'AITA for saying my husband is a good father if he was absent with his first child?' UPDATED

"AITA for saying my husband is a good father?"

When he was in his early 20s, my husband got a girl pregnant. They were casual dating in college, they had a lot of mutual friends. He didn't want to be a dad and told her as much, but she was adamant about keeping the baby. He was supportive through the pregnancy but was clear he didn't want to be involved.

He wanted to renounce his rights, but ended up with an agreement where he still pays child support but doesn't do visitation nor has involvement in any parental decisions. The girl is now 12. He hasn't met her nor plans to ever do.

I met him 8 years ago, we've been married for almost 7. He told me about the whole having a bio child out there very early on. I was (am) fine with it, it is sad that a child came to the world under those circumstances, but I don't think he was wrong for choosing not to be involved.

We now have a 5 year old son. My husband has always been wonderful to me (that's why I fell in love with him), he was great during the pregnancy and birth, and has been dotting on our son and me ever since. I think he's a wonderful dad and husband.

The problem. Two of his friends married their college girlfriends, whom were/are friends with his bio daughter's mother. In now three occasions in conversations where I said my husband is a wonderful father, one of them said something snarky and mean like "Yeah, to only one of his children".

Over the weekend we attended to one of them kids' birthday party. I was chatting to another mum about motherhood and said that it's easier when you have a good team player in your spouse. The home owner mum chimed in to say, loudly, "If only the mother of his other child had the same!"

Later I confronted her in the kitchen. Said I was very tired of her and (other friend) comments about my husband, that she didn't need to invite us to things or spend time with us if she didn't want to, but it was super disrespectful to be constantly insulting him as a father.

She told me she initially liked me but finds it distasteful and rude that I keep praising my husband as a good father when I'm well aware that he isn't, that she will always make sure to correct me because it's not ok that he got away with what he did and he now gets to play happy family with me and our son.

The conversation went south from then on and of course we left. The other mum friend texted me yesterday to tell me she completely backs up what the other said and that I'm horrible for marrying and having a kid with a deadbeat and on top of it to praise him as a good dad.

I have no doubts of my feelings, my husband has been and is great with our son and with me. I guess I never thought how my words could be insensitive towards his bio daughter and her mother (whom I've never met), but AITA for occasionally saying my husband is a good father when talking to people? Should I stop?

What do you think? AITA? This is what top commenters had to say:

reyballesta said:

NTA and i really don't get all the comments saying otherwise. he wasn't ready to be a father then (made that very clear to the ex), STILL supported her through the pregnancy, STILL pays child support, and has stuck to their agreement, as has the ex. what?

Is he just supposed to show up at random? toss that little girl's life into disarray just so he's not a 'deadbeat'? which he doesn't seem to be at all? your other comments even make it clear that he recognized it would be unethical to give away parental rights (which...it wouldn't have been lol).

I mean is there something i'm missing here? he can't be a good or a bad father to that little girl because he is NOT her father in anything more than blood. He is a father to your son, and a good one, in ways beyond that, so no, you're not the asshole for saying that he is what he is.

punkkshifter said:

NTA- he made it clear that he wasn’t interested in being a single father in his 20s and it sounds like the mother was willing to be a single mother. he chose to have a kid with you and sounds like a great dad. good on you for defending him, but you might wanna talk to him about dropping those “friends."

[deleted] said:

I'm kind of torn between ESH and Y T A. You're right that they probably just shouldn't hang out with you and your husband. But, if your husband is friends with their spouses, they're a little bit stuck. And they should let sleeping dogs lie, and yet. . .why do you talk about what a great father your husband is that often, that it's now come up in conversations 3+ times?

It sounds like you are defensive and constantly reiterating that he's a great father, in front of these women who are good friends with the woman he left to parent alone. So I honestly don't blame them for wanting you to shut it.

So it comes down to why this has come up so often. If they are constantly bringing up, unprompted, that your husband sucks as a dad, they should stop. But you should also stop constantly bringing up, unprompted, that he's a great dad. Their friend has been a single parent for years because he only values one of his children. You've decided that's OK with you, but it doesn't have to be OK with them.

