There is this rather natural parental frame of mind that if you’re gonna have kids, you might as well have several, because they’ll just babysit each other, right? Seems like a good idea, right? On paper. Not so much in practice. Why? Because humans are notoriously complicated beings and there’s a lot to consider before going along with that auto-babysitting plan.
Now, if you want an example of how it can go wrong, consider this: a single dad of an adult daughter and twin preschoolers recently turned to the internet for some perspective on whether he was wrong to expect his daughter to babysit her twin siblings on a regular basis, all the while paying her back in free rent under his roof, and once it hit the fan, he got upset she was “acting privileged.”
More Info: Reddit
While having several kids just so the parents can have them babysit each other sounds like a good idea, it's not the smartest idea in the long run
Image credits: Andrea Piacquadio (not the actual image)
The story goes that OP has a daughter who’s currently 20 years old and studying while living under his roof. He doesn’t charge her rent as she does some chores here and there and occasionally keeps an eye on his 2 other kids, 5-year-old twin boys. This happens if he’s busy with work, or wants to take a break to see his girlfriend.
For context, OP elaborated that “occasionally” means 3 times a week in most cases, and is more often than not only away for a few hours at a time. According to him, the twins are mature for their age and tend to not cause a crazy ruckus. So, in his eyes, it seems like a simple task.
This one parent had to learn that the hard way after he asked the internet if he was wrong to have his adult daughter regularly babysit his twin sons, her siblings
Image credits: u/Throwaway476905
The 20-year-old daughter was OK with doing the daily chores, but was frustrated with having to babysit as it got in the way of her studies
Image credits: Pixabay (not the actual image)
However, one day, the daughter approached him about the whole babysitting thing. She feels as if he’s putting too much of a workload on her with all the chores and all. While she did mention that she's OK with the cooking and cleaning, the babysitting, however, is frustrating and stressful for her. In turn, it’s a speed bump in her studies.
This immediately upset the dad. He recalls having to go to school all the while having to pay the bills and take care of her as a baby alongside his ex-wife. In his eyes, she was acting privileged. But if he could do it, so could she. The daughter did not take this well, and stormed off to her room.
The dad's sister also got involved and sided with the adult daughter, saying the dad should at least pay her for it, but he argued she's already living rent and tuition-free
Image credits: u/Throwaway476905
Image credits: Karolina Grabowska (not the actual image)
Soon after, the dad got word of how the daughter “went behind his back” and talked to his sister about how he was treating her. So, the sister in turn called him and tried to do some damage control in this situation by suggesting mayhaps paying the daughter for the chores she does. He disagreed, but admitted that comparing his situation to hers was unfair as at least he had a choice to have kids, and his choice shouldn’t bleed out into other people's lives.
However, he still stood his ground that, if she’s going to live in his house rent free, all the while he’s paying for college, this alone should be considered an allowance. But the question was passed on to Reddit’s r/AITA community just to be sure.
The online community was having none of it, though, saying that the dad should not shove his responsibility onto his daughter, let alone even think that it's OK to charge her rent
And sure enough, the community delivered a verdict the dad probably didn’t like, i.e. many considered him the bad guy in this situation. For the most part, folks reiterated OP’s sister’s comment that he can’t compare his situation to his daughter’s—he had a choice, whereas she wasn’t given one, let alone it’s not her responsibility to bear this burden, to be fair.
Others were a bit more understanding of this whole situation—it all depended on how much he was actually asking her to babysit. They argued that it is not unreasonable to ask a daughter to do things, but cooking and cleaning on the daily seemed a bit too much, and he still needed to listen and consider her wants, needs, and plans.
And yet others considered the whole concept of having a child live “rent free” at his house to be madness. If anything, that sounded like very poor parenting as the task of a parent is to provide a home. And should that continue, she might just move on and leave for good.
This is, however, an even bigger issue if viewed from a psychosocial perspective. Children parentification, i.e. assigning roles and tasks to kids that would otherwise be handled by the parents (or adults in general), is known to lead to higher levels of anxiety and depression, which in turn perpetuates the same behavioral cycle with their own kids.
Though, the Awareness Center also notes that not everyone is affected negatively by parentification, namely that only a quarter actually experience negative effects. The upside of parentification is that such kids often grow up with greater levels of interpersonal competence and take on “caretaker” personality traits, which in turn often lead them to become nurses, support workers or even childcare specialists.
Whatever the case, folks on the subreddit have spoken, all the while upvoting the post, which you can check out here, over 9,000 times (no meme intended, I swear), and generating over 5,500 comments in discussion.
So, what’s your take on this? Was the dad right to do what he did, or do you side with the daughter? Let us know in the comment section below and keep the conversation going!
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