Please or to access all these features

Add post

Watch this thread

Save thread

Start a new thread

Flip thread

Hide thread

My feed

Active Unanswered threads

Getting started FAQ's

Unanswered threads Acronyms Talk guidelines

Hide shortcut buttons

Talk

AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

See all MNHQ comments on this thread

Flip

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

Original poster

to boycott my parents' 30th anniversary?

199 replies

VisitTheInfidel · 14/03/2015 17:39

My sister is organising a big party for them and wants to get a professional photo of the 3 of us and the 5 grandchildren as a present. I want no part of it. I've told her I have other plans for the party date and don't want to do the photo because I don't wish to discuss the real reason. She's getting quite arsey about me ruining my parents' special day.

I did the whole special day thing for them 5 years ago for their silver anniversary. Presents, big family get together in nice restaurant, special cake, the whole 9 yards.

Then 2 years ago my dad rang me to tell me that it was all a lie. They had actually got married 2 years after I was born so their real silver anniversary was in a few weeks. They wanted me to know the truth because they wanted a fuss made for their real anniversary.

I was so hurt and angry with both of them. They felt I was over-reacting as it no longer matters if your parents are married like it did back then. I felt like they were missing the point entirely. I didn't care whether they were married when I was born. I cared about a life-time of being lied to and deceived and the fact that their motivation for telling me was entirely their own self interests. I didn't speak to them for the next 6 months and last year's anniversary went by unmarked. I still have so much resentment bottled up and our relationship has never recovered.

So AIBU for wanting no part in this charade?

OP posts:

Bunbaker · 14/03/2015 22:33

"I don't believe that anyone would be able to just brush of the fact that their parents had allowed them to celebrate a false anniversary a couple of years previously."

I did - well it was one year, not two. But I didn't find it a big deal. Having said that, I hadn't organised a big party, just cooked a family meal. Thinking back, I remember I did a nice meal for them for 20 years as well. Also, I didn't find out until after my father had died. We we clearing the house and I found my parents wedding certificate, dated four months before I was born.

aprilanne · 14/03/2015 23:01

i am 44 i remember when i was about 18 my mum telling me she an my dad did,nt marry until after my brother and i were born .i can remember thinking well how very rock and roll .she told her cousins and other family that she and my dad had eloped to gretna green to save face .yes it was a lie but it was the times .and no one wanted to admit having a baby out of wedlock .don,t be so hard on your folks there are worse crimes

RedRugNoniMouldiesEtc · 15/03/2015 11:47

Well, I stand by my post at the start of the thread - that you are overreacting about the recent anniversary stuff.

However I also think you have other issues to deal with about your history and childhood. I don't know but suspect addressing them with your parents won't get you far as gaslighting seems a big part of the problem but perhaps some counselling to help you address your experience? I have no experience of AS but I can't help but think the slightly off centre view your upbringing must have created can't have helped you. (Fwiw I'm not suggesting this because of your AS, I'd suggest the same to anyone with the history you have)

Marynary · 15/03/2015 12:33

You have the wrong era. When you were born (1971?) it was a very big deal to have a child if you weren't married. By the mid/late 80s (around the time your parents told you) when OP was born attitudes had changed and it was no longer a big deal. There was no reason for them to be so secretive.

Wantsunshine · 15/03/2015 13:05

I think it is still a big deal to some people to have a planned child out of wedlock. Not as bad as previous eras but still exists

aprilanne · 15/03/2015 13:23

marynary .its actually nothing to do with the era .its to do with family attitudes .some people even in 2015 would not want a child out of wedlock .personally i don,t care what other,s do but not everyone is the same .but sorry her parents telling a white lie to hide there embarresement is hardly a crime .not telling her sister is a bit strange i agree .

Marynary · 15/03/2015 13:47

marynary .its actually nothing to do with the era .its to do with family attitudes .some people even in 2015 would not want a child out of wedlock.

It is something to do with the era Aprilanne. Whether or not people would or wouldn't want a child out of wedlock nowadays, it isn't a massive scandal if they do get pregnant when not married and they aren't treated by society in general as if they have committed a crime as they were in the 50s and 60s. Attitudes to unmarried parents in the mid/late 1980 (when OP was born) were similar to today and very different to the 1960s.

toldmywrath · 15/03/2015 15:12

Well I disagree with you Mary-I recall being quite shocked in the late 1980s when someone who was unmarried or single became pregnant(.Obviously not to the same degree as attitudes in the 1960's)

Allstoppedup · 15/03/2015 15:27

My mum and dad had a rush job marriage in the late800s because my mum was pregnant with me.

