AIBU for telling my parents about my pregnancy very late? I just sometimes forget they even exist or that I have parents

Realistically you can tell them when you like. Your posts are a bit contradictory though - you didn't think to tell them/forgot, is different to not telling them because you didnt think they'd care .

My mum was raised in a boarding school from age 5 and only went home during the holidays. She was very detached from her parents. It was an awkward relationship, I witnessed their conversations. It was cold and lacked any warmth. Really strange as if they were distant relatives and not close at all. She did write them a letter once a month like she did in boarding school to keep them up to date with news. When I was a teenager she asked me to ring them on Sundays to update them instead. I did and she stopped writing to them, but this meant I didn’t really pass anything on apart from peasantries as I didn’t think they really cared about my award in school or that I made a new friend or that mum started going to a new church. As a result they used to complain to me a lot that they didn’t know about certain things, when they cropped up in a conversation. I stopped phoning them every week. It would be once a month until I eventually stopped. I realised my mum didn’t want the responsibility of keeping in touch with her own parents. But nor did I want that now as we were not close at all. I went away to university and didn’t call them once. When her parents died she did not cry once. She even said to me that she cannot make her self feel anything for them. I think that in order to feel bonded to parents, you have to be raised by them and have daily communication. Otherwise you are perfect strangers and it’s difficult telling strangers all of your business, as we tend to save that for close people. Do you have other siblings? Are they the same way with them?

Sorry Op but this made me laugh.
I actually do think your relationship with your parents got stuck when you were relatively young and hasn't moved on from there.
But I don't think that is your fault or entirely your responsibility.

You withhold information because they withheld interest in you.
You are trying to provoke but don't really have a means to do it beyond finding a fairly passive way to be hurtful.
But what you actually want is a declaration of love - and that feels out of reach.

OP you’re getting such a hard time on here! Fuck people can be so nasty. I would say yes it’s unusual not to tell a parent you’re pregnant, but to call you names like spoilt brat is completely uncalled for

That’s no normal parenting, that’s a firm rejection.

As a child she was boarding for 6 months of the year and then for good chunks of the holidays she wasn’t allowed in the family home, or if she was her parents would stay elsewhere.

She’s obviously hardened her heart to her parents and permanently downgraded their importance in her life. which is fair enough honestly.

You speak really fondly of your siblings so if any of them knew you are pregnant, then did they not ask you if you’d told your parents? And if they spoke with you about that, then it would be really difficult to “forget” to tell your parents…

Something is not adding up here. As some others have said, perhaps more therapy would be a good idea for you to work through your feelings towards your parents. When you’ve had your child, then parenting will be at the front of your mind and it is bound to trigger thoughts and feelings of how you were parented. I wish you well with everything.

I feel sorry for you (and your parents) that their wealth has led you and your siblings to have such an emotionally impoverished lives. I do hope that you and your DH are able to break that model with how you raise your child(ren). I agree with the majority of the PP here that you are quite possibly in denial about your reasons why you withhold information about important life events from your parents. You keep repeating here that your parents (and particularly your mother) don't seem bothered/interested/curious/care about how you are doing. And that may well be the truth. But you also have said that your mother was upset that you didn't let her know about your pregnancy earlier. Perhaps something is changing in her as she is aging? Why don't you try asking her the next time you have one of your "obligatory" phone chats? I wouldn't assume that how someone has been is how they will always be. But even if they haven't changed, what's stopping you from moving your conversations with them beyond superficial political world events? Have you or your siblings told them how you actually consider them distant relatives rather than mum and dad?

I’d think it a bit odd that parents who hadn’t seen their children who boarded overseas for months wouldn’t move heaven and earth to see them in the holidays.

It doesn’t sound from the OP’s description that we’re talking here about a set of ‘present’ parents having a couple of weeks holiday away from their teens.

It isn’t normal to not see your child for months on end, and then when they do come home you don’t bother being there for them. There is nothing normal about that.

Oh, come on. If you barely/never speak to them it could be more understandable and clearly you feel very detached from them which I get.

But you do speak fairly regularly! Would you speak to a friend that often and just never mention something that big? Even if catch ups are mainly surface level chats, you cannot use the excuse that they never asked! Even very engaged parents don't want to be intrusive or upset someone who may be struggling with something. It is not unreasonable at all for your mother to be upset imo and I agree with PP - either you forgot you were pregnant (which I don't believe for a moment) or you made a choice not to mention it on numerous occasions when speaking to your parents.

I would say the same thing tbh if you were speaking about a distant relative who you care about enough to speak to regularly on the phone.

It makes sense that you feel quite detached and built your life outside of them to a great extent. However, the fact that you do speak to them pretty regularly makes this very hard to understand and sure as hell would feel like a terrible punishment to me if one of my dds truly thought I wouldn't give a shit.

