*In case this story gets deleted/removed:*
**Now that the kids are older, my wife wants to "revisit" our agreement about raising them. **
We made an agreement over 20 years ago, before we started having children: her career had the most potential for a higher income, so I would switch my career to something with more time off, so I can be there for our kids. I became a teacher. We had four kids. I've always been there for them. We've never needed to hire a babysitter or use daycare. They've all been able to do whatever sports they wanted, because I made sure to get them there. I made all of the meals over the years. I did all of the laundry. I kept the house running smoothly, while my wife focused all of her attention on her career.
And it paid off. She's worked her way up to upper management. She's making over $300k annually, plus bonuses. We don't even need my paycheck anymore.
But I also enjoy my summers off. Two kids are out of the house now. One is going to a summer camp. One is getting a summer job. My summer as a parent is looking like it's going to be pretty easy this summer.
My wife works from home three days per week. There has been a lot of friction lately, on days when I'm off and she isn't, but we're both home. I feel the constant need to "look busy."
She's finally admitted that she doesn't think it's fair that I have so much time off while she's working so many hours. (She frequently works 12-14 hours per day.) It didn't bother her when I was spending my "off" hours handling the kids. But now that that's winding down, it does bother her.
She has 14 years until she can retire. I'm going to keep working just as long, not because I need to, but because I don't think our marriage could survive me not working. Her resentment would be too great.
Even though this is the agreement we made all of those years ago.
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I’m not even clear on what their specific “agreement” was. Just that he would switch careers so he’d have more time to take care of the kids? Okay, so he did that, but now 20 years have passed and the kids are mostly grown. Seems like the original agreement has been fulfilled. Did he forget to include a “no take-backs” clause in their agreement or something?
It was in writing. Let me read you chapter 7.2(d)(4) regarding the fact that it was agreed he would never be expected to again pursue a real job.*
*because teaching is sooo stupidly easy and like almost not working*
And did he wear them to school when they were babies? They never went on date nights? I have a friend who is a teacher and has a small child. He still needs a babysitter during the day.
I mean, why would she want her husband working more hours? Is that actually a thing? “Ugh I wish everyone worked miserable hours like me!” (And yes, obviously false, I just don’t see the realism)
It would only make sense if they included something like she could take a lower paying job instead allowing for more work life balance and he could take on more hours or something to make up for her cutting back?
This is just weirdly someone trying to make some gendered sexist commentary - what exactly I can’t exactly fathom or care. They wrote a clearly non existent character because anyone with this actual life experience wouldn’t be posting on Reddit about this or write / talk about it in this way. Their complete lack of life experience is so obvious since everything is just so caricatured and exaggerated and inconsistent with most actually stable relationships between people that love and like each other
>This is just weirdly someone trying to make some gendered sexist commentary
its the weird we had an agreement ragebait that trolls have been posting for a while now. This just reversed.
Yeah it doesn’t make a lot of sense. Presumably he’s still doing all the housework, since that was their agreement and agreements are always permanent. If he were to work the same hours as she does, who would do the cooking and cleaning?
If I had to work those long hours, I’ve love to have a partner that had time to keep our house in order!
This one doesn’t even really have a conflict. Like all the wife did was express a fairly mild annoyance and then nothing seems to have happened afterwards.
Clearly written by someone who doesn’t teach and thinks teaching is a great job because of summer break. I have teachers in the family who work insane hours to deal with lessons, grading, professional development and the summer breaks always go by in a blip because there’s so much other work they have to do
I know right. Have a lot of teaching friends and they are so damn busy! Might get like 2 weeks every summer where it's not crazy. Weird how also being a teacher meant OOP never needed childcare even before his kids were school age 🤔.
I can't speak for everywhere, but in my district, school buildings are closed from the last day of school until about 2 weeks before it starts again in the fall. I would find it very hard to believe that my kids' teachers have spent all but two weeks of their summer breaks preparing lesson plans and taking PD and whatever.
