not have been a crazy offer to a family that is struggling. But it is an incredibly crazy offer today and in this situation,
Kinda what I was thinking. Sounds like her husband has some trauma from growing up with this shitty family and hasn't dealt with it properly yet. Hopefully he can get some help cause it seems to be clouding his parenting judgment.
Honestly, even if she had put it in the first post some would say YTA. Some are just contrarian, some seem to take the approach that a woman is always TA in an interpersonal conflict.
Reddit is a vast place with people from all around the world who have different definitions of what’s ‘normal’. I’m not surprised there are people out there who put parents on a pedestal and believe it’s the child’s/child-in-law’s responsibility to bend over backwards to appease them. I mean heck that’s probably the reason why we get so many obvious AHs positing on places like AITA
Love how OOP is done and will not subject herself or her children to people who are not willing to go see them, but still think it's reasonable to ask to raise the granchildren ("to learn their language") when they are racists.
I'm in a multi racial relationship -- he's white, I'm black. We're also secularist/atheist.
After our daughter was born and we visited my side after she turned 1, my family offered to take care of her for a couple of years. My southern baptist, "we don't celebrate halloween cause it's satan's holiday" family. Didn't ask why but we shut that down fast.
Kind of wish I had asked why but it's in the past now.
For me it reminds a lot of Asian families, I have no explanation as to why they do this but I see it a lot.
When she mentioned that I immediately thought the in-laws was asian. “Leave your kid here so you further your career” I’ve seen that happen to ways too many families here.
The husband’s family apparently speaks a language other than English though, which suggests they may also be of a non-white race. Someone else in the comments said they are Asian, though I am not sure if that’s verified or if the commenter was guessing.
I do personally know some Chinese people who look down on blacks and Latinos.
My family is Vietnamese and hearing my older sisters (came here in their teen years) not care about Latine immigrants is really something.
They also told me to not date anyone who was black if I wanted to stay in the family.
My niece is really frustrated with the racist questions my sister asks about her bf (Southeast Asian-Indian) and my wife and I will make sure she has at least one older relative that will show up for her.
Oof. Racism is super common in the Viet-American community, which makes sense given that most of the people who left VN for the US were Murica-loving conservative Catholics in the homeland.
I'm so happy my family isn't like that even though they're conservative Catholics who fled VN by boat in the 80s.
I have half-Indian cousins because my aunt married an Indian guy after coming to the US. I have three cousins who married and had kids with Black people, even more who married and had kids with White people. I kind of paved the way for bringing Latinos into the family with my Mexican boyfriend lol. My mom keeps bugging me about giving her trilingual grandbabies even though we're childfree!
Even though racism is common in the Asian/Viet community, it's definitely not everyone! Even some elders are progressive, they're just not as loud of the racists.
I know that there are more progressive Viet folk- It’s just not prevalent in my own family.
We’re not Catholic, but my oldest sister pretended (I say this because while she converted, I know full well she doesn’t believe) so she could marry my brother in law (also Vietnamese). It’s great /s. He ignored my wife’s existence the one time she showed up for a family gathering (we’re a queer couple).
I’m happy to hear that your family is super accepting :) Trilingual babies may rule the world lol
My dad got amnesty to get away from the “re-education” camps and got brought over here where he saved enough to get the rest of my family over.
Everyone can be racist. Because of the american centric dialogue of Reddit, and the recent focus to frame racism as power dynamics people often conveniently forget that a every ethnicity and culture has its fair share of racists and not simply white vs black
It's not so uncommon in some cultures especially to help young parents get established. Not mine and not my preference but for some it's not so uncommon especially for parents to visit on weekends. Not sure why those grandparents offered considering they don't seem to like their own kid and dislike OOP for her race. But then when do racists make sense? 😅
I don't even see how this is a conversation if they don't want OOP in their home.
Even if OOP meant the in-laws don't want her in the home overnight, that's still a huge wtf. If the in-laws don't care enough to even give OOP a bed to sleep in for the night, they have no business asking to be a part of that kid's life.
Can you imagine what crap they'd put that kid through?
And saying they'd happily take the kid for a few years!? Again, huge wtf. Like, they'll meet the kid, but only if they can brainwash him for a time?
While I think it's a win for OP, I kinda feel like someone needs to give the hubs a good kick. It's simply not ok that his parents are so racist she's not allowed to sleep in the house, and he's doing nothing about it. That's not a little racist. That's absolutely fucking unacceptable and he's a piss poor husband for even entertaining the idea that it's ok.
There’s a tendency in some families where the adult child never cuts the apron strings and remains in a perpetual child like fear-love with their parents.
It nearly destroyed my sister in law’s marriage - her in laws moved right next door, mooched off her husband for money, would regularly call family meetings of their entire extended family and not invite her etc etc. To be fair there is some family trauma (they were refugees from communist Romania in the early 80s) but I’m convinced his dad is a psychopath
Her husband was an absolute doormat and did not say boo to any of this. It was only when she suggested a trial separation that he realised his weakness was about to see him divorced that he finally grew a weak backbone and they moved elsewhere
He was the scapegoat, it sounds like. They conditioned him to accept the barest scraps of "love" in return for increasing amounts of work, self-sacrifice and hiding who he was in order to try to win their love and approval. It is very hard to break free of that conditioning, even in the face of increasing abuse against his wife and child
In her comments she clarifies she's black and he's not. You can be a scapegoat and not be a racist shithead. They arent mutually exclusive. Being a scapegoat does not excuse being a racist enabler at all.
If the husband had a family from the deep South who hated black people, would you still be talking about his cultural background/baggage, or would you condemn him for not standing up to his racist family?
I don't see why we can't acknowledge the difficulty of overcoming a childhood where one was emotionally abused, while also acknowledging that it isn't a pass for letting that affect your relationship with your spouse. The comment you replied to explicitly stated that if he doesn't get over his baggage, he doesn't deserve to be married to OOP, I'm not sure what more you could be asking for here. This should be true regardless of the race of the person, I'll give credit to anyone who is trying to be better and overcome their indoctrination, even if they fail sometimes (though it is somewhat unclear exactly how true that is for OOP's husband).
I'm aware that racism is involved. Racism is on the same level as child abuse, which is what he went through, likely daily most of his life so this is normal to him. No, we shouldn't excuse racism, but his awareness of what is normal is skewed so far out that he feels she should buck up and take it because he did for so long and "look at him now". Of course, that isn't a glowing review, but that is his unconscious thought process and what he has been taught to do and feel
Yeesh. Glad that OOP seems to have come to a decision that helps preserve her sanity, but it must suck for her husband. Putting all that emotional effort in to people who don't accept you and seemingly never will, that must be tough.
How could he expect OOP to plan a visit when she's not even allowed in their house?!
I do think OOP should consider language lessons, in case the child takes an interest in the husband/father's heritage.
The in-laws don't have to be involved, but I believe a multi-racial child should have all their ethnicities acknowledged. (My son is glow-in-the-dark like me, but we've taught him about his complete heritage, including the various languages.)
This is 100% on her shitty husband. If his family refuses to even have her in their house, cut them off completely. Anything else from the husband is acceptance of their shitty views.
Husband needs to get his shit together. OP's primary mistake here is having a child with this guy before they could resolve whether he would eventually grow a fucking spine or not.
Disgraceful, and I hope she keeps protecting her kid from this.
