AIBU to not feel like my parents chosen grandchild is part of the family

[Happygoluckywifey]

I (32f) have two brothers, T(34m) and V(31). We come from a lower middle class family, but we’re all smart and V and I both graduated from university and live a stable live married with children.

V has had a drug problem in a very long time and has been living a very unstable life. Finally, he was arrested and is currently in prison.
Before he was arrested, he had a girlfriend Y(48f). Y has had a problem with alcohol and lost custody of her three children from three different dads to the respective grandparents.

Shortly after my brother T was arrested, Y realized she was pregnant and claimed T was the father. She thought about terminating the pregnancy but my parents J(62f) and E(63m) as deeply religious people talked her out of it. They supported her throughout the pregnancy, helped her find a small apartment, she got sober and gave birth to a baby girl S(8f). My parents who didn’t have any other grandchildren at that point, treated her like a grandchild and my brother V and I treated her as a niece, although we lived far away and din’t have much contact as she was still a baby.

When Y claimed child support, my brother questioned paternity and a DNA test was done through the court. The test came back negative, my brother T wasn’t the father.
When my parents learned about the test results , S was already 18 months old.
Y told us on Christmas Eve, although I later learned from my grandmother, that my parents had already known for months at that point and I felt manipulated by the timing of telling us. My brother V and me just nodded it off awkwardly back then.

My parents then just decided for themselves, they wanted to keep everything as it was and kept treating S as their grandchild.

My brother V and I have stopped calling us aunt or uncle but otherwise treat Y and S respectfully. They are friendly but don’t fit in very well with us, we have absolutely nothing in common. They are at every family gathering at my parents place, every family holiday. My parents have S stay with them for weeks on end during summer breaks.
Just when my grandmother, my brother or my husband and I are hosting, we don’t invite them, which causes tension with my parents.
Now my brother and I have both had kids who are started getting attached to S and I feel like I have to make a decision to embrace them or not and what to tell S and my children who they are to each other.

I don’t want to punish S since it’s not her fault she doesn’t have family but I also think it was wrong of my parents to push this on us.
So AIBU to feel like S and Y are not part of the family ?

Your parents sound absolutely amazing.

Not sure why you're not embracing and including this little girl. So what if her mums a bit different to you? It's so so hurtful to be shunned by family, and yes she has become part of your family. This girl will really feel that rejection growing up.

This girl is FAMILY!

Spot on

They have adopted someone informally as their granddaughter, nothing to do with all their friends....they could also decide that their birth family are so horrible that they disown them and choose to exclude them in disgust from family gatherings.

I think it's money and inheritance

@Happygoluckywifey

You seem to be ignoring the fact that your parents, through their religious zeal, put Y in this situation. She was going to terminate the pregnancy and they talked her out of it based on their religious beliefs. They may (rightly IMHO) feel an obligation to her because, in essence, they determined the course of her life. And chances are they promised her they'd 'see that she was alright' as part of their convincing. That promise didn't end because of DNA results. It continues because the basis of that promise was religion, not relationship.

I live in a country where 'right to life' religious zealots are very vociferous that no woman should be allowed to terminate a pregnancy no matter what the circumstances, but they are dead silent when it comes to actually providing support for a woman who decides not to terminate due to their rhetoric. Your parents are simply practicing what they preached. I respect them for that.

You are a horrible person and a terrible snob !

I don’t think you understand about being a doormat. You’re not putting yourself out by including this child and her Mother to family events a handful of times per year.

You sound vile , treating a child in this way. You say you’re “highly educated “but your post is incomprehensible. You say the child has nothing in common with you , that’s a blessing for her.
Hopefully your own children will inherit their Grandparents personalities and form positive , healthy relationships not ostracise the most vulnerable in their lives.

Sorry I don't get this! V had a girlfriend Y but she claimed your other brother T was the father of her child?? And they've both been in prison??

Behave yourself. I had an 'aunt' who was in a similar position to this baby. She died alone due alcoholism. It's not the child's fault, and you've abandoned her.

It seems like you may be over confident in your being highly educated, given the way you write!

Can you write so badly in a second language? If you'd read all of the OP's post you would have seen that English is not her first language!

I agree the OP maybe doesn't come across so well, but I do actually feel rather sorry for her and her brother.

It does sound like their parents have directed their attention elsewhere for their entire lives, and this woman and child are just the latest. It's complicated by the fact that the parents interfered regarding an abortion and the child undoubtedly benefits from their input, but that doesn't take away the lack that OP and her brother still feel.

