A Disturbing Comment About an Unborn Baby Leads to One Person Cutting Contact with Family
When a stranger makes you uneasy, you can leave. When a family member makes you feel unsafe around your child, you don’t have to explain yourself forever, but you’ll still owe yourself the clarity and the record of why you chose to walk away. That’s exactly the wrenching situation a Reddit user known as u/SafeConstant6405 laid out in a viral AITAH post: after a long trail of weird, violent and sexual comments from her brother-in-law, she and her husband decided to go no contact.
The spark that set everything off was a single line he allegedly said when they announced a pregnancy: “I hope you have a girl so I can take her away and give her back after she flowers.” What followed were refusals to respect boundaries, public displays that felt predatory, and in-laws who defended him instead of asking hard questions. Her post drew hundreds of replies, and a lot of fury.
What the poster said happened
In her original post, the woman, 26, married with a one-year-old son, details months of behavior she found alarming. Her brother-in-law, a 28-year-old she nicknamed “d ck” in the post, allegedly made violent and semexul remarks while she cut his hair at her salon. She reports he told her he watches videos of men being set on fire and insisted they were real, joked he wanted to slice a pizza customer’s throat for being slow, and made sexual comments about minors who work with him.
Family dinners, she wrote, provided more red flags: he would finish eating quickly and go to the basement with the kids, three boys aged 6, 8 and 11, plus an 18-month-old girl, shutting the door behind him. She describes that behavior as weird and isolating, and says other family members shrugged it off with “he just loves kids.” When she and her husband told him they were pregnant, his response, she said, was the now-infamous line about taking a girl and returning her “after she flowers,” which she read as an overtly sexual innuendo.
The moments that convinced them to cut him off
The list of specific incidents the OP provided is chilling in its accumulation. After her son was born and the family had a strict “no kissing” rule on account of RSV, she says her brother-in-law kissed the baby several times seconds after her husband had, despite being reminded of the rule. At a pumpkin patch outing she describes him kissing the child while the baby was strapped to her chest and “brushing up against” her breasts, a detail she says made her visibly uncomfortable while both parents-in-law looked away. The same trip, she claims, he pulled out a large knife with brass knuckles attached and waved it around, which she notes are illegal where they live.
Those incidents led the couple to set a hard boundary: he would no longer be allowed to hold their son. According to the OP, her husband texted his brother before Thanksgiving to tell him the rule; the brother replied “OK lol.” He then ignored them at Thanksgiving and later texted asking to visit on Christmas, allegedly accusing the OP of taking her husband’s phone and texting him. OP and her husband say they told the parents, the grandparents, and were met with shrinking defensiveness; her mother-in-law allegedly responded to the decision with “ok bye” and then began speaking negatively about the OP behind her back and trying to manipulate the husband into changing course.
How Reddit reacted and why commenters were so angry
The post struck a nerve. Top comments on the thread were blunt: dozens of users called her “NTA” and urged far more drastic action than cutting off a single person. One of the most upvoted comments read, “NTA. I would be cutting off contact with FIL and MIL too. PROTECT YOUR KIDS.” Another commenter boiled down the disbelief and horror many felt about the basement behavior, writing basically, “Why the hell is this man locked in a basement with those kids? OPEN THE DOOR.” Several people urged her to involve the police or child-protection services, pointing to the fantasies she quoted and the knife incident as potentially criminal. Others drew on personal experience of family members who defended abusers, warning that even clear allegations can be gaslit away if the rest of the family refuses to look.
The messy family fallout, loyalty, gaslighting, and boundaries
What makes stories like this so damaging is the family dynamic. The OP describes long-term enabling by both parents, plus attempts to “gotcha” her with backroom complaints about parenting and statements that their job was to communicate the cut-off to the brother, a demand she found absurd. She and her husband reportedly agreed he could maintain contact with his brother if he chose, but they would not put their child at risk. That boundary was still met with pressure and manipulation from the grandparents, and comment threads exploded with people insisting she take an even harder line: cut off the whole family and lock down contact entirely.
Other commenters sympathized with the emotional turmoil she described: the loneliness of being the family scapegoat, the exhaustion of defending your parenting choices, and the guilt of erecting walls that divide holiday tables. Many echoed the sentiment that protecting a child outweighs preserving family peace, especially if the “peace” depends on ignoring troubling behavior.
What To Take From This
The most practical takeaway is simple and hard: trust your instincts and document everything. If you or your child ever feel unsafe, take immediate steps to protect yourselves, that can include banning an individual from contact, recording incidents, telling other adults who might be in charge of your child, and in some cases contacting law enforcement. If a family member is making sexual comments about minors, carrying illegal weapons, or consistently violating health and safety rules, those are not “quirks”, they are signs that demand action.
Second, anticipate the emotional price of boundary-setting. Family members who enable bad behavior will often retaliate with guilt, gaslighting, and smear campaigns. Prepare your partner for what that looks like and insist on a united front. Finally, get outside support: counsel, a trusted friend, or a lawyer can help you navigate the practical and psychological fallout. As many Reddit commenters urged the OP, protecting your child is not selfish, it’s the job.