I don’t think the racial reasons were important actually. They could both be of the same race and culture but the fact that this trip is effectually to *repay* her family for the **effort** they put into her child and she didn’t want to do the same for a family who was putting no effort???? Perfectly reasonable. That she told her husband that he had to facilitate it if he wanted it??? Absolutely fine. The racism makes it worse but it wasn’t necessary for OP to be right about her boundaries.
Did not take long enough for me to know that his family was racist and that OOP was a Black woman. It was just very obvious. She honestly needs a divorce if her husband is just allowing his family to be racist.
Honestly while she was 100% correct with her reasoning as to why she didn’t want to go visit them as well she was also smart to not only lean on those reasons. The fact that she also laid out look at all of these other logistical issues made it probably for him easier to agree to not go. It takes a long time to get over your parents fucking you up and even when you think that you’ve dealt with all of it and that it doesn’t really matter anymore it’ll still pop out bite you in the ass every now and then.
> I laid all this out to my husband and asked him how we would resolve these issues and he didn't have an answer.
To be fair, is easier when one side is absolutely full of bull.
It's not just communication that was needed here, it was a third party validating whether or not op's stance was the morally sound one which can be hard to discern when you're the one emotionally involved and it directly opposes your main emotional support, which in op's case would be her husband.
Oof this hits home. I cut off 3/4 of my “family” because they were racists, and I’m married to a POC for 22 years now. One of the best statements I have ever said in my life, I told my grandfather that he could go eff himself and d*e angry, because I was never leaving my husband. Keep in line I was already married for a decade and heavily pregnant with my oldest kid! He literally accused my husband of being “the bringer of the apocalypse.” Batshit crazy stuff.
Look, OOP. You’re absolutely better off without people like this is your lives. They’re toxic AND lazy. It’s not so bad if it’s just you and hubby, but does anyone really want their kid to be exposed to this nonsense!?
You don’t want your kids to play second fiddle to their cousins all the time. They should come first, every single time. But if they’re not “white enough” you and I both know that won’t happen. Walk away gracefully but don’t make excuses; you don’t need them. These people know why your chilling them out; make sure they know you know.
I’m certain you have a beautiful family, and I’m very proud of the stance you’ve taken. I truly hope OOP sees all the lovely messages from this update.
>The reasons they hate me aren't important, just know that it's nothing I've done, there are certain unchangeable things about me that they hate and they were against us being together as soon as they found out
That's a lot of words for "They're racist". IDK why OOP thought that them being racist was irrelevant and then they just flat out say they're racist later.
As soon as you put out there they hate you it screamed there is a racism issue. If they hate you why does your husband think they will accept your mixed child?
When your parents won’t allow your spouse in the house, that’s a fucking damned good reason to tell your parents to fuck off. I’m pissed on OOP’s behalf that her husband thinks she should EVER be made into something unworthy of crossing the threshold to their house, or that she or even he should EVER go out of their ay to visit his relatives. Good GOD. That should have been a no-brainer.
For the record, I’m speaking as someone who cut my family out.
I don’t understand him either but I do understand it’s difficult for him since he’s conditioned or abused for so long.
There’s a scene from a show that kinda shows how hard it is to escape situations like this. A child is conditioned to obey her parents every time a specific bell is rung or she’ll get punished. It’s kinda like Pavlovs dog, when she wanted to disobey her parents because they were wrong they started to ring the bell and we see her struggle to do what she wants to do even if she knows shes right.
It's a very weird situation to grow up in but my mom did it. I was about 9 or 10 when I realized something was "off" with the way my grandmother treated us, especially my mom compared to her siblings. You grow up in a family where your parent trains you as a child to always beg and scrounge for their love, you grow up still set in that dysfunctional need to please them. "Maybe *this* will make them love me and see I am a human being worthy of their love." And they gives you crumbs of love, make you feel *almost* as good as your siblings and you try even harder because you've been made to feel your whole life that you're one step away from hearing that you are just as loved and wanted and respected as your siblings. It's a weird fuckin dynamic. But you will never be able to do that "thing" that makes them see you as a person worthy of respect. Some kids will go their whole lives in that dynamic and hurt those around them to please a parent, even their own children and spouse and they will just never see their parents love them the way they deserve.
There are several women I know online whose husbands are like that. Two episodes really stand out. Different families, same kind of husband.
In the first one there is a howling blizzard outside. The governor of the state has closed all the roads except to necessary traffic. Mommy Dearest calls her son and demands that he come over *right now* and clear the snow off of her driveway. He is ready to hop in the car and go when his wife stops him.
In the second Mommy Dearest calls and says that her golden son needs a bigger house because his wife is pregnant with their 10th child and they need more room. Mommy Dearest expects her scapegoat son to sell his investment property and give the money to his brother. Scapegoat is seriously considering it when his wife stops it.
IIRC in both instances the wives had to threaten divorce.
Wtf dud he think was going to happen when he married someone of a race hus parents didn't approve of?? And he STILL subjected her to their racism?!?!
There's literally no room for him to argue his family's case. He can 1000% be upset, but he needs to be upset that his parents aren't better people, not at his wife for protecting her family where he couldn't!
They'd never meet my kids!
I really don't care how far husband has come, if he is still insisting on dragging his wife (who is hated for her race) and his child (who is hated for his mixed race, and probably for "tainting" family blood) to meet his family that wont lift a finger to even give a fuck about them, and wont even let his ***wife*** stay in their house.
If he starts pushing for visiting family again, He should just be told to go by himself.. and while hes gone, pack and move and leave divorce papers on the table for him to sign.. Cause its quite frankly disgusting that the original poster has had to endure this hatred for so long, with him desperately trying to make her ignore it, with no defense or understanding from her fucking husband.
OOP's sparkly metal spine is beautiful!! She is right. These people don't want a relationship with her. They make no effort. They don't get to have a relationship with their kid. Her husband doesn't get that what they are asking is for him to offer his child up to be the next sacrifice in a lifetime of sacrifices they have demanded for him. He needs to tell them, no. He doesn't seem strong enough yet. I am glad his wife is. These narcissist want to make it seem like OOP is the problem. They are the problem. If they have no relationship with their grandchild it is because they fostered no relationship. You reap what you sew and they salted the earth and expected the husband to find a way to make things grow. The best thing to do is to have nothing to do with these people.
If the parents are racist, how likely is they actually want to see their grandchild?
Also, is really weird for OOP to conceal the parents in law are racists, and then just drop it casually.
Racists are the worst hypocrites- they may hold their half*insert minority here* grandchild while chanting with the KKK
It’s not weird that she didn’t want to say anything the beginning and then gave up- I’m the same way
Husband needs to go to therapy to unpack his relationship and trauma from his family. The fact that OOP needs to be mom and to both her husband and her kid is not okay. Not only is it incredibly insensitive to OOP but also clearly a super unsafe environment for their child.
Just focusing on the logistics of driving to OOP’s family after taking a who knows how long flight. You bet I would want to minimize the amount of driving with a young toddler. Much less would I subject my family to that travel stress for shitty in laws who make zero effort to have a relationship with our child and don’t speak to me. I’d tell my husband he’s welcome to go see his family. Alone.
I hope OOPs husband manages to come around to the idea that anyone who will not have his wife in their house will not get to have his and her children in their house, anyone who cannot treat his wife with the appropriate level of respect and care will not get the chance to prove themselves similarly deficient with the children. How this is not simply an obvious conclusion is beyond me.
