I Found My Daughter's Pregnancy Test. Should I Have Told My Wife?

New York Times

16-07-2025

About a year ago, while doing some minor renovation work in my 25-year-old daughter's bedroom closet, I stumbled upon an unopened but clearly hidden pregnancy-test kit. I left it alone without mention, wanting to honor my daughter's privacy about her sex life. A year later, my wife stumbled upon the same unopened test kit while searching for a handbag my daughter had borrowed. When my wife mentioned finding it, I admitted to seeing it a year earlier. My wife is now hurt that I didn't tell her at the time. Had my daughter been a minor, I might have acted differently, but I believe that my daughter's right to privacy as an adult superseded the duty my wife says I owed her as a co-parent. Who is right? — Shawn, Queens
From the Ethicist:
You owe it to your adult daughter to respect her privacy. You owe it to your wife to share important information about your daughter's life. Which matters more here? That may depend in part on your particular marital understanding, which may depend, in turn, on your cultural traditions. But to my way of thinking, that unused plastic wand is pretty low on the list of things that clamor for disclosure. This wasn't a cache of heroin or an alarming medical report. (If you ever did come across something truly consequential, you might want to talk to your daughter first and offer to help her share it if needed.)
So I'm with you. You stumbled on something that this 25-year-old presumably intended to keep private, and you recognized that she's entitled to that privacy — even when under your roof, even when sharing the Wi-Fi. That doesn't make you a secretive spouse. It makes you a father who knows, perhaps better than most, how to respect an adult child's boundaries. Kudos for that.
Readers Respond
The previous question was from a reader who was dating a man who wanted to be exclusive. He wrote: 'I'm a 20-year-old male college student who met someone new this spring. I recently let him know I'm not interested in monogamy right now. He seemed to take it all right, but I later discovered that within two weeks, he slept with three people without telling me.
'To ease tensions, I agreed to four months of exclusivity to see where we stand. … Should I suppress my bohemian urges and go along with his desire for exclusivity or attempt another structured conversation about it?' — Name Withheld
Want all of The Times? Subscribe.