While some families spiral in panic, worry, and questions when their daughters experience their first menstruation cycle, there are some families who anticipate age-old family traditions of celebrating their daughters’ transition into womanhood.
But as strong of a tradition as this might be, it only really matters if the daughter wants to participate, pointed out the users of the “Am I the A**hole?” (AITAH) subReddit.
Redditor YocalLocaChoca knew that his daughter was not interested in having a “period party” that his wife was so passionate about throwing for her, and he reassured her that she would not have to participate.
When his wife “misunderstood” and planned a period party anyway, the Original Poster (OP) not only didn’t make his daughter attend, but he called his wife out in front of everyone for not respecting their daughter’s wishes.
He asked the sub:
“AITAH for putting a stop to my 12-year-old daughter’s ‘period party’?”
The OP’s younger of two daughters recently experienced her first period.
“My wife (42 Female) and I (43 Male) have two daughters, seven years apart. Our 19-year-old was at college in a different state when this happened.”
“Our girls are very different. 19-year-old is outgoing, even extroverted, loves meeting new people, trying new things, etc. Our 12-year-old is shy, a homebody, finds things she’s comfortable with, and sticks with them. (In fairness, her sister was kinda like this until she was 16 or so; maybe it’s genetic).”
“A couple of months ago, my 12-year-old came to me in my home office, obviously upset. She stammers a bit and then manages to tell me that she just got her first period.”
“I play the supportive dad, comfort her, and get her a box of sanitary pads my wife had bought earlier in the year (guessing this was going to happen sooner or later), and go over the instructions with her.”
“She goes into her bathroom, does what she has to do, thanks me for my help, I got her some ice cream and Midol, told her there was nothing to be embarrassed about, and she could always come to me for anything.”
When the OP’s wife found out about it, the OP was a little shocked by her reaction.
“My wife gets home later that day, and my 12-year-old tells her what happened. My wife starts crying, ‘My little girl is growing up,’ etc., and then asks who should be invited to the ‘period party’ (which I only knew of from listening to Bert Kreischer; if they were a thing when our 19-year-old started, she never asked for one).”
“My 12-year-old immediately closes off, says she doesn’t want a period party, and doesn’t want anyone to know.”
“My wife tries to talk to her some more, but our daughter ignores her and goes to her room.”
“My wife tries to enlist my aid in changing her mind, but I tell her, ‘She said she didn’t want one, don’t worry about it.'”
The OP’s wife did not respect their daughter’s wishes.
“Two days later, I get home from running errands, and before I can even make it to the stairs, my daughter runs up to me and asks if she can do her homework in my office. I’m confused, but say sure, and she bolts upstairs.”
“At this point, I started to suspect what was going on, and walked into the living room to find that my wife had not only decorated it like something which wouldn’t have looked out of place on a sweet sixteen party, but there were several family friends (all women) and a few I recognized as neighborhood mothers.”
“I beckon my wife into the hall, she asks where our daughter is, and I tell her she wanted to do homework in my office. She rolls her eyes and starts to move past me, but I step in front of her.”
“Me: ‘What are you doing?'”
“Wife: ‘Going to get our daughter; it’s her party.'”
“Me: ‘She told you specifically she DIDN’T want one of these.'”
“Wife: ‘Oh, she didn’t mean that. This is an important time for a girl, she needs to know not to be ashamed of her body.'”
“Me: ‘She’s not, I already explained things to her, she just doesn’t want to talk about it more.'”
“Wife: ‘I don’t expect you to understand, this is just for us women.'”
“She actually tried to PUSH past me, but I stepped into the doorway and completely blocked her.”
The OP’s wife continued to push the issue.
“Wife: ‘What’s wrong with you?'”
“Me: ‘What’s wrong with YOU? You know how shy she is, you knew she didn’t want you doing something like this, and you did it anyway.'”
“Wife: ‘I told you, it’s for her own good. We can’t let her grow up with a negative attitude toward something so natural.'”
“Me: ‘And we’re not, I told you, she knows what’s going on, she’s getting a handle on it, she just doesn’t want to talk about it with anyone else for right now.'”
“Wife: ‘Well, it wasn’t your business to tell her about it anyway.'”
“Me: ‘You were at work. Was I supposed to ignore her for four hours until you got home?'”
“Wife: ‘You could have called me, I would have come home.'”
“Me: ‘It still would have taken you an hour. She was upset, I knew what was going on, I talked her through it.'”
“Wife: ‘You don’t KNOW anything about it, it’s never happened to you.'”
The OP decided the conversation was over.
“At this point, I gave up. Point to my wife, no, I’ve never had a period, but I had three older sisters and a live-in girlfriend before my wife and I met, plus we’ve been married almost 21 years. I’m pretty well-versed.”
“She AGAIN tries to move past me, but I don’t move.”