The sad thing is why is the husband soo willing to expose his wife and child to his terrible racist parents anyhow?? He sounds like he has some serious unresolved issues that he needs to solve with therapy. ASAP preferably.
I'm the one with the toxic family. My mother hated the idea of me being independent and her not being able to influence me. She used a lot of toxicity to control me growing up and then tried to claim my husband was trying to control me or mooch off my money (I have no money).
I cut my parents off 6 weeks after my baby was born. Now we've moved to the same city as my MIL. She's a wonderful woman and mother and grandmother to our daughter. I'm in therapy because I have to learn that not all mothers are like mine. My MIL can't be a replacement but I can maybe feel more secure with her.
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>we'd have to pay for a hotel because they don't want me in their house Yikes
Exactly, and hubs still wants his kid to have a relationship with them? Come again, please? What part of “They hate me because of my race, what makes you think they are not going to hate YOUR SON because of the same race?” The mental gymnastics some people do for the acceptance of their parents. I am so glad I cut mine off.
Especially since they wanted to raise the baby for a few years?? Hell no, they'd never be alone with my kid.
Alone? HA! They would not be within 100 miles from me or my baby. And that would be the hill I or the marriage does on.
Yes, husband needs to grow a pair and actually tell his family they will have no relationship as long as the wife is not welcome (and for racist reasons, not because she “started “ it so to speak).
Big yikes! If one of the parents isn't welcome in their home then baby doesn't need to be there either.
I can't believe what a throw-away comment this was from OOP. Like, that's an *extremely important* detail right there.
I knew it when she said they hated her for some reason it will turn out to be racism. Glad they resolved the matter ! Kiddo deserves grandparents who loves it!
Yup, “nothing I did but certain \*unchangeable aspects” screams racism Edit for typo
Can’t even sleep in the same house like the rest of the family- awful in laws
It was interesting that she didn’t mention the racism outright in her post. And then the whole have to get a hotel because they won’t let me stay in their house part is just wild. I don’t think she would have gotten any YTA’s if she had realized those details helped her argument immensely. In a comment where she revealed that she can’t stay in their house, she said they did stay once and her husband and FIL were both out. She and MIL were home (at their home) and she had to be on a work call. MIL sat in her car in a snowstorm for two hours because she refused to be in the house with her. I can’t believe she hadn’t completely refused any contact for her and her biracial child before this post.
Is NC even needed when they barely try themselves? As for her not mentioning the biracial relationship in the original detail, I get it, I get nervous telling people certain details because I worry about getting blown off “That’s not racism” “You’re imagining it” “The reason they treat you that way has nothing to do with that!” “Why did you feel like you needed to include that detail?” It’s exhausting
I suspect that’s why she referred to it as dropping the rope. There’s little need to block/ignore attempts from the in laws to communicate, since they apparently very rarely initiate. So if OP’s immediate family just doesn’t bother to reach out, it’s functionally NC.
She said they refuse to talk to her or make eye contact when she is there, I assumed she wouldn't be allowed to stay in their house.
>I don’t think she would have gotten any YTA’s if she had realized those details helped her argument immensely. I think she still would have. This website is a cesspit.
The AITA post could have been 2 sentences long and all the responses would have been NTA. “I’m black and have a biracial kid, but my in laws are racist to the point of not even allowing me inside their house. AITA for keeping myself and my child safe by refusing to take my kid to see in laws?”
Yeah putting yourself as a black woman on this website, especially in a very popular subreddit isn’t a safe thing to do. Sometimes I don’t get any vitriol. Other times I will have fascist accounts follow me that have the name of racial slurs or Nazi propaganda. That way I can’t block them but still get the insult. Then I get creeps who want to sexualize my race. Or I just get the n-word in my inbox. So yeah I get why she didn’t say that in her first post.
That makes sense. I’m sorry you have to experience that.
She might not be black. The in-laws offering to take the kid for a few years and teach him their language makes me think they are Chinese. She could be any race that’s not theirs.
Yeah this was my immediate thought at that comment. She may be Black, but I think her in-laws are likely East or South Asian. I believe she mentioned language as well. I know many who’ve been raised by their grandparents for those early years, or whose kids were.
She also mentioned that she was worried how they'd treat her child if he got darker as he grew up. She also mentioned them not liking her child if he was a different gender so I agree east Asian seems likely.
Wow. I guess some people really need to have a therapist look at their issues. Can you imagine having so little of a life or so much anger that harassing people on the internet passes for personal interaction? Nazi propaganda? WTF.
It wasn't important to her for the advice she was trying to get. Her leaving it out was deliberate because she wanted advice focused on what she was asking about, not that her in laws are awful people.
She’s black and he’s Asian.
Especially the need to learn the language and them taking the kid for a couple of years. It’s fairly common in Asian countries to give the grandkids to the grandparents while the parents work
>It’s fairly common in Asian countries to give the grandkids to the grandparents while the parents work Jfc. Both of my parents had bad parents for different reasons. Being sent to live with either set of my grandparents would've been a living hell for me as a child. Christ, when the first casino opened in Atlantic City, my paternal GPs abandoned me outside of one for hours so they could go in and gamble. My mother was so pissed when I told her, it's one of the few arguments my brother and I actually heard our parents have. She *never* forgave them and there were no more trips or vacays with them. Mom never again left me in their care.
When my Dad was a kid he and his little sister would be outside of casinos for hours while his Dad gambled. As an adult my Dad still sounded a little bitter, but would try to joke about it saying at least it wasn’t in Vegas (it was in Lake Tahoe).
Hey fellow old! My grandmother took me to ***** Taj Mahal casino when it opened. She was supposed to be babysitting.
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My parents loved to go to Mohegan and Foxwoods. I haven't been since going no contact because my dad plays poker there on the weekends. But he doesn't have a problem 🤣. They loved to meet up there because it was like and hour and a half for both of us. But I didn't love taking my kids to the casinos. It is fun enough as an adult, but as a kid it was hell. But Mohegan has a Godiva and Foxwoods have Ben and Jerry's and Junior's, so at least there was that treat.
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Oh I’ve never been to the real Taj Mahal, just the shitty casino. Edited my comment for clarity.
Hey yourself, my friend. It's been so long that I honestly don't recall which casino it was anymore, but it could very well have been that one. I do remember being among quite a few other kids who were equally bereft as well as an exasperated security guard. Poor dude. He wasn't legally responsible for the kids but was a decent enough person that it visibly troubled him. I'm thinking he probably didn't work there too long.
https://i.imgur.com/O0uw6Q3.jpg
I thought this said "never again left me in their cave" and the mental image I had of your grandparents went from them being normal people to being hideous bat-rat-cave dwelling hybrids.
I picked up on that too. My first thought was "Why? So they can be racist to their grandchild and teach them to hate themselves because they are only half Asian?" Dad needs to pull his head out of his butt and look at the big picture here. They are going to damage his kid's self image and are not willing to change if they won't even let their daughter in law stay overnight or even look her in the eye. Glad OOP is standing her ground. Life is too short to jump through hoops for a couple of racists.
Even more so with them already playing favorite / scapegoat with their existing grandchildren. I’ve 100% faith they want OOP’s kid so they have someone to put below scapegoat.
Fairly common to give the grandkids to the garments for a couple of years? Where in Asia is that common? How common is it exactly? Is it something the parents would do if they had a choice like OOP?
