Son has got girl pregnant - not engaging with situ

[WillfredJohn]

My 19 year old son met a girl briefly at a party and she is now pregnant. She’s a touch younger than my son and is in care.

Where my son has led a charmed life, the girl has not. She’s had a tough series of life experiences that had resulted in her being put into care, all through no fault of her own.

They’re not together, having seen each other for just a single weekend and she reached out several weeks after finding out she is pregnant. As it was a causal fling, my son, has since been dating someone else. It’s been about 3 months with his GF but any mention of the baby and he becomes very withdrawn. The GF has known the baby situ from the start.

He’s not been the most communicative and my wife and I have since built a solid relationship with mother to be. I really like her - she’s smart, tenacious, and fiercely independent. As you can imagine from someone who has been let down a lot in life, she finds it hard to ask for help. Recently she was very poorly during the later stages of her pregnancy and my wife and I stepped in to ensure she was properly taken care of.

During this instance - I asked her to stay at our house, much to frustration of my son. He struggles to talk to her and I think is very intimidated by both her and the situation.
Being vocal about being uncomfortable that she’s staying at our house.

I keep having big arguments with him because I really want him to rise to the challenge, buts he’s not being emotionally available or supportive. His current GF is quite needy also I believe is behind some of his reluctance to engage - fearing it will be the end of their relationship.

How do I get him to take an interest? I’ve tried the softly approach and even the very hard approach, which resulted in me and him having a major altercation.

There’s only 2 months of the pregnancy left and he’s so far been absent from scans or any hospital appointments - he’s also not bought anything or saved any money to help. I fear he’s happy to sit back and let my wife and I do everything whilst he hides at his GFs.

I’d really welcome any advice on this - as I’m increasingly really worried.

Your son is not mature enough to deal with the situation, and you can’t force him to engage, at a later date he may change his mind. At that point he will rely on the good will of the child’s mother for the amount of access. As grandparents all you can do is build a positive and supportive relationship with the new mother.. this is the start of a lifetime journey for you all and the seeds you plant now will dictate the relationship you have with your grandchild. Your son will have to contribute child support and it should be done formally (dont do it informally), your son will try and hide from his responsibilities, but he won’t be able to and it will blight his future. How he treats this young mother now will set the tone for their relationship in the future and he will have to live with that consequence. You will have to remain neutral like Switzerland, you are going to see some behaviour on both sides that you do not like…. Remain focused on keeping good relations for the sake of your grandchild… be prepared for other boyfriends and possibly other children. Your son will spend his life ‘hard up ’ and unable to afford a new girlfriend.

this is a bleak picture and i can only advise to focus on what you can influence and control. Your son is now a man (though immature) and will make decisions today that will impact his future…. But yes will probably not accept your wise council.. your son needs to be aware people dont remember what you did or didn’t do… but they never forget how you made them feel.

The speculation regarding paternity seems a bit irrelevant in all honesty. A) help has already started B) no one has suggested the baby is not his.

your son sounds extremely immature. You sound lovely. I would echo what PP said and tell him either he leaves to make room for your grandchild or he shares your home with them.

I’d love to be a fly on the wall at the new girlfriend’s family’s house. I’m sure they’re thrilled that their barely adult daughter is in a relationship with a dosser that’s knocked someone up and is running from responsibility!

I would most definitely be supporting my son not somebody who sadly has made a dreadful decision that she will regret and pay for for the rest of her life but is entitled to a massive amount of support from the state.
Whilst you’ve been terribly kind and very very generous to this person, your son is your son and it’s him. I would be pouring the supporting into personally.

I take your point but that has been the message to men for generations.

This^

This. 100%. From the off OP described him as having lived a charmed life. I suspect this girl is a project OP has taken on very much at the expense of her own son, and with no thought as to whether the baby is actually his.

Two wrongs don’t make a right. Especially if it results in an unwanted child.

I know a family who helped look after a grandchild after a girlfriend turned up saying it was his son’s. The son wasn’t interested and had a new girlfriend. It was a similar situation to yours except they were older. After a couple of years the son took a dna test and the child was not his. It was a sad situation all round. I would start with the dna test.

