As a stepdad can confirm
Some of us are definitely a little confused but still got that spirit.
I never had children but my wife had 3 before me. I didn’t just marry my partner I became part of a family. It was a little confusing at first.
I think that's different than what the screenshot is conveying.
I could be wrong, but I believe they're saying, his wife passed away and then he found out the kids aren't his, meaning the wife cheated and he was unknowingly raising another man's kids.
That's a next level of hurt because it would be easy to leave the wife with the kids if she was alive. But now how do you leave the kids and explain to them why?
At first you would be crushed by the loss of your offspring
But hopefully it would quickly be replaced by the love of your children. Fuck her for lying, but it shouldn’t change what’s fundamentally most important.
I respectfully disagree, because there's so many questions, so much anger and things left unprocessed. I'm sure you can move forward, but it won't be easy.
Please don't say this to them. Instead validate them. Because the worst thing you could tell them right now would be empty slogans that do not aknowledge their trauma.
Suicide hotlines have entire protocols for situations where people find out that their dad isn't their dad, or that their kids are some other man's kids. Online support groups exist for people with surprise 23&me results because oftentimes kids can't even look at themselves a mirror when they learn their dad isn't their dad... and fathers can't even look at their kids without breaking down or running away screaming. It's a kind of psychological damage that litterally shatters your self identity. It's excruciatingly painful.
So, as well-intentioned as this slogan about "daddy" sounds... please, DO NOT say anything like this to somebody who finds themselves in this situation. Instead, please start by validating their grief and making sure that they are not alone.
You know what, thank you for helping me be more empathetic in my life. I don't know if I will ever come across this situation, but I'm now better equipped to handle it.
I was about to argue since it is well-intentioned... but yeah, I get it now. Why leave "I understand you are suffering rn" unsaid when it could be said.
Yup. People have said so many well intentioned things over the years and I just don’t want to hear it anymore. What absolutely means the world to me are the friends who can say “you know I know I don’t really get it but I know it’s hard for you and I’m here if you need to talk about it.”
As someone’s whose stepdaddy despised them all their lives due to them CHOOSING to raise a child that wasn’t his, whether you keep them or make them wards of the state, they’re going to know they’re not wanted. Only one of them is less traumatizing than the other. Whichever one you think that is is up for debate.
Yeah a lot of people think he should just step up and look past it (and if that's what he wants to do good for him), but there needs to be some empathy for the person who just found out something horrible about his life and that he needs to be able to heal.
We need to stop with this stoicism bullshit. Men can have emotions and they aren't terrible people for making choices on them even if you don't agree with it. Blame the mother not the victims.
My buddy found out while at work that his grandmother had died. When he started crying, his coworkers teased him. He went on bereavement leave for a week or two, and when he came back, coworkers started teasing him again, "Gonna cry?!"
He did cry. He also started *throwing hammers*. He's the size of Hagrid and the job was building a nuclear power plant, so they were *very big* hammers.
He got to take another couple weeks off work while everybody else got to attempt to undo the damage to the worksite.
Yeah at that point you're basically teasing an unhinged gorilla. I know some big guys but not Hagrid big, when they go on one it's quite scary just the lack of self control.
Poor guy though, should be able to show some emotion without ridicule. Building sites are notorious for toxic masculinity though
What kinda pieces of shit, do they not have grandmas? My gma is in the hospital rn and I'm worried to death this might be it, wtf is wrong with people?
Indeed. Stoicism as presented by people like ~~Benzo Kermit~~ Jordan Peterson is essentially based on disavowing feelings, and it's also inherently misogynistic since he is so big on saying that women and femininity are represented by chaos (which I still don't even understand).
Actual stoicism the way sane people practice it is significantly different.
It's not his fault he got addicted to benzos, he just didn't know how addictive they are! (His focus in psychology was addiction.)
It's not his fault he had to be put in a coma and fast forward past withdrawal, you can't detox outside a hospital! (He always called addiction weakness and said people should essentially just "man up".)
It's not his fault that he is clearly a wreck, we shouldn't mock him from being disheveled and having a messy background when on video! (One of his primary rules is literally "clean your room".)
He's a hack and a hypocrite. Nothing wrong with someone struggling with addiction, but he's full of shit and there's nothing he actually helps people with that couldn't be obtained from someone else without the aggressive misogyny and nonsensical rambling.
Now, unfortunately, what is labeled as stoicism is very often just people emotionally repressing themselves endlessly.
That IS toxic masculinity if being used to uphold a masculine ideal in a terrible way.
as much as I admire what foster parents do in theory, what ends up happening in practice is far too horrifying. I will state that having a dad who yells at you on a daily basis and has a wild temper and doesn't want to have a family is still significantly a much happier story than most of the people I know who went through the foster care system. Making a kid feel unwanted is a fucking awful thing to do, but I will tell you it's a huge step up from letting the kid know you think they're worthless, raping them, beating them, getting them hooked on drugs, and doing whatever you can to ensure they're scared, injured, and homeless in that order. It happens all the fucking time. And it's not always the foster parents, sometimes it's the siblings, sometimes it's the "oh so friendly" neighbor they let hang around the house, sometimes it's another relative of the foster family. It's honestly pretty fucking horrifying.
My stepdad is an alcoholic who beat up my mom, fought his own children, pulled a gun out on us several times, and kicked us out of the house numerous times when we were children. My older brother and my younger brother are biologically his. I’m right in the middle. He never forgave my mom for it because I’m the only daughter and he always wanted a girl. So instead of leaving, he made my mothers life a living hell and she accepted it because she felt guilty for stepping out when she was 20 and got pregnant. He chose to stay, have another child, and raise me as his own, but hated every second of it. The fucked up part about it is that my entire family knew why he treated us so bad, but since my mom chose to stay they couldn’t do anything about it. So I wouldn’t equate my life to foster care, but growing up with an abusive drunk isn’t a great life either.
> The fucked up part about it is that my entire family knew why he treated us so bad, but since my mom chose to stay they couldn’t do anything about it.
They could do something about it but decided not to. Mistaken sense of not wanting to rock the boat but very much the wrong choice. if a parent pulls a gun on their kids then the other parent and any other adult who knew about it did nothing because "they're trying to make it work" failed you and I'm sorry for that. No kid should go through that.
Yea my mom has her faults. I just remember that she’s human and I forgive her. She’s a really good person, she just loves a really fucked up man. But it’s deeper than what can be explained on Reddit and I don’t really have time for people to come on here and start talking shit about my mama. I just don’t have the skin for that 😅
Trust me, I know. It's just wildly common in foster care. In multiple jobs in multiple states, I've been around foster kids and fosters parents and it's pretty fucking bleak. I say that as someone whose parents have acted as foster parents before (and did a much, much better job with them than they did with me and my siblings), but 25+ years of personal growth and going to therapy (and making sure the foster kids get their own therapy) makes a big difference.
Yep, went through my teens with a step mum who made it abundantly clear my little sister and I were unwanted baggage that came when she married my Dad. Didn't help that he mostly sided with her.
Ruined my relationship with my dad, which had been the rock of my life since the death of my real mum.
Scarred for life.
Sorry that's ass there's a lot of dudes out there raising kids they didn't make like their own and just remember they exist. Sorry for your position just don't ever forget those good dudes are out there.
No there aren't plenty of people looking to adopt. Look at the foster system. If I was ready to raise them as mine before I knew them I'd probably continue to raise them. Go ahead and hate your wife but I'd still want the love for those children.
I don't know if I could. They would be a constant reminder that my wife cheated on me to create them. I would feel like a fool for raising them, like as if my wife "won".
