This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/bestofredditorupdates by /u/Choice_Evidence1983 on 2025-05-14 04:00:18+00:00.

---

I am NOT OOP, OOP is u/Feeling_Possible3552

Originally posted to r/AITAH

[New Update]: AITAH for losing it on my husband and MIL after she hit our son?

NEW UPDATE MARKED WITH ----

Thanks to u/queenlegolas for suggesting this BoRU

Trigger Warnings: child abuse, emotional abuse and manipulation, verbal abuse, trauma, accusations of racism, abandonment, deadbeat parent

Mood Spoiler: upsetting, disgusting

---

RECAP

Original Post: September 23, 2024

I’m F 30 and my husband is 29. We have a 3 year old son. He is from South America. I’ll call him Juan. He came to my country as an immigrant and can now stay permanently if he wants to.

I’ve only met my MIL in person on the day of our wedding and she seemed like a nice old Latin lady. I’ll call her Maria.

She recently came to the country for a few weeks, Juan invited her, so she could meet our son and see the wonders of our country, like grey skies and old buildings and old people.

She absolutely loved our son and was so happy to see him and play with him. Everything went well, but one day I left him with her for a moment while Juan and I went shopping for dinner. We were out for less than half an hour and when we came back our son was crying and came running to me as soon as he saw me come through the door.

I asked Maria what had happened and she said “he was misbehaving so I hit him with a spoon and he started to cry” I couldn’t believe what she had said so I asked her to repeat it and she did, saying it as if she was proud of it.

I asked her why she was so proud of hitting my son? She said she only hit him once, as if that was better. This started an argument, she said that children need to be hit once in a while or they’ll become delinquents, she said that all her children were regularly hit with spoons or sandals and they all turned out fine.

I couldn’t stand it, so I told her to get out, she could stay in a hotel that wouldn’t let her near my son again, she was so angry and started insulting me in Spanish which I only half understood. It took me 3 hours to get her out of the house.

Then I continued to argue with Juan because he said NOTHING the whole time. He said he didn’t like it but it was true that they turned out well, I said corporal punishment is NEVER OK but that made him angry, he said “I challenge you to find a single mamá latina who has never hit her children, not even once, but that’s the way we were brought up because otherwise we would have become week men” and then he went on to say that I was suggesting that an entire culture of millions of people had been brought up wrong and that was racist.

That is the short version, because we ended up arguing most of the night. I didn’t let Maria see our son until I went back to her country, and Juan went to sleep with a friend. All my friends put it down to culture shock and that I’m crazy to die on that hill, and Juan is still very angry with me.

So AITAH? and racist?

edit: thanks all for your support, thanks for clarifying it isn’t a cultural thing. Yes there is older people in my own country who still defend corporal punishment, but him insiting that this IS a cultural thing and therefor shouldn’t critizice it was bullocks. I try to contact him to talk but he keeps leaving me on read while uploading stories at a pub at the same time. I’m furious honestly. But I’ll see what I can do.

AITAH has no consensus bot, OOP was NTA

Top Comments

Commenter 1: NTA. It’s not a race issue. My Eastern European mother would do the same. Just because that’s the way it always was doesn’t make it any less abusive. You need to talk to your husband about how you want to parent your son. It sounds like you haven’t had to resort to hitting so far, so why start now, just because your MIL is incapable of managing a toddler?

Commenter 2: Has anyone explained to Juan that OP is not a “mama Latina” and this is not how children are raised today. It has nothing to do with an entire culture being brought up wrong. The child is three, he’s only met this grandmother recently and she conks him with a spoon, great way to get to know your grandmother!

Commenter 3: He was pretty quick to call you racist because you disagreed with something. That’s so bs. It comes across as very manipulative.

NTA

Update #1: January 28, 2025 (four months later)

Hi everyone. Its been a while, I had forgotten about this account. But I was cleaning this computer before selling it and I was still logged in.