“Me: ‘No. She doesn’t want this, I’m not letting you make her do it.'”
“Wife: ‘…Fine, have it your way.'”
“She goes back to the living room and tells the other ladies the period party is off because I’m being ‘a jacka**.”
“I lose it, follow her in, and let the women know, calmly but in no uncertain terms, that I appreciate what they wanted to do, but my daughter made it EXPLICITLY CLEAR that she DID NOT want this party, and my wife is trying to pressure her into it.”
“Several of the moms frown at her, my wife starts to backpedal, talking about how she didn’t think she was being serious, but I ignore her and begin taking down the decorations.”
“Everyone clears out shortly, and once the coast is clear, my daughter comes back downstairs.”
“My wife gives her a half-a**ed apology, again saying she didn’t think she was serious, but my daughter ALSO ignores her and just starts doing her homework in her usual place at the table.”
The OP’s wife was furious with him for stepping in.
“My wife was p**sed at me for a week, claiming I undermined her authority as a parent (apparently, by not helping her force our daughter into doing something she didn’t want to do) and made her look back in front of the neighborhood moms (by telling them she’d been doing this against our daughter’s wishes).”
“AITAH?”
Fellow Redditors weighed in:
- NTA: Not the A**hole
- YTA: You’re the A**hole
- ESH: Everybody Sucks Here
- NAH: No A**holes Here
Fellow Redditors reassured the OP that he was right to stand up for his daughter’s wishes.
“NTA. Puberty is an awkward, embarrassing time. Having your parents shine a spotlight on every confusing milestone would be a nightmare.”
“Imagine a first pube party or a wet dream dinner.” – JohnRedcornMassage
“Puberty embarrassment aside, there’s a whole host of privacy issues involved with what OP’s wife did. Ignoring her kid’s request for privacy is a massive violation of trust, especially for a kid. It teaches her that she can’t entirely trust her mother to keep anything a secret.”
“Hopefully, the kid can trust and rely on her dad, because if he hadn’t advocated for her, a logical outcome would be to just hide every medical and personal issue she faces in the future. That’s how you end up with kids that don’t tell you when they need help or when they’re in trouble.”
“OP may have just prevented a whole lot of future problems by showing his kid that he’s a reliable person to talk to.” – AshMendoza1
“Dad is going to be the go-to person and Mom will be out of the loop. Considering she went to him when it started and trusted that he would help her, and then when she was trying to hide from what her mother was doing trusted her dad would protect her. I think he has a beautiful relationship with his daughter!” – crazycarrie06
“Dad is her safe person. Her Mom should be ashamed of herself. This is about consent, and her dad came through teaching her that it’s her feelings and she has a right to them. Years from now, she will probably want her dad in the delivery room along with her baby daddy, and her mom will have no one to blame but herself.” – Any_Addition7131
“Considering that dad knew exactly what to do and say shows how amazing a dad he is.”
“My mom told all my neighbors and the family of my neighbor at the neighbor kid’s party. I walked in and every woman congratulated me with ‘becoming a woman.’ Little 12-year-old me was so f**king embarrassed. My mom couldn’t understand why.” – yuffieisathief
“My mom was talking to a family member that was over and kept ignoring me when I was begging for her help. She kept shooing me away.”
“I finally just told my Dad, and my Dad went and got my mom and told her I’d started my period. I didn’t want my male relative overhearing, so I asked him to pull my mom aside.”
“Instead of helping me, she did a dramatic, ‘My baby’s all grown up!’ and proceeded to start calling random family members and telling them the ‘good news.’ I still didn’t have any feminine products because I didn’t know where they were or how to use them.”
“I, again, had to go to my Dad and tell him that I didn’t know where anything was, but I knew I needed a pad or tampon, and he had to go and tell my Mom that he didn’t know where the period products were either, and to tell him because he needed to help me.”
“She got mad at him for ‘trying to take this away from her’ while she was on the phone with relatives.”
“I was 10 years old, a nerdy bookworm, and introverted. Her insistence that this was about her, not me, still sticks with me. I felt so vulnerable and like my mom wasn’t there for me when I needed her. That was a trend, though. My dad is the one who was always there.”
“I’m sure that’s the OP, too.” – Material-Variety7084
After receiving feedback, the OP shared an update in the comments section:
“After a few days, things around the house went back to normal. My wife cooled off, my daughter began talking to her again, and they didn’t appear to have any issues.”
“Except that my 12-year-old began coming to me more often about things instead of her mom. My wife obviously noticed, as they’d been very close before this, and was hurt, but said nothing. I guess she figured she deserved it.”
“Finally, one day after I got back from taking my daughter to school, my wife asked if she was still angry with her. I said I didn’t think so, and my wife just… kinda deflated. She looked so miserable that I actually got worried, and asked if SHE was still angry.”
