Throwing fits at a gender reveal

I often wonder what it would have been like had I had a sister. I think it would have added a much-needed dynamic to my family growing up that was missing. It being just me and my two brothers fed into a sinister dynamic. One that insisted on the following:

• Other people didn't matter
• My brothers and I were destined to head the family business
• Parents of girls were by nature less-than

My older brother had two children before I did. For their first child, they had a gender reveal party. Everyone already knew that my father was really hoping it was a boy to carry on the family name & blood. When it was revealed that they would be having a girl, he made a big "joke" about being distraught in front of everyone. He loudly groaned, rolled his eyes, threw a pillow in the air, said things like "God why, a girl? Seriously?" well past the point of being a joke. He went on for the rest of the event and even several days afterwards. It was enough to upset my sister-in-law once everyone left.

My father did his signature apology, which consists of an initial apologetic tone but is morphed into it ending up with you being the one to apologize to him for thinking wrong of him, and feeling just awful that he took the high road by being humble enough to be apologetic for you so you could save face.

A few years later my brother and his wife were expecting another child. This time at the gender reveal, my father made sure everyone knew how he wasn't going to react either way because he knows how sensitive my SIL is. They were having another girl. Everyone was excited for them, touting how my brother was going to officially be a "girl dad".

A Brief Somewhat Unrelated Story

Earlier that year, my brother and his wife hosted for dessert at their house for Mother's Day. As many do they took this opportunity as a fun way to announce they were pregnant with their 2nd child. The evening was pretty normal and progressed as anyone might expect.

Until it abruptly ended.

We were outside enjoying the near-sunset, my father smoking a cigar and my niece playing with her trike. My little brother who was around 17 at the time started talking to my father about something; I can't remember exactly what, but it was a somewhat controversial & opinionated conversation about politics. My father is very right-wing and says a lot of flamboyant things like how God should rip California off the US with an earthquake and let everyone drown, all our politicians should be hanged for treason, etc., and this was one of those kinds of conversations.

Midway through, my father noticed my little brother had been holding his phone with the camera pointed at him. He's very squirrel-y about being on camera.

He asked my brother if he was recording him, to which he replied "Why does it matter?" or something to that effect.

This immediately set my father off. He started raising his voice at him demanding that he delete his recording. My little brother initially resisted with a laugh, I think trying to hold onto this being a prank of some sort. However, my father can be overwhelming and he quickly folded and perhaps shed a few tears in the process.

The evening ended then, with my father continuing to chastise my little brother on the way back to their car about how he should never even think about doing that again, about how he's a liar and a deceiver, about how he's rebellious, etc.

My little brother still lived with them at the time, so I'm sure that continued after they left.

My brother and his wife called their daughter, said bye to me and my wife, and went back inside. My wife and I stood there for a minute feeling disoriented as it had blown up so quickly, and then headed back to our car.

The next day at work at the family business, I asked my older brother how he and his wife were after that blowup.

"He shouldn't have recorded him" was all he said, and walked off.

Then some years went by. My father would frequently ask about when we would be having grandchildren. When I was about 6 I had the notion I would have 8-10 kids, and my father would tell me that's what I truly wanted, even if I didn't feel like it as an adult, because as I kid I was my genuine self.

The firstborn

It was the end of March in 2020. The pandemic was starting up and housing prices were skyrocketing in my area. I had landed a good job at a prestigious software company and was on my second-to-last day of my two-week notice at my old job. The last thing I was expecting was to come home and be presented with a basket full of 9 positive pregnancy tests.

It was the worst timing I could have thought up. On top of the pandemic and housing costs (and everything else) getting expensive, my little brother was living with me at the time. He owned his own house but in an attempt to save money was renting it out to a coworker. I had agreed to let him move in with me for the summer with the understanding he would sell his home and save up money for something even better. However, less than two months in and he had saved no money, opting instead to buy and consume a ridiculous amount of alcohol and weed.

We needed to figure out how we were gonna handle having a kid quickly. We both knew immediately that we needed to move ASAP, because at the time we were living right down the road from the family business & my grandparents. My family would honk as they drove past my house. My father would take naps in my driveway just to be on my property.

I also didn't want to tell my family anytime soon about the pregnancy. But, since we were going to be moving soon, I wanted to let my little brother know sooner rather than later that he would have to figure out another place to spend the summer once we found a place.

After some thought, I landed on just being transparent and telling him that we were expecting and wanted to move. He was happy and excited and didn't seem bothered about having to move out. That was until I told him to keep the news to himself for now.

"You're not going to tell our parents? Do your in-laws know yet?" he asked.

My in-laws and all of my wife's friends knew before I did. Our marriage was in the worst place it has ever been, and my wife was more anxious about telling me about being pregnant than actually being pregnant. I wasn't very happy about that, but I understood even then that it wasn't without reason. I was out of the family company for a year and a half at that point but still had a lot of personality issues I was working on.

"Why does that matter?" I asked back.

This is where things started to crack. My little brother's face registered the difference here. The way my family thought about family children was vastly different than how I wanted to handle it. I had already started setting the groundwork to prepare them for this.

My little brother didn't respond verbally, instead showing me a look of surprise and disgust.

"How we handle the news of expecting a baby is our business."

"They have a right to know," he said.

"They don't have a right to my children at all. That's a privilege. That's how it goes for everyone, not just them."

My father had told us growing up how important it was to always let grandparents have access to their grandchildren. He would mention how no matter how bad of arguments he got into with my grandparents, he would never ever withhold us from them. It was very important that we never do that to him with our kids too. Grandparents had a right to be with their grandchildren no matter what.

He would bring this up several times a year for as long as I can remember, and I always thought it odd.

Now I have a feeling this was unfortunately just part of the grooming process my father started with us when we were young. He's had a history of being inappropriate with some people close to him.

The thing with my brothers is that the grooming has worked with both of them. Where I ultimately couldn't live with myself if I didn't take whatever actions were necessary to break out, they can't see anything else but what they're in.

This core disagreement caused a multi-day fight between me and my little brother. He would come home from work and was pissed at me. By day three, he started slamming doors hard enough that he broke part of the bedroom door frame he was in. At that point, I had had enough.

I walked to his door and knocked on it.

"We need to talk"

"I'm busy," he said.

"Fine. This isn't working. You don't get to be living in my house for free and be so upset with me over this that you're damaging my house. You need to find somewhere else to live ASAP."

That got him to open his door.

"Excuse me?" he said.

"You have a huge problem with how I'm handling the news that we're expecting a baby, in my own house. You're wrong in principle, and certainly wrong to make such a show while you're in my house. I don't want this in my house and around my wife while she's pregnant, so you need to leave."

He started yelling back at this point. I was abandoning my family. Leaving my family out to die. Being rebellious and disrespectful. I just hated my father for no reason and was doing everything I could to hurt everyone. It was a whirlwind, and in the end, I was completely fed up and told him he had until the end of the weekend to be out of my house.

He wound up moving back in with my parents. I would find out later that the whole idea of his wanting to live with me was my father's idea. On top of my little brother reporting back to him every day at work, he would be texting him throughout the evening with updates about us, and calling him every night before bed for a final update.