I'm trying to get an idea of how to advise my nephew. If this is not appropriate for the PC forum (doesn't involve marital infidelity) I can move to OT. It's a bit convoluted so bear with me.

Nutshell: my nephew's GF is 6-7 months pregnant. His mom found out a week ago, the rest of the family found out this weekend at my birthday party.

My nephew (DN) has been dating a Bangladeshi girl (GF) for about a year and a half. They are both mid-20's. Their 'master plan' had been for her to get her masters' in journalism, after which they'd marry and start having children, after which DN would become a house husband.

GF reportedly comes from a rich Bangladeshi family that are very traditional muslims. DN describes GF (privately) as spoiled. She has been raised in the US and lives with relatives; her parents are back in Bangladesh.

What really sets off red flags for us is that her parents do not know that GF is even dating DN, much less pregnant. DN says she is in total denial about the pregnancy, has not had any kind of prenatal care and is refusing to plan the logistics of where to put the baby's crib, childcare, etc.

DN's mom (my sister) is reluctant to help in any material way. Our parents never watched the grandkids, and my sisters' attitude is that she shouldn't have to either. (my mom has since explained to me that this was because she was working 50+ hour weeks, and had neither the time nor the energy, but my sister seems to hold a grudge about it).

I wonder if the baby is even his. I think GF may be dating a culturally acceptable BF for the benefit of her traditional family, and DN is side action so she can feel like a rebel. Or maybe I read SAA too much.

My wife and I are concerned that GF plans to either have the baby in a bathroom and leave it in a trash can, or have the baby and drop it at a safe haven like a fire station or a hospital. This would result in her not being pregnant any more, not having to alter her life, and not being attached to a culturally unacceptable BF, thus keeping her funding from her parents. We have nothing to base this on besides the fact that she hasn't even told her parents about DN and is in such denial/blase about her pregnancy.

There is also the possibility that she could leave the country before giving birth, or have the baby and then leave the country with it.

We are definitely going to advise DN to have a paternity test done as soon as the baby is born to see if it's his or not.

Is there anything else he can do? He can't compel her to go to the doctor or lead a pregnancy-healthy lifestyle. Is there a means in place for fathers of safe haven or abandoned babies to claim them? Can he prevent her from leaving the country with the baby? I'm not sure of the passport requirements for infants.

Any help would be appreciated.

He should get a consult with a family law attorney in his state/county.

i agree with faith and i mean like yesterday

it sounds like she is using him and as soon as she has what she wants he will be on the single again with a baby if she doesn't give it away first.

he should find out all he can about his rights to raising the child without her and what he can do to prevent her from just dropping it off somewhere

I do not find any indication in what you wrote to suppose that the girls is sleeping around on your dear nephew.

Rather, with her parents being devout moslems, she could be in danger of being expelled by her family or worse.

I know of a patient, moslem, very modern or so I thought, who found out she was 20 weeks pregnant by the man she was engaged to be married with. They would marry in half a year. She cried and cried, but said she would have to abort the baby, because her family would kill her and her fiancee if they found out.
She had the baby aborted at 22 weeks. Said they had no choice.

This was a very modern looking family, well to do. I know that this is not the case for all moslems, but you have to understand that it may not be possible to present him to her family as a boyfriend.

Also I would like to say, that there is nothing in your post that indicates that she is using him for anything. Rather, HE might have talked her into having sex with him, most of the time it is not exactly the girl that is pushing to move forward on that terrain. He could have made sure birth control was used so that he would not ruin her (and his) life and/or career.

Happyheart

Well an update.

DN changed his name and converted to Islam a couple of weeks ago. They originally tried to schedule the wedding on 11 November but it fell through. They were married this last Friday.

In their culture it looks very bad for an unwed woman to have a baby, hence the rush to get her married. DN's MIL is telling everyone they were married in secret in February, I guess as a face-saving move. My DN in turn lied to his MIL about the amount of college he has (lie: 2 years, reality: none) so it'll be interesting if and when this all unravels.

My sister (DN's mom) vehemently opposed the name change and conversion. Subsequently, DN didn't invite her to the wedding. She got very hurt and wouldn't speak to him for a few weeks. Supposedly the GF's mom called her to try to get together for coffee or lunch or something, and my sister was extremely nasty to her. She didn't show at the wedding either. She denies having said anything nasty. My W and I wonder if this is evidence of overuse of ambien.

GF and MIL-to-be came to Thanksgiving at my mom's house. They were nervous but pleasantly relieved to find that the rest of us aren't like that. My W and MIL-to-be got on very well. DN's mom dropped off her turkey and stuffing, and then left...much to the disappointment of my kids, who adore their aunt.