To be honest, I very much doubt they would have got married at all if it weren't for the pressure that being unwed and pregnant. I think it was still very much a stigma in the 80s. I guess it depends on family background, religious communities in the area etc...

I have a DC now and am pregnant with my second and am not married- sometimes even now I feel judged for this.

That said, OP, if your parents are genuinely good people and have been kind, supportive and loving- this being their only oversight, I would be inclined to forgive them. I would perhaps jokingly say, something about them not hoping to cash in again in two years time etc but I don't think it is worth burning bridges over, although I can appreciate why you are upset.

Allstoppedup · 15/03/2015 15:28

Late 80s not 800s...I'm not Methuselah! just feel/look like it

Marynary · 15/03/2015 17:03

Well I disagree with you Mary-I recall being quite shocked in the late 1980s when someone who was unmarried or single became pregnant(.Obviously not to the same degree as attitudes in the 1960's)

Really? How old were you? Quite young? I was in my late teens/early 20s in the late 80s and attitudes in general to being unmarried and pregnant really weren't that much different to today.

BoneyBackJefferson · 15/03/2015 18:29

So if the OP tells her sister and she knows then how will the op feel? The only person in the entire family that wasn't aware of the situation.

She tells her sister (who she doesn't have a good relationship with) and she runs to the parents, parents can then have a go at the OP for upsetting the sister.

OP does nothing and doesn't go to the party etc. and she is the one causing trouble.

OP does nothing and the parents pull the anniversary trick again in two years and can blame the OP as she knew (classic deflection).

Whatever the OP does she would be attached to another object by an inclined plane, wrapped helically around an axis.

toldmywrath · 15/03/2015 18:41

Mary, I left school in 1979 so I was young in the 1980's, but that's in comparison to feeling not so young now. I was married & my DH's sister was single & became pregnant late 1980's, I was quite shocked. So it probably is a matter of upbringing.
I have a much more liberal attitude these days & realise that times have changed & so have I, thankfully.

toldmywrath · 15/03/2015 18:42

Sorry for thread hijack, op

ethelb · 15/03/2015 19:11

The OP has over reacted but her dad sounds like a shit stirrer tbh. Telling one sibling the truth while the other stresses over a fake celebration, and then demands a real celebration. It's weird.

Also I'm nearly 30. Most of my friends were not born to married parents, most of my parents friends had at least one baby before they got married. If anything I would have thought there has been more judgement about lying about when you got married than there would be about having a child out of wedlock for the OPs parents generation.

Honestly they are at least one generation out for playing this sort of game re wedding dates

Marynary · 15/03/2015 19:20

toldmywrath I'm sure that some people would be shocked today though depending on their upbringing. In general though, societies attitude towards being unmarried and pregnant wasn't much different in the late 1980s to today. Therefore those that think that OP should be more understanding of her parents because it was a different era and there was more of a stigma towards being pregnant before marriage in the late 80s are not correct.

Marynary · 15/03/2015 19:22

Honestly they are at least one generation out for playing this sort of game re wedding dates

I agree.

toldmywrath · 15/03/2015 19:30

You can't tell someone they are not correct because they have voiced a different opinion & experience to you.

HotBurrito1 · 15/03/2015 19:36

OP I think you have been put in a very difficult position. I completely understand why you don't wish to carry on the pretence. What are you going to do?

notsolovely · 15/03/2015 20:04

By the mid 80s my mum was divorced with 2 kids, one aunt was a single mother who never married (even now) and one was divorced from the father of her first 2 kids and had a third by her new husband. We are Irish Catholics. No one batted an eyelid. I think the OPs situation isn't anything to do with embarrassment about kids out of wedlock. Its do with her parents pretending her 37 year old father had an affair with a 17 year old and got her pg. Its about rewriting history. Had he not been married they probably wouldn't have lied.

notsolovely · 15/03/2015 20:05

Sorry I mean its about pretending her father DIDN'T gave an affair

ethelb · 15/03/2015 20:13

Mary the more I think about it the more ridiculous this is. In 1985 a lot of my parents generation were influenced by second wave feminism who 'didn't believe in marriage' and used the diaphragm as contraception. And you know, shit happened.

Do you know how many of my friends are 'cap babies'?

x2boys · 15/03/2015 20:28

My mum and dad told me when I was about 16 that they had actually got married a year later than I thought she was three months pregnant this was early 70,s and my parents were both 29 but my grandma actually told my sad to bring my sister ( as a baby ) the back way so the neighbours wouldn't gossip that they had only been married a few months! times were very different then.

x2boys · 15/03/2015 20:28

My dad not sad ffs!

Flip

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8