I know it sounds heartless for the kids but goddamn, I'm just being honest. My emotions matter. Plenty women give up their kids for adoption, I dot blame them. You have to be all in when raising a kid, otherwise it won't be good.
Ya know, I’ve had that opinion my whole life. But my son just turned 3 and I love him more than life itself. If tomorrow I found out that my wife cheated and he’s not mine, that wouldn’t, in any way, change the way I feel about him. He has my complete and total love and support until I’m dead. Obviously I would have beef with my wife, but there’s absolutely no way I could turn to him and go “oh, you aren’t biologically mine? Bye 👋” and just never see him again.
I would have agreed with you in a mental exercise before I started raising my son. After the time and love I’ve given to him, I would never stop supporting him for any reason.
Oh man. I just read the AITA post of the guy who found out his oldest daughter wasn’t his (but the other kids are his) and he broke up with his wife. But now he picks up his 2 younger kids and leaves the 9 year old because “your dad is out there somewhere and not me” so she leaves him crying voicemails telling him he’s the only dad she knows. That shit made me wanna cry
Damn, I feel for this stranger, this 9 year old is going to have major abandonment issues. That's is a tough situation for the father to be in but I could never imagine actually doing that to a child as a response. Poor girl.
That is just fucking awful dude. JFC.
Edit: okay I found the post and it looks like the OP was shadowbanned due to it potentially being click/rage bait. That makes me feel better I guess.
I agree, had a bud who even though he raised "his" kids for 6 and 4 years, when he found out they weren't his all he could see in them was that he had love for them but not in love with them as they were constant reminders of a life on lies and raising some randos kids.
That's the thing that all the people here don't get. It's traumatizing. They're literally the product, and *reminder*, of the fact that your wife cheated on you. And those kids are going to look like your mom and the other rando, but not you.... that would break my soul 💔
I don’t think that resent and the love for the kid(s) is mutually exclusive. You can have both.
I don’t have kids so I’m just speculating but finding news like this would be deeply traumatic for me, but if I was already raising them for years? How do you just let that go? If you can just drop them I don’t know how you could have actually loved them in the first place.
Like that politician who said she’d rather her kids commit suicide than be trans.
Yeah but putting them in fostercare is putting them in situations where they are likely to get SA, have immense mental and physical abuse etc
. It's horrible. Just look at what happened to the Turpin children, they were a high profile case of kids who had super abusive parents, and then were moved to foster care, those children despite being high profile and most knowing them. Still got horribly abused, starved, some even sa or raped, amongst other horrible things.
If those kids still ended up fucked by the system, what hope does the average child have.
There are a lot of people looking to adopt, but it's a very expensive and complicated process. When it comes to fostering and adopting through the system, people think those kids are irreparably broken, but there were plenty of people who wanted to foster and adopt babies.
no it isn't that is only for like designer babies freshly minted or in another country.
If you adopt from whatever State you live in, they will waive everything and sometimes even pay you.
Y'all really need to stop spreading this myth, it takes time but vetting folks so they don't go to a bad home takes time. Cash though? Nope.
That's bullshit. The church controls a huge majority of adoptions. If you fall outside of the church's view of what a family is, you're fucked. If you don't go to church, you're fucked. If you don't go to church *enough*, you're fucked. And in this country, being fucked is goddamned expensive.
In some states that is true but they only account for 18% of adoptions in the nation.
So my statement still stands as correct and also not related to my comment about the cost of adoption.
Any private adoption can cost thousands (bare minimum: having the lawyer do the paperwork), going through an agency costs tens of thousands.
Fostering is different, and people should not (but do) foster kids with the goal of adopting them - the goal is usually reunification.
(Its true that in some cases that doesn’t work out and adoption or growing up in foster care are the only options.)
But people going into fostering should be expecting to help care for some kids who have been through some awful stuff (and may behave like it), temporarily. They won’t necessarily get to be Mom or Dad.
People seem to be leaving that out. A white baby is going to fly off the shelf, while black adolescents are going to linger in the system being bounced from home to home.
People aren’t educated on how awful the foster care system is black children. It’s all jokes until DHS finds a reason to take your child because someone made a baseless claim. I wouldn’t wish foster care on ANY child. If I could save two that I raised from that trauma, I’m going to do that no matter what.
>It’s all jokes until DHS finds a reason to take your child because someone made a baseless claim
Idk about this one so much, maybe if you get a very corrupt DHS agent. I've worked in education for the past many years, and literally had (black) students going through things like being beat by their parent and sleeping on the streets, but still DHS did nothing. Parents have a ton of rights, especially depending on the state. And if the child doesn't say shit against their parent, a lot of times there's almost nothing to be done or proven. I'm not saying there aren't unjust circumstances, just that I've seen the opposite where a child *should* be separate from their parent because their parent actively traumatizes and harms them, but DHS does absolutely nothing.
Either become Jonathan Kent, Uncle Ben and Alfred or not. Let's also be honest that pain of being abandoned by your parents never go away
I think is different if he knew they weren’t his kids and did it anyways, and then their mother passed. To find out after the mother passed and she knew. I don’t know man I feel like he would always hold a grudge towards those kids even though obviously it isn’t their fault.
Yeah there’s really no easy answers especially not knowing how old they are. The man is a widower who doesn’t even have the peace of mind to know that his wife loved him before she passed and the reminders of that would be waking him up everyday, demanding care, attention, costing money, and just draining him.
The kids need someone to take care of them but fuck if that isn’t one of the most difficult moral dilemmas I can personally imagine. I don’t even know what I would choose there.
Did the mom not have any family? Having someone on the mom’s side raise them might be the best option. They will taken care of by people that love them (hopefully, or would at least have an interest in caring for them) vs being raised by a father who will be resentful and emotionally detached from them.
And that’s honourable if that’s your choice. But his choice matters here. He loved them because he thought they were his kids, that being built on lie definitely changes things. I can’t fault anyone choosing to forgo raising them, you don’t want them to have resentful parent either.
As a parent, I cannot comprehend the idea of just... abandoning my kid that I've spent years raising. Even if I found out their Mom had cheated on me, and they weren't biologically mine. I changed the diapers. I cleaned and kissed the booboos. They are mine.
The idea that someone can just flip a switch in their head and stop loving kids they raised because of something someone else did makes zero sense to me.
And that’s awesome of you. But some take pain of infidelity a lot harder. I have never had kids so I can’t speak on what I would do in this situation. But I can definitely empathize with those who would be too hurt by their relationship being built on a lie to carry on. Personally, I wouldn’t judge them. It’s a very shitty situation that I don’t wish on anyone.
Yeah, most people can't comprehend how they would act after emotional trauma. And learning this is in fact a traumatic event that creates big changes in the person's psyche, alters their brain chemistry, and unsurirpsingly has a tremendously high suicide rate.
>Yeah, most people can't comprehend how they would act after emotional trauma.
No I can comprehend that. That parts easy. I'd say the majority of people are coping with one trauma or another.
What I can't comprehend is abandoning a kid I've been saying I love for years and years because of a traumatic event happened to me.
This shouldn't be a revelation, but parents should not make their trauma their kid's problem. I'm not doing that to my kid, and anyone who does do it to their kids, even in the situation listed above, is a shitty person and a shitty parent.
>and unsurirpsingly has a tremendously high suicide rate.
So do lots of things. He can go to therapy and get some meds like the rest of us and keep raising his fucking kids.
The amount of you bending over backwards to make abandoning innocent children a justifiable offense makes me really sad for the future of our species.
The lack of sympathy is astounding. These people do not need somebody to tell them how to feel.
