AIBU or has DM been selfish to deny me any knowledge of my father?

[UmBankroll]

I’ll try to keep it concise but detailed so as to avoid any drip feeds.

I am in my mid-20s and I have never met my father, never seen a photo of him, never even been told his name. It isn’t on my birth certificate. As far as I’ve been told, he and DM were not married but were in a long-term cohabiting relationship when I was planned and conceived, until he cheated on DM when she was quite heavily pregnant and she kicked him out.

I am an only child, as is DM. DGPs (maternal obviously) say they met my father several times during the relationship but have been told by DM not to tell me anything about him. As far back as I can remember, whenever I would ask DM where my father was, she would reply “you don’t have one”.

Naturally as I grew older and more inquisitive I pressured DM a lot with questions about him but she would never reveal any information as to his identity. Then when I was 7 I recall her receiving a phone call, crying, and telling me that my father had died.

All these years, she and my DGPs have never let slip one iota of information about him. I’ve asked so many times whether the reason DM is so adamant that I know nothing about him is due to the fact that he is/was a terrible man, and she’s protecting me from him, but she and DGPs always insist that’s not the case. DM’s favourite reasoning is “He didn’t deserve to know his beautiful DD after how he betrayed me. He threw it all away and it was his loss.”

I can truly believe that this is her logic because I have seen a pattern over the years with her friendships that have broken down. Friendships with people who were my ‘godparents’ and whom I had known all my life. DM felt utterly betrayed by me for remaining in contact with them, even though her personal fallings-out with them had nothing to do with me.

I’m a happy person and I grew up feeling very much loved, but of course there’s always been a void and a curiosity that has never been satisfied due to knowing nothing about my father. And now that I have recently become a mother myself, I just simply can’t comprehend the idea of ever denying my child the right to know who their father is/was. Even if (god forbid) my DH did something terrible or hurt me tremendously, I can confidently say I would never deny our child the right to (at the very least) know the identity of his father. I believe it is a birth right, and since becoming a parent myself I have really found it difficult to stomach my DM’s decision to keep me in the dark.

My DH has tried to convince DM to at least give me a nugget of information about my father, and last year she did admit to DH that she thought she may still have a photo of him somewhere that she could ‘possibly unearth’, but it never emerged.

So AIBU to think my DM has been selfish in starving me of any information regarding my father for my whole life? Or should I accept/respect her decision and assume she’s doing it with my best interests at heart (as she sees it)? Is it a parent’s right to deny their child knowledge of their other parent?

You can find him by testing at AncestryDNA plus, get help from someone to help interpret results and get closer to goal. Also try to get as much information from any wider family member/friend. Good luck.

@Iggly that’s awful, I’m so sorry. I hope you managed to find information out yourself x

Your post really resonates with me. My Cousin doesn't know who her father is, her mother (my aunt) was a selfish, self indulgent cow at the best of times. Move on 60 years, the father is dead, my aunt is dead, and all I can offer are the few small fragments my own mother told me about the whole sorry saga and my cousin has a mother she absolutely abhors and no name for a father. All we know is he was married but stayed in touch with my aunt until he predeceased her.

I'd be generous and say my aunt was protecting this married man, but it wasn't, it was a power game over her own mother, daughter and wider family.

I don't think anyone has the right to deny a child one half of their entire family, heritage and wider background - although I do realise this is what a lot of MN posters really drive home - leave him/don't give him access/don't put him on the birth certificate - which might be appropriate, but don't lie to your child either.

Thank you everyone for taking the time to share your support and suggestions.

I don’t want to go down the public humiliation route of appealing for information via social media, though the threat of it could perhaps work as an ultimatum to give DM one last chance to come clean with information.

If she still refuses to be forthcoming I’ll have to pursue the ancestry DNA/private investigator routes. I’ve grappled with it over the years, wondering whether I’m actually better off not knowing anything, or whether finding out might be opening Pandora’s Box... but I don’t think I’ll ever be able to put it to rest in my mind unless I get some sort of answers. I’m absolutely not expecting or hoping to establish any kind of relationship with him (if he turns out to still be alive) because, as PPs have pointed out, he clearly didn’t try that hard to be involved in my life in the first place. It’s simply a source of lifelong curiosity and mystery and I think I have a right to some basic information about who he was (or is, as it may be).

You can find him by testing at AncestryDNA plus only if anyone in close proximity has tested.

@Auramigraine thanks. I’ve not started looking yet but may do one day! I’m not quite ready yet.

YANBU. This is so unbelievably cruel. People need to know who their parents are. Apart from anything else what happens if as an adult someone enters into a relationship with someone who actually turns out to be their half sibling? With so many people in the world it's obviously a very slim chance, but it's not unheard of either and it causes devastation when they find out.

Could you get back in contact with your godmother and ask her? She might not care about keeping your mothers secret 10+ years later. Especially if you explain how you feel. What's your mum going to do? They've already fallen out...

