Mom Wonders If She's Being Unreasonable for Restricting Husband's WiFi When He's Avoiding Dad Duty
Trying to figure out how best to divide and conquer parenting duties is a challenge for most couples. Doing it with twins is a whole different ballgame. And for a mom on Reddit, seeing her husband delay tackling certain tasks has caused her to start pulling the plug on their WiFi. That's because, she says, every time he should "be doing something with the children (it's his turn for a diaper, a bottle, even just soothing a fussy newborn), he ALWAYS goes to the bathroom first."
He "always takes his phone" and "is always watching YouTube." And he spends, on average, 25 minutes per session in the bathroom, the original poster (OP), writing under the handle FinalWintersEve, shared.
The OP wrote that both she and her husband are on family leave currently, and he's "on medication that makes him spend a lot of time in the bathroom about an hour after a meal." Another factor at play: "I would rather let him use the restroom first than have to put down a baby mid-task," noted FinalWintersEve.
She continued, "It's the most frustrating when it comes time to feed them (one of the twins needs to be held specifically for health reasons, so I can not double feed), because we will get up, I will warm up bottles, change one baby bum, get the first one fed, burped, and laid down in their crib, get the other baby changed and be settling down to feed baby number two before he can be bothered to emerge and figure out why one child has been screaming, because they had to watch their sibling eat. And then, the other will cry when they don't get to cuddle at all, because I have to immediately set them down to feed the hysterically sobbing child."
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The OP noted that since she had been keeping track, only twice in 10 days had her husband not ditched her to go camp out in the bathroom and let her finish "80% of the childcare."
So, she set a new rule: "If he is in the bathroom for more than 10 minutes, I flip the WiFi off. He has not spend more than 15 minutes in the bathroom at a stretch today but is extremely upset. I feel like the fact that without the WiFi, his uncontrollable toilet issue cleared up rather quickly." And this proved to her that the rule needed to be implemented. But her S.O. feels she is being unreasonable—and she explained that she was presenting the situation to Reddit to ensure that "sleep deprivation isn't making me an a*****e."
Her final Q: "AITA for turning off the WiFi when my husband is in the bathroom for extended periods of time, avoiding domestic and fatherly duties."
All in all, the buzzy post racked up 4.7K comments and over 25K upvotes.
Some Redditors concluded that the OP is not at fault. One, writing under the handle disregardable, said, "What kind of a man f***s around on the internet while his baby screams and cries? He deserves it." Another named eloveandapplesauce said, "I'd love to see how long his bathroom trips lasted if he didn’t take his phone into the bathroom for one day. If he wanted to truly be a supportive father/husband, he'd do that to try to break his habit."
SomnusEternus wrote, "If he needs to be told that using his medical issue as an excuse to get out of his parental duties while his wife does the bulk of the parenting is messed up, he's not an adult. You're already caring for two children. You shouldn't have to parent a third."
And MrAppendages shared that he was going to blame the wife initially, simply based on the post title, because it sounds like "such a petty and childish thing to do." But after reading about the situation, he concluded, "The context cleared up that he's much worse and SOMETHING had to be done. That something probably shouldn't devolve to actively tracking someone's time in the bathroom. Speaking to him was a positive step for her. Him lying about it was a reason she had to move further. But it's still such a silly thing to do that it should be a question of 'Why do I have to do this?'"
That question is one that might ring in all too many parents'—especially moms'—heads when they're in the midst of attempting to divide domestic labor equally. Given the OP's husband's behavior and the number of Redditors who could relate, it's clear that all too many people need to be doing better as parents and as partners.