The baby was born this morning, about 6 weeks premature. DN's W had been on bed rest for a month or so, and had gotten a couple of steroid injections to help the baby's lungs grow. The baby is 3 pounds, but doing well considering - alert and breathing on his own. It's flu season so no visitors aside from parents/grandparents. DN's wife is doing fine.

My sister is going to the hospital to visit them and the baby. I really hope this leads to some reconciliation between them.

Can you talk some sense into your sister? What a tragic mess!!

My sister isn't someone you can talk sense in to . She's stubborn as the proverbial mule, and trying to convince her of something just makes her dig her heels in harder.

The tack my wife and I are taking with her instead is to treat it like we'd treat one of our kids' tantrums: just ignore it and proceed normally. Eventually, with no audience and no conflict, she will defuse into a more rational state of mind.

For example, my wife and I took the kids and dropped by her house Friday after the wedding. I asked my wife ahead of time if we could not talk about the situation at all while we were there. My sister knew why we were out her way (the mosque where DN was married is near her house). W and I said nothing of it and just had a purely social visit. Whenever my sister brought it up, I changed the subject. The visit went really well.

The next day I sent her an email saying we had wanted a purely social visit, not to grill or browbeat her, and that she was still my sister and my kids' aunt, regardless of her relationship with DN or his son. I added that we'd love to hear her side of the situation whenever she's ready to talk.

Her two big issues are his name change and his conversion. I'm not sure why she has an issue with the name change; her kids had to keep her XWH's name for insurance purposes after the divorce. When DN changed his name for the conversion, he dropped XWH's family name and changed it to mine and my sister's name - as he puts it, to honor and respect the family that did the most for him. Seems like my sister would like that.

Her issue with the conversion is political. It's not like our family is traditionally Jewish or Catholic or evangelical. He's not even converting from anything.

She did send pictures of the baby (3 pounds 15 ounces, not 3 flat as I originally thought) and seems to have softened a bit. Hopefully the trend will continue!

if he is not converting from anything or for any REAL religous reason then his conversion will be seen as a sham by the rest of her family and will not be accepted anyway.

your dn and his w need to decide whether they are going to live as a free family in this country or as an enslaved family member to her families culture

Yes, this is my feeling too. I'm an agnostic but it seems to me that converting for the sole sake of marrying someone would be seen as an act of hypocrisy by the powers-that-be.

Aaaaannnnnd now my mom and my W are going at it. This is shaping up to be a glorious holiday season!

It could also be a sign of respect. If clearly one side of the family doesn't have a religious affiliation, and the other side does, it could simply be respect and honor to the affiliated family, a showing that the new spouse intends to honor his wife's religious background in regards to the offspring.

My father's family was terribly Catholic, and my mother, while not converting, had to agree to raise us Catholic, which was fine since her family wasn't religious anyway.

It doesn't much matter to me any more. My nephew has chosen his path and gotten the girl he said he was going to marry. He'll be a good muslim, or not. He'll manage to blend the two families, or not. It'll work out for him, or not.

I'm now much more worried about the rift that has opened up between my wife and my mom, with me squarely in the middle. My wife has shut down and I'm not sure where it's going right now.

Wow! What is going on? Are they fighting over the nephew?

Kind of and kind of not. There's a lot of background and it's mostly resolved now anyway. Key things to keep in mind:

• My wife and I are really bad about staying in touch with family
• My mom hates finding out about things at the last minute, and hates being the last one to find out anything
• My wife has been reaching out to DN's family

I called my mom last Friday just because I hadn't talked to her in a while. I told her that DS8's "kid" birthday party was the next day (he had his "family" party on Thanksgiving). I apologized profusely for not having told her, and said we totally understood if she couldn't make it.

I also mentioned that my wife had been trying to help set up a baby shower for DN's W. Her family doesn't see a point to having one now that the baby has been born. DN, my W, and myself (and pretty much anyone outside the family) think there needs to be a baby shower because they have pretty much nothing to care for a baby with. My mom got irritated and started grilling me for details, which I didn't have.

Later that night my mom sent me a very ugly text, essentially complaining that my W has all this time to spend talking to DN's "muslim family" but no time to pick up the phone and invite her to her grandson's birthday party. She also speculated if the "muslim family" would be there, and if we had waited so long to invite her and my sisters because we didn't want them there.

I was livid; I was so furious I was shaking. My W asked what was wrong and I showed her the text. We were both badly shook up and angry that night. I sent my mom a long, scathing letter that night before I went to bed.

