Tyler Baltierra is detailing one of his most important life decisions.
While discussing his inconsistent relationship with his own father, Butch Baltierra, the Teen Mom: The Next Chapter star reflected on why he and wife Catelynn Lowell decided to place their now-15-year-old daughter Carly in adoptive care after her 2009 birth.
In the Feb. 20 episode of Teen Mom, Tyler—who also shares daughters Novalee, 9, Vaeda, 5, and Rya, 3 with Catelynn—gave insight into the difficult decision saying, “With just not having my dad around, it has a lot to do with why I even placed Carly in the first place.”
He added, “I was just so scared to screw it up.”
But now, Tyler noted, he and Catelynn—who tied the knot in 2015—feel whole enough to parent their three younger children.
“I think that was a catalyst for me and Cate,” he explained, “wanting to heal ourselves before we brought more kids into the world.”
There’s no doubt Tyler was affected by his father’s struggles with addiction and absence from his life—during the Feb. 20 episode, Tyler revealed he hadn’t seen Butch in five years—but he’s come to have more empathy for him now that he’s a parent.
“The older I get, the more love I actually have for my dad,” Tyler detailed. “Because I have my own kids and I just know that, like, he was younger than me and he didn’t have half the resources that I had, so you can’t hold too much against him.”
Elsewhere in the episode, Tyler displayed just how much he loves being a dad by gushing over his three youngest daughters, saying, “If I could just pause life right now, and just, like, stay here for as long as I can, I would do it.”
And when Catelynn called him a “great daddy,” Tyler gushed, “That’s the highest honor.”
Tyler’s detailing of his and Catelynn’s predicament with Carly comes shortly after the couple shared insight into where they stand with their daughter’s adoptive parents.
“They definitely have 100 percent closed the adoption," Catelynn told E! News last month of Carly’s parents Brandon and Teresa Davis. “We’ve asked her parents and continue to do so, 'Is it Carly not wanting contact?' Because if it's Carly not wanting contact, it would hurt, but we would understand and say, 'Hey, if you ever want to have it, we're here and we totally understand that all of this could be hard for you.’”
However, Catelynn added, “If it's just her parents acting out of fear, it's my duty as a birth mom to show this child that I'm continuously fighting for communication, because that's what's ultimately the best for her, if that's what she wants.”