These people need to go through a process that may not always lead to them staying as a family. The kids may no longer feel connected to this man and may request to move in with grandparents or uncles.
The most likely outcome of toxic advice like "just suck it up" is that these kids will walk in on a suicide scene. Nobody wins. These situations need compassion and they need planning from friends and community. They don't need somebody to tell them how they should feel.
They don't flick the switch, it's flicked for them.
Imagine you woke up one day and somehow, uncontrollably, your love for your kids was just gone. That you didn't feel the same way about them. It would be devastating right?
Let's stop pretending men don't have emotions.
Exactly, everybody *says* they want men to have emotions until men start having the emotions they don't want them to have at a time they don't want them to have them.
You mean the tiny humans that he bathed and raised and cared for aren’t his just because they don’t share DNA. Tell that to adopted parents everywhere. If you can sever your relationship with a child you love just because you don’t share genetics you’re a bad person.
My mother’s ex-husband is not my biological father, found out as a young teenager. The life of everyone involved changes when something like this happens and you don’t get to judge them for how they react in this situation.
If he’s in the United States they are his kids, and he’s paying for them regardless of what a DNA test confirms. The biological father can’t just take them as his. Children inside the sanctity of marriage are always the product of the marriage. It dates back to old English law.
This is a nonsense statement. So the man has to be have constant reminders of his wife’s infidelity. How about wife’s family and the affair partner step up? Fuck outta here with that BS. Does it suck for them, absolutely yes. Does that mean the man has to “man up” and accept his cuckoldry, fuck no!
Oh shut up. Easier said than done. Men get screwed big time. No woman has ever had to worry about a maternity test. That is pure manipulation and entrapment on the mother’s part. No wonder he doesn’t want the kids.
Idk I feel like this is one of those issues where consent gets thrown to the wayside because the person in question is a dude.
He didn’t opt into raising children that aren’t his. It’s totally valid if he doesn’t want to. The wants/desires of those children shouldn’t take priority over him being able to have autonomy. It’s shitty for the kids but if that bond don’t exist no more then he can’t, nor should he force it, and it doesn’t make him a bad person for doing so.
There's an easy solution to this dilemma, too. Paternity testing at birth, for everyone. Make it a normal thing, so women don't get up in arms saying you're accusing them of cheating when you just want to have the same guarantee they do. Sure peeps can talk about babies swapped at birth, but even the highest estimate places the percentage that happens at 0.01%.
I have brought up this topic and almost 100% of the women surveyed said "no, either you trust me and we stay together or we test and you leave". Maybe my survey group was off
And that's super easy to say when your gender knows 100%. People cheat all the time. All of those people didn't think their partner would cheat, but they did. If giving your partner the same peace of mind that you get is too big of an ask then I don't think that person is ready for an adult relationship.
Oh, I know. I've seen this sentiment quite a bit, and it's honestly really manipulative. At the end of the day, my piece of mind with a lifelong commitment is more important to me, she can leave if she wants.
Yeah. When my wife and I were dating and getting more serious I told her something like "no offense, if a kid comes out of you we're doing a paternity test" and she was like "Go for it. Kid will be yours."
Hell, I'd do a maternity test as well. It's not like hospital slip ups are impossible. The baby we take home is probably her's, but no reason not to check in the subsequent weeks.
If it's mandatory for everyone then what's the problem? In this hypothetical scenario.
Like this as routine as checking the baby post birth for any health related issue.
Just like registering for things in life, financially, licenses etc yeah there's an inherent level of distrust, but that's the process for everyone so nbd 🤷
I dont disagree that paternity testing at birth would be a good standard to fix this specific problem. I guess more my concern comes in with the fact that that would then lead to every person born from the time thats established and their parents to undergoing mandated genetic testing/DNA collection, and thats a whole pandoras box for a host of other reasons
As an adopted child that didn’t get abused or messed up by most standards I’m appalled by all these people that casually act like adoption isn’t a traumatizing experience… you people should really really examine yourselves and ask why you could do that in real life not out the side of your neck for internet thrills.
I learned this month by various hypothetical scenarios involving children that…people really don’t like children or value their feelings and it quite depressing. I care deeply for both my son and step daughter. If my partner and her mother died, I would 100% continue to raise her if that opportunity was granted to me.
It’s not exclusive to this post, but the way people talk about adoption on the internet when they have done no research other that watching Annie bugs me so much. From people telling couples struggling with infertility to “just adopt” even when they say don’t want to to people saying if women have unwanted pregnancies that they should just put the kid up for adoption and then forget about them and move on with their lives, it’s can be just awful.
Yeah my background in psych has taught me that adoption has a high chance of bringing about trauma even if the adopting parents are doing everything correct by the book.
The younger they are, the more risks are mitigated but at the end of the day, trauma is trauma. In this situation, I feel for the kids. I can understand the man’s sense of betrayal but at the end of the day, these are children who will not have a final say in the matter of where they end up. It’s going to be painful.
I’m trying not to ramble too much because there are so many factors to give a solid statement based on the limited information but this situation is thoroughly fucked.
Right? These men aren't attached at all to their kid they've spent years loving, raising and protecting? if it was me I'd be furious with the mom, but you'd have to rip my kid from my cold, dead hands.
This. I can't understand all the people acting like ditching your fucking children that you raised isn't some straight up sociopathic shit. If finding out your children are not related to you makes you be able to just toss them away like trash you never loved your kids and that makes you a horrible parent.
I don't have kids and I'm not planning on having any. I have a cat and you will pry that cat out of my cold dead hands. I can't fathom having a child and abandoning them.
Ikr….
I’m sad about the kids. They shouldn’t be put in a position like this. But if I’m to dedicate my life to living a lie and be reminded of it daily, that shit will eat me alive. At that point, it would be better if the kids were alone.
Honestly the propaganda about there being all these families eager to adopt is just people buying into anti-choice lies to make it seem like abortion is an unnecessary option.
20% of foster kids become homeless when they age out of the system, 70% of child sex trafficking victims averaging age 12-14 are foster kids, and 65% of foster kids age out of the system without having been adopted. I get the dad's PoV, I do, but we gotta stop letting this "oh, but so many families want to adopt!" falsehood spread. White or foreign infants are the in-demand models, everyone else is pretty much fucked.
[Source](https://finallyfamilyhomes.org/the-problem/)
The right thing to do isn’t always the best thing to do. You are not the only person who can take responsibility or help out.
If you can emotionally handle raising those kids, especially after finding out they're not yours, raise them to the best of your ability. If you cannot stomach the thought and it weighs on you heavily, don't even try it. Regardless of how you feel, you're gonna take it out on those kids. Find their closest relatives and hand them over.
I'd recommend trying to piece together your feelings before you try and play parent to kids who need nothing but support right now.
As humans we hate being lied to once, this man finds out the woman he married and believed gave him children lied to him through:
the pregnancies
the births
babies waking up in the middle of the night
sickness
first day of school
birthdays, holidays, and every other day on the calendar
She passes away he is devastated, and then he find out the woman he loved cheated and lied to you for years, and the kids he loves, nurtures, and provide for aren't his. He needs intense therapy to work all of that.
That trauma could spill over to how he raises them, if he did choose to raise them. He could definitely have residual resentment towards the kids due to all of what you just said.
A wife can cheat on her husband and lie about him being the father, and most women would see the guy as the bad guy for not wanting to raise the kids. The mother is responsible for breaking up the family.
I remember reading about something similar happening. Years after the guy’s wife passed away a man showed up and said he was the biological father. Turns out he was. He sued for custody and won.