For a start there needs to be a DNA test, at this point your son (or you and your wife) have no idea if the baby is his or not. That's not being critical or nasty towards the Mother, it's sensible. It may be your son isn't engaging because he's not sure he's the Dad. Once it's established he is, it's possible he may decide he wants to be more involved. However, if he doesn't, there isn't much you can do to force him. He clearly doesn't want to be a Dad, it was unplanned and he's had no say regarding the continued pregnancy. He's 19, most likely scared witless, doesn't want to lose his current girlfriend and is burying his head in the sand. At the very least, if he's working, he needs to be paying child support. He's not in a relationship with the Mum, so it's likely very awkward for him to attend appointments with her, given that he doesn't really know her - does she even want him there??! As others have said, it's wonderful that you and your wife have stepped in to help the Mum, but she needs to access support available to her, and as she was in Care, there should be some. There's nothing wrong in you helping, but you need to do this at a distance. Moving her into your home, would have made your son feel very uncomfortable and he might have felt like you were trying to push him into a relationship with her, because she's pregnant. Your priority is a DNA test.

Agree with all of these points.
You and your wife sound very intense and will look a bit foolish if the baby isn’t your sons.

If you want a relationship with your grandchild , then l can see why you are behaving in this way towards the mother of said grandchild . However your son is only 19 and may see this as you betraying him imho. It's a very difficult position for you to be in @WillfredJohn l really don't know what l would do if it were my grandchild . Wishing you all the very best.

I think you sound like lovely people but with attitude from the previous century and very misguided. Two people made this baby. Both of them could have easily prevented this baby, barring a condom failure. One of them had not one but two opportunities, one the next day, one lasting several months, to abort this baby but made a unilateral decision to keep it.

And yet you have moved a girl with whom he had a one night stand into his home to attempt to force him into your vision of parenthood.

To be honest the person I feel most sorry for here is your son. I'm sorry, because you do sound lovely, but I'm afraid you are coming across, to me, as excited to have a grandchild on the way more than caring for your son.

DNA test.
I feel for your DS he’s so young to have this happening in his life.

Why is it irrelevant ? They had a one night stand and hardly know each other - perfectly possible it wasn’t her first or last. Yet everyone has assumed he’s responsible and moved heaven and earth to accommodate her. It may well be his baby, but help shouldn’t have started until that was established. And kicking the lad out of his own home to accommodate a situation he doesn’t want is batshit, and totally unnecessary. The girl will have local authority support if she’s still in care, the boy and his family can provide additional child support - should the baby be proved to be his.

I would also be wary of moving her in. I don’t think that is realistic. If she has been in care and doesn’t have family support, what is set up for her when she has the baby? Is she eighteen yet? Surely social workers are involved. She would be supported with appointments etc and also preparing for the baby and providing things she needs. Where is she living? She might go to a mother and baby home or temporary foster care. (I know a young girl in care who went through this.) I would be supporting what is already in place rather than having her stay with you. Is her staying with you even ‘allowed?’ Do social services know you are involved with her?

Why are there so many of these "My son knocked up a random girl" threads just now? There have been at least 3 in the last week.

I am for me, personally, but not for other people. Her body, her choice whether to put herself through a termination or a pregnancy.

A girl who grew up in care will value the family connection with her baby. She has been, in some way, discarded by the people who should have loved her. She may well struggle with discarding a potential child.

I’m not approving her choice, but I do approve her right to make the decision.

He doesn’t have to play happy families. He does need to start to process his situation, which is that he will potentially have a connection to his ONS for 18 years- and more, if he has any physical presence in his child’s life.

I think it’s good OP is supporting the girl, that a paternity test is needed, AND that OP needs to be very clear with their son that they aren’t rejecting him. They need to support all the parties in this sad situation.

A very similar situation to this one happened in our extended family, and the grandparents handled it brilliantly. Their son was young so they understood that he wasn't yet ready to step up and be a dad, but they basically took the grandchild under their wing on his behalf.

Years later after their son had grown up a bit he was ready to step into his father role, which was much easier since the grandparents had continued contact and built a relationship on his behalf in the meantime. So sounds like you're doing great!

