Should my daughter's boyfriend be in the delivery room when she gives birth?

[argio]

My unwed 19-year-old daughter will deliver our first grandchild this August. She’s rather emphatic that her boyfriend and father of her child be present in the labor and delivery room, along with her mother and grandmother. I’ll likely be in the waiting room with her siblings and friends. I feel that level of intimacy and bonding should be reserved for marriage, similar to the “marital embrace.” Am I disrespecting their need to share this moment of childbirth? Why not wait it out until she’s given birth and been cleaned up?

 

[Michelle_Arnold]

I think it may be possible that you are seeing this in an overly-romantic light. I recommend that you try to look at this not as your daughter’s boyfriend seeing your daughter in an intimate state, but as a father witnessing the birth of his child. If witnessing the birth of his child helps to better bond this father to his child and to his child’s mother, then that is all to the good. Especially since the bond of marriage is lacking, your daughter and grandchild will need all the help they can get in solidifying this young man’s sense of love and responsibility for them.