My grandmother passed away a couple of years ago and the first thing my mother said to me when she broke the news was ‘thank god I don’t have to see or speak to her again’ my mother spoke to her mother almost every single day and saw her very very frequently.

Maybe sending you to boarding school was the best thing that they ever did, if they had raised you themselves, you could have been stuck in this cycle too, or not feeling the emotional bond but having to pretend you do for the rest of your days.

As long as you can cultivate perfectly functional relationships with other people, than you don't need to worry about the relationship with your parents, keep them updated by all means, but I'd even go so far as to stop the fortnightly "conversations", anything that you do ONLY because you feel obligated to is never going to be good for you, and if all you do is go through the motions so you can mentally tick it off, then what is the point?

Well you know that your relationship with your parents is different from other people's family relationships and I think you'd like to change it - or at the very least for them to acknowledge they might have failed you.

I think you want to talk about it with them but are perhaps scared at their response and whether that might upset you further. So you are left a bit stuck - needing to resolve your feelings and there being no mechanism to do so.

But I think therapy would support you to come to terms with it and build something better (with or without greater involvement from them).

You were ages 15+? What ages were the other siblings. If the were 18+ I see this as totally normal when I was growing up - parents often went away leaving older siblings to care for younger siblings of ages much younger than 15. But you have trauma from this normal event?

Completely agree! I think you might have meant to quote OP, though.

I get it OP. Your parents chosen the dynamic between you from a very young age and your role in the relationship does not include talking about yourself. Perhaps you felt self conscious or like you would be accused of being dramatic if you announced your pregnancy? I don’t think you truly forgot, but I don’t think you did anything wrong either.

I have a similar thing with my DM. she never asks me anything about myself and in the past when i did say something it would be met with criticism. When I was 24 she made a comment that she thought it was weird i didn’t tell her I was moving to the US. I thought it was an unfair comment from her since I did tell her - i just didn’t “announce” it, i brought it up at a relevant time exactly like you have. Also it made no difference to her, I could have easily not told her and she wouldn’t have found out / noticed. It took her another 6 years to ask what my career was in “because her friends were asking her so she thought she should find out”.

I also went to boarding school. It’s not the school that does it exactly, but there’s probably a tendency for parents like ours to choose boarding because they don’t want the day to day closeness with their children.

I think I get where you are coming from OP. I had a very different upbringing to you, but also with parents that were just not interested in me or my life. I don't think it is being sent to boarding school that is the issue. I am sure there are lots of DC that go to boarding school, but still have caring involved parents. It sounds like they were not there for you emotionally ever, and that is tough, and has life long effects.

It sounds like you are dealing with this the best you can. A warning though, as your DC grows it will likely bring it all into sharp focus, because you will compare how you were parented to how you are doing it, and it will sting when you realise you just couldn't do that to your DC. Definitely worth considering more therapy at some point. As far as how you treat your parents, I think do whatever works for you. You don't owe them anything.

My boarding schooled DP has a very strained and weird relationship with his parents and siblings. He doesn’t speak to them half as often as you speak to your parents. But he still includes them. You clearly have unresolved issues. Maybe now is the time to speak to your parents about it, they might regret how you were brought up and want to try to do things differently with grandchildren. My Daps parents do regret it, the relationship they have with our children is not the same as with my parents who we see weekly and are involved, but they do care and do love our kids, and children need as many people that care about them as possible in the world. Regardless of how those people show love, as long as they are not actually abusive or dangerous people then it’s worth trying to forge a path where they can be involved even from a distance or in their own way. Shutting them out is detrimental to your child . DPs dad is totally incapable of spending time alone with the grandchildren, has no ability to be a typical grandparent or even converse with the kids at their level, but he shows love in other ways, sends lovely gifts, has helped out with much needed expensive things, he does love them but we have just had to accept his way of showing it and our kids know he loves them and are excited to see him on our limited visits despite how he is. More people who love your child is better even if they don’t show love in the same way you think they should.

As an ex-boarder from 8 years, talking to my parents every other week in adulthood sounds stifling! And you didn’t slip in the fact you were pregnant? Very strange. This is more about you, I feel.

It’s easy if you’re used to never talking about yourself and you are never asked about yourself.

Your parents were like very distant relatives all your life and that’s how you treat them. I get it.

Some people think consciously or unconsciously you’ve set out to hurt them back, but you’re the only one placed to examine that and see if that’s really the case.

It is very far outside most people’s experience or expectations to have such a distant relationship with parents, so that will influence responses. However, your detachment is an entirely natural response to the environment you encountered growing up. I suspect it didn’t come easily and developed over many years.

Your parents may want a closer relationship now they’re older and perhaps wiser. Maybe ask them. But they’re not entitled to it. only you have the right to decide if it’s worth it for you and your children.