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He's just trying to be a good parent.
By Nia Tipton — Written on Dec 05, 2022
A father is being defended after refusing to let his daughter leave for a date.
Posting to the subreddit "r/AmItheA--hole" (AITA) — a forum where users try to figure out if they were wrong or not in an argument that has been bothering them — the man explained his decision.
In his Reddit post, the father wrote that he's been a single parent for the last nine years.
He refused to let his daughter go on a date after she wouldn't let him meet the boy taking her out.
"My daughter is 13 and is the single greatest thing to ever happen to me. About a week ago she said that this boy in her class wanted to know if she would be up to grab pizza on that Saturday," he shared.
After hearing that his daughter was asked out on a date, he agreed to let her go out with the boy from her class.
However, the only rule he had was that he wanted to officially meet the person his daughter would be getting pizza with.
While it seemed like a logical request, the man's daughter immediately became agitated about having to introduce her date to him.
"I said that if a guy is asking my daughter out, I just want to be able to put a face to a name," he told his daughter.
He even promised that he wouldn't grill her classmate too badly and that it would not be the cliché "goofy dad interrogates boyfriend and acts all scary."
The man told his daughter that all he wanted was to say "hi" to her date, and after some back-and-forth, the daughter agreed and told her father that she would inform her date about the meeting when he came to pick her up.
On the day of the daughter's date, her father learned that she didn't want him to meet her date.
When it came time for the man's daughter to leave for her date, he noticed that she'd tried to walk out of the door without bringing her date in.
"I tell her to hold up and ask where her date is. She says he's outside and that they're going to bike ride to the pizza place."
When he asked why her date wasn't coming to the door to meet him, she responded that he was "nervous" and didn't know what to say to her father.
When her dad refused to drop the subject, that's when his daughter told him that she doesn't understand why he feels the need to meet her date.
"I reiterate my 'why' to her and ask her to go get him," he continued.
However, the daughter refused, telling him that she lied and wasn't planning on telling her date that her dad wanted to meet him, arguing that she thinks the entire ordeal is "stupid."
In response, the father told his daughter that she wasn't allowed to go on her date if he couldn't meet the boy taking her out.
"I told her to text him that the date was off. She said I wasn't allowed to do that. I asked her again to tell him. She started getting teary-eyed, texted him, told me I was mean and that she hated me, and went to her room."
Most people who commented on the man's Reddit post agreed that he was NTA (Not The A--hole).
"If she can’t handle asking him to meet her parent she isn’t mature enough to be alone with a person you don’t know," one user wrote.
Another user added, "As a parent, my kids don't go anywhere with anyone I don't know. Period. I don't care if it's a date, I don't care if it's for a school function, etc."
"You’re being a good dad and watching out for her and she doesn’t see it now, but she will in the future. She shouldn’t have felt like she needed to lie," a third user chimed in.
Nia Tipton is a writer living in Brooklyn. She covers pop culture, social justice issues, and trending topics. Keep up with her on Instagram and Twitter.