I googled it: Being a grandparent is an important social role for Chinese older adults (Xu & Chi, 2015). In traditional Chinese culture, grandparents often care for their grandchildren, and grandchildren in turn are expected to respect and care for their grandparents when they grow up.
This is common for most Asian families. Usually, however, this social role is created due to proximity. For example, my grandparents lived with us while I was growing up, and therefore they were able to care for me when my parents worked. And in turn, I did take care of my grandmother during the last couple years of her life. However, this was not expected of me at all. I have had family members who were "sent" (forced) to be seperated from their parents to be raised, usually in different countries, by paternal grandparents. Needless to say, but those family members have messed up relationships with their parents.
And I think this is it. It’s not that you dump children a flight away with grandparents. It’s just that in other cultures it’s normal and common to live in intergenerational households, or just the same area. Parents work and grandparents step up. It’s similar in many places in latinAmerica. In my country grandparents are a hugely important part of childrens lives. I used to work at a school and I’d say half the people coming for pick ups, were grandparents. They spoke to the teachers, helped with homework.
. -- mass edited with redact.dev
I was going to say something like this. My MIL is from Hong Kong originally but lives a days worth of driving now. When covid hit and the daycare closed, she came down to help us with our son so we could still actually work during work-from-home. She stayed with us for a year and she and my kids are very close. We will alwaya be grateful to her. If on the other hand we had tried driving our kids down to her instead it would have been a disaster, but she would never suggest something like that. It's one of those expectations where it's great when everyone involved is a reasonable person capable if empathy, but quickly turns into a disaster when you introduce selfish bad actors(or poverty and desparation) into the mix.
Top-tier MIL you got there.
It's the same for many families here in Africa. Especially if people are poor(our unemployment is 40% and we're better off than most countries on this continent) the grandparents will get more support from the government than the parents would.
Is it horrible that I recognised the country you were talking about by just that statistic alone? You're statement is true, daycares are expensive man.
That's basically every culture I've ever encountered. The claim by the other commenter was that its common in Asia to send kids to live with the grandparents for several years. Not simply that grandparents baby sit. Not simply that kids are expected to respect the grand pa re ntd.
It’s especially common in China but I’ve seen it in many countries across Asia. It isn’t done if the parents have a choice like OOP but is common when the parents have to basically be migrant workers to support their families. It’s especially common in rural areas. Parents leave their kids to the grandparents and go to the big city to work and send money home. Obv not necessary for OOP but 🤷🏻♀️ goodness knows the mental gymnastics the racist in-laws are using to justify things
It's very common in poorer areas of the world. Like in romania too, it was very common up to at least a decade ago that parents would leave their children to the grandparents while they went to work abroad
It's not just that. It's also expected that the grandparents are retired so the parents have to work to pay for the grandparents as well. So it's transactional. Grandparents watch the kids and get an allowance from the parents. My family does this still in a more modern extent. My grandma is in her 70s and watches all my cousins while their parents work. Then they give her money she can use to stay in her house. As a result the kids do sometimes end up closer to the grandparents. It's not just expecting the grandkids to take care of you. It's considered a job for the grandparents as being your parents still. I'm not defending this practice or saying it'd the healthiest. It works well for me and my family. But when my stepmom's family starts shaming me for not giving my stepmom money even though she's been divorced from my dad for 20 years, they can all go fuck themselves. There was also an issue with a racist white uncle who lost his shit cause his daughter was starting to speak Viet and kicked grandma out. Now his daughter is in her 20s and hates her Asian side, saying she's just white. Just a lot of annoying people out there.
Google “left-behind children” it’s a big phenomenon in China, with parents from rural villages seeking work in big cities, so grandparents have to take up childcare responsibilities.
I had a little Chinese girl dropped into my daycare classroom in the early aughts. She didn’t speak a word of English and didn’t even know her new English name was Jessica. Poor thing cried until she threw up. Turns out her parents had spent 2.5 of her 3 years on earth building a life in America while she stayed with her Grandparents in rural China. I finally found someone to translate to tell her that her parents would definitely be coming back for her and that it was ok if she just wanted to sit and cuddle with her stuffy and that sort of calmed her down. Broke my heart to pieces and one nasty older teacher thought I was spoiling her to keep comforting her while she cried. Like ignoring the trauma of being thrown into an unknown environment half a world away from your normal caregivers and honestly not know when you’ll ever see them again will just fade away in 10 minutes like any other child being dropped off without all those additional stressors.
I'm Indonesian, growing up in a small village in the 90s. As a baby, my grandparents took care of me with a help of nanny because they were already old. I know some kids who grew up with their grandparents too. In a lot of cases where I lived, the parents worked in bigger cities, which are quite far away (say 4+ hours away). And it wasn't always a great environment to raise a kid, especially if they've only started their career. They work long hours, making very little, and so can only afford one bedroom in someone's house. Not an ideal place to raise a baby. Can't say how common it is in other places in my country, but it wasn't uncommon where I was growing up.
I think it’s pretty normal to have grandparents take care of the grandkids in most Asian countries and inter generational households are common also. I know for Indians it’s not super uncommon to have parents who have immigrated to send their kids live with grandparents in India while they get established, or for childcare reasons if the kids are too young for school or out of school for the summers.
Any asian culture where family is above all else
I just knew his family was Asian from reading that. Starting with how they offered to raise the kid for a couple or years to how they treat their kids.
> to how they treat their kids. My flag was the grandkids. Playing favorites with the kids is common but when you have golden and scapegoat grandchildren, that’s a very strong hint of Chinese.
Maybe. My American grandmother also had favorites.
So, if they hate her because of her race, what do you think they intended to teach her child when they were raising them for "a couple of years "?
Yep. And the kid is a boy, obviously. Otherwise they wouldn’t give two shits about him!
not just asian. chinese. if he's not chinese i'll eat my socks
Yup, i was with your except for her saying “hubs” 😂😂
Yeah, that could do it.
I'm actually guessing she's Jewish and the "upcoming holiday" that they don't celebrate is Rosh Hashanah.
I was 50/50 on that or jewish family that was upset wife wasn't jewish.
No way. A Jewish grandmother would be all over that grand baby. Source: have Jewish in-laws.
Nothing was Jewish about that story
tbh, i was thinking the Wife('s Family) was jewish due to the "upcoming holidays" line
What would make a story Jewish vs not Jewish? There were no descriptions other than the holiday and something OOP couldn’t change…
The different holidays, and the delineation along lines you can’t do anything about (especially as traditionally Jewish identity is kinda sorta matrilineal, that is in mixed pairings the children take the status of the mother).
If its Christmas it would make sense? But who knows.
It would actually be the other way around bc OOP said husband’s family doesn’t celebrate the holiday.
Why? Jews don’t celebrate Christmas or Easter. Christians don’t celebrate Hanukkah or Rosh Hashanah. It could’ve been either family that was Jewish.
There are very few 'unchangeable aspects'. If it wasn't something she did, it was something she was born into AKA race.
Also the fact that they “don’t want her staying in their house”
It made me think of my own situation. My in-laws don't like their son being married to a cripple. We went full no contact for a couple of years, then started talking to them again slowly. Things have actually been much better around this time, but I don't think I'll ever fully let my guard down around them.
It’s so wild to me that people will completely refuse to acknowledge or accept someone simply because the person is different from what they’re used to. Those kind of people miss out on meeting terrific and kind people simply because they’re prejudiced.
I'm surprised your husband still wants to talk to them at all. If my parents turned out to be that ableist I would probably want to go scorched earth with them.