My mom sent me a long, scathing letter in reply the next day (Saturday). At one point I completely fell apart, holding DS4 and listening to Christmas music on the radio. I hadn't cried like that since my dad passed a few years ago.

My mom and I had an hour conversation Sunday night with no mention of the text, the email exchange, or the situation between us.

Monday I asked my wife to treat my mom's text as words spoken in anger, and to blow them off as a product of stress. We POJA'd that she would call my mom once a week and I would call her dad once a week, as part of both of us doing a better job of staying in touch with family. She also said she'd be better about email - she is a busy SAHM and carving out time and brain cycles for email is hard for her.

I apologized to my wife for not protecting her by showing her the text. In retrospect, I felt like I should have privately dealt with the issue with my mom. My W said I did nothing wrong; that I had been open and honest with her (her #1 need).

Monday/Tuesday/Wednesday she was like a zombie. Distant, tired easily, reluctantly accepted affection, wouldn't ask me for help with things around the house or the kids. We had SF on Tuesday (after a few weeks off for everyone being sick) - she wasn't really "present". Wednesday she finally opened up and told me what the trouble was.

It seems she was strongly triggered back to the situation with her mom and step-dad. My previous thread here. My mom made those nasty remarks and didn't apologize, which is the kind of thing my W's step-dad would have done. And my W felt compelled to stay in contact with my mom, similar to how W's mom was constantly trying to compel her to have contact with her step-dad, even after she told her mom what he had been trying to do.

We revoked/canceled the POJA about staying in touch with family and agreed that she would contact my mom if, when, and how she saw fit. W was much better after sharing these things with me, and has been back to her old self the last couple of days.

Thursday I got an email from my mom saying she was sending flowers and a note of apology to my wife. Mom is still angry about what happened, but understands that her remark was uncalled for. I had expected that given a few days to think it over, my mom would apologize, but I didn't want to tell my wife and raise possibly false hopes. The apology will go a long way with my wife.

I guess that's it.

Oh wow, just wow. What a nightmare for you and your wife. I don't have anything to add since it seems you and your wife are handling this so deftly, but I wanted to give you my sympathy. What a mess! Is your family Irish by any chance?

My mom is mostly Scots-Irish-English with some Native American thrown in for color. My wife is Scots-Irish-French. So yeah...my dad was mostly German with some Irish, because apparently Germans don't drink enough. I inherited a lot of his tendencies...I just want everything to run smoothly

My wife had always really looked up to my mom - she was an army officer's wife who raised 3 kids pretty much on her own. When my dad retired, she went to college after 20 years of being a SAHM, and took on her own career in the IT industry. The nastiness from my mom hurt that much more. I hope that they can patch things up; we'll see how our tree trimming party goes on Sunday.

DN's son went home a couple of days ago, BTW. I didn't think he was going home until he'd made 5 pounds - either he made a pig of himself or they sent him home early.

Good night, bitbucket, that's a lot of crap to go through. Kudos to you for protecting your wife from your mother and making it clear to her she doesn't have to continue to keep contact with your mom for your sake.

My parents have also been pretty disrespectful toward me and my wife. We haven't seen them much in quite some time, but are hoping that may start to turn around soon. When I discovered that my parents were causing love bank withdrawals in my account in Prisca's love bank, it was a no brainer to tell them I couldn't tolerate their behavior any more.

Thanks markos. I was actually thinking of you and prisca earlier in the week when this was at its worst, and hoping we wouldn't have to go that route. It seems like both my mom and my sister backed off after a strong defense. I hope they don't probe again!

I hope they learn to stay off that boundary, bitbucket. I think if I had recognized and enforced our boundaries with my parents much earlier, things might not have gotten as bad as they did for us.

The sad thing is that I had a copy of His Needs Her Needs For Parents in the house at the time. I knew what Dr. Harley said, I just hadn't fully bought into it yet. I also didn't understand just how big the problem really was early on.

I just wanted to post an update. In a nutshell, everything is good between my wife, my mom and I.

My mom sent flowers and an apology note to my wife. My wife sent a long email back to my mom, and has been making an effort to keep in touch better. The issue seems to have been dropped on both sides, and looking at it you'd think nothing had ever been wrong. The holidays went fine and so did the February double birthday celebration went fine.

We're all attending my sister's 4th birthday of sobriety tonight. The change in her has been great to see...she stayed sober through a long period of unemployment and having to move in with my sister. Now she has a FT job and is really happy.

I've been in a funk lately due to work stress and a schedule change, but am slowly coming out of it. I wouldn't say I'm in tall cotton...maybe knee-high

Wow! That is good news!