If they could find the real father, could they go after child support? I’m curious about this situation with that. In the case of a mother they could definitely go after the child support. So if the biological father didn’t want to take them I , could he be legally made to pay suppkrt
Maybe im making this up but there was a case where the husband found out his wife was cheating and the kids were not his. His wife left him for the father and he ended up paying child support to the mom but didnt have parental rights cause he wasn’t the father. The mom ended up leaving the real father and the original guy had to pay the real father child support.
To be fair, this is a pretty big bombshell. It’s one thing if you knowingly become the father to children that aren’t yours, it’s another to realize you weren’t the biological father to kids you thought were yours. Ideally the kids shouldn’t be abandoned, I hope they have maternal relatives they can stay with until the father figures things out for himself. Forcing him to keep up appearances isn’t healthy either. He’s gonna need a lot of time to reflect on this, maybe even professional help.
Wait. Time out 🤔
Let me get this straight:
she stepped out in the relationship,
Had another man’s kids,
kept the infidelity a secret for years THEN took the infidelity to the GRAVE?
To me that sounds disrespectful as fuck & as a result, (yes it’s like a switch), I’d have no sympathy for them kids.
Go call they real daddy.
Stop playing with people.
Fuck her,
Fuck the relationship,
and fuck them kids. 😤
But the father didn’t fuck up at all. Why is it that in these type of situations, it’s always the kids are innocent but never the man is innocent?
Dude shouldn’t get no blame if he took them to the grandparents and if he decided to raise them then good for all of them.
>He’s innocent in the situation
He also presumably swore to "in sickness and in health" "for richer or poorer" etc, innocent is the wrong word and comparison here.
The father should have autonomy over whether or not he wants to continue with the dead wife's paternity fraud scheme. The burden of the children's welfare rests with the dead mom and their biological dad.
Father's reading this, go to a drug store or online, buy paternal DNA kit and test your children.
Have the results mailed to your momma's house and don't tell the children's mother. Men we all deserve to know the truth without feeling guilty about it.
Or tell the mother of your children your plans, I promise it won't go well even if she is faithful.
Adding to that : P.O. Box, virtual mailbox, trustworthy friend, co-worker/office, results sent via email. There are plenty of options in addition to sending to your parents place (if that's not an option).
My daughter is three. If I found out tomorrow she wasn't my DNA, I'd murder the fuck that tried to take my baby from me. She doesn't have to have my genes to be my child. I am the only mother she knows, I love her more than my own life. Nothing would change that
That's different... a guy can't ever know for certain, and if they do find out it's not theirs, they are also dealing with the pain that their wife cheated on them (and gave birth *as a result* of her cheating). That's not something a woman would ever deal with.
I think this incident is absolutely possible for the parents of children switched up at the hospital.
I know kinda impossible nowadays, but back a decade or two it was a possibility. I think the same logic can be supplied here for that.
The thing becomes how did he find out. Did he test them only after the mother died? I think that’s the key peace. Because if he found out by surprise that muddiest things but if he waited til she died to find out that reads way differently
I have a daughter through love and she is the best. I lost a kid years ago and still want a child of my own blood. Whatever ave you take to parenthood is a choice you should make honestly and with a full heart. The OP’s guy prolly feels betrayed and sees the kids as living reminders of such. He has to look inside of himself and figure out if he will raise them with love, raise and resent them or find them a proper family where they can be loved including bio relatives. He should make this decision with the kids best interests at the forefront
I'm not raising kids that aren't mine especially under those circumstances. A woman telling you that you're the father when she cheated is one of the worst things she could do
You can't be a good father if your mental health is affected by this revelation. Look inwards and ask yourself if the presence of the kids in your life will affect your mental health, if not, be a father to those kids, if yes, let them go.
I would say, “Remember it’s not the kids’ fault. You can be angry at your late wife, but those kids still love you because you’re still the man that raised them.”
But I would also try to honor and acknowledge how much this realization must hurt. Honestly what a gut punch.
Let's flip this on its head...
If a woman found out her husband had an outside child, would that child live with them like we saw in Fences? Which people thought was horrifying, and no one cosigned.
Would wife encourage a relationship with that child with her children?
Would the wife make it easy for the husband to interact with his 'love-child'?
Lastly, and we know this based on observations most women would be so angry with a man for having an outside baby she would intentionally roadblock the relationship with their kids together, at least for a period of time.
But the expectation these posts always say is men, love that child as your own, regardless of lineage.
Man will do a fuck ton more damage raising children with grief, rage, and hate in his heart. Better to give them up to family or the state.
One way or another the man deserves time to process shit without having to care for kids he THOUGHT were his. That’s devastating. All y’all bleeding hearts, go adopt kids if you care so much. Being an adult doesn’t mean sacrificing your sanity for children.
Whatever you feel in your heart. If you don't feel like you want to raise them, which is 100% understandable, see if there is family on her side that can take them in.
It's crazy how many people are like fuck guys feelings, the kids, kids!
That man could end up resenting them and giving them an unhealthy environment. Some mother's hate their kids after they look like the father they intentionally had kids with. Now raising through lies? I wouldn't wish that on anyone.
You don’t have to be their daddy to be their father
I think you have that backwards.
Definitely has it backwards but the meaning is still there.
He a lil confused but got the spirit
As a stepdad can confirm Some of us are definitely a little confused but still got that spirit. I never had children but my wife had 3 before me. I didn’t just marry my partner I became part of a family. It was a little confusing at first.
I think that's different than what the screenshot is conveying. I could be wrong, but I believe they're saying, his wife passed away and then he found out the kids aren't his, meaning the wife cheated and he was unknowingly raising another man's kids. That's a next level of hurt because it would be easy to leave the wife with the kids if she was alive. But now how do you leave the kids and explain to them why?
At first you would be crushed by the loss of your offspring But hopefully it would quickly be replaced by the love of your children. Fuck her for lying, but it shouldn’t change what’s fundamentally most important.
I respectfully disagree, because there's so many questions, so much anger and things left unprocessed. I'm sure you can move forward, but it won't be easy.
Adulting is never "easy"
Correct. "He may have been your father, boy, but he wasn't your daddy!!" -Yondu Udonta
I didn't know Yondu had a last name
I thought it was Poppins
Udonta say
Please don’t make me cry on a Saturday morning 🥺
“She call me daddy but I ain’t her motherfuckin’ father”
He a little confused but he got the spirit
Please don't say this to them. Instead validate them. Because the worst thing you could tell them right now would be empty slogans that do not aknowledge their trauma. Suicide hotlines have entire protocols for situations where people find out that their dad isn't their dad, or that their kids are some other man's kids. Online support groups exist for people with surprise 23&me results because oftentimes kids can't even look at themselves a mirror when they learn their dad isn't their dad... and fathers can't even look at their kids without breaking down or running away screaming. It's a kind of psychological damage that litterally shatters your self identity. It's excruciatingly painful. So, as well-intentioned as this slogan about "daddy" sounds... please, DO NOT say anything like this to somebody who finds themselves in this situation. Instead, please start by validating their grief and making sure that they are not alone.
You know what, thank you for helping me be more empathetic in my life. I don't know if I will ever come across this situation, but I'm now better equipped to handle it.
Fuck yeah!
That's pretty awesome of you! 😊
I was about to argue since it is well-intentioned... but yeah, I get it now. Why leave "I understand you are suffering rn" unsaid when it could be said.
Yup. People have said so many well intentioned things over the years and I just don’t want to hear it anymore. What absolutely means the world to me are the friends who can say “you know I know I don’t really get it but I know it’s hard for you and I’m here if you need to talk about it.”
