AITA for telling my husband I don't want my children to spend unsupervised time with his parents?

NTA, but girl, you’re screwed.

You married a man who is okay with his parents behaving like this. You are having a baby with him. There is no way out now: you deal with constant turmoil over dealing with his parents or you get divorced and have no idea what happens on dad’s time. Any way you slice it, it’s gonna suck.

In a perfect world, you could just say NO and everything would move along. But this isn’t a perfect world. Your husband doesn’t want to deny his parents time with your kid. Presumably he doesn’t share their hateful values, but he still loves his parents, and that makes this super messy. You’re going to need to make concessions unless you want a divorce.

Your husband needs to get on board. Start now with telling the in-laws that they can’t “talk politics” (lol as if any of that shit is actually about politics). Get them in the habit of silencing themselves because “little ears” are listening. Your husband and you both know they don’t care about changing their thinking, so don’t bother asking them to. Tell them not to talk like that because the kids can’t repeat it. When my racist dad starts to go off the rails, I’ll tell him about some made up FB story I read where a kid was expelled for using a racist term and remind him we can’t say stuff like that in front of the kids. Is it bullshit? Oh hell yes. But it does work.

When it comes to alone time, you’re going to have to play your cards carefully (assuming you want to have a relationship with your husband). I’m guessing he’s too scared to tell his parents no because he doesn’t want to explain the real reason. IF they’ve learned to silence themselves by the time the kids are old enough for overnight visits, then maybe this won’t be an issue. But if not, I’d suggest you be the bad guy and say you can’t bare to leave your kid(s) overnight. Just be the irrational woman who has too many mama bear hormones and let them be pissed at you - but ONLY if your husband backs you. Don’t let his cowardly ass throw you under the bus.

This is going to be rough. Hateful values are obviously never acceptable, but it is really hard to convince someone else cut off or deny family. You’re in a no-win situation. Would it be amazing to just say “no”? Hell yes, it would be great. But that isn’t going to happen because your husband doesn’t want to do that. So you’re going to have to find another way to make this work, and while that way may not be ideal, maybe you can make it work.

Good luck. Congrats on the upcoming baby.

/r/AmItheAsshole Thread