So, on my last post, my MIL came in to visit our country, MIL and my husband Juan are from south America, we left her alone with the baby for a moment only to find out she had hit him because he was behaving like a baby.

My husband defended her. And called me racist because according to him, every Latin American parent hits their kids and its ok, but its not ok with me at all.

So, the situation kept going on for a while, this became a huge issue in our marriage, and then Juan confessed that he had also hit our son when I wasn’t home, he believes that is the only way to discipline a child and that “gentle parenting” doesn’t work.

That was it for me, the problems got bigger and bigger while he kept insisting that this way of parenting of the reason why Latin Americans are more resilient than northern countries, and that people in here are “too soft” and sensitive.

We started fighting every single day, and then I just asked for a divorce, after that he became so verbally violent that now we communicate through lawyers only. I have plenty of evidence of him confessing to hitting our son, while he in his testimonies confirms it but says “is not that serious”.

This is stressful and im not doing well, so I have to sell a few things to pay for bills and debts. Im going for full custody while he is doing the same, claiming that im an unfit mother for not teaching our son “discipline”.

Well, enough if my drama, I have to go and do something else, thanks everyone.

ETA:

I wasnt expecting so many people to read this, but wow, thanks everyone.

To be clear, my husband wasnt beating our son in a way that could put his life in danger, but for example, wrapping a spoon in clothes so when it hits, still hurts but leaves no marks on the skin. He described this to me as a way to make me see that “is not that serious” but is still unacceptable.

This is not an attempt to make Latin people look like abusive parents, but Juan really thinks that because growing up he normalized it, he really thinks that everybody does it, and the people who wasn’t raised that way are weak.

And yes. We had talked about how to raised our child, but I always thought that not hitting them ever was obvious.

I’m not sure when I might update with something important, I dont even have a court date yet, so it will take a while, but ill be reading your comments.

Edit 2: thanks for all of your support, but I cant keep reading your stories of child abuse. Im so sorry, Im glad the majority of you are doing better now, but I just can’t keep reading them. Its actually making me feel so bad, that’s the downside of having empathy. Sorry.

Top Comments

Commenter 1: Thanks for standing up for your kid, you’re a good mother. Your husband is an ass, to say the least; I have a Latina mother and she never even attempted to hit me once in my first 20 years of life (I moved to a different country when I got married) and actually defended me when my dad was about to hit me when I was around 7-8. Hitting oftentimes create adults with a lot of stress, anxiety and fear to voice out their feelings.

Commenter 2: NTA. Hitting a baby is never ok. They can’t learn “discipline” at that stage, only fear and pain. You are doing the right thing OP.

Commenter 3: Exactly, childhood abuse and trauma creates scars that are evident even in adulthood, you are doing right by your child, good job

Commenter 4: Stay strong, you’re doing the right thing for your son.

---

----NEW UPDATE----

Trigger Warnings: abandonment, deadbeat parent

Update: my husband left the country: May 7, 2025 (3.5 months later)

I have no fucking energy for context here, I’m so damn angry and frustrated.

My husband and I are divorcing but this is so slow as you can imagine. He has been such a pain in the butt about it and trying to put every roadblock he could think off.

He got silent for some days, damn silent, like he fell off the edge of the earth. Then he sent me a message of him, with his mom, on a beach, with a beer, and a caption that said in Spanish “intente pedirme manutención desde acá jueputa” which translate to something like try to ask me for child support from here, you b word, and then blocked me.

I’m so angry, nobody knew he left the country, his friends, coworkers, the girl that I have a suspect he was cheating on me with, nobody.

Seems like he is at his home country and yes, he is from a coastal city where some of his family members still live in.

I’m damn devastated and feel so stupid for ever thinking this could ever be a good man for my child. I was fighting to get cust…

---

Content cut off. Read original on https://old.reddit.com/r/BestofRedditorUpdates/comments/1km613s/new_update_aitah_for_losing_it_on_my_husband_and/