In a moment of raw honesty, the father confronts the mother, demanding she stop shielding their son from the consequences of his actions. His insistence that life’s hardships must be taught through responsibility exposes fractures in their partnership, forcing both to confront uncomfortable truths about parenting, equality, and the lessons they want to pass on.
My son (13) has recently got into cooking and he’s amazing at it. Usually when he was experimenting or making food for just himself he washed up.
He started helping me out with meals, and two times a week now he cooks dinner by himself.
My husband has been insisting he wash his own dishes up, but I usually just wind up doing them. I don’t particularly like feeling like I’m doing nothing.
Four nights ago he sat me down and said I need to stop doing our sons chore, he made the mess so he cleans it. He shouldn’t be getting away with it.
I replied that while it was true for small, single person meals, it doesn’t work the same for family meals. He got huffy about it, at which point I said, “Why does he have to wash up, but I don’t?” At which point he got kinda quiet.
He tried excusing his behaviour but each time there was a flaw and he basically huffed off. He came back a couple hours later and said something along the lines of, “We have to make him realise how hard life can be,” at which point I basically told him to fuck off.
Here’s where I may be the asshole: I implemented a new rule. You have to somehow be a part of dinner in order to eat it.
So, for example, my son makes dinner and I wash the dishes. Therefore we both get to eat it. My husband was angered by this rule, and I replied by telling him to put his rubber gloves on and get cleaning.
So far my son and I have had three amazing meals and my hub has left the house to go eat elsewhere. Our funds are seperate so it has no affect on me.
My son thinks it’s pretty cool, (he’s always much preferred me over his father, and this bonding time is really important to him), but family think I’m being way too harsh, agreeing that he should do more chores.
I disagree, but no one seems to be on my side, so I come to you, dear Reddit. Am I the asshole?
Conclusion
The original poster (OP) is facing conflict with her husband over household chore distribution, specifically regarding their 13-year-old son’s cooking clean-up. The OP initially enabled the son by doing the dishes after his family meals, but her husband insisted the son must clean up his own mess, leading to a stalemate. The OP ultimately enforced a new rule tying participation in dinner preparation/clean-up to eating the meal, resulting in her husband leaving to eat elsewhere.
Is the OP justified in linking the right to eat the family meal to contributing to its preparation or clean-up, effectively enforcing the husband’s desired chore standard by proxy, or has she created an overly rigid and punitive structure within the family dynamic?
Here’s how people reacted:
I was fully ready to declare Dad TA at first because if the kid put in the work of making the food it’s totally fair for the person who ate it to clean up. That’s what sharing housework and working together to help the family is all about. It’s weird that he’s so hung up about it. But now you’re using it to score points on your husband and disrupt his relationship with his kid. That’s gross. And that your husband is so stubborn and passive aggressive he’d rather go eat in a completely different building than wipe a dish is also gross. And you thinking this arrangement represents some kind of win for you because it means your kid likes you more (and will presumably pick you to live with after the divorce) is just gross. Congrats on winning the fight, I guess, but be aware that it’s ultimately your kid who is losing.
Ya don’t say! That’s because his father is an asshole. The goal of parenting is to raise a child into a functioning adult member of society. The goal is not *treat children like slave labor so they learn how goddamn hard life is.* There is a lot of time to learn how hard life is. He needs people to model good behavior, stand up for him, and teach him basics of how to care for himself, his belongings, and his home when he leaves. You are doing that, you had his back when his dad was being an asshole to him. You stood for fairness, instead of letting someone come in and treat your son poorly specifically because he’s a child. You’re NTA, but your husband absolutely is.
Cooking IS a house chore. If son is cooking dinner, is more than fair that someone else does the cleaning. Alternatively, you could divide the chores so the person cooking dinner does the dishes afterwards, but then the next day someone else will cook dinner and clean everything up. But anyway it’d be up to you. If your son is ok with cooking dinner and your ok with cleaning up afterwards, then there’s no reason for drama.
And the ‘no help no dinner’ rule you made up seems pretty fair to me. Your husband was complaining even though he did NOTHING to help with dinner. If he’s so annoyed with the way dinner is being cooked, then he might as well go eat somewhere else.
>My son thinks it’s pretty cool, (he’s always much preferred me over his father, and this bonding time is really important to him)
The idea of you and your son “bonding” over sticking it to his father doesn’t bode well for your marriage and is damaging to the father/son relationship. Now it might well be that the father is enough damage all on his own, but you shouldn’t be adding to it.
Edit to thank generous Redditors for the awards.
You are also not helping by saying that your son prefers you. TBH, without that line, I would have thought you were doing a good job taking an entitled dad down a notch, but at the end of the day, you should be figuring out ways to run your household and raise your son as a team, rather than using his laziness as a way to make yourself out to be the favorite parent.
I also think the “you cook I clean” rule for meals is a good one.
But are the only things involved in dinner really cooking and cleaning? What about buying ingredients and picking a menu. And why can’t your husband share bonding time with your son by helping look up what to make for the week and then going to the store and getting what is needed for it?
Your husband is showing your son that rules and “being right” are more important that his family. You are turning your son against your husband. All in all: dysfunctional.