'AITA for telling my sister to stop getting pregnant just to try for a baby boy?'
"AITA for telling my sister to stop getting pregnant just to try for a baby boy?"
I already feel like the villain in this store but I need outside perspective. My sister is currently pregnant with her third child. She has two daughters already, both under 6. Money is tight. her husband works but they constantly stressed about bills, childcare, everything.
She vents to me all the time about being exhausted, overwhelmed, and feeling like she has no time for herself.
Here’s the part that set me off.
This third pregnancy wasn’t some surprise. It was planned. Why? Because her husband really wants a boy.
That’s it. That’s the reason.
He’s been making comments for years about wanting a son to carry the name and have someone to bond with. My sister admits she’s nervous about adding another baby but says she doesn’t want to disappoint him. She literally told me, If this one’s not a boy, we might try again.
I snapped. I told her she needs to stop getting pregnant just to fulfill her husband’s gender preference. I said kids are not collectibles where you keep trying until you get the one you want. I told her she’s risking her health, their finances, and the stability of the kids they already have just to chase a baby boy fantasy.
She started crying and said I was being cruel and disrespectful to her marriage. Her husband heard about it and now he’s furious, saying I’m overstepping and trying to control their family planning. My mom says I should have kept my mouth shut because “it’s not my life.”
But I’m watching my sister burn out in real time. I’m watching her daughters already compete for attention. And now there’s this unspoken pressure that if this baby isn’t a boy, it won’t be enough.
I don’t hate kids. I don’t hate boys. I just hate the idea of bringing a whole human into the world for the sole purpose of satisfying someone’s gender preference.
AITA?
Here’s what people had to say to OP:
NTA. Kids aren’t collectibles. If they’re stressed now, adding babies for a “maybe boy” won’t fix anything.
I physically cringed at the carry the name thing. Sir, this is not Game of Thrones. Bond with the daughters you already have.
dventurous_Belt2024 (OP)
thank you. I felt crazy for thinking this. I'm not anti baby, I'm anti let's keep rolling the dice until we get the right one. That mindset scares me a bit ngl.
Also, what happens to those poor girls if daddy dearest actually gets his boy? They‘ll watch him give the boy all the love and attention they never got. If sis can’t stop this BS for her own sake, she needs to do it for her actual, living children. NTA - BIL is disgusting, sis is letting her kids down and mom is toxic.
Honestly the scariest line is we might try again. That's not family planning, that's obsession. You're not the jerk for calling it our. Sometimes love sounds harsh because the situation is.
Don’t let them reframe the discussion. Keep stating the main point. “They’re already struggling, and the only reason they’re trying is that Don insists he has to have a son. How many will it take? When does he start caring about the kids they do have? When does his wife become a person to him and not an incubator? What will happen to the poor kid if they turn out to be a girl?”
Adventurous_Belt2024 (OP)
thank u for wording it like that, bc somehow the convo became about me being disrespectful instead of the actual issue which is they're already struggling and still gambling on a gender.
Agree, but start softly and gradually escalate. “How many children do they need to have, and how much further do they need to slide into debt, before you consider this to be a dreadful plan with no redeemable features? No, it was not a rhetorical question.”
When her third girl (her husband is the one that determines the sex, I’ve heard, and he’s two for two so far) finds out that she was supposed to be a boy, it’ll be part of her identity forever. And how will her husband treat the third girl? Women are increasingly refusing to change their names for men, so he may get to carry on his family name anyway.
NTA - I have never understood people having gender preferences for their kids. That is apart of the surprise with getting pregnant because you don’t know what you are going to get. Bad on them for having a 3rd when they knowing can’t afford them in all the factors - time, money, emotional support.
Adventurous_Belt2024 (OP)
yeah that's what's wild to me. the whole point is you don't control the outcome. it's not build a baby workshop[. and the affordability part is what keeps me up tbh. love doesn't pay bills.
Tell her to google how babies genders happen. It comes from the sperm and a lot of men can only have one gender. If the first two kids are one gender its likely that all that mans kids will be the same.
So you are NTA for feeling this way, but you probably didn't need to shout it at her. And as someone with a bit of experience watching people do stupid things, nothing you say will change her mind. Your sister loves this man and will do anything to make him happy with a son, whether or not he's a complete idiot for asking her to do so...
NTA. Someone had to say it. Hopefully, when you say you snapped that does not mean you were yelling at her, that would be wrong. But nothing you said was wrong. If things are already hard, they are taking away resources and time from the 2 daughters they already have. I also don't believe in keeping your mouth shut when it comes to someone you love.