A husband has taken to Reddit to explain why he refuses to cut back on his work hours to help his wife with their six children despite her pleas.
The man made an anonymous post to the “Am I The ***hole” Reddit forum this week. “I have been with my wife since our senior year in high school. We have 6 kids between the ages 7- 15. I work Monday-Friday (14 hours 3 days a week, 12 hour 2 days) my wife is a stay at home mom,” he wrote.
He explained that he is “extremely grateful” for all that his wife does. “My days off, I take the kids out and my wife has the day to herself or she goes out and I handle chores,” he wrote. “I always remind my wife, and take her out on date nights a few times a month on my days off. My sister comes by and helps out some days through out the week.”
However due to a “financial crisis” earlier in the year, he needed to add “extra hours” at work to make ends meet. The father justified his work schedule as “completely necessary” as four of his children have extracurricular activies that need to be paid for on top of bills.
“We were in an accident earlier this year, then I was extremely sick a few months ago, which put us back,” he wrote.
But despite the demands, he said that his wife had been asking him to cut back on his work hours.
“We have young twins, and earlier this week they got the flu which spread all throughout our home which had the kids home from school for the majority of the week,” he wrote. “I could not call off, but it left my wife extremely stressed out.”
The father explained that one of their children has autism, and requires more attention when unwell.
He said that his wife was angry with his decision not to call out of work, and it resulted in a blowout argument.
“Today my wife shouted at me for over an hour for refusing to take less hours, because she is so stressed,” he wrote.
“She said I get to escape at work, and she has a household to run. I tried to explain that I’d love more than anything to be home more but I couldn’t, but she continued yelling saying I was the problem,” he wrote, before asking “AITA [Am I The ***hole?]
Some Reddit users said the husband was between a rock and a hard place with the dilemma, while others said he was right not to call off work. Some then questioned whether working to pay for extracurricular activities were “important enough to be worth burning out [his] wife”.
Another user pointed out the additional stress of having a special needs child. “A burnt out caregiver, esp to a kid with special needs, is a dangerous thing,” the person wrote. “Having 6 kids is so much work, and she’s doing it alone essentially.”
Mental health experts have warned that burnout is a serious issue for stay-at-home parents.
A 2012 study in The Journal of Health and Social Behavior found that mothers who stay at home experience worse physical and mental health than women who are employed outside the home.