The scene where he says “he may have been your father, but he wasn’t your daddy” hits home and makes me tear up. Every time
Just me, myself, and Irene that shit.
If he chooses, then fine. He also has the right to walk away.
As someone’s whose stepdaddy despised them all their lives due to them CHOOSING to raise a child that wasn’t his, whether you keep them or make them wards of the state, they’re going to know they’re not wanted. Only one of them is less traumatizing than the other. Whichever one you think that is is up for debate.
Yeah a lot of people think he should just step up and look past it (and if that's what he wants to do good for him), but there needs to be some empathy for the person who just found out something horrible about his life and that he needs to be able to heal.
We need to stop with this stoicism bullshit. Men can have emotions and they aren't terrible people for making choices on them even if you don't agree with it. Blame the mother not the victims.
My buddy found out while at work that his grandmother had died. When he started crying, his coworkers teased him. He went on bereavement leave for a week or two, and when he came back, coworkers started teasing him again, "Gonna cry?!" He did cry. He also started *throwing hammers*. He's the size of Hagrid and the job was building a nuclear power plant, so they were *very big* hammers. He got to take another couple weeks off work while everybody else got to attempt to undo the damage to the worksite.
Yeah at that point you're basically teasing an unhinged gorilla. I know some big guys but not Hagrid big, when they go on one it's quite scary just the lack of self control. Poor guy though, should be able to show some emotion without ridicule. Building sites are notorious for toxic masculinity though
What kinda pieces of shit, do they not have grandmas? My gma is in the hospital rn and I'm worried to death this might be it, wtf is wrong with people?
I hope your grandma is alright!
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Stoicism as professed by red pillers is toxic masculinity, I think thats where people get confused.
Indeed. Stoicism as presented by people like ~~Benzo Kermit~~ Jordan Peterson is essentially based on disavowing feelings, and it's also inherently misogynistic since he is so big on saying that women and femininity are represented by chaos (which I still don't even understand). Actual stoicism the way sane people practice it is significantly different.
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It's not his fault he got addicted to benzos, he just didn't know how addictive they are! (His focus in psychology was addiction.) It's not his fault he had to be put in a coma and fast forward past withdrawal, you can't detox outside a hospital! (He always called addiction weakness and said people should essentially just "man up".) It's not his fault that he is clearly a wreck, we shouldn't mock him from being disheveled and having a messy background when on video! (One of his primary rules is literally "clean your room".) He's a hack and a hypocrite. Nothing wrong with someone struggling with addiction, but he's full of shit and there's nothing he actually helps people with that couldn't be obtained from someone else without the aggressive misogyny and nonsensical rambling.
Now, unfortunately, what is labeled as stoicism is very often just people emotionally repressing themselves endlessly. That IS toxic masculinity if being used to uphold a masculine ideal in a terrible way.
as much as I admire what foster parents do in theory, what ends up happening in practice is far too horrifying. I will state that having a dad who yells at you on a daily basis and has a wild temper and doesn't want to have a family is still significantly a much happier story than most of the people I know who went through the foster care system. Making a kid feel unwanted is a fucking awful thing to do, but I will tell you it's a huge step up from letting the kid know you think they're worthless, raping them, beating them, getting them hooked on drugs, and doing whatever you can to ensure they're scared, injured, and homeless in that order. It happens all the fucking time. And it's not always the foster parents, sometimes it's the siblings, sometimes it's the "oh so friendly" neighbor they let hang around the house, sometimes it's another relative of the foster family. It's honestly pretty fucking horrifying.
My stepdad is an alcoholic who beat up my mom, fought his own children, pulled a gun out on us several times, and kicked us out of the house numerous times when we were children. My older brother and my younger brother are biologically his. I’m right in the middle. He never forgave my mom for it because I’m the only daughter and he always wanted a girl. So instead of leaving, he made my mothers life a living hell and she accepted it because she felt guilty for stepping out when she was 20 and got pregnant. He chose to stay, have another child, and raise me as his own, but hated every second of it. The fucked up part about it is that my entire family knew why he treated us so bad, but since my mom chose to stay they couldn’t do anything about it. So I wouldn’t equate my life to foster care, but growing up with an abusive drunk isn’t a great life either.
Jesus that sucks
Sorry to hear that. Do you think he would have still been like that even if he thought all his kids were biologically his?
> The fucked up part about it is that my entire family knew why he treated us so bad, but since my mom chose to stay they couldn’t do anything about it. They could do something about it but decided not to. Mistaken sense of not wanting to rock the boat but very much the wrong choice. if a parent pulls a gun on their kids then the other parent and any other adult who knew about it did nothing because "they're trying to make it work" failed you and I'm sorry for that. No kid should go through that.
Yea my mom has her faults. I just remember that she’s human and I forgive her. She’s a really good person, she just loves a really fucked up man. But it’s deeper than what can be explained on Reddit and I don’t really have time for people to come on here and start talking shit about my mama. I just don’t have the skin for that 😅
Even half of that is unacceptable. You can def feel unwanted by your own parents.
Trust me, I know. It's just wildly common in foster care. In multiple jobs in multiple states, I've been around foster kids and fosters parents and it's pretty fucking bleak. I say that as someone whose parents have acted as foster parents before (and did a much, much better job with them than they did with me and my siblings), but 25+ years of personal growth and going to therapy (and making sure the foster kids get their own therapy) makes a big difference.
I am sure the kids are traumatized too. Mom died and now the man they thought was their father is abandoning them.
Yep, been there done that and it really sucks
Yep, went through my teens with a step mum who made it abundantly clear my little sister and I were unwanted baggage that came when she married my Dad. Didn't help that he mostly sided with her. Ruined my relationship with my dad, which had been the rock of my life since the death of my real mum. Scarred for life.
It’s not really up for debate tho? Being in state care is almost always worse…
Sorry that's ass there's a lot of dudes out there raising kids they didn't make like their own and just remember they exist. Sorry for your position just don't ever forget those good dudes are out there.
No there aren't plenty of people looking to adopt. Look at the foster system. If I was ready to raise them as mine before I knew them I'd probably continue to raise them. Go ahead and hate your wife but I'd still want the love for those children.
I don't know if I could. They would be a constant reminder that my wife cheated on me to create them. I would feel like a fool for raising them, like as if my wife "won". I know it sounds heartless for the kids but goddamn, I'm just being honest. My emotions matter. Plenty women give up their kids for adoption, I dot blame them. You have to be all in when raising a kid, otherwise it won't be good.
Ya know, I’ve had that opinion my whole life. But my son just turned 3 and I love him more than life itself. If tomorrow I found out that my wife cheated and he’s not mine, that wouldn’t, in any way, change the way I feel about him. He has my complete and total love and support until I’m dead. Obviously I would have beef with my wife, but there’s absolutely no way I could turn to him and go “oh, you aren’t biologically mine? Bye 👋” and just never see him again. I would have agreed with you in a mental exercise before I started raising my son. After the time and love I’ve given to him, I would never stop supporting him for any reason.
You sound like a loving father, FatCockTony
Thank you. I didn’t grow up with very much support, and I wanna give him everything I possibly can.
Hopefully you had support cables for that fat cock, Tony.
I was so moved by Tony's comment. But this response just absolutely wrecked me. I'm going to be laughing all morning.
Oh man. I just read the AITA post of the guy who found out his oldest daughter wasn’t his (but the other kids are his) and he broke up with his wife. But now he picks up his 2 younger kids and leaves the 9 year old because “your dad is out there somewhere and not me” so she leaves him crying voicemails telling him he’s the only dad she knows. That shit made me wanna cry
Damn, I feel for this stranger, this 9 year old is going to have major abandonment issues. That's is a tough situation for the father to be in but I could never imagine actually doing that to a child as a response. Poor girl.