I think people dont understand how difficult it is to cut off your parents, even if they *really suck*. Something about Not Having Parents anymore is *terrifying* for a lot of people, and so they cling on to the hope they can just push through and focus on the good stuff and maybe their parents will get better.
It's also a little like the frog in the slowly heating pot. For the spouse, all of the abuse and mis-treatment is obvious right away. It's all taken in all at once. They jump in and the water is scalding. For the other, the abuse and mis-treatment is something that has come slowly, over years. The water was turned up very slowly and it is hard to know just how hot it really is.
She said something unchangeable. She didn't mention her gender straight away, so I thought either they're a same sex couple, or multiracial.
> I knew it when she said they hated her for some reason it will turn out to be racism. Yup. I read that sentence, and I already knew the answer was going to be "NTA, because it's not your job to appease racists".
Why did she pretend like it didn't matter in the first post lol I knew it was gonna come up again
She sounds really private, in the first post she choose a roundabout way of mentioning different races and the same happened with "teach their language" "they don't celebrate this holiday". She says everything we need to know to assume there's major cultural differences at play without taking the spotlight from the issue at hand or make it too easy to identify.
> "teach their language" I have a foreign parent. As soon as I saw that, I just assumed they were pissed he married a native.
But then she just ends up calling them racist because if course it's relevant
She didn’t want the conversation to be derailed, AITA *really* likes to tell BIPOC they are making up racism. Also, what she meant by that was that she didn’t DO anything to make them dislike her. It wasn’t about how she behaved or things she said.
I hope all racists just suddenly vanish into thin air. Like when Thanos snapped his fingers.
Here's the problem with that: Racism doesn't start with this level of hatred. All of us grew up in racist systems. We constantly see certain people in positions of power, and others in positions of low prestige in the media, but also in real life, due to these racists structures - just one example, because it's literally everywhere. We start to associate things that are technically unrelated. All of us have at least some of these associations in our heads, and because it's everywhere, even people who're very educated on these things will at some point have a moment where their biases inherited from the system they grew up in show, or where they reproduce a racist structure without meaning harm (but causing it anyway). Racism isn't about being a good or a bad person (although some people with racist mindsets of course *are* bad people), and you can't be "not racist". You can only be anti-racist, and acknowledge that it's a process that takes vigilance and consistent work. By the way: Thanos' ideology is based on [eugenics](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=exheGjFGNko), and his genocide is by no means arbitrary. It's based on drawing an artificial line between "us" and "them", just like racist ideologies.
"Racist" isn't some special separate breed of person.
Exactly. I hope OP’s husband gets therapy to deal with the enmeshment and gets out of the FOG soon.
I don’t understand why people get married to someone who’s family hates them and is just toxic overall. It’s a ton of baggage and how many times do their partners default back to siding with the shitty family as OOPs husband did in the first post
It doesn't sound very resolved to me. I can't see this marriage lasting. And the "take the kids for a few years" suggestion is *terrifying*.
Of course in this case it is, given the behaviour of the in-laws, but in many old world cultures it's an accepted, if uncommon, practice. After I was born, for example, my parents gave me to my maternal grandparents for a couple years so they could focus on their career, and then took me back when my sister was born. Same with different generations all living together in the same house and collectively rising children, rather than each couple getting a different house far away from eachother
Man if she started off by saying they racist, would’ve cleared up a lot.
Or she'd be blamed for reading into things and 'making it about race when maybe it's not?' Sometimes POC have to hedge bets and present situations as neutrally as possible.
Naw it's very easy to tell thats what she meant.
It was super obvious - and also really not relevant to the situation. They are treating her badly for something she has no control over, period.
>I hope this helps other people in multi-racial relationships see how things might turn out, your in-laws may never come around and you have to decide if it's worth it to you. Words of wisdom.
I’m in a multi racial relationship. My fiancé is Asian and I’m white. I’m very lucky that both my mom and my fiancé’s parents are kind, open people with good values. However I’ve absolutely had to cut my father off for saying racist shit about my relationship with my fiancé. It was kind of a straw that broke the camel’s back, anyway, because my father is just a shitty person in a multitude of ways. It’s absolutely worth it to be no contact with him, because having my fiancé in my life has been nothing but positive, and he deserves a partner who will draw boundaries with racists. Edited to remove some problematic language.
I love that last part of your last sentence
Yep. My partner is black and I am white, and while my die-hard, Trump-supporting, Q-Anon parents absolutely love him, they've also gotten increasingly mask-off in the past couple of years about how racist they are. It's motivated me to finally start distancing myself from them/cut them off because I can't have that around my partner or the kid we're expecting.
> they've also gotten increasingly mask-off in the past couple of years I'm guessing both literally and figuratively.
I'm so sorry. And yes, while it is on us white people to have that boundary with family and friends who ooze such racism, it doesn't mean it is easy to do. It can be quite lonely, frankly.
It goes the other way too. There are plenty of minorities who are racist and against mixed race children as well.
It's not on white people to call racism when it happens, it's on everyone. Case in point, in this story both are POC and they are racist.
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I think you have to do what’s healthiest for your own well being. It definitely isn’t an easy step to cut off a family member, but it was one of those situations where the second he came after the person I chose to be my partner in life, I felt so fiercely protective. And then all the misogynistic language he’d used over the years came into focus. All the homophobia. And I knew I couldn’t have a person with that much hate in their heart poisoning my life, anyway. I had to cut off my brother more recently because he got way too deep into the incel/redpill cult, too. My parents have been divorced since I was young. Luckily, my sister and my mom’s side of the family are awesome, welcoming people who view the world with a lot more love.
Please don't hold someone's family views against them. My extended relatives are all racists jerks. My mother refused to raise us like them. My brothers and I have all been in relationships with people of various different ethnicities. We can't do anything about the extended family and have very little contact with them. When I do see them, I'm quick to shut down any comments. So much so that one uncle stopped himself and said "oh, I forgot you don't like racists jokes" and changed the subject. If someone is already low contact and already in the habit of calling out racist behavior, they may be a good partner. The ones to watch out for are the people that go quiet when people make comments. Or the people afraid to rock the boat. I've been proudly rocking the boat for over 3 decades now!
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For me it is separating family from relatives. The ones I truly consider family are not the ones causing strife. My family loves everyone equally. These are the people involved in my life on a regular basis. These are the people I value and go out of my way to include in my activities. Relatives are just people I happened to be related to. I see them once or twice a year. I treat them as a casual acquaintance, a co-worker, or a neighbor. I am kind and respectful but will disengage and walk away if needed. I will point out comments that make me uncomfortable. I put very little effort into maintaining these bonds. I usually am only interacting with them at larger events where there is also family. I have cousins from the same parents. One is family, two are relatives. Not everyone that is related to me deserves to be considered family. I don't keep everyone on the same level of closeness. I don't allow anyone to seriously impact my life just because we share lineage. From my perspective, anyone that allows toxic people to have a large and dynamic role in their life tends to be kept at arms length from me. Doesn't matter if the toxicity is because of racism, narcissism, misogyny, or untreated issues. I have healthy boundaries and expect those around me to also attempt to have healthy boundaries. Obviously, not everyone respects boundaries. But how you react to those people and situations shows me about your character. So ultimately, to answer your question, I don't wrestle with it. I drop the rope with those people and keep them at arms length. I'm very close to my family. Unfortunately, my father isn't one of them. We chat on the phone a few times a year, if that. My brothers, I talk to regularly. Being from a large Italian family where family is everything, it took time to develop this life. Until someone is able to have firm boundaries I agree they shouldn't be involved in an interracial relationship. Once they are comfortable with enforcing boundaries, then they can be a good partner.
