A Woman’s Family Wants Her To Have A Baby To Make Her Husband More Responsible
What could possibly go wrong?!
Reddit is a place that exists to collectively hold all of humanity’s most unhinged nonsense. It’s an oasis of chaos in an already chaotic digital landscape. But a recent post on the subreddit r/Marriage truly has us shook. Because even in a context of guilty pleasure, there’s a limit.
Redditor u/Emotional_Tone_9868 took to the popular subreddit to ask advice on her marriage. Her husband recently found a job after a year of unemployment. His last job ended when he was fired for routinely not showing up and for not hitting his “required targets.” The good news? Her husband loves his new job! The bad news? It seems that old habits are already starting to return.
“He has been two times late to work already (30 minutes and 45 minutes),” she explains in the post. “On the other days he has taken an Uber because he doesn’t wake up early enough to get the train.”
Understandably, u/Emotional_Tone_9868 is concerned, not just because being the sole breadwinner is scary and stressful, but because her husband’s last bout of unemployment negatively affected his mental health. As many of us do, she turned to her family to vent. And that’s when they dropped some truly remarkable advice. “Remarkable” in the sense of “if we do not remark on this we are literally going to explode.”
“My family says that we should have a baby so he can become responsible,” she writes. “I pushed back on this because I do not want to gamble with the life of my future child and use is as a motivating factor for my husband. They strongly disagree with me.”
“How do I deal with this? Any comment is appreciated,” she concluded.
Overwhelmingly, the comment from fellow Redditors largely fell along the lines of “WTF?”
“Yikes on bikes. WTF is wrong with your family?!?!” asks u/occasionallystabby. “Having a child is absolutely the worst possible idea. It's not going to force him to be responsible. It's just going to increase your workload and stress.”
Amen to that.
“Do not listen to these people,” agrees u/OriginalMoragami. “I know they're family, but they are trying to ruin your life with that nonsensical advice. Do they really want grandchildren that badly?!?”
The most liked response as of press time simply reads, “This is the craziest dumbest sh-t I've ever read.”
Honestly, it’s hard to add anything that isn’t summed up in that simple sentence.
Though some commenters had additional advice beyond the crucial “Girl, no,” including multiple people who suggested her husband should, perhaps, be screened for ADHD or other mental health problems that might manifest as executive dysfunction. Others suggested couples counseling or even divorce.
We haven’t heard any updates from u/Emotional_Tone_9868, but hopefully they’re going with their gut (and the advice of more than 100 other redditors) for this particular problem. It’s hard enough to bring a new baby into a really healthy and well-functioning family.