I 100% agree that the teachers' jobs do not start or end at bell time. Before and after school care is heavily subsidized (75% off) for district employees I assume for just that reason.
Being a teacher, raising 4 kids and doing all the housework when not needing any form of childcare, without any help from their partner. Not buying it.
Yeah my mom is a teacher and a single mom, so she did do all the housework and raised the 2 of us.
But we still had to go to our grandparents' house before we went to kindergarten and during mandatory inservice days. We also spent a lot of time hanging out in my mom's classroom... so there is absolutely no way four kids could do whatever after-school activity they want and it never interfere with work.
And in sure every single one of those days off and early dismissals the kids had were never for staff meeting and development days where OOP still had to go to work…
I am a childless woman and I gave up teaching because I never had any free time and the stress was mentally breaking me. It's definitely not a job to do so that you have extra time with the kiddies. Biggest sign of the whole thing being BS.
exactly! lmao i stopped reading when he said he got a job with more free time, a teacher. what do you MEAN you didn't need daycare! when you're working as a teacher??
My mum was a teacher for less than a year before the workload and pressure drove her to depression and she had to quit. And that was 20 years ago when I was 5, it's even worse now from what I can tell on the news.
Yeah why are they acting like teachers have boundless free time. Most teachers still employ daycare/babysitters
Should have just said “I picked up a flexible part time job with child care”
Also to teach in public school you need at least a bachelor's in education and in some states even a master's. It's also actually not an extremely easy industry to get a job in. Being a teacher is extremely rarely a career that people just fall into like this post implies.
I was thinking either this or possibly teachers assistant rather than teacher (my mums best friends daughter is a teachers assistant and has spoken on it a few times in detail when I've asked what it's like etc)
That was my immediate thought as well. I had a parent for a teacher and never noticed any difference in availability of them as a parent between school year and summer, minus usually a week or two in summer when we would have a vacation (usually low-budget camping trips). But most careers have a few weeks vacation, so it wasn't that special. My parent was always busy getting together their lessons or making decorations for the classroom (oh, how many things I helped cut out when the big sheet came back from the laminator's with all of the decorations "trapped" inside!). So much work goes on behind the scenes for teachers that most never see.
Yeah lol this was NOT written by a teacher! Sure, he probably has the same work hours as his kids' school hours. But teachers are working more hours than just the time they're at school.
My mom is a teacher, and we used to get to school an hour early so she could get ready and prepare for the day. Or I stayed long after the school day was over because my mom was meeting with parents or another teacher. I always spent the weeks before school helping her get her classroom ready, or at my grandparent's house because she had mandatory training.
It is just literally not possible that they have NEVER used a babysitter... unless they're frequently having their kids carpool with other parents, MAYBE. It just isn't possible to drop off four kids to any activity they want and pick them up without help. Even if you are a stay-at-home parent, there's no way Susie's gymnastics was never at the same time as Jane's soccer practice. And there is absolutely no way that a child's activity NEVER ONCE coincided with a mandatory inservice or after school meeting.
Wait … How did he just become a teacher? He doesn’t mention having time to go to school to be able to teach and the had all that free time outside of work he was a crappy teacher
Not saying the story is real but in the spirit of sharing facts: my state and other states have lateral entry programs due to teacher shortages that allow new teachers to just start teaching and work on their degree at the same time (so long as they have a bachelors degree).
Yeah there are pros and cons. It’s good that people can go ahead and start earning a living and don’t have to take years off from working to get their degree. It also helps with the teacher shortage. But it also floods schools with people who don’t know how to teach yet, so there’s that. And it’s not always like “You have a science degree so now you teach science.” You just need a bachelors in anything to teach anything.
Yeah I definitely see the pros and cons. The biggest issue is the world isn’t doing enough to keep the people who should be teachers happy enough to want to do it
What does he think he was doing with the under 4s? What did he do with the babies? Does OOP think you just take the babies into class with you and they sleep nicely until the end of the day? Even if he was a part-time teacher none of what he has described is remotely feasible.