I don't think there's much you can do to get him to step up, but you're already doing the most important things which will (a) keep that door open for your son for when he's ready to step into his role a father (he's still young and likely terrified, but he will hopefully get there one day) and (b) supporting your grandchild and their mother, who sounds very vulnerable

I agree a DNA test is sensible, but I don't see any harm was done by the op helping a pregnant woman when she was poorly.

I think op if you have tried coming down hard and tried softly softly you can't try anything more - and reiterations of the same approaches might do more harm than good. Ultimately you cannot force him.

Well done for supporting her, but do follow up with a DNA before people's attitudes and feelings get too entrenched. It doesn't mean you have to drop her like a brick, but it's better people know where the realities lie.

Whilst I admire you supporting the girl, you risk losing your son here. This is likely to accelerate the relationship with his current girlfriend. She may or may not be the love of his life, but whilst he feels uncomfortable in his own home and he spends more time with her he may end up staying in that relationship out of convenience or even getting her pregnant too. He may be resentful towards you and so may the girlfriend. I would be supporting the mother to be from a distance.

What absolutely terrible advice. Please do not push your son even further away from you. This is a sure fire way to end your relationship with him.

You shouldn’t have had her to stay. Don’t permanently damage your relationship with your son. Support your grandchild and their mum financially, practically and emotionally but do not do so by throwing your relationship with your own baby in the bin.

Good grief, it’s one thing being kind, it’s another thing pouring all your help and support into a complete stranger and alienating your son. His behaviour around this may not be the best, but even if he suddenly decides to be a part of his child’s life or even at the very least accepts financial responsibility, he will quite possibly never forget how his parents tried to manipulate him and placed the welfare of someone else above that of their own son. There are plenty of ways to be kind and helpful without going to the extreme of moving her into your home. I’m completely flabbergasted at this. And also at the number of posters here who seem to think it’s a good thing.

I cant think of the official term for this sort of behaviour but there is a name for it

OP being really generous and caring to a complete stranger while basically ostracising their own child. Clearly they care more what strangers think of them being a saviour of sorts and don't care if people think badly of their son, as long as they look like good caring people

The OP's behaviour stinks of somthing I can't quite put my finger on but I don't trust it

It's not 'totally on him'. She consciously chose to have the baby. Yes, 'her body, her choice' and all that, but a teenager in the care system surely isn't in the best position to become a mother. She's now going to tied up with serious responsibility until the age of 35. And 'don't have sex' is a ridiculous argument. Would you say that to a woman who'd been date raped or killed by a partner? Don't date men if you don't want to get raped or murdered.

I'm half of the opinion that if a woman wants to have the baby against the wishes of the father he should be able to opt out entirely, on the condition that he has nothing to do with the child. If he changes his mind ten years down the line then he has to pay the backlog of child support he would've paid.

My friend was dating a girl who was apparently on the pill. Bit of an odd couple as he was a pretty poorly paid mechanic and she was a high flying exec. Seemed like chalk and cheese to me. But everything seemed fine until she suddenly became pregnant. He totally believed her but it all seemed a bit suspicious when she dumped him shortly after getting pregnant, and one of her mates also let slip that she'd been on the adoption list all along.

Fast forward a couple of years she tells him she'd like another child but would rather it be with the same father. He initially said no way, but being a bit of a soft touch she managed to talk him round, saying she felt bad about how she'd acted and it was all the hormones etc.

They got back together and she kicked him out again as soon as she was pregnant with the second. 😂 Thankfully, he's a good father and absolutely loves his kids, but no doubt he was played like a fiddle. People have asked him why he didn't wear a condom but he said the pill is supposed to be 99% effective and it's not like he was going to tell his partner he didn't trust her. Tbf he did trust her and never thought she'd use him as an unwilling sperm donor.

Men should be more vigilant and take precautions but let's not pretend there aren't some women that happily have children for selfish reasons knowing that the father never wanted this. They should accept the consequences of their actions.

She's in care so her social worker should be sorting out a suitable place to live. Get her to contact them for an appointment. I don't think she should be living at your house?! You're drinking your son away! When the baby's born, make sure you do a dna test to ensure it is your son's. You can still support her while she's independent, you shouldn't make her dependent on you as it will continue forever.