@Iggly I’m so sorry you’ve been through similar. My DM would also hint at things but never give concrete answers, or hint at perhaps giving me information in future but nothing ever materialised. The revelation to my DH last year that she thought she actually still had a picture of my father somewhere (she had always told me she destroyed all traces of him after his betrayal) made me feel like she may somehow enjoy the manipulation and power of it all.

It is absolutely selfish of your mother, for whatever reasons, to hide this from you. For starters, you might imagine a human being far worse than he was or a human far better.

If he has done something terrible you have a right to know. These things have a habit of cropping up from sources your mother may not have expected.

It's very lovely that so many posters are saying the mother might be protecting her daughter from terrible things he has done but it is totally irrelevant. She is being unreasonable, no matter what noble reasons she may have. People deserve to know and process the information.

Had you been in your late 40s or 50s, then I would have thought your dm’s attitude would have been quite common. Fifty years ago, to have a child out of wedlock was shameful, and absent fathers weren’t considered part of the picture. No one even thought they should have a right to be involved, or the child needed to know who they were.

However, you are born in a different generation where everything is more open. I think you the gp may be the best source of information here, or family friends. Can you contact the godparents?

And I'm astounded that she is using the excuse that he cheated as a reason. That is the most minor reason I can think of for such extreme actions. I'm not sure I would be able to talk to my mother if she kept on refusing.

I think you should write it all down in a letter and hand it to her to read in her own time. When you ask someone in person about something difficult then it's easy to shut down and not give any information. If she has all your thoughts down on paper then she can acknowledge it, re-read it and have time for a better reply. Maybe give her the option of writing back to you if she finds it difficult to talk about. It takes the pressure off and I think you'd get more out of her.

@PlainSpeaking - re: AncestryDNA - you can identify parents from quite distant matches now. If you can source relevant people to test to edge closer. It can take a long while but it’s been done many times now in UK with UK parents , particularly if you already have the identity of one parent.

My mother did similar. I asked and I asked her for information and she kept saying she had contact details for him and his family but wouldn't pass them to me. It was a ploy to control me and keep me in contact with her. It didn't work. I went NC with her for the last twenty years of her life.

She also had form for controlling behaviour, abuse, and cutting people off, including her own family. She was no loss tbh.

Best of luck with the electoral roll/ancestry etc. I hope you find some answers.

It is your human right to know your parentage, I am allowed to contravene standard GDPR rules at work to provide access to records for this human right. Did she ever take him to court for maintenance?

Your mother is wrong to do this to you. My mum is very similar, I know the name of my biological father because he was on my original birth certificate but nothing more. She even told other family members not to ever speak of him to us or she would cut them off. Not knowing anything of our dad has had a huge impact on me and my younger sister. In my work as a psychotherapist I regularly encounter people with similar experiences - I don’t think many people grow up in circumstances like that without being harmed by it.

I can understand why my mum did it, her marriage to my father was deeply unhappy and her unmarried pregnancy then separation, divorce (and remarriage to the wonderful man who took the role of my dad from then on ) an absolute scandal in a Catholic family in the early 1960s. I understand why she wanted to bury those painful and shameful memories and pretend that all if it never happened but knowing how badly it has effected us I find it very hard to forgive her.

Good luck OP. I hope you find some of the answers you are looking for.

Can you go down the route of "I need to know more for medical history"?

Op I am In the same position as you . The identity of my father is like a state secret. My mother married my stepfather when I was very young and I grew up believing he was my father . In teenage years I started to question how we could be related and through a chance remark found out he was not my father. My mum was lovely but did not want to talk about it.
I asked all my family and close friends but nobody knew his identity. I began to wonder if he had done something terrible but I just wanted to know . It is like a missing piece of a jigsaw.
Through DNA I have found I am 50% South Asian and I have now found some distant relations so I hope a close match will come along.
Many times mothers on here say children don't need a father but it is so important to know where you came from if only basic information. My DH knows all his history and cannot understand my need to know. Good luck with your search OP . Feel free to PM me.

@Golden I am allowed to contravene standard GDPR rules at work to provide access to records for this human right

Who do you work for ?

if you sign up to Ancestry (free trial) you may find them on earlier electoral rolls as they have more records accessible than you can just find online.

@GoldenHour That’s interesting to know. She always says with pride that she never took a penny of child support from him or the government (and often reminds me of how much she sacrificed and suffered financially to give me a good upbringing, but that’s a whole other thread... ) so I’m not sure that would be a fruitful route to pursue.

With regards to my godmother, I have tried to remain in touch with her in my adult life but she also has narcissistic tendencies, and hasn’t responded to me for several years. She’s intensely private and seems to have gone off the radar. I learnt about a family tragedy she experienced through the national press a few years back, and tried to reach out to express my sympathies, but her number was disconnected and a letter I posted was returned to sender.

@PlainSpeakingStraightTalking the government (in this context though not strictly my employer) I look after magistrate court records.

Your mother sounds horrendous and I would not waste my time trying to placate her. It is a right, NOT a privilege to know who your parents are. I would get going with DNA stuff immediately. I feel cross on your behalf. Good luck.

I'm in exactly the same situation as Iggly.

However, I am now 50 and have now given up on ever finding out. I have had to move on. It makes me incredibly sad.