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The original was posted on /r/AmItheAsshole by /u/Loving_Grandpa_87 on 2023-09-23 20:58:24.

Usual disclaimers apply; sorry this is long.

I (49M) will be the first to admit I’m not a perfect father, but I’ve tried my hardest to do right by my son (23M); it’s just been the two of us since he was very young, and I’ve always tried to instill in him the value of hard work and making the best of yourself. So I was incredibly proud when he got a place at a prestigious university (Russell Group) to study aerospace engineering.

At uni, he met “Susie” (now 24F), who had a daughter (3 at the time, now 8), “Bonnie”. Her having a kid so young, with the father out of the picture, raised a lot of red flags for me even after meeting her, so I was honest with my son; she was clearly looking for a dad for her kid first-and-foremost, and he’d be putting his future at risk by taking that role. He told me he wanted to step up and help raise this girl anyway, because he loved her and he loved Susie, and wouldn’t hear anything to the contrary.

Well, long story short, he dropped out after one year of uni with something like £14,000 in student debt (last I checked, but that was a few years ago) and moved in with Susie, and is now working a dead-end data entry job while playing daddy to someone else’s kid. We still talk occasionally, but things have become tense between us; he’s noticed I don’t have any interest or affection for his partner or Bonnie, and we’ve fought on-and-off over it a few times.

Which brings me to two months ago, when my son called me to let me know that I had a grandkid. Apparently, he and Susie decided not to tell anyone except people who had to know and close family (which really means her family, apparently) until the kid was born. I’ll admit, that hurt a lot, but I swallowed my pride and sent them a card along with a couple of books; one a baby book and the other a nice edition of a storybook I hoped my granddaughter would get to enjoy once she was older.

A few days later, they made a Facebook post to announce the kid publically, and in one of the photos, Bonnie had the second book I’d sent. I messaged my son asking why he’d given something that was meant to be my grandkid’s special thing to Susie’s kid instead, and he told me that Bonnie’s noticed I don’t send her things for birthdays etc, that she felt out when her sister got gifts and she didn’t, and that it’s one of her favourite books. He said his other daughter is too young to know it was meant for her; I said that Bonnie isn’t even his daughter, and he needs to accept that I don’t owe anything to someone else’s kid. It turned into this huge fight and I got a long message, signed by both him and Susie, saying I wasn’t going to have any more contact with my granddaughter until I accept Susie and Bonnie are family too.

I’ve complained about all this to my work friends, and gotten mixed reactions. Some say I’m in the right, but I’ve also been told by more than a few that I’m an AH for “rejecting” this kid. So, am I?