One month later, she posted this update:

The verdict on my original post was NTA but people were raising concerns about my husband's bio daughter's wellbeing. I also got advised to cut contact with this woman and to tell my husband (Tim) what they were saying about him. So I spoke with Tim after I posted here. He decided to speak with his friend (John) about what his wife (Jane) was doing, and we will cut Jane off.

After Tim spoke to John we learned the truth. Turns out this wasn't about Tim or me at all. I can only say what John authorized me to share (even when this is anonymous he prefers not to go into details) While still in college John and Jane also had an unplanned pregnancy and he wanted an abortion but she didn't. They were still discussing what to do when she had a miscarriage (early stage).

They never told anyone because she didn't want to and John respected her wishes, my husband never knew about this and felt terrible for them. While they moved on, and eventually got married and had kids, it's obvious she isn't over it and harbors resentment towards him for his stance at the time.

Since our son was born, it seems she has been occasionally unloading her feelings onto Tim because she feels this is how it would've gone for her if she didn't miscarry (this is what John said, I have not spoken to Jane so I don't know her side). John confronted her after Tim spoke to him, they had a big fight because John did not like her actions and immediately saw what was the real reason behind them.

He is staying in our guesthouse for almost 2 weeks now but we hope they will work through it for the sake of their family. She hates us even more now, though, for hosting him. So we are not really sure how our friendship will fare if/when they reconcile.

The most important part of the update: John contacted bio daughter's mom (Callie) after fighting with Jane. He told her everything and asked her to "stop feeding Jane's irrational feelings" because she was taking them out on us instead of him, and causing problems for Tim.

Callie ended up contacting me on social media, this was an absolute first, we have never interacted in any way before, and I did freak out about it when I saw her first message. She was wanting to "speak to me mother to mother" and clear things out, so I responded and we got to chatting (Tim was informed).

She said she wanted me to know she didn't want anything more from Tim than what they had agreed on, that she never fed anything to Jane regarding him, they don't even talk that often, and she wanted no part of this mess nor to be dragged into it.

I told her that we had a feeling she wasn't involved in the situation and appreciate her telling me but really, this had nothing to do with her and I apologized if the drama disturbed her and her daughter. We got to chatting from there on and she's a lovely person.

She is married and her husband (Sal) has been in their daughter's (Ellie) life since she was about 2, she calls him dad. They also have a younger daughter together. She knew about Tim being married to me and about us having a son because apparently, Jane shared those things with her despite her telling her she had no interest in hearing about him.

So I updated Tim of my chats with Callie all along. After some reflection and back and forths, we ended up having video callll the 4 of us (Tim and I, Callie and Sal) just this past weekend. Iwas awkwardrd at first but we talked about Ellie mostly. We saw pictures of her, a beautiful girl.

The gist of this is, Sal and Callie have been wanting him to adopt Ellie officially, but they were honest about how their finances would suffer from losing the child support.

Plus the biggest obstacle was they didn't want Ellie to lose her college fund/trust fund from Tim, because they would have a very hard time providing college funds for both their daughters in their current situation, and all the more without the child support (they're not poor nor anything but they just don't have the means for saving away that much).

Long story short, after this call, it was decided that Tim will renounce paternity and Sal will adopt Ellie officially, but Ellie will keep her trust fund /college fund. It will be up to them to decide how and what to disclose to Ellie as for where the money comes from, but so far she knows her bio father was doing his half of the financial responsibility (in other words of course), so I don't think they'd lie to her about it.

This will take some time to be finalized, we only just started, and we still need to consider if and when our children want to meet (which is a difficult topic to tackle and we agreed to continue discussing it over time) but we are all happy.

Tim says this is how it should've been all along, and Callie and Sal seem thrilled about finally being an official family. There was even a very nice moment when Sal told Tim "you have a lovely family" and Tim replied, "thanks, so do you". So thanks all. If I hadn't posted here, maybe none of this would be happening.