My in-laws are bigots. I’ve always known this, but since moving from New England to Tennessee, they’re now much more overt about it. While they’re currently halfway across the country, they have plans of moving back. I’m not sure how I feel about them being around my child, in either large or small doses.

I say this at least in part because my grandmother was also a bigot. She spent a load of time with my older brother when he was growing up (she preferred him to me and thank Dog for that), and he has followed in her racist little footsteps. (My father, fwiw, is a dyed in the wool, civil rights marching hippie.) I am concerned that bigotry can skip a generation, so to speak, with too much exposure. Hate like that is learned, after all.

Indeed, most of my in-laws are bigots, hubs seems to be quite the outlier, just the local ones know better than to be all that obvious. I hate spending time with them all for these (and other) reasons, but I know family relationships change with new babies.

How have/ how would you handle something like this? Is bigotry a family deal-breaker? And if so, how does one handle that with their partner?