It used to be every parent’s nightmare. For one gay New Jersey dad, it still was.And like many parenting nightmares, it started with a text.Backing up a bit, Richard adopted his son, Jonathan, in 2005 at the age of five.
Just to clarify, Jonathan was five, not Richard. That would have been far too young to become a father and this would have been a very different story.Related: Father’s request to see teen son’s “boy toy” goes viral for all the right reasonsJonathan has since joined the Navy, and sent his dad into a tizzy a few weeks ago when he told him via text he planned to get a tattoo.Richard shared the story with parenting website Gays With Kids.“Don’t you dare,” he texted back to his son.“It’s just that when it’s your own child, and they are permanently going to alter the look of their body, all sorts of thoughts start going through your head,” Richard explained. “How is it going to look when he is older?
What is he going to choose? Will he regret it? Will he be able to cover it up? Will they see it on a job interview? How did he choose the tattoo artist?
Is he just getting one due to peer pressure?”“It’s the Jewish mother in me,” he added.Related: This emotional coming out scene between a father and his son will have you in tearsA couple of weeks went by and Richard thought the idea was put to rest.But Richard got another text: Jonathan went through with it.