To tell or not to tell- Your kid his/her father

“I dint need anything from him, all I wanted was to see him, to know him and that’s all, I think that would have solved quite a number of my problems”. I saw the hurt, the disappointment and most importantly the betrayal this man felt towards his mother. Did you ask her about it? I prodded, “am sure she hated me for that’, he admitted absentmindedly,’ but she passed on before I knew the answer and by then our relations had been severed by my constant questions and nagging on who my father was”. I watched this man closely- a father himself- as he talked about this topic which he adds,’ I rarely talk about because just the thought of it changes my moods’.

This is a nightmare topic to most mothers who are not living with the father of their babies, this topic sends shivers down their spines, somehow at the back of their mind they know it will come up someday, some out rightly lie to their babies with tales such as he died in an accident etc while others build walls to bar their kids from ever bringing this topic up. The nature of relation one had with the kid’s fathers more or less makes mothers a bit hesitant especially if the breakup was nasty, if she was betrayed or if the father disowned the baby during pregnancy etc. But the truth of the matter is that withholding this information from the kid affects him/her deeply than maybe how it affects you.  Mothers have their own reasons for withholding this information from their kids but are the psychological torture they are subjecting their kids to worth it?

At some point in a kid’s life they start to notice some differences maybe on how they look, how they are treated by their step-dads, some words that maybe relatives or other kids  throw at them, maybe why their birth certificates lacks a father’s name, why they have a different surname etc. these observations get pronounced when a kid becomes teenager and during this time he is actually seeking himself, trying to know and understand himself, the pain especially gets deeper if they find out from a third party, they feel very betrayed by their ‘current’ parents and especially by their mother.

Someone ones told me, ‘maybe I am here and my dad is a beggar somewhere, how I would do anything just to SEE/KNOW him and I swear if he doesn’t want me in his life I will not insist, my aim is just to know him.

These observations and much more kept me thinking about this topic over and over again and now I ask “ Should you or should you not tell your kids who their biological father is, and what would be some of the reasons to make you withhold this important information from them?