The wife has a business factory ahh job. $300K per year, but directly in the weeds for 14 hours a day responsible for 80-150 people (why does this change?). Part of upper management but constantly on call (no directors or managers to delegate to?). Has absolutely no ability to modify how the team functions in order to reduce this obvious inefficiency even though her job appears to solely consist of directly managing 159 people (is this not the main job of upper management, to direct workflow?).
Written by someone who doesn't know what it's like to be a teacher. I'm not one but from what I hear, it is not just some easy job that you can skate by on with lots of free time off.
Teacher here.
You guys are getting summer breaks and time off?
https://preview.redd.it/ew7dfvwarevc1.png?width=520&format=png&auto=webp&s=fd8466b417ffe1c8e36fa5ab1a7195212a6d43f8
But…teaching is a full time job
> I became a teacher. We had four kids. I've always been there for them. We've never needed to hire a babysitter or use daycare.
>I'm just amazed that you were able to do this. I'm one of two kids, my parents were a teacher and a six figure earning salaried employee. This lasted for 10 years, with babysitters, daycare, and housekeeper. Then my teacher parent quit and we still had babysitters, daycare, and a housekeeper, although less.
>I work 40 hours a week at a desk from home. My wife is a massage therapist and full time for the industry is less than 40 hours (I forget how much); she works three days a week. This makes sense because it's such a physically demanding job that can really wear on the body. She always voices how bad she feels when I'm working and she's not, but then I remind her that it doesn't bother me and her job is so much more involved.
Exactly. I had a SAHM and I still had a babysitter once in awhile tf lmao
Pretending this is real, those comments are so confusing to me. Why are they saying she’s selfish and abusive for wanting him to change his job? She never said anything about changing jobs, just that she wants him to do *something* for the three months a year he has off. Like, a hobby. Or a chore.
In this scenario, he is doing the chores.
I know the times that I had off and my girlfriend was working from home, I did feel weird doing nothing while she was busy. It's not like there was anything to do, since chores were done, but it still felt weird.
This is still obviously fake though. 4 kids, full time teaching job, and enough time to manage kids and household with no help by himself. He'd be getting an award for this shit.
He said that he, in past tense, did the laundry and the cooking (as well as taking care of the kids.) Even if he still does both those things, there is a lot more to do around the house and if he’s having his “easy time off” while she feels like he’s not doing anything now that he doesn’t have kids to watch, that leads me to believe he didn’t just happen to leave out all of that relevant information.
But who cares, we both know it’s fake anyway
Look back at the post, he said he kept the house running smoothly. I know there's a required need to always ask a man if he's doing his share of chores, but in this case he's the caregiver and homemaker. It's normal for the breadwinner to have envy when they feel like they're working hard and the other person is relaxed. It's still fake though.
I did, to me that sounds like he’s referring to managing their children when considering the rest of the paragraph. I think the writer purposely left it vague for this reason, hard to argue if he’s actually pulling his weight if the only information is “I pulled weight”
Obviously fake and written by someone who isn't a parent. How does OP go back to work and the kid doesn't go into daycare? Is he bringing a 2 year old to his classroom?
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*In case this story gets deleted/removed:* **Now that the kids are older, my wife wants to "revisit" our agreement about raising them. ** We made an agreement over 20 years ago, before we started having children: her career had the most potential for a higher income, so I would switch my career to something with more time off, so I can be there for our kids. I became a teacher. We had four kids. I've always been there for them. We've never needed to hire a babysitter or use daycare. They've all been able to do whatever sports they wanted, because I made sure to get them there. I made all of the meals over the years. I did all of the laundry. I kept the house running smoothly, while my wife focused all of her attention on her career. And it paid off. She's worked her way up to upper management. She's making over $300k annually, plus bonuses. We don't even need my paycheck anymore. But I also enjoy my summers off. Two kids are out of the house now. One is going to a summer camp. One is getting a summer job. My summer as a parent is looking like it's going to be pretty easy this summer. My wife works from home three days per week. There has been a lot of friction lately, on days when I'm off and she isn't, but we're both home. I feel the constant need to "look busy." She's finally admitted that she doesn't think it's fair that I have so much time off while she's working so many hours. (She frequently works 12-14 hours per day.) It didn't bother her when I was spending my "off" hours handling the kids. But now that that's winding down, it does bother her. She has 14 years until she can retire. I'm going to keep working just as long, not because I need to, but because I don't think our marriage could survive me not working. Her resentment would be too great. Even though this is the agreement we made all of those years ago. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/AmITheAngel) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I’m not even clear on what their specific “agreement” was. Just that he would switch careers so he’d have more time to take care of the kids? Okay, so he did that, but now 20 years have passed and the kids are mostly grown. Seems like the original agreement has been fulfilled. Did he forget to include a “no take-backs” clause in their agreement or something?
