'AITA for dropping my sister's secret on my niece because my sister was being rude?'
"AITA for telling my niece her mother's secret about her?"
supermans_left_ti writes:
I (28 M) got into a huge argument with my sister (31 F) last week. The argument had been simmering for a long time, as tension between us has been high for years. When I was 17, my sister had an accidental pregnancy, and when she told her boyfriend, he left her.
Due to our religious family, she kept the baby, but once her daughter was born, she panicked. She didn’t want to go through the legal troubles of adoption, so she asked that me and our mother take care of her kid. There was no legal custody, but it was an agreement made within the family.
I essentially raised my niece from birth until she was 3, with help from my mother, as she was working to support the new addition to the family. I dropped out of school and took care of her, fed her, changed her, and taught her how to walk while my mom was away at work.
Then my sister met her now husband, cleaned her life up, and suddenly wanted her kid back. No warning. She moved back home, said thanks, and started being a mother. My niece is now eleven and doesn’t remember all that I and her grandmother did. It’s been a family agreement to forget this all happened until the argument.
My sister made a petty comment during a fight, where she implied that since I lost my job recently, I can’t handle responsibility. I snapped and told her she was lucky her daughter was too young to remember how she abandoned her.
My niece overheard this and now wants to know what I meant. I outright said that her mother didn’t think she could raise her and left her with me and grandma. Now my sister says I traumatized her daughter, and my mom says I should have kept the secret like we agreed. I think this secret couldn’t stay kept forever. Am I the a^#%ole?
OP added more context.
Hello, I’m here to give some more context and answer a bunch of the most common questions. When the argument happened, I had put my niece to bed hours earlier. We were at my mother’s house, and no one knew she was going to come in.
Secondly, after my niece was born, my sister moved to another state to get a job. Also, she was 20 and I was 17. And finally, in the aftermath, I said that we can’t go back now since my niece already overheard us all talking, so as a group with her stepfather, we should get together to explain it better.
But since the event (a week ago), my sister has been saying that we should just let it blow over and that my niece will forget if we don’t bring it up again. I’m frustrated at this, and at how she’s now slating me alongside my mother.
My mother believes I’m in the wrong for arguing with my sister in the first place, whereas I say she has no right to criticize me for losing my job when I lost my education to care for her child. I’m trying to get in contact with my niece’s stepfather to ask him for his opinion.
The comments were torn on OP's post.
RB1327 says:
ESH, Everyone Sucks Here. This should never have been a family secret at all. Plenty of teen parents start with a rough patch, and your sister apparently got her act together and turned it around. Your niece could have had that explained once she was past toddler age and able to basically understand.
You chose to weaponize this information because you're bitter about your own choices to step up and help your mother. But the person you are hurting more is your innocent niece, not your sister.
Spare-Article-396 says:
Your mom completely sucks for allowing you to derail your own life for the sake of a 20 year old woman not wanting to step up. It’s shameful. You shouldn’t have said what you said, but ohh boy, I can’t even begin to understand the resentment you must feel. NTA. Make no mistake; it was an ah thing to do. But I’m giving you a pass.
ThrowRA_974 says:
YTA. You have valid baggage, but you need to keep that amongst the adults. Not even remotely okay.
happybanana134 says:
ESH. You absolutely should not have said that. Your niece did not deserve to find out like that; in trying to hurt your sister, you hurt her too and that's not on. I agree that this couldn't be kept a secret forever, but your niece deserved to be told properly, and not treated as collateral damage in an argument between you and your sister.