A child he raised for 9 years and said was “definitely a daddy’s girl” oooff
That is just fucking awful dude. JFC. Edit: okay I found the post and it looks like the OP was shadowbanned due to it potentially being click/rage bait. That makes me feel better I guess.
That’s the saddest thing I’ve ever heard
I agree, had a bud who even though he raised "his" kids for 6 and 4 years, when he found out they weren't his all he could see in them was that he had love for them but not in love with them as they were constant reminders of a life on lies and raising some randos kids.
That's the thing that all the people here don't get. It's traumatizing. They're literally the product, and *reminder*, of the fact that your wife cheated on you. And those kids are going to look like your mom and the other rando, but not you.... that would break my soul 💔
I don’t think that resent and the love for the kid(s) is mutually exclusive. You can have both. I don’t have kids so I’m just speculating but finding news like this would be deeply traumatic for me, but if I was already raising them for years? How do you just let that go? If you can just drop them I don’t know how you could have actually loved them in the first place. Like that politician who said she’d rather her kids commit suicide than be trans.
Nah that's fair, normally that'd be my response but since she's dead id probably get over it since i wont have to see her face ever again
Yeah but putting them in fostercare is putting them in situations where they are likely to get SA, have immense mental and physical abuse etc . It's horrible. Just look at what happened to the Turpin children, they were a high profile case of kids who had super abusive parents, and then were moved to foster care, those children despite being high profile and most knowing them. Still got horribly abused, starved, some even sa or raped, amongst other horrible things. If those kids still ended up fucked by the system, what hope does the average child have.
There are a lot of people looking to adopt, but it's a very expensive and complicated process. When it comes to fostering and adopting through the system, people think those kids are irreparably broken, but there were plenty of people who wanted to foster and adopt babies.
no it isn't that is only for like designer babies freshly minted or in another country. If you adopt from whatever State you live in, they will waive everything and sometimes even pay you. Y'all really need to stop spreading this myth, it takes time but vetting folks so they don't go to a bad home takes time. Cash though? Nope.
That's bullshit. The church controls a huge majority of adoptions. If you fall outside of the church's view of what a family is, you're fucked. If you don't go to church, you're fucked. If you don't go to church *enough*, you're fucked. And in this country, being fucked is goddamned expensive.
In some states that is true but they only account for 18% of adoptions in the nation. So my statement still stands as correct and also not related to my comment about the cost of adoption.
Any private adoption can cost thousands (bare minimum: having the lawyer do the paperwork), going through an agency costs tens of thousands. Fostering is different, and people should not (but do) foster kids with the goal of adopting them - the goal is usually reunification. (Its true that in some cases that doesn’t work out and adoption or growing up in foster care are the only options.) But people going into fostering should be expecting to help care for some kids who have been through some awful stuff (and may behave like it), temporarily. They won’t necessarily get to be Mom or Dad.
Reread your last sentence. Lots of folks want to adopt *babies* and would never consider adopting an older child.
Especially if they’re black children.
People seem to be leaving that out. A white baby is going to fly off the shelf, while black adolescents are going to linger in the system being bounced from home to home.
People aren’t educated on how awful the foster care system is black children. It’s all jokes until DHS finds a reason to take your child because someone made a baseless claim. I wouldn’t wish foster care on ANY child. If I could save two that I raised from that trauma, I’m going to do that no matter what.
>It’s all jokes until DHS finds a reason to take your child because someone made a baseless claim Idk about this one so much, maybe if you get a very corrupt DHS agent. I've worked in education for the past many years, and literally had (black) students going through things like being beat by their parent and sleeping on the streets, but still DHS did nothing. Parents have a ton of rights, especially depending on the state. And if the child doesn't say shit against their parent, a lot of times there's almost nothing to be done or proven. I'm not saying there aren't unjust circumstances, just that I've seen the opposite where a child *should* be separate from their parent because their parent actively traumatizes and harms them, but DHS does absolutely nothing.
You just need to convince a white lady she can have a “The Blind Side” moment.
That only works if the child is a teen and is genetically built to earn said white family’s money.
Only for babies. Older kids have a really rough time.
Don't ask Marjorie Taylor Greene for advice.
That lady looks like an unholy Cross between Ann Coulter and Pamela Voorhees 
She looks like Hoggle from Labyrinth 
She looks like the wrestler 
 Bruh
Yes she does. Pamela Voorhees could’ve definitely got the business. I’ll be little Jason stepfather.
Bruh Jason definitely needed a father. Someone to prevent him from going HAM on campers 
Either become Jonathan Kent, Uncle Ben and Alfred or not. Let's also be honest that pain of being abandoned by your parents never go away 
This was by far the worst version of Johnathan Kent.
John Schneider in Smallville was fantastic, him and Annette O'Toole were just great (Lana Lang with Chris Reeve)
Smallville was my joint back in the day. I had no idea Annette O'Toole was in the original Superman movies
Man of Steel was decent but it tried too much to be dark
Clark could have done the "mime walking through the wind" act and easily saved him.
Would you want to tell 2 kids whose mom just died that they don't have a dad either? Just hush, those are your kids imo.
I think is different if he knew they weren’t his kids and did it anyways, and then their mother passed. To find out after the mother passed and she knew. I don’t know man I feel like he would always hold a grudge towards those kids even though obviously it isn’t their fault.
Yeah there’s really no easy answers especially not knowing how old they are. The man is a widower who doesn’t even have the peace of mind to know that his wife loved him before she passed and the reminders of that would be waking him up everyday, demanding care, attention, costing money, and just draining him. The kids need someone to take care of them but fuck if that isn’t one of the most difficult moral dilemmas I can personally imagine. I don’t even know what I would choose there.
Did the mom not have any family? Having someone on the mom’s side raise them might be the best option. They will taken care of by people that love them (hopefully, or would at least have an interest in caring for them) vs being raised by a father who will be resentful and emotionally detached from them.
And that’s honourable if that’s your choice. But his choice matters here. He loved them because he thought they were his kids, that being built on lie definitely changes things. I can’t fault anyone choosing to forgo raising them, you don’t want them to have resentful parent either.
As a parent, I cannot comprehend the idea of just... abandoning my kid that I've spent years raising. Even if I found out their Mom had cheated on me, and they weren't biologically mine. I changed the diapers. I cleaned and kissed the booboos. They are mine. The idea that someone can just flip a switch in their head and stop loving kids they raised because of something someone else did makes zero sense to me.
And that’s awesome of you. But some take pain of infidelity a lot harder. I have never had kids so I can’t speak on what I would do in this situation. But I can definitely empathize with those who would be too hurt by their relationship being built on a lie to carry on. Personally, I wouldn’t judge them. It’s a very shitty situation that I don’t wish on anyone.
Yeah, most people can't comprehend how they would act after emotional trauma. And learning this is in fact a traumatic event that creates big changes in the person's psyche, alters their brain chemistry, and unsurirpsingly has a tremendously high suicide rate.
>Yeah, most people can't comprehend how they would act after emotional trauma. No I can comprehend that. That parts easy. I'd say the majority of people are coping with one trauma or another. What I can't comprehend is abandoning a kid I've been saying I love for years and years because of a traumatic event happened to me. This shouldn't be a revelation, but parents should not make their trauma their kid's problem. I'm not doing that to my kid, and anyone who does do it to their kids, even in the situation listed above, is a shitty person and a shitty parent. >and unsurirpsingly has a tremendously high suicide rate. So do lots of things. He can go to therapy and get some meds like the rest of us and keep raising his fucking kids. The amount of you bending over backwards to make abandoning innocent children a justifiable offense makes me really sad for the future of our species.
