Time and again, we are astonished that people other than a child’s parents think they should have a say in what that baby’s name will be. And maybe at this point, we shouldn’t be surprised by the audacity of one Reddit mom’s in-laws, but we are — because they are pressuring her to name her unborn daughter after her husband’s dead wife.
“Just to clarify, he’s not the one who wants us to name her after his late wife, it’s his family and friends,” B19row85n wrote on Reddit this week. “They’ve been making him feel like a horrible person for not ‘honoring’ her memory by doing that.”
Apparently, the late wife was the husband’s high school sweetheart before being married for 10 years. The new wife isn’t against him remembering her, but she’s drawing the line at passing that on to her own kids — which, yeah. The in-laws already tried this with their first-born daughter, who is 10 months old.
“I’m [26F] currently 5 months pregnant, they are again like: ‘You know what would be nice? Naming this baby after late wife first name,'” B19row85n wrote. “I told them that we are not going to name her like that, and one of his brothers told me that I should be more ‘considerate’ because naming our daughter like that would be nice because it would be like remembering her forever.”
And again, the husband doesn’t even agree with this family on this!
“[H]e has made it clear to me that he doesn’t want to name our daughter after her either, but his family and his friends got mad at me because they think that I manipulated him so that he thinks like that,” she said. “They think that I’m being insensitive and that I’m a bad wife because I don’t think about my husband’s true feelings.”
Who else is experiencing a strong desire to visit these people and give them an earful about what “insensitive” really means? Well, the folks on the AITA subreddit sure would.
“Jesus Christ, his family seems like a bunch of insensitive idiots,” ThrowawayLittle-Bat wrote. “I’m sorry that you have to deal with them. There is nothing wrong with not wanting to name your daughter after his late wife. Sure, it is sad that she passed, but judging by your post, you are already very respectful about the memories of her being (understandably) important to him. Everything has its limits. He is your husband now, you are not a replacement for his late wife, you are a different person, somebody he is with now.”
Several readers are mad at the husband for not defending her more.
“Your husband has to do the clean up here, both in telling people that the decision was his and he did not want to name his daughter after his late wife, and by telling people that them not believing that is extremely disrespectful of him and you, and to cut that shit out,” MLeek wrote.
Many are quite confused by the way the family act like it’s a totally normal thing to name a child after a dead woman unrelated to them. They called it inappropriate and even “ghoulish.”
“If I died, I’d want my husband to move on and enjoy his life, but I don’t think I’d want his future kids named after me,” CoastalCerulean said.
And Tantrums_and_Tiaras wondered, “If they want to do something nice in her honor, why don’t they raise money and sponsor a part of a building, a tree or a bench or something in her honor? Why don’t they raise a large sum of money for charity and give it something she would have cared for dearly. Why don’t they honor her by naming their children after her?”
We’ll say it one more time for anyone who wants to share this with their in-laws. The only people who get to name a child is that child’s parents. Punto.
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