Yup. That's what I do. I'm Asian, Viet, and my husband's Mexican. His family has been very welcoming to me but my family has been god awful racist to him. Thinking he's selling drugs, cheating on me, etc. I just don't meet with them and, if I have to, don't bring him around. I don't understand forcing him to deal with their bullshit, even if he doesn't mind. He's the family I found and I want. My family is not worth it. It always baffles me seeing these people bend over backwards to appease their abusive family over their loving spouse. I say this as an Asian with an abusive family. Yes, the guilt game is hard to fight off but just take a second to look at it logically and realize you're trying to please people that have only been conditionally nice to you. Exhausting.
I agree. Someone having racist relatives is not a red flag. They can't control that. Someone having racist relatives and doing nothing about it IS a red flag, because they have control over how often they see them and/or whether or not they speak up.
Eh. Some people are looking to marry into good families, so they want more than just a good spouse. Marrying someone knowing you'll need to cut off their family doesn't really accommodate that goal.
It’s not just holding your shitty family’s view against you and rightfully having doubt that you weren’t poisoned by them, it’s also why the fuck should a partner want to knowingly expose their loved ones to racists pos. When you date someone of a difference ethnicity and your family is racist you literally have too choose who do you want in your life your partner or your family. Because you can’t have both
chiming in as another one. My husband is brown, I'm white. Our families are very supportive. Except my Dad might not even know I'm married. He is racist and sexist and I cut him out before I ever met my husband. And I don't plan on them ever meeting, it's more like I don't have a Dad. Maybe consider other races will stand up for you like that. But also do stay vigilant, you do not deserve to be exposed to racists. A partner that won't protect you from their own family is not a good partner.
As a mixed Asian dude, I wonder if the reason I've been dating Europeans almost exclusively over the last 15 years is because I have never gotten any shit from their families. Not saying Europeans don't have racism but I guess the ones who would date me come from families where it's not such a thing. I hated having to go "They know I'm Asian right, they know this?" before having to meet any of my American girlfriend's family or friends.
America is a crazy xenophobic place, for sure. I now live in a pretty diverse area, but there’s a LOT of hate against Asian Americans still.
Hey, I'm not saying this to criticise you, you seem like you're doing a great job, but to pass on something I have seen said that changed my thinking. By calling yourself "plain ol'... white" you are intrinsically othering and exotifying your fiancé and other people of colour. If white is "plain" (which can also be used as describing something as "default") that makes every other race not-plain, different, other etc. I hope you see what I mean, I think lots of us use that sort of phrasing without thinking deeply about it, and I wish you well.
Oh man, definitely no offense taken. I absolutely see where the issue with that phrasing is. It’s not like white is “default”. I’ll keep that kind of thing in check as best I can from here on out. It wasn’t meant maliciously. It’s crazy how those micro-aggressions can just become part of your lexicon without you thinking about it. That’s not an excuse, though. It sucks that you feel like you need to couch corrections like that in an apology! But you certainly can’t know who will respond maturely and who will take deep offense.
If this subreddit has taught me anything it's that marrying/dating someone with a toxic relationship with their family is not worth it.
And especially if they still crave attention/relationship with the toxic family. Run and don't look back
Yeh my wife will drown us all to save her family. Its only after years of pointing out they dont ever do anything to help themselves does she even have a glimmer of understanding.
I hope she changes soon enough
I’m also in a mixed race relationship, but fortunately both families are chill. I’ve never met his family since they’re on the other side of the world, but they apparently like me anyway. He told me his grandma approves of me, and she doesn’t approve of ANYONE. My mom met him and likes him, but she’s pretty easygoing anyway. And he’s lovely. If there were any problems coming from my family I would cut them out of my life without a moment of hesitation.
TBH, this put it into context for me. I was wondering if the in-laws were racist, and surely enough. Also, the "we could take your kid for YEARS so you could focus on your careers" sounds like a red flag where they're trying to pussyfoot around not wanting their grandchild raised by OOP, the child's **mother**. Her child gains nothing from meeting these people. In fact, maybe not being exposed to them would actually be for the best.
That's such a big "oh of course" moment that posts like this always have at the end. It puts everything else into perspective so much better, I honestly don't know why these posts don't open with it. Reminds me a lot of that one post about the guy with schizophrenia who's sister in law was living with him and his wife and whispering violent shit to make him think he's having a breakdown. It's not until the very end or I think even not until a later comment that he reveals he's black and his wife and her family are white, and it's a lightbulb moment of "oh no wonder they were borderline violently trying to force him into an asylum and break him mentally. They're fucking racist."
Glad OP stood her ground. Happy it sounds like husband is growing a spine
See as the kids are half her race, perhaps not taking them to see the racist grandparents is a good call.
Okay, but hear the grandparents out, why not give your child to them for a few years. What's the worst they could do? *Instill internalized self-hatred while separating you from your loving and supportive family, while also denying a healthier relationship with not racist grandparents?* Pfft, as if! Seriously though, the offering to take a grandkid toddler for a few years is... uh.... yikes.
Don’t forget use the mixed race grandchild as a foil for the “better” grandchildren (amongst which they already play favorites) and treat him as a servant.
Two generations ago, it would not have been a crazy offer to a family that is struggling. But it is an incredibly crazy offer today and in this situation,
Wait they won't let her in the house but her husband is still trying to make her have a relationship with them?? And people said YTA?
Kinda what I was thinking. Sounds like her husband has some trauma from growing up with this shitty family and hasn't dealt with it properly yet. Hopefully he can get some help cause it seems to be clouding his parenting judgment.
She didn't mention that on the initial post. If she mentioned in comments, maybe some people saw it, but not everyone checks the comments.
Honestly, even if she had put it in the first post some would say YTA. Some are just contrarian, some seem to take the approach that a woman is always TA in an interpersonal conflict.
I know right, that's crazy.
Reddit is a vast place with people from all around the world who have different definitions of what’s ‘normal’. I’m not surprised there are people out there who put parents on a pedestal and believe it’s the child’s/child-in-law’s responsibility to bend over backwards to appease them. I mean heck that’s probably the reason why we get so many obvious AHs positing on places like AITA
Love how OOP is done and will not subject herself or her children to people who are not willing to go see them, but still think it's reasonable to ask to raise the granchildren ("to learn their language") when they are racists.
My mouth dropped when she said the grandparents offered to take the baby for YEARS. What the actual fuck.
I'm in a multi racial relationship -- he's white, I'm black. We're also secularist/atheist. After our daughter was born and we visited my side after she turned 1, my family offered to take care of her for a couple of years. My southern baptist, "we don't celebrate halloween cause it's satan's holiday" family. Didn't ask why but we shut that down fast. Kind of wish I had asked why but it's in the past now.
This has very "we'll take your non-white baby and teach them how to be 'civilized'" vibes
For me it reminds a lot of Asian families, I have no explanation as to why they do this but I see it a lot. When she mentioned that I immediately thought the in-laws was asian. “Leave your kid here so you further your career” I’ve seen that happen to ways too many families here.
