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• Tuesday, January 13, 2009 05:45 AM

  @ Amerigo

  I thought that many of the posters have been surprisingly understanding of the LW. I actually credited her for being honest enough to acknowlege that she does not care in the least for this girl and feels burdened by her presence in their lives. Clearly this young lady is an utter mess, but the LW feels little in the way of sympathy for this teenager and nothing in the way of empathy. Imagine being dumped in a foreign country by your mother who has gone nuts? Or coming home and having your father foist daily care off on a nanny and might see his daughter once a week or so. She admits that in the fours years of her relationship with her boyfriend that they almost never saw the girl and had little to do with her. Is that normal for a father to treat his child that way? I'd call it neglectful at the very least, abusive at worst. This child is a victim and desperately needs at least one of her parents to finally step up to the plate and do right by her.

  As for the LW, I'm really stunned after re-reading her letter that she didn't see anything wrong with how her boyfriend basically ignored his daughter for so long. She seemed more than content with the idea that he had a child, but the child was somewhere else and not a part of their daily lives. Is it any wonder that this girl retreats into reading? After all, her mom is nuts, her father pays little if any real attention to her and certainly doesn't take a daily hand in her upbringing, and her father's girlfriend looks down her nose at her. Hell, I'd be crawling under the bed and refusing to come out if this was how my upbringing was. It is not a nanny's job to raise a child for the parents and I'm really stunned that the LW seems to think this was an acceptable arrangment.

  Cary was correct in that her boyfriend can no longer shirk off his responsibilities as a father and that if the LW cannot find it in herself to care about this child and love her as her own, then she has no business being in a relationship with this man. The last thing this girl needs after everything she's been through is to have a stepmother who thinks so poorly off her. She needs a woman who will take her in hand and teach her happily how to be a confident and independant young woman - not to act as if her presence is a grand imposition in their lives.

  As for the the LW's age - she's 29! This is not a child or someone just starting out in life. This is someone who's been done with school and out in the world for some time now, thank you very much! The fact that her boyfriend's child is just 13 years younger than her isn't that huge a deal - my brother remarried a much younger woman who is only 12 years older than my neice and she loves my neice as if she were her own daughter. The LW is as immature as her boyfriend's daughter is and some of her comments, such as that because the girl isn't so attractive that she might not ever fall in love, come across as painfully shallow. And given how her father has treated her, I'm not overly surprised that she has no interest in boys.

  Cary was correct that legally and morally, at this point the LW doesn't have any obligations to this child except not to be in the way of her father's parenting responsibilities. If they marry, however, she becomes a de facto parent - there is no escaping that. So the LW has two choices; she can either grow up and accept this responsibility with an open heart and be the mother that this girl so desperately needs, or she ends her relationship with the girl's father. The man and his daughter must come as a package deal. And honestly, how could any man who treats his own child so shabbily be anything worthwhile as a husband?

  —Ravanne Read Ravanne's other letters
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