“My wife said no, then admitted that she’d f**ked up and gotten too into the concept of what others here have called ‘menstruation celebration’ (which is a great phrase, it even rhymes!).”
“She said she’d been so focused on making sure our daughter had a positive experience that she brushed aside her reluctance to take part (and in my wife’s defense, she regularly does this: she’ll say she isn’t looking forward to doing something, but if she pushes past her shyness and takes part, nearly always has a good time). So my wife had thought this was just another example of her doing that, and didn’t take it seriously.”
The OP’s wife was clearly very concerned.
“Then my wife said something which threw me for a loop. She asked me if I thought our daughter hated her now. I was stunned, and automatically replied, ‘Of course not, she’s just…’ and then I kinda trailed off because I didn’t really know what to say. ‘Upset’ was what I finally settled on.”
“My wife was quiet, and then I asked her WHY she’d been so insistent, since she hadn’t tried to do this for our older daughter (no drama there: she got hers at 13 while they were out shopping, it was handled before they even left the mall). She said when she started, it was just such a busy day that she didn’t really have any time to think about it beyond, ‘Quick! Let’s get to the bathroom so I can help.'”
“It wasn’t until after this that that mife really thought about her own first, which basically consisted of her being told virtually nothing beforehand by her emotionally manipulative mother (they’ve been no contact for 15 years), barely being 12 when it happened, and once she DID go to her mom, only being handed a box of pads and warned not to get pregnant. Nothing more was ever said about it between them, my wife had to learn nearly everything from a friend’s mother.”
“Yeah. That old woman is a piece of work.”
“My wife was determined she wouldn’t behave like that toward our daughter when it happened, but as events show, she basically went too far in the other direction. Then she asked me what I thought she could do to fix this.”
“I told her the truth: our daughter probably wasn’t going to feel comfortable confiding in her again for a while, but if she really wanted to apologize, she should tell our daughter what she just told me.”
“And so she did. My wife went to pick her up from school, and when they got home, I saw they’d both been crying, but also seemed happier. Turned out I wasn’t quite right, and our daughter HAD still been harboring some resentment toward my wife for trying to push her into the period party, but after hearing my wife’s story, she decided to forgive her, only asking that my wife promise not to do something like that again.”
“And two months later (this happened in May), things between them seem to be back to normal. Maybe not the most exciting resolution, but I don’t think our daughter is going to hold a grudge over this or has permanently damaged their relationship.”
Fellow Redditors hoped that the OP’s wife had genuinely learned from this.
“I think your wife learned a valuable lesson and your kid will probably be okay with her, albeit this might be one memory she won’t look back upon very fondly.”
“My mother was very supportive of periods, we don’t need to be ashamed type, but it’s such a change, such a stupid thing too (I remember being SO upset that I’d have to endure this crap for the next 40 years or so) and the idea that I would have to buy period stuff on my own (I didn’t, but I thought that at one point as an adult I have to) at that point in time seemed so horrible, so ‘everybody will know!’ that I hated even the periods being mentioned.”
“It’s definitely something that is natural but due to age when it happens is very fragile period anyway, even in families where it’s natural and normal, I think girls are overwhelmed.” – NightSalut
“Even with support and education and allll that, it’s still objectively ‘gross’ at that age. You have bodily fluids leaking out of you that you can’t control, it can smell weird, it can stain your clothes, other little a** holes might make fun of you…. It’s just a very private thing.”
“Would I have wanted 10 women oohing and awwing over my dirty panties? F**k to the f**king no. That whole thing is so beyond the pale. I have anger and anxiety just thinking about this, and I had supportive, progressisve parents, AND I’m 55.” – ttaptt
“I understand why your wife did what she did. My mother didn’t know periods existed until she had her first. She thought she was dying. She screamed and cried until her friends explained what was happening. Her mom treated periods as a taboo topic that should never be brought up, even to teach your children.”
“However, your wife also ignored your daughter’s ‘no.’ That’s a consent issue. Your wife wanted to teach your daughter that a woman’s normal bodily function isn’t taboo or nasty, but she ignored another important lesson, ‘no means no.'”
“Your wife needs to be aware of this and work on this so that your daughter can be comfortable in telling people no and setting boundaries.” – shelupa
“That sounds like a happy ending. Well done. Glad to know you all talked it out so that everyone was heard and understood and, it seems, forgiven. Very good update.” – StrangerCharacter53
The subReddit was with the OP, it seemed, 100% between his willingness to listen to his daughter, respect her wishes, and then stand up for what his daughter wanted when his wife still attempted to put the party into place.
It was clear to all of them that the party was no accident and that the mom hoped that organizing it would provide enough pressure to get her daughter into the room for the celebration her mother wanted to have. But as long as she had a dad like the OP, she’d have the support to say no.