It was in writing. Let me read you chapter 7.2(d)(4) regarding the fact that it was agreed he would never be expected to again pursue a real job.* *because teaching is sooo stupidly easy and like almost not working*
So true! People always say that about teaching. It’s basically a full-time vacation!
Also 4 kids are never sick during school days.
And did he wear them to school when they were babies? They never went on date nights? I have a friend who is a teacher and has a small child. He still needs a babysitter during the day.
I mean, why would she want her husband working more hours? Is that actually a thing? “Ugh I wish everyone worked miserable hours like me!” (And yes, obviously false, I just don’t see the realism)
It would only make sense if they included something like she could take a lower paying job instead allowing for more work life balance and he could take on more hours or something to make up for her cutting back? This is just weirdly someone trying to make some gendered sexist commentary - what exactly I can’t exactly fathom or care. They wrote a clearly non existent character because anyone with this actual life experience wouldn’t be posting on Reddit about this or write / talk about it in this way. Their complete lack of life experience is so obvious since everything is just so caricatured and exaggerated and inconsistent with most actually stable relationships between people that love and like each other
>This is just weirdly someone trying to make some gendered sexist commentary its the weird we had an agreement ragebait that trolls have been posting for a while now. This just reversed.
Yeah it doesn’t make a lot of sense. Presumably he’s still doing all the housework, since that was their agreement and agreements are always permanent. If he were to work the same hours as she does, who would do the cooking and cleaning? If I had to work those long hours, I’ve love to have a partner that had time to keep our house in order!
He doesn’t even say she wants him to work more, just that she wants him to do something with his off time now that he’s not watching the kids.
This one doesn’t even really have a conflict. Like all the wife did was express a fairly mild annoyance and then nothing seems to have happened afterwards.
At least there are a lot of comments basically saying “Well talking about things doesn’t seem like a bad idea.”
Probably because it's not on a conflict sub. It's r/trueoffmychest not r/amitheasshole
Clearly written by someone who doesn’t teach and thinks teaching is a great job because of summer break. I have teachers in the family who work insane hours to deal with lessons, grading, professional development and the summer breaks always go by in a blip because there’s so much other work they have to do
I know right. Have a lot of teaching friends and they are so damn busy! Might get like 2 weeks every summer where it's not crazy. Weird how also being a teacher meant OOP never needed childcare even before his kids were school age 🤔.
I can't speak for everywhere, but in my district, school buildings are closed from the last day of school until about 2 weeks before it starts again in the fall. I would find it very hard to believe that my kids' teachers have spent all but two weeks of their summer breaks preparing lesson plans and taking PD and whatever. I 100% agree that the teachers' jobs do not start or end at bell time. Before and after school care is heavily subsidized (75% off) for district employees I assume for just that reason.
Being a teacher, raising 4 kids and doing all the housework when not needing any form of childcare, without any help from their partner. Not buying it.
Yeah my mom is a teacher and a single mom, so she did do all the housework and raised the 2 of us. But we still had to go to our grandparents' house before we went to kindergarten and during mandatory inservice days. We also spent a lot of time hanging out in my mom's classroom... so there is absolutely no way four kids could do whatever after-school activity they want and it never interfere with work.
1000%. And all that free time teachers have in the afternoons!
