It’s a common refrain among moms around birthdays and other big celebrations. They buy the gift and the card and plan the party and then add their partner’s name to the card as though it were a joint effort. Maybe it’s not a big deal to everyone, but for one mom enough was enough. She reached out to the sub-Reddit “Am I The A**hole” community to see if she was in the wrong for not including her husband’s name on her daughter’s birthday card, and she got a real mixed bag of responses.
“It was my daughter's birthday yesterday and i wrote her the following in her birthday card,” the mom wrote on Reddit, sharing the sweet message of love she sent to her daughter for her fourth birthday in a card she signed, “happy birthday, love mummy.” While she was happy with the card, her “partner was FURIOUS that i didn't write it from the both of us.”
She went on to explain in her post that she had indeed shown her partner the card earlier and he did not ask her to put his name on it before adding that she “just wanted a card from me to her.”
The original poster also wondered why her partner didn’t get their daughter a birthday card from him if that was something he wanted. She noted that the couple are in the process of separating and have never had a history of giving their little girl a birthday card specifically, either together or separately.
The mom’s decision not to sign her partner’s name to their daughter’s birthday card garnered lots of opinions on both sides of the issue. “Why Fathers don't put any effort in their relationship with their children and then expect the mothers to step up to pretend the father cares? He can get his own card,” wrote one user, while another disagreed. “YTA - a 4 year old kid probably doesn’t have the reading comprehension to understand the card and who signed it. You are making a passive aggressive point to your partner and using your kid as a pawn in your petty relationship drama.”
While there were plenty of people who appeared to think it was the mother’s responsibility to sign the birthday card for her partner, this person made an excellent point. “He could’ve taken the initiative to spend 5 extra seconds writing his own name down to show that he cared. Or even better yet he could’ve bought her his own card that he thought she would like. I personally could always tell growing up that it was just my mom signing for stuff. That my dad couldn’t be bothered to spend the extra 5 seconds writing his own name down to say that he loved me. We as a society need to stop making excuses for these lazy husbands not putting in the effort for their own kids.”
Realistically, their 4-year-old daughter was probably far less interested in her birthday card than she was in her gifts. So maybe now is the time for her dad to get into the habit of signing birthday cards himself before she does start to notice.
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