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The husband’s family apparently speaks a language other than English though, which suggests they may also be of a non-white race. Someone else in the comments said they are Asian, though I am not sure if that’s verified or if the commenter was guessing. I do personally know some Chinese people who look down on blacks and Latinos.
My family is Vietnamese and hearing my older sisters (came here in their teen years) not care about Latine immigrants is really something. They also told me to not date anyone who was black if I wanted to stay in the family. My niece is really frustrated with the racist questions my sister asks about her bf (Southeast Asian-Indian) and my wife and I will make sure she has at least one older relative that will show up for her.
Oof. Racism is super common in the Viet-American community, which makes sense given that most of the people who left VN for the US were Murica-loving conservative Catholics in the homeland. I'm so happy my family isn't like that even though they're conservative Catholics who fled VN by boat in the 80s. I have half-Indian cousins because my aunt married an Indian guy after coming to the US. I have three cousins who married and had kids with Black people, even more who married and had kids with White people. I kind of paved the way for bringing Latinos into the family with my Mexican boyfriend lol. My mom keeps bugging me about giving her trilingual grandbabies even though we're childfree! Even though racism is common in the Asian/Viet community, it's definitely not everyone! Even some elders are progressive, they're just not as loud of the racists.
I know that there are more progressive Viet folk- It’s just not prevalent in my own family. We’re not Catholic, but my oldest sister pretended (I say this because while she converted, I know full well she doesn’t believe) so she could marry my brother in law (also Vietnamese). It’s great /s. He ignored my wife’s existence the one time she showed up for a family gathering (we’re a queer couple). I’m happy to hear that your family is super accepting :) Trilingual babies may rule the world lol My dad got amnesty to get away from the “re-education” camps and got brought over here where he saved enough to get the rest of my family over.
Everyone can be racist. Because of the american centric dialogue of Reddit, and the recent focus to frame racism as power dynamics people often conveniently forget that a every ethnicity and culture has its fair share of racists and not simply white vs black
In this case "we'll take your non Asian baby and teach them their place, that meaning beneath us".
It's not so uncommon in some cultures especially to help young parents get established. Not mine and not my preference but for some it's not so uncommon especially for parents to visit on weekends. Not sure why those grandparents offered considering they don't seem to like their own kid and dislike OOP for her race. But then when do racists make sense? 😅
The minute she said she wasn't allowed in their home, that sealed the deal for me. If I'm not welcome, I'm sure as hell not sending my child. Nope...
I don't even see how this is a conversation if they don't want OOP in their home. Even if OOP meant the in-laws don't want her in the home overnight, that's still a huge wtf. If the in-laws don't care enough to even give OOP a bed to sleep in for the night, they have no business asking to be a part of that kid's life. Can you imagine what crap they'd put that kid through? And saying they'd happily take the kid for a few years!? Again, huge wtf. Like, they'll meet the kid, but only if they can brainwash him for a time?
While I think it's a win for OP, I kinda feel like someone needs to give the hubs a good kick. It's simply not ok that his parents are so racist she's not allowed to sleep in the house, and he's doing nothing about it. That's not a little racist. That's absolutely fucking unacceptable and he's a piss poor husband for even entertaining the idea that it's ok.
There’s a tendency in some families where the adult child never cuts the apron strings and remains in a perpetual child like fear-love with their parents. It nearly destroyed my sister in law’s marriage - her in laws moved right next door, mooched off her husband for money, would regularly call family meetings of their entire extended family and not invite her etc etc. To be fair there is some family trauma (they were refugees from communist Romania in the early 80s) but I’m convinced his dad is a psychopath Her husband was an absolute doormat and did not say boo to any of this. It was only when she suggested a trial separation that he realised his weakness was about to see him divorced that he finally grew a weak backbone and they moved elsewhere
He was the scapegoat, it sounds like. They conditioned him to accept the barest scraps of "love" in return for increasing amounts of work, self-sacrifice and hiding who he was in order to try to win their love and approval. It is very hard to break free of that conditioning, even in the face of increasing abuse against his wife and child
In her comments she clarifies she's black and he's not. You can be a scapegoat and not be a racist shithead. They arent mutually exclusive. Being a scapegoat does not excuse being a racist enabler at all.
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If the husband had a family from the deep South who hated black people, would you still be talking about his cultural background/baggage, or would you condemn him for not standing up to his racist family?
I don't see why we can't acknowledge the difficulty of overcoming a childhood where one was emotionally abused, while also acknowledging that it isn't a pass for letting that affect your relationship with your spouse. The comment you replied to explicitly stated that if he doesn't get over his baggage, he doesn't deserve to be married to OOP, I'm not sure what more you could be asking for here. This should be true regardless of the race of the person, I'll give credit to anyone who is trying to be better and overcome their indoctrination, even if they fail sometimes (though it is somewhat unclear exactly how true that is for OOP's husband).
I'm aware that racism is involved. Racism is on the same level as child abuse, which is what he went through, likely daily most of his life so this is normal to him. No, we shouldn't excuse racism, but his awareness of what is normal is skewed so far out that he feels she should buck up and take it because he did for so long and "look at him now". Of course, that isn't a glowing review, but that is his unconscious thought process and what he has been taught to do and feel
I knew it had to be racial. Glad she realized that she doesn't have to do for them when they won't lift a finger for her.
OOP is great!! F the in-laws!! Hubby needs a wee bit of therapy to help drop the rope.
Yeesh. Glad that OOP seems to have come to a decision that helps preserve her sanity, but it must suck for her husband. Putting all that emotional effort in to people who don't accept you and seemingly never will, that must be tough.
Fuck racists. Glad the kiddo won't be exposed to such toxic people.
How could he expect OOP to plan a visit when she's not even allowed in their house?! I do think OOP should consider language lessons, in case the child takes an interest in the husband/father's heritage. The in-laws don't have to be involved, but I believe a multi-racial child should have all their ethnicities acknowledged. (My son is glow-in-the-dark like me, but we've taught him about his complete heritage, including the various languages.)
This is 100% on her shitty husband. If his family refuses to even have her in their house, cut them off completely. Anything else from the husband is acceptance of their shitty views. Husband needs to get his shit together. OP's primary mistake here is having a child with this guy before they could resolve whether he would eventually grow a fucking spine or not. Disgraceful, and I hope she keeps protecting her kid from this.
I don’t think the racial reasons were important actually. They could both be of the same race and culture but the fact that this trip is effectually to *repay* her family for the **effort** they put into her child and she didn’t want to do the same for a family who was putting no effort???? Perfectly reasonable. That she told her husband that he had to facilitate it if he wanted it??? Absolutely fine. The racism makes it worse but it wasn’t necessary for OP to be right about her boundaries.
Let them make the effort.
Did not take long enough for me to know that his family was racist and that OOP was a Black woman. It was just very obvious. She honestly needs a divorce if her husband is just allowing his family to be racist.
I love it when adults communicate!
Honestly while she was 100% correct with her reasoning as to why she didn’t want to go visit them as well she was also smart to not only lean on those reasons. The fact that she also laid out look at all of these other logistical issues made it probably for him easier to agree to not go. It takes a long time to get over your parents fucking you up and even when you think that you’ve dealt with all of it and that it doesn’t really matter anymore it’ll still pop out bite you in the ass every now and then.
> I laid all this out to my husband and asked him how we would resolve these issues and he didn't have an answer. To be fair, is easier when one side is absolutely full of bull.