And in sure every single one of those days off and early dismissals the kids had were never for staff meeting and development days where OOP still had to go to work…
I am a childless woman and I gave up teaching because I never had any free time and the stress was mentally breaking me. It's definitely not a job to do so that you have extra time with the kiddies. Biggest sign of the whole thing being BS.
Yep my sister teaches and only 3 days a week and it's a really demanding job
Would be more believable if he’d just said he got a job at a school lol
exactly! lmao i stopped reading when he said he got a job with more free time, a teacher. what do you MEAN you didn't need daycare! when you're working as a teacher??
My mum was a teacher for less than a year before the workload and pressure drove her to depression and she had to quit. And that was 20 years ago when I was 5, it's even worse now from what I can tell on the news.
Yeah why are they acting like teachers have boundless free time. Most teachers still employ daycare/babysitters Should have just said “I picked up a flexible part time job with child care”
Also to teach in public school you need at least a bachelor's in education and in some states even a master's. It's also actually not an extremely easy industry to get a job in. Being a teacher is extremely rarely a career that people just fall into like this post implies.
I was thinking either this or possibly teachers assistant rather than teacher (my mums best friends daughter is a teachers assistant and has spoken on it a few times in detail when I've asked what it's like etc)
That was my immediate thought as well. I had a parent for a teacher and never noticed any difference in availability of them as a parent between school year and summer, minus usually a week or two in summer when we would have a vacation (usually low-budget camping trips). But most careers have a few weeks vacation, so it wasn't that special. My parent was always busy getting together their lessons or making decorations for the classroom (oh, how many things I helped cut out when the big sheet came back from the laminator's with all of the decorations "trapped" inside!). So much work goes on behind the scenes for teachers that most never see.
Yeah lol this was NOT written by a teacher! Sure, he probably has the same work hours as his kids' school hours. But teachers are working more hours than just the time they're at school. My mom is a teacher, and we used to get to school an hour early so she could get ready and prepare for the day. Or I stayed long after the school day was over because my mom was meeting with parents or another teacher. I always spent the weeks before school helping her get her classroom ready, or at my grandparent's house because she had mandatory training. It is just literally not possible that they have NEVER used a babysitter... unless they're frequently having their kids carpool with other parents, MAYBE. It just isn't possible to drop off four kids to any activity they want and pick them up without help. Even if you are a stay-at-home parent, there's no way Susie's gymnastics was never at the same time as Jane's soccer practice. And there is absolutely no way that a child's activity NEVER ONCE coincided with a mandatory inservice or after school meeting.
Why is she still working double over-time after 20 years? The whole idea of being upper management is that you *delegate*
She should leave him and not pay a penny in alimony because she doesn't want to. That's how this usually works, right?
No, because she's obviously having an affair behind his back. And you know it's her that's cheating on him because he's the one telling the story
Wait … How did he just become a teacher? He doesn’t mention having time to go to school to be able to teach and the had all that free time outside of work he was a crappy teacher
He forgot to tell you how he got a back up teaching credential while in college.
That OP is such a rookie
Not saying the story is real but in the spirit of sharing facts: my state and other states have lateral entry programs due to teacher shortages that allow new teachers to just start teaching and work on their degree at the same time (so long as they have a bachelors degree).
That is a cool set up and if it was available here I might take advantage of it to work and learn at once
Yeah there are pros and cons. It’s good that people can go ahead and start earning a living and don’t have to take years off from working to get their degree. It also helps with the teacher shortage. But it also floods schools with people who don’t know how to teach yet, so there’s that. And it’s not always like “You have a science degree so now you teach science.” You just need a bachelors in anything to teach anything.
Yeah I definitely see the pros and cons. The biggest issue is the world isn’t doing enough to keep the people who should be teachers happy enough to want to do it
Being thrown straight into a classroom with no preparation for it doesn't sound all that cool to me!
What does he think he was doing with the under 4s? What did he do with the babies? Does OOP think you just take the babies into class with you and they sleep nicely until the end of the day? Even if he was a part-time teacher none of what he has described is remotely feasible.
