Being a single parent isn't easy, and anyone who had their kids at a young age knows that's no picnic either. But after trying to do what he believed was the right thing, a 23-year-old single dad on Reddit started to struggle with his new reality.
Disappointed by his lack of social life, increased parenting responsibilities that make it hard for him to advance at work, and pretty much nonexistent dating life (hmmm, ladies where does that sound familiar?), the guy came to the conclusion that it would be a good idea for him to give his 2-year-old son up for adoption and asked for help deciding.
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The candid dad shared he was the one who convinced his college girlfriend not to have an abortion and accepted sole responsibility for their baby boy.
When his girlfriend got pregnant, he asked her not to terminate the pregnancy and she reluctantly agreed not to on the grounds that once the baby was born he would be on his own to raise their kid. "I felt that [the abortion] was against my beliefs (btw I’m not pro-life, I feel like the option to abort should be there for people that don’t believe what I do but this is what I thought was right for my child)," he wrote in his post on Reddit. "I was graduating that year and already had a pretty well-paying job lined up so I felt that I could provide for my kid."
But flash forward two years since he and his ex made their deal, and now the dad is starting to feel the strain of wanting to have a normal 20-something life while also raising a child. "I just feel so tired and secluded from the world. My only friend is my son, between work and him I have no free time. All I do on my free time is go to the park with him, watch kids shows etc.," he wrote. "My mom lives kinda far away but she visits every few months and lets me have some alone time but it’s not enough."
He added that due to his "parent responsibilities" he has not been able to take needed initiatives to get a promotion at work and he simply "can't" date as a then 23-year-old dad.
The dad said he was considering giving his boy away for adoption so that he could be raised by a 'more stable family.'
"I just feel unfulfilled and alone and it has started to take its form in a little bit of animosity against my son and I never want that to happen," he wrote. "I want to be a great dad that loves his kid but I don’t think I can be that, I’ve tried for two years. You always hear about this undying love you’ll have for your kid but I just never had that."
But no matter how stressful parenting can be, most don't openly come to this dad's conclusion. "Would I be the a–hole for putting my son up for adoption?" he wondered. "Please give me your perspective[s]."
And at this point, he admitted that there were only two things that gave him pause about going through with it. "The thing that makes me think that I am an a–hole is that he has started to form an attachment to me and that it would be unfair on him to leave him and unfair on his grandmother that also has a good connection with him," he wrote. "But what makes me think I’m not an a–hole is that I think that his childhood would just get worse the more lonely and unfulfilled I feel and that he’s better off with a more stable family."
Um, yeah, people online responded — and they weren't fans of his problem-solving.
'You signed up for this,' one person responded.
'I feel so angry for that child,' another person commented.
"People like you are the reason why there are so many kids languishing in the foster care system," the commenter added.
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And someone else reminded him that his son 'isn't a pet.'
Getting personal time back is not a good enough reason to give up the boy for adoption, they argued.
Seeing that no one was going to support this idea, the dad has since reconsidered.
"I think I was just in too of a dark place to see how bad this post is and even if I got a lot of non-constructive comments that hurt, I got a lot of comments that really hit it on the nail with how bad it would be to follow through with this as well as giving me really sound advice," he wrote in an update on Reddit.
The dad shared that he was going to try therapy, join some single parent groups, and invest in a babysitter. He added that he would also to reach out to the boy's mother though he said, "I’m pretty sure that she hasn’t changed her mind."
"Lastly, I just want to say that I love my son and that I genuinely thought that him getting adopted by a stable family would be better for him," he concluded. "[I] can now see how that can mess him up in so many different ways. I think I might have some sort of postpartum depression that comes and goes and when I wrote this post I think I was at my lowest."
These stories are based on posts found on Reddit. Reddit is a user-generated social news aggregation, web content rating, and discussion website where registered members submit content to the site and can up- or down-vote the content. The accuracy and authenticity of each story cannot be confirmed by our staff.