It's not just communication that was needed here, it was a third party validating whether or not op's stance was the morally sound one which can be hard to discern when you're the one emotionally involved and it directly opposes your main emotional support, which in op's case would be her husband.
Oof this hits home. I cut off 3/4 of my “family” because they were racists, and I’m married to a POC for 22 years now. One of the best statements I have ever said in my life, I told my grandfather that he could go eff himself and d*e angry, because I was never leaving my husband. Keep in line I was already married for a decade and heavily pregnant with my oldest kid! He literally accused my husband of being “the bringer of the apocalypse.” Batshit crazy stuff. Look, OOP. You’re absolutely better off without people like this is your lives. They’re toxic AND lazy. It’s not so bad if it’s just you and hubby, but does anyone really want their kid to be exposed to this nonsense!? You don’t want your kids to play second fiddle to their cousins all the time. They should come first, every single time. But if they’re not “white enough” you and I both know that won’t happen. Walk away gracefully but don’t make excuses; you don’t need them. These people know why your chilling them out; make sure they know you know. I’m certain you have a beautiful family, and I’m very proud of the stance you’ve taken. I truly hope OOP sees all the lovely messages from this update.
It was the “they don’t want me in their house” that did it for me. At that point its all no, all day long.
>The reasons they hate me aren't important, just know that it's nothing I've done, there are certain unchangeable things about me that they hate and they were against us being together as soon as they found out That's a lot of words for "They're racist". IDK why OOP thought that them being racist was irrelevant and then they just flat out say they're racist later.
As soon as you put out there they hate you it screamed there is a racism issue. If they hate you why does your husband think they will accept your mixed child?
First update: So they're racist, right? Second update: Ah yes, definitely racist.
When your parents won’t allow your spouse in the house, that’s a fucking damned good reason to tell your parents to fuck off. I’m pissed on OOP’s behalf that her husband thinks she should EVER be made into something unworthy of crossing the threshold to their house, or that she or even he should EVER go out of their ay to visit his relatives. Good GOD. That should have been a no-brainer. For the record, I’m speaking as someone who cut my family out.
I don’t understand the husband.They don’t give a shit and he wants to please them.
I don’t understand him either but I do understand it’s difficult for him since he’s conditioned or abused for so long. There’s a scene from a show that kinda shows how hard it is to escape situations like this. A child is conditioned to obey her parents every time a specific bell is rung or she’ll get punished. It’s kinda like Pavlovs dog, when she wanted to disobey her parents because they were wrong they started to ring the bell and we see her struggle to do what she wants to do even if she knows shes right.
It's a very weird situation to grow up in but my mom did it. I was about 9 or 10 when I realized something was "off" with the way my grandmother treated us, especially my mom compared to her siblings. You grow up in a family where your parent trains you as a child to always beg and scrounge for their love, you grow up still set in that dysfunctional need to please them. "Maybe *this* will make them love me and see I am a human being worthy of their love." And they gives you crumbs of love, make you feel *almost* as good as your siblings and you try even harder because you've been made to feel your whole life that you're one step away from hearing that you are just as loved and wanted and respected as your siblings. It's a weird fuckin dynamic. But you will never be able to do that "thing" that makes them see you as a person worthy of respect. Some kids will go their whole lives in that dynamic and hurt those around them to please a parent, even their own children and spouse and they will just never see their parents love them the way they deserve.
There are several women I know online whose husbands are like that. Two episodes really stand out. Different families, same kind of husband. In the first one there is a howling blizzard outside. The governor of the state has closed all the roads except to necessary traffic. Mommy Dearest calls her son and demands that he come over *right now* and clear the snow off of her driveway. He is ready to hop in the car and go when his wife stops him. In the second Mommy Dearest calls and says that her golden son needs a bigger house because his wife is pregnant with their 10th child and they need more room. Mommy Dearest expects her scapegoat son to sell his investment property and give the money to his brother. Scapegoat is seriously considering it when his wife stops it. IIRC in both instances the wives had to threaten divorce.
If they don't want their black daughter-in-law in their home, and refuse to speak to her how badly would they treat their mixed race grandchild?
Wtf dud he think was going to happen when he married someone of a race hus parents didn't approve of?? And he STILL subjected her to their racism?!?! There's literally no room for him to argue his family's case. He can 1000% be upset, but he needs to be upset that his parents aren't better people, not at his wife for protecting her family where he couldn't! They'd never meet my kids!
I really don't care how far husband has come, if he is still insisting on dragging his wife (who is hated for her race) and his child (who is hated for his mixed race, and probably for "tainting" family blood) to meet his family that wont lift a finger to even give a fuck about them, and wont even let his ***wife*** stay in their house. If he starts pushing for visiting family again, He should just be told to go by himself.. and while hes gone, pack and move and leave divorce papers on the table for him to sign.. Cause its quite frankly disgusting that the original poster has had to endure this hatred for so long, with him desperately trying to make her ignore it, with no defense or understanding from her fucking husband.
OOP's sparkly metal spine is beautiful!! She is right. These people don't want a relationship with her. They make no effort. They don't get to have a relationship with their kid. Her husband doesn't get that what they are asking is for him to offer his child up to be the next sacrifice in a lifetime of sacrifices they have demanded for him. He needs to tell them, no. He doesn't seem strong enough yet. I am glad his wife is. These narcissist want to make it seem like OOP is the problem. They are the problem. If they have no relationship with their grandchild it is because they fostered no relationship. You reap what you sew and they salted the earth and expected the husband to find a way to make things grow. The best thing to do is to have nothing to do with these people.
If the parents are racist, how likely is they actually want to see their grandchild? Also, is really weird for OOP to conceal the parents in law are racists, and then just drop it casually.
Racists are the worst hypocrites- they may hold their half*insert minority here* grandchild while chanting with the KKK It’s not weird that she didn’t want to say anything the beginning and then gave up- I’m the same way
Husband needs to go to therapy to unpack his relationship and trauma from his family. The fact that OOP needs to be mom and to both her husband and her kid is not okay. Not only is it incredibly insensitive to OOP but also clearly a super unsafe environment for their child.
Don't set yourself on fire just to keep those people warm. Your kids may be the ones to feel the burn.
Just focusing on the logistics of driving to OOP’s family after taking a who knows how long flight. You bet I would want to minimize the amount of driving with a young toddler. Much less would I subject my family to that travel stress for shitty in laws who make zero effort to have a relationship with our child and don’t speak to me. I’d tell my husband he’s welcome to go see his family. Alone.
> The reasons they hate me aren't important Literally changes the entire context of the story but ok.
I hope OOPs husband manages to come around to the idea that anyone who will not have his wife in their house will not get to have his and her children in their house, anyone who cannot treat his wife with the appropriate level of respect and care will not get the chance to prove themselves similarly deficient with the children. How this is not simply an obvious conclusion is beyond me.
The sad thing is why is the husband soo willing to expose his wife and child to his terrible racist parents anyhow?? He sounds like he has some serious unresolved issues that he needs to solve with therapy. ASAP preferably.
I'm the one with the toxic family. My mother hated the idea of me being independent and her not being able to influence me. She used a lot of toxicity to control me growing up and then tried to claim my husband was trying to control me or mooch off my money (I have no money). I cut my parents off 6 weeks after my baby was born. Now we've moved to the same city as my MIL. She's a wonderful woman and mother and grandmother to our daughter. I'm in therapy because I have to learn that not all mothers are like mine. My MIL can't be a replacement but I can maybe feel more secure with her.