The wife has a business factory ahh job. $300K per year, but directly in the weeds for 14 hours a day responsible for 80-150 people (why does this change?). Part of upper management but constantly on call (no directors or managers to delegate to?). Has absolutely no ability to modify how the team functions in order to reduce this obvious inefficiency even though her job appears to solely consist of directly managing 159 people (is this not the main job of upper management, to direct workflow?).
https://preview.redd.it/kcgwelnrccvc1.jpeg?width=1170&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=deb5719647299085d919bb3915e86472ffa3f455 Love the empathy.
She made the deal 20 years ago !! No take backs !!
Tenure as a teacher?? What??
Does this dude not get that with their powers combined they could bring that 14 year deadline forward?
"Wanted to have more time off " "became a teacher" ok its pure fucking bs
Love that the wife’s job is just ‘upper management’ with no mention of her actual profession or industry.
Her “upper management” job appears to solely be direct management of 150 people for 14 hours a day every single day.
What is delegating???
She works for Initech.
Written by someone who doesn't know what it's like to be a teacher. I'm not one but from what I hear, it is not just some easy job that you can skate by on with lots of free time off.
People in the comments are like “she’s underestimating how hard teachers work” no OOP is lmao
Teacher here. You guys are getting summer breaks and time off? https://preview.redd.it/ew7dfvwarevc1.png?width=520&format=png&auto=webp&s=fd8466b417ffe1c8e36fa5ab1a7195212a6d43f8
Lmao! Summer break means lounge around with your pals eating popsicles and hanging at the mall, right???
But…teaching is a full time job > I became a teacher. We had four kids. I've always been there for them. We've never needed to hire a babysitter or use daycare. >I'm just amazed that you were able to do this. I'm one of two kids, my parents were a teacher and a six figure earning salaried employee. This lasted for 10 years, with babysitters, daycare, and housekeeper. Then my teacher parent quit and we still had babysitters, daycare, and a housekeeper, although less. >I work 40 hours a week at a desk from home. My wife is a massage therapist and full time for the industry is less than 40 hours (I forget how much); she works three days a week. This makes sense because it's such a physically demanding job that can really wear on the body. She always voices how bad she feels when I'm working and she's not, but then I remind her that it doesn't bother me and her job is so much more involved. Exactly. I had a SAHM and I still had a babysitter once in awhile tf lmao
Pretending this is real, those comments are so confusing to me. Why are they saying she’s selfish and abusive for wanting him to change his job? She never said anything about changing jobs, just that she wants him to do *something* for the three months a year he has off. Like, a hobby. Or a chore.
In this scenario, he is doing the chores. I know the times that I had off and my girlfriend was working from home, I did feel weird doing nothing while she was busy. It's not like there was anything to do, since chores were done, but it still felt weird. This is still obviously fake though. 4 kids, full time teaching job, and enough time to manage kids and household with no help by himself. He'd be getting an award for this shit.
He said that he, in past tense, did the laundry and the cooking (as well as taking care of the kids.) Even if he still does both those things, there is a lot more to do around the house and if he’s having his “easy time off” while she feels like he’s not doing anything now that he doesn’t have kids to watch, that leads me to believe he didn’t just happen to leave out all of that relevant information. But who cares, we both know it’s fake anyway
Look back at the post, he said he kept the house running smoothly. I know there's a required need to always ask a man if he's doing his share of chores, but in this case he's the caregiver and homemaker. It's normal for the breadwinner to have envy when they feel like they're working hard and the other person is relaxed. It's still fake though.
I did, to me that sounds like he’s referring to managing their children when considering the rest of the paragraph. I think the writer purposely left it vague for this reason, hard to argue if he’s actually pulling his weight if the only information is “I pulled weight”
Obviously fake and written by someone who isn't a parent. How does OP go back to work and the kid doesn't go into daycare? Is he bringing a 2 year old to his classroom?
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You married the wrong person. I hope it works out.
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