My daughter came to me at 16 and said she was non-binary, but only sometimes. Like, some days she would feel more male than female and somedays she would feel like neither. She wanted me to ask her every day what day it was and then refer to her as that pronoun of the day.
I told her that wasn’t going to fly (Growing up, I spent a lot of time on LJ during the ol’ ‘bun-self’ and ‘zen-self’ ‘zir-self’ days. People who think this is new to this generation are fooling themselves). I told her that I would call her the pro-noun she wanted, and do my best to remember it day to day, but she was going to have to tell me what she wanted for that day. I wasn’t going to play a daily guessing game.
This went on for about a week or two until she finally seemed to grow tired or bored and just said I could call her ‘her’. Though she still identifies as non-binary. Fine. (At least when it was going on she wanted ‘she, he, or they’ — I’m sorry but I couldn’t have done fox-self/fox-them with a straight face).
So that’s the pronoun story and looking back where I think things started to go off the handle. Here’s my real question.
My daughter is now 18, pregnant, and seems to have lost her god damned mind. Or I’m an asshole. You choose.
This year has been a struggle. She wanted to take a break year before she goes to community college, but can’t keep a job. Apparently, retail situations are too phobic against her non-binary state. (My child looks/acts/dresses exactly as a young adult female btw. When I ask how people are being phobic against her she gets as prickly as a cactus so I really don’t know the details.). She’s been through 4 or 5 jobs this year, quit all of them. She won’t consider call centers that aren’t face to face because she doesn’t like to talk on phones, and is apparently looking for a remote job without any luck.
She’s been unemployed since Thanksgiving (she quit her last job on Black Friday, in fact) and I was on the verge of laying down the law, telling her she either needs to go to school this upcoming semester full time or get a full time job or move out with her friends.
But now she’s come to me and she’s 5 months pregnant. She’s very angry at me, says it’s my fault because:
- I didn’t put her on puberty-blocking hormones when she came to me 2 years ago.
- She believes I am in fact trying to ‘feminize her’ by getting her birth control. (The pill.). She’s been throwing her prescription away.
This is where I might be the asshole. I called her a little idiot. We don’t use that sort of language in my house, and I never call people names—especially my own child— but at that moment I could just see red.
The hormone thing is a non-issue IMO because this is the first time I ever heard of her wanting hormones. What was I supposed to do? Go back in time?
As for the birth control! It’s also the first time I’m hearing anything about this! There are non-pill options that don’t have estrogen. If that was her want, all she had to do was ask and I would have driven her to the doctor myself! Or she could have taken the car she has and done it. She has her own medical card, even! Though to be fair, I don’t know how she would have managed the co-pay without a job. I know for a fact her old high school gave out free condoms like candy because her friends were always giggling over flavored sample packs and even blew a few of them up like balloons and left them around the house one time. She had all the birth control she could ever want and used none of it.
It gets worse.
We’re way past the date of abortion (again, I would have helped her if this had been her wish! We live in an abortion protected state and can afford it!). She’s known she was pregnant since about 2 months and has come to think of her baby like a sibling.
She expects me to raise it like it was mine. That this is my duty, in fact, because she says it is my refusal to accept her non-binary state that led to her being pregnant. So she was going to get a brother or sister and I was going to have another child.
You can say my language grew… sterner. Versions of ‘get your head out of your ass’ and ‘congratulations, Mommy, you have some hard decisions to make’ and I said I would absolutely not raise her baby for her.
She also refused to say who the father was. Now that I’ve cooled down I’m really hoping she has a secret boyfriend. She does have some friends who were born male, but now also don’t identify that way. We didn’t even get there as I lost my mind when she said she thinks of her own baby as a sibling and wants me to raise it like my own child.
She’s locked herself in her room loudly wailing, I feel like crap warmed over. She’s been in there for 12 hours, and as she has an attached bathroom, probably won’t be coming out until she gets hungry. Considering it’s been half a day I think she has snacks stored.
I also don’t know where to go from here. Being pregnant sucks and messes with your head, so I’d like to blame that and the fear she must be feeling, but… I have the bad feeling I either raised a spoiled brat or someone with an emerging personality disorder.
So I need to know from people who aren’t emotionally involved, and maybe some people who are more in tune with this whole nonbinary thing than I am.
What do I do to help while also making her responsible for her own child? How can I help my daughter accept she must do basically the most feminine thing you can do (give birth and possibly breast-feed) while being sensitive that she’s non-binary? Am I just a big asshole here?
Typing all this out it feels like my daughter is lost in crazy town. I'm still not raising her baby but at what point do I drag a legal adult to the hospital?
Edit: You might disagree with my choices or wording, but I'm reporting people who call this bait. It's not.
Edit2: It's the middle of the night and she has decided to pack some of her clothes and stay with one of her friends. (One who I suspect is the baby daddy). Before she left she told me that she already called the police and let them know that she was 'leaving of her own free will and was not in danger'. Like I was going to report an 18 year old adult as a runaway or something? It was insulting.
I told her she needs to work out details if she wants to adopt with the father, and she was welcome back home when she had a plan in place.
It was short because I heard her on the way out. I think she just meant to leave without saying anything.
Thank you for your kind comments and advice, Reddit. I'm going to sleep.