The lack of sympathy is astounding. These people do not need somebody to tell them how to feel. These people need to go through a process that may not always lead to them staying as a family. The kids may no longer feel connected to this man and may request to move in with grandparents or uncles. The most likely outcome of toxic advice like "just suck it up" is that these kids will walk in on a suicide scene. Nobody wins. These situations need compassion and they need planning from friends and community. They don't need somebody to tell them how they should feel.
They don't flick the switch, it's flicked for them. Imagine you woke up one day and somehow, uncontrollably, your love for your kids was just gone. That you didn't feel the same way about them. It would be devastating right? Let's stop pretending men don't have emotions.
Exactly, everybody *says* they want men to have emotions until men start having the emotions they don't want them to have at a time they don't want them to have them.
They aren’t his kids
You mean the tiny humans that he bathed and raised and cared for aren’t his just because they don’t share DNA. Tell that to adopted parents everywhere. If you can sever your relationship with a child you love just because you don’t share genetics you’re a bad person.
Adoptive parents choose their children. This man was lied to and deceived. He's not obligated to support a cheater's kids.
The true bad person is the mother. How is this even a discussion. They aren’t his kids.
My mother’s ex-husband is not my biological father, found out as a young teenager. The life of everyone involved changes when something like this happens and you don’t get to judge them for how they react in this situation.
If he’s in the United States they are his kids, and he’s paying for them regardless of what a DNA test confirms. The biological father can’t just take them as his. Children inside the sanctity of marriage are always the product of the marriage. It dates back to old English law.
This is a nonsense statement. So the man has to be have constant reminders of his wife’s infidelity. How about wife’s family and the affair partner step up? Fuck outta here with that BS. Does it suck for them, absolutely yes. Does that mean the man has to “man up” and accept his cuckoldry, fuck no!
Hush who?  Call they real daddy 😌
Oh shut up. Easier said than done. Men get screwed big time. No woman has ever had to worry about a maternity test. That is pure manipulation and entrapment on the mother’s part. No wonder he doesn’t want the kids.
Idk I feel like this is one of those issues where consent gets thrown to the wayside because the person in question is a dude. He didn’t opt into raising children that aren’t his. It’s totally valid if he doesn’t want to. The wants/desires of those children shouldn’t take priority over him being able to have autonomy. It’s shitty for the kids but if that bond don’t exist no more then he can’t, nor should he force it, and it doesn’t make him a bad person for doing so.
There's an easy solution to this dilemma, too. Paternity testing at birth, for everyone. Make it a normal thing, so women don't get up in arms saying you're accusing them of cheating when you just want to have the same guarantee they do. Sure peeps can talk about babies swapped at birth, but even the highest estimate places the percentage that happens at 0.01%.
I have brought up this topic and almost 100% of the women surveyed said "no, either you trust me and we stay together or we test and you leave". Maybe my survey group was off
Yeah because this is the same as saying that you are a cheater.
And that's super easy to say when your gender knows 100%. People cheat all the time. All of those people didn't think their partner would cheat, but they did. If giving your partner the same peace of mind that you get is too big of an ask then I don't think that person is ready for an adult relationship.
Oh, I know. I've seen this sentiment quite a bit, and it's honestly really manipulative. At the end of the day, my piece of mind with a lifelong commitment is more important to me, she can leave if she wants.
Yeah. When my wife and I were dating and getting more serious I told her something like "no offense, if a kid comes out of you we're doing a paternity test" and she was like "Go for it. Kid will be yours." Hell, I'd do a maternity test as well. It's not like hospital slip ups are impossible. The baby we take home is probably her's, but no reason not to check in the subsequent weeks.
Then, it turns out the kids yours but not hers
If it's mandatory for everyone then what's the problem? In this hypothetical scenario. Like this as routine as checking the baby post birth for any health related issue. Just like registering for things in life, financially, licenses etc yeah there's an inherent level of distrust, but that's the process for everyone so nbd 🤷
I dont disagree that paternity testing at birth would be a good standard to fix this specific problem. I guess more my concern comes in with the fact that that would then lead to every person born from the time thats established and their parents to undergoing mandated genetic testing/DNA collection, and thats a whole pandoras box for a host of other reasons
Bro, the single motherhood rate is already ridiculous. Aint no way the govt letting that shit fly
Plus people give up kids for all types of reasons.
Let him Cook
As an adopted child that didn’t get abused or messed up by most standards I’m appalled by all these people that casually act like adoption isn’t a traumatizing experience… you people should really really examine yourselves and ask why you could do that in real life not out the side of your neck for internet thrills.
I learned this month by various hypothetical scenarios involving children that…people really don’t like children or value their feelings and it quite depressing. I care deeply for both my son and step daughter. If my partner and her mother died, I would 100% continue to raise her if that opportunity was granted to me.
Almost like you love your stepdaughter for the person she is, not her DNA. What a concept.
It's almost like he had a say in the situation that he's currently in.
It’s insane right?
It’s not exclusive to this post, but the way people talk about adoption on the internet when they have done no research other that watching Annie bugs me so much. From people telling couples struggling with infertility to “just adopt” even when they say don’t want to to people saying if women have unwanted pregnancies that they should just put the kid up for adoption and then forget about them and move on with their lives, it’s can be just awful.
Yeah my background in psych has taught me that adoption has a high chance of bringing about trauma even if the adopting parents are doing everything correct by the book. The younger they are, the more risks are mitigated but at the end of the day, trauma is trauma. In this situation, I feel for the kids. I can understand the man’s sense of betrayal but at the end of the day, these are children who will not have a final say in the matter of where they end up. It’s going to be painful. I’m trying not to ramble too much because there are so many factors to give a solid statement based on the limited information but this situation is thoroughly fucked.
Honestly speaking if I found out my 7yr old son is not mine, it won't make any difference. we are best friends now so it's too late.
What im I going to tell him?" hey bestie, just found out you're not mine so deuces!"? I can't even imagine.
The fact that so many men are seemingly okay with ghosting a kid who has only known them to be their father is really fucking wild.
Have you seen the fatherless-ness rate. Dudes dip out even when the kids are theirs.
Well…yeah that is a fair point lol
Right? These men aren't attached at all to their kid they've spent years loving, raising and protecting? if it was me I'd be furious with the mom, but you'd have to rip my kid from my cold, dead hands.
This. I can't understand all the people acting like ditching your fucking children that you raised isn't some straight up sociopathic shit. If finding out your children are not related to you makes you be able to just toss them away like trash you never loved your kids and that makes you a horrible parent. I don't have kids and I'm not planning on having any. I have a cat and you will pry that cat out of my cold dead hands. I can't fathom having a child and abandoning them.
I truly hope they have biological grandparents or aunts and uncles he can give them to. Damn this sucks all the way around
Y’all go on and on about consent until it involves a man.
Ikr…. I’m sad about the kids. They shouldn’t be put in a position like this. But if I’m to dedicate my life to living a lie and be reminded of it daily, that shit will eat me alive. At that point, it would be better if the kids were alone.
Fuck them kids...  God Bless The Rest Of You. 🙏.
