Woman refuses to share pictures of baby after her mom 'violates her trust.'
When this woman is upset with her parents, she asks Reddit:
'AITA for refusing to send baby pictures to my parents and denying them their grandchild?'
My husband (M35) and I (F32) have been married for five years, and I gave birth to our little girl one year ago. Having a baby was a dream come true for the two of us as we had been trying for a long time, and my parents (M61 and F55) were over the moon.
That being said, however, my parents have yet to meet 'Emma' as they live on the other side of the world and they have said that they will never come back to our home country (no particular reason, they just feel that they would rather spend their money seeing new places rather than travelling for two days to see the city they were born and raised in).
Totally fair enough, but tickets are also quite expensive for my now family of three meaning that we haven't yet been able to go see my parents.
In the meantime, my husband and I consistently send photos and videos of Emma to my parents, and we video call at least once a week.
The problem we are facing though is that neither my husband nor I want photos of Emma online anywhere - regardless of how 'shut down' anyone's social media is. This is a solid boundary, and we have not had anyone push this except for my mother.
My mom posts EVERYTHING online, and I mean everything. She posts photos, long paragraphs detailing her activities, and 'check ins' on Facebook at least once a day. She claims she is doing it so that she can look back at the Memories function and be nostalgic.
My husband and I have no issue with her posting her own business, but we are quite private people and have had many problems in the past where she posts details about us and our lives claiming to be proud and wanting to look back.
This meant we were crystal clear about photos/details about Emma and that she would not receive any more information if anything was posted.
Well, we recently discovered that she has somehow blocked us from seeing her posts on Facebook (to be honest, we aren't on social media often enough to really notice), and has been posting photos of Emma at least once or twice a week since she was about eight months old.
We discovered this when an aunt sent me a message saying how cute Emma looked in my mom's post.
We were furious and I immediately called my mom asking what the hell she was doing. My mom said she was proud and wanted to be able to look back on when Emma was so little, and that she was doing it out of love.
I told my mom that if she ever expects to meet Emma in person, I want all photos to be taken down and she will not be getting any more photos/updates until I feel like I can trust her again.
My mom is devastated, and my dad is telling me I am being selfish. My husband agrees with me, but my dad's words really got to me and I am wondering if I am being an AH.
Let's see what internet users had to say.
lushae writes:
NTA - if they were so proud and in love they would have visited. Nothing would keep my mum away from visiting a grandchild.
Set your boundaries and keep them - she needs to delete all the pictures she's posted and won't get any that can be saved from now on. Utilise the features on phones and WhatsApp that lets you see the picture for 5 seconds.
Make sure she is clear if you find her going against these rules it'll be NC. Require proof of deletion (either her Facebook password to check, or her going through her own Facebook on facetime). She knew what she was doing.
verne writes:
NTA. You set a boundary, and she chose not to respect that. There are a lot of methods to store photos and look back at them, she doesn't need to post them for the world. The only selfish people here are your parents, who can't cater to your one request.
throwaway77 writes:
No OP, your MOM is being selfish and your father is supporting her. So, your parents are older than me so it might be that they will just never understand why parents want to avoid plastering their kids online, but that is YOUR choice, and an intelligent one.
Frankly the whole situation shows that they are selfish as hell, which is their right, but you shouldn't cater to it if you don't sincerely want to. NTA