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GH Discussion Group
I have a question, and please don't be offended by it, but I wonder if your son really wants to have a relationship with his child, or if he is being somewhat pushed into it by you and your husband who want to be able to see and know your grandchild? I can understand wanting to see a grandchild, myself. But how does your son feel about it? Would he want to get sole custody, after a costly court battle paid for by you? Would you wind up in that case taking care of the child while your son went on with his search for a career? And then having taken the child away from its mother, then your son marries and his wife doens't the child? This happens? This is often a story told in the soaps and we know that in the soaps every father, no matter what he is otherwise, loves his child from the time he first hears about it, and when he feels he has been wronged, then fights for sole custody. But in real life, young men who create a child who is taken to another place soon after birth, don't always feel that intense love for them. It's just a fact of life. Mothers, even those who 'run around' because they are not married and have parents who help take care of them as you take care of your son, can still love the child.
So I think it depends on your son; does he honestly want to do something that would gain him a child to rear when he is just starting his life? If he marries in a few years, what if his wife doesn't want to have a child thrust on her shoulders when she is just a bride? These things happen. If you really think your son, with a college education is still too young to handle his own affairs, then he isn't old enough to take on a little kid and rear it.
The main thing I sense in your message is that you feel very hostile towards the mother and possibly her parents as well. This won't make for an easy custody agreement or a support agreement, if you get into the middle of it. He is the man who must know for sure if he wants to fight an expensive battle paid for by you, to get a child he hardly knows. How do the other grandparents feel? Are they at present caring for the child, while the mother 'runs around?" When there is so much obvious anger on your side, consider what it might be on the other side for their grandchild's father. And in between, the father and mother of the child, how do they feel at present? You speak of the mother as 'running around.' If she isn't married, is she doing anything that your son doesn't feel free to do, too? Does he not date because he has a child out of wedlock?
MY advice is for all grandparents to get out of the way and the two adults who are the parents try to find a way to treat each other civilly, as they would hope to be treated themselves. It's an old bit of advice you may have read before.
What everyone must keep in mind is that the little child will grow up in a few years and then she will understand the hateful talk she might have heard when she was younger. And she may wonder at the accusations and if they were deserved. Adolescents are able to make choices, and they no longer believe everything they've heard. She will know and love her parents and grandparents, or else she will be quick to get away from them all. If the mother wins custody, your part as grandparents are to be loving, patient, and wait to see how the child's parents come to an agreement. Sometimes we must wait to have a child love us. Sometimes it never happens if the child has heard only ugly things. Sometimes a child thought to be lost will come willingly to visit and find what has been forbidden and love what was there for her all the time. But to remember nothing but arguments, accusations, hatred, jealousy, and malice is not the way to rear a child to love anybody. And it happens in too many families that begin only wanting to love the child. Be the people you want your grandchild to remember with love.
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