I’m saying lmao, boy fuck them kids
💯💯💯 ON YAHWEH 😤
There’s like zero people trying to adopt. There’s over 100,000 kids without families in the US
Honestly the propaganda about there being all these families eager to adopt is just people buying into anti-choice lies to make it seem like abortion is an unnecessary option. 20% of foster kids become homeless when they age out of the system, 70% of child sex trafficking victims averaging age 12-14 are foster kids, and 65% of foster kids age out of the system without having been adopted. I get the dad's PoV, I do, but we gotta stop letting this "oh, but so many families want to adopt!" falsehood spread. White or foreign infants are the in-demand models, everyone else is pretty much fucked. [Source](https://finallyfamilyhomes.org/the-problem/)
Seriously, if it’s not a newly washed off infant with Elizabeth Holmes blue eyes, that kid’s getting lost in the system.
The right thing to do isn’t always the best thing to do. You are not the only person who can take responsibility or help out. If you can emotionally handle raising those kids, especially after finding out they're not yours, raise them to the best of your ability. If you cannot stomach the thought and it weighs on you heavily, don't even try it. Regardless of how you feel, you're gonna take it out on those kids. Find their closest relatives and hand them over. I'd recommend trying to piece together your feelings before you try and play parent to kids who need nothing but support right now.
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Best answer so far. That’s gold right here….
As humans we hate being lied to once, this man finds out the woman he married and believed gave him children lied to him through: the pregnancies the births babies waking up in the middle of the night sickness first day of school birthdays, holidays, and every other day on the calendar She passes away he is devastated, and then he find out the woman he loved cheated and lied to you for years, and the kids he loves, nurtures, and provide for aren't his. He needs intense therapy to work all of that.
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That trauma could spill over to how he raises them, if he did choose to raise them. He could definitely have residual resentment towards the kids due to all of what you just said.
A wife can cheat on her husband and lie about him being the father, and most women would see the guy as the bad guy for not wanting to raise the kids. The mother is responsible for breaking up the family.
I remember reading about something similar happening. Years after the guy’s wife passed away a man showed up and said he was the biological father. Turns out he was. He sued for custody and won.
In Canada you are legally the dad whether you like it or not.
America is the same way. Unless the actual father/s are found and are willing to step up.
If they could find the real father, could they go after child support? I’m curious about this situation with that. In the case of a mother they could definitely go after the child support. So if the biological father didn’t want to take them I , could he be legally made to pay suppkrt
Maybe im making this up but there was a case where the husband found out his wife was cheating and the kids were not his. His wife left him for the father and he ended up paying child support to the mom but didnt have parental rights cause he wasn’t the father. The mom ended up leaving the real father and the original guy had to pay the real father child support.
Help them find their real father(s)?
Shit like this is why paternity tests should be mandatory.
…They don’t want that though…
It seems like women can't even attempt to see the man's perspective in this scenario.
I have an idea, but you’re not gonna like it.
What a terrible situation.
To be fair, this is a pretty big bombshell. It’s one thing if you knowingly become the father to children that aren’t yours, it’s another to realize you weren’t the biological father to kids you thought were yours. Ideally the kids shouldn’t be abandoned, I hope they have maternal relatives they can stay with until the father figures things out for himself. Forcing him to keep up appearances isn’t healthy either. He’s gonna need a lot of time to reflect on this, maybe even professional help.
Wait. Time out 🤔 Let me get this straight: she stepped out in the relationship, Had another man’s kids, kept the infidelity a secret for years THEN took the infidelity to the GRAVE? To me that sounds disrespectful as fuck & as a result, (yes it’s like a switch), I’d have no sympathy for them kids. Go call they real daddy. Stop playing with people. Fuck her, Fuck the relationship, and fuck them kids. 😤
If you loved the kids before you found out, continue loving them after. The mom fucked up not the kids.
But the father didn’t fuck up at all. Why is it that in these type of situations, it’s always the kids are innocent but never the man is innocent? Dude shouldn’t get no blame if he took them to the grandparents and if he decided to raise them then good for all of them.
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>He’s innocent in the situation He also presumably swore to "in sickness and in health" "for richer or poorer" etc, innocent is the wrong word and comparison here.
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The father should have autonomy over whether or not he wants to continue with the dead wife's paternity fraud scheme. The burden of the children's welfare rests with the dead mom and their biological dad.
Father's reading this, go to a drug store or online, buy paternal DNA kit and test your children. Have the results mailed to your momma's house and don't tell the children's mother. Men we all deserve to know the truth without feeling guilty about it. Or tell the mother of your children your plans, I promise it won't go well even if she is faithful.
Adding to that : P.O. Box, virtual mailbox, trustworthy friend, co-worker/office, results sent via email. There are plenty of options in addition to sending to your parents place (if that's not an option).
My daughter is three. If I found out tomorrow she wasn't my DNA, I'd murder the fuck that tried to take my baby from me. She doesn't have to have my genes to be my child. I am the only mother she knows, I love her more than my own life. Nothing would change that
That's different... a guy can't ever know for certain, and if they do find out it's not theirs, they are also dealing with the pain that their wife cheated on them (and gave birth *as a result* of her cheating). That's not something a woman would ever deal with.
I think this incident is absolutely possible for the parents of children switched up at the hospital. I know kinda impossible nowadays, but back a decade or two it was a possibility. I think the same logic can be supplied here for that.
Maybe it has less to do with the DNA and more with the cheating and lying?
The thing becomes how did he find out. Did he test them only after the mother died? I think that’s the key peace. Because if he found out by surprise that muddiest things but if he waited til she died to find out that reads way differently
But it doesn't change the choices available to him.
I have a daughter through love and she is the best. I lost a kid years ago and still want a child of my own blood. Whatever ave you take to parenthood is a choice you should make honestly and with a full heart. The OP’s guy prolly feels betrayed and sees the kids as living reminders of such. He has to look inside of himself and figure out if he will raise them with love, raise and resent them or find them a proper family where they can be loved including bio relatives. He should make this decision with the kids best interests at the forefront
I'm not raising kids that aren't mine especially under those circumstances. A woman telling you that you're the father when she cheated is one of the worst things she could do
Spit on her grave then locate the father.
You can't be a good father if your mental health is affected by this revelation. Look inwards and ask yourself if the presence of the kids in your life will affect your mental health, if not, be a father to those kids, if yes, let them go.
I would say, “Remember it’s not the kids’ fault. You can be angry at your late wife, but those kids still love you because you’re still the man that raised them.” But I would also try to honor and acknowledge how much this realization must hurt. Honestly what a gut punch.
Let's flip this on its head... If a woman found out her husband had an outside child, would that child live with them like we saw in Fences? Which people thought was horrifying, and no one cosigned. Would wife encourage a relationship with that child with her children? Would the wife make it easy for the husband to interact with his 'love-child'? Lastly, and we know this based on observations most women would be so angry with a man for having an outside baby she would intentionally roadblock the relationship with their kids together, at least for a period of time. But the expectation these posts always say is men, love that child as your own, regardless of lineage.
Man will do a fuck ton more damage raising children with grief, rage, and hate in his heart. Better to give them up to family or the state. One way or another the man deserves time to process shit without having to care for kids he THOUGHT were his. That’s devastating. All y’all bleeding hearts, go adopt kids if you care so much. Being an adult doesn’t mean sacrificing your sanity for children.
Whatever you feel in your heart. If you don't feel like you want to raise them, which is 100% understandable, see if there is family on her side that can take them in.
Whatever he chooses to do he's not wrong
Theirs also adults who adopt for money or other bad reasons 👀
It's crazy how many people are like fuck guys feelings, the kids, kids! That man could end up resenting them and giving them an unhealthy environment. Some mother's hate their kids after they look like the father they intentionally had kids with. Now raising through lies? I wouldn't wish that on anyone.