I know you said you would not return to the thread OP, but just in case you do, I agree, it's not fair. But you can't change your parents and somehow you and your brother need to make your peace with the parents you have and the best of the times you get to spend with them.

No, you don't have to have Y and S to all of the events you host, although if S is staying with your parents at the time of any of those events then I guess you would have to have her along and make her welcome. And I agree with others who say to describe S and Y as family friends.

I disagree that the parents are amazing or whatever other superlatives others have used to describe them.

They pressured a woman to keep a baby because of their own religious beliefs. That isn't amazing.

That aside, they clearly believed that this was their biological grandchildren. Whilst the paternity test must have been a shock for them, the child was 18 months old at this point. Thinking about my child at this age, if I discovered he had been switched at birth he would 100% still be my son. So I can understand why they have continued to treat her as their grandchild.

That doesn't mean that you need to feel the same familial bond towards the child, however. Going against the grain of many others here, I can totally understand why this situation makes you feel uncomfortable. You need to respect that your parents will want to include the child and her mum at their family occasions, but that doesn't mean that you need to include them in yours. The fact you don't live close makes it somewhat easier to maintain a healthy distance.

I think it's more concerning what happens when your brother returns from prison. Will your parents expect him to play happy families with a child who isn't his? That's not healthy for anyone.

Poor child. She been part of a family for 8 years. You sounds childish and selfish. There's an 8 year old in the middle of this. Your dp are better people than you. You could learn from them

You could say exactly the same about a child that was related to you, if your other brother had a child that you barely saw would you begrudge them too as you hadn’t bonded with them? Would you have the same issue with a child adopted into the family too?

You sound like you are jealous of this child. Perhaps you wanted your child to be the 1st grandchild and are sore that they are not perceived this way.

Your parents and your children get along with this child and care for her, it seems like there is only you with a problem.

Strangers???????

This is the oddest thing I ever heard of un my life.
So your brother briefly had a relationship with a woman who became pregnant and said the father was your brother and that's a lie and everyone wants to know why you don't love her.
Now we all want to love kids amd all that
But my God, stop with the fakeness people, why on earth should OP love this child and say that they are cousins to her kids?
They are categorically not!
Bizaare story and she's nothing more than a family friend that your parents chose to adopt instead of focusing on their own grandkids
Simples
But now that she is part of your family
Treat her as an adopted grandchild I guess
Very weird

T, V, S, Y - very hard to follow 🤣

I was really trying to make the point that she comes over very condescending. She can’t get on with her because she’s less intelligent! That speaks volumes about the sort of person she is, she comes across as jealous of a young child and the relationship her parents have with a little girl who has hardly anyone else. She should be thinking what wonderful people her parents are. All she has to do is put up with it now and again for a few hours, how hard can it be?

Even op couldn't follow it - she mixed them up half way through.

What I say now I saw with love and without judgement and the words I use are simply the only words I can think of the describe my idea accurately.
Could it possibly be because you have spent your childhood verging on being neglected by your parents and so spent your adult life gaining qualifications, an education, a husband, a good home life, children all the things you thought your parents value in an attempt to get them to ‘notice you’ and praise you and yet none of it worked and they perhaps criticise you still as they did when you were a child and yet here is a ‘nobody’ no blood relation, no fancy person with a title or money and in fact they are the other way, not very intelligent, not great company or conversationalist etc etc and yet your parents think the sun shines out of this child/mother? Perhaps they praise the child? Help the mother? Take them away for holidays or help with childcare and spend quality time with the child all the things they maybe didn’t do with you?
and now to top it all by forcing you to include this child it maybe feels like they are putting this child before you? Putting what this ‘nobody’ wants before what you, there own daughter, wants?
you obviously consider a stable family life, manners education etc to be important and you want to make your parents proud so have sought these things out. Yet here is a nobody that has got every opportunity and yet is the opposite of what you have/have achieved?
(apologies for grammar and spelling I’m writing this by voice note while I breastfeed the baby)

I see where you're coming from OP. It's a strange situation. The whole Disneyfied "family is what we make it" thing only works if literally everybody is playing along.

My cousin's ex wife has no family left, so his mother - my aunt - still invites her to every family function, even though she never could hold a conversation to save her life. She got a new man and I thought oh good, she's starting to build something for herself. She started bringing the new man and his brood along to our family functions as well! A lot of us are nonplussed, but I'm glad she and my aunt have a bond I suppose. (Cousin's not delighted but maybe he shouldn't have left his mum to pick up so much of the slack during his marriage, everything from DIY to financial help.)