"AITA for wanting to meet my 'daughter' after giving up my parental rights?"

Long story short: in my (40f) twenties I had a one night stand with this guy "Nathan" (now 41m) and got pregnant. I first thought of having an abortion, but Nathan had come from a conservative religious background (not Christian) and wanted the baby so we made a deal:

I would give birth to the child and sign away my parental rights (my name is not even in her birth certificate, it's a possibility in my country) and he would pay all the medical expenses plus some extra for my troubles. That's what we did and didn't keep contact after his daughter was born.

A few weeks ago, a friend of mine who has the same religion as Nathan sent me a post from her temple's youth group (they were asking for donations for the homeless) and one of the girls from the picture looked a lot like me. I searched for her profile and found out that she had Nathan's surname and had the right age to be the baby I gave away.

She's 17 now and seems to be doing fine: she is involved in charity work, apparently loves music and has lots of pictures with friends and family (Nathan, his wife and half-siblings).

I never wanted nor want to be a mother but I became curious to know more about this human I put in the world, so I texted Nathan's old phone number, which he has not changed, and asked if he would allow me to meet his daughter, since I gave birth to her and everything, and made my intentions clear: I do not want to interfere with his family, just to know her.

He then wrote a long text which comes down to the fact that I am an a$$hole for wanting to know his daughter now after I "abandoned" her and that this meeting would only mess up with her head. I told him I was telling him out of courtesy because soon the girl will be an adult and be able to choose herself if she wants to meet me. He then blocked me.

Am I being the a$$hole here? I don't think there is any harm in meeting my "daughter"; she already has a great family and it would only be beneficial to her to know about her own history. But maybe I am not seeing the full picture.

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

salmonberrycreek said:

Honestly I think YTA. You decided not to be in your child's life, it is not fair for you to now force yourself back into it because YOU want to. A more appropriate course of action would have been to reach out to provide current contact information and let him know that if she was ever interested in getting to know you that's something you are open to. It should be her choice. Not yours.

Smart-Bake713 said:

So you didn’t want her then, you don’t want her now but you’re curious to see how she turned out? YTA. You have no desire to be in her life but want to meet her…. Do you not think that would be upsetting to meet the woman who gave you away and learn she still doesn’t care about you? Leave her alone

VinnyCapistrano said:

Soft YTA. You signed away your parental rights. You didn't want this child. You don't get to change your mind 17 years later and decide you want to insert yourself into her life, any more than any other stranger off the street should get to insert themselves into her life.

If she wants to meet you after she turns 18, then that's her decision. But you already made your decision, and that was to not have this child in your life.

000-Hotaru_Tomoe said:

Sorry, but YTA. You mentioned you're curious about your daugther, but you don't want to be a mother, so I assume that this meeting will only be once and then you won't have an active role in his life. You only though about yourself and not about your daugther. Teens years are delicate and fragile and this meeting won't bring anything worth in her life.

UPDATE:

Hi everyone. First of all, thank you for your judgement. Some of you were were pretty harsh and a bit misogynistic to be honest, but I needed to hear what the well-intentioned comments had to say. Some answers to common assumptions:

1.) I wasn’t coherced into giving birth. Nathan and I reached an agreement in a situation that involved us both. I’ll admit that I was young, didn’t know what pregnancy was really like and needed the money (which I’m not proud of but hey y’all are gonna judge me anyway).

2.) I didn’t want to reach out to Nathan’s daughter just because she looks like me. I only mentioned it because this is what made me realize that the girl on the picture was the child I gave birth to, but it blew out of proportion.

3.) I don’t know why some people assumed Nathan is Christian and why they were judging him for being religious. He is Jewish and I am agnostic myself but don’t think it’s a problem for him to have a strong bond with his religion. The one night stand happened when we were very young and I don’t know what his views are about that, but it doesn’t matter.

His daughter apparently is very attached to their community and it’s important to her. Also I might have used the world temple wrong but I’m not Jewish myself.

4.) When I said I don’t want to be a mother I didn’t mean I didn’t want a relationship with Nathan's daughter. I am not her mother since I didn’t raise and don’t want to take this place from the person who truly did: his wife. I also chose not to have children of my own.

So after reading your comments, I came to a better understanding of what my role is in this situation and decided to reach out to his wife through social media to try to make amends.

She was very understanding and explained to me that Nathan had a couple of tough years being a single dad before meeting her and me coming back like that made it seem (like some of you pointed out) that I wanted to skip the hard parts and become a parent out of nowhere, which was never my intention.

They told their daughter that her birth mother had to go back to her home country and couldn't take care of her, which was kind. The wife is going to talk to Nathan to leave the door open if their daughter wants to meet me when she’s older and I gave her all my contact information for when and if the time comes. I'll admit I was being a bit selfish here, so that is the best ending I could hope for. Thank you again.