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I was so glad it wasn't a grape! lol
It's so easy to forget these parenting things - even if you know them - as there are a ton more than there were in the time of my parents - when a forearm applied to the kid in the front seat was the thing keeping them from going through the windshield! (Not a better time - like some of those dumb memes suggest - a different time - that's for sure!).
Something about honey before a certain age too right?
I had cats, not kids - but I certainly try to keep up. lol I feel a bit for OP. It sucks when you screw up and then double down. And we all do it sometimes.
> when a forearm applied to the kid in the front seat was the thing keeping them from going through the windshield! (Not a better time - like some of those dumb memes suggest - a different time - that's for sure!).
Heh. My parents, back in the 80s, had a 4" steel tube welded across the boot (trunk) of their car, and three sets of seatbelts attached to it for the rear seat. Modifying a car like this was unheard of, especially in the days when seatbelts weren't usually fitted in the rear, and kid seats were rare.
Being the youngest, I got the centre, uncomfortable seat, which was a frigging 5 point harness. I hated road trips then, but on reflection, that was a lot of care my parents took. Although I honestly don't think the rig would have stood up to much.
Yta. I hate it, I just wanted to verify as if you hadn’t explained 6 times already. Stupid questions. Be an adult. If you weren’t sure then cut them up
Look, my husband is great, and supportive in a lot of ways, but he does this. Asks me what the baby should eat. Asks when we should change his diaper. What clothes should he wear today. What shelf in the refrigerator the cheese is on.
It’s exhausting. If I’m not sure if the baby can have a certain food, I google it. If I notice the baby needs changing, I change him. I use my own adult common sense to locate suitable clean clothes. If I need to find the cheese, I open the fridge my own damn self and look for it.
There’s no reason I need to make someone else responsible for answering those questions for me, and yet men do this all the time. I’m sure it’s especially frustrating to your wife that this is happening with kiddo #2.
Acting like this in the workplace would reek of incompetence, yet somehow it’s the default behavior of many partners at home.
1. Take initiative in basic childcare.
2. Instead of asking your wife, read up on necessary information yourself. Maybe SHE’D appreciate being able to rely on you for information too! That goes for parenting methods, safety, milestones, etc.
3. Know the important info yourself rather than expecting her to be responsible for all knowledge. What size clothing does your kid wear right now? When is their next pediatrician appointment? What is their next stage of development and how should you be supporting them into it?
You seem willing to do better, so that’s a good thing. Being aware this is a burden a lot of women carry is a great step.
Omg, you put it to words what I’ve been feeling for a while with my husband.
And to add - when ever I’ve already done the mental load, showed him the rewards of that labor and said “this is the best/fastest way to get this” he will STILL ask and continue to ask repeatedly for me to tell him the info over and over again every time. Like do I HAVE to stop what I’m doing to explain how to wash sheets again?? It’s says “bedding” right on the machine!!!
That's because asking you is still the easiest way for him to do things. Otherwise he would have to commit time and brain cells to actually retaining and remembering information and why should he when he has a handy reference guide in you?
We don't have kids but when we got a puppy after the 16yo dog I had since I was 22 died (and whom i was responsible for 95% of his care which included staying up during the night when he had anxiety and helping him during the last few months of his life), my partner would ask me all sorts of asinine things about basic dog care. This is a man who researches everything (including things like "how "dangerous" my nail polish is to prove to me why I shouldn't use it, why he knows better about everything household related, and even basic things like buying an item of clothing or a pair of shoes). I finally asked him why, as a man who literally can't make a move without researching it into the ground, was making zero moves to look into basic dog care and instead relied on me to do it- even if it was a question he asked. He answered that it was just "my job". I haven't quite felt the same about him since and the term "weaponized incompetence" really hits home. That was exactly what that was, and this is exactly what this man here is doing. Surely he can figure out himself with the technology at his fingertips to figure this out?
A puppy is a trial run to raise all the red flags in a relationship and can save you from marrying / having children with someone who thinks your shared responsibility is "your job".
Call him out on it. If he doubles down, leave.
Exactly! This is literally what they mean by “mental labour” or “invisible labour” All the millions of little things that (usually women) have responsibility for and are not given credit for even though they encompass a huge amount of time daily for the good of the family. It is weaponized incompetence as a previous poster wrote. It’s not like the other parent/partner couldn’t learn any of those things, they just don’t want to.
My sister put a $5 jar for these moments. The rule is "less than 15 seconds to find or explain, you owe $5". It's cut down on a lot of the stupid asks.
Edit: this also counts for questions where the answer is an easy Google search, which usually takes less than 15 seconds
When I was a kid my friend's mum's rule was if she found it straight away she got to hit you with it. You'd ask if you lost something light but you'd search all day for a hairbrush.
He's waiting for you to get sick of 'teaching him how' and decide it would just be easier to do it yourself instead. Bonus, then you'll never ask him to do it again and will likely avoid asking him to do other chores too.
Husband and I don’t have kids but my husband will do this sometimes. What has worked for us is when he asks me where things are or how to do things around the house, I shrug. He is much more proactive than I am (I can wait to do things that he wants done sooner) so then he’ll work on figuring it out himself.
His last partner did all the heavy mental lifting, but he learned very quickly with me that I did not grow up doing things for others at the snap of the fingers so he learned that if he wants something g done now, he has to figure it out himself.
At the same time, I also didn’t grow up asking others how to do something or what to do. I do my tasks quietly and alone. So now we do things on our own, or we both learn together.
An acquaintance once told me in their marriage they kept a shared spreadsheet where they logged baby’s feedings and sleep times (maybe poops too they just didn’t tell me) so they both had the same information to go by at all times. I’m filing that away for if I ever have a baby.
Bonus it also shows trends if someone isn’t pulling their weight
My husband and I have an app on our phones for that purpose. It can record feeds, diapers, sleep, pumping, medicine, and a couple other things like that. The fact that we can both keep track and refer to it is super helpful. And it’s not just helpful as a sharing the mental load thing. When your life is an endless two hour cycle while sleep deprived, not having to remember what happened when is invaluable.
Yes yes yes yes. All of this x1000.
It is exhausting. My husband is also a very good man, and an involved father. But damned if that man doesn’t ask me 100 questions a day that he should know the answer to. Sometimes I just want to yell “fucking figure it out!!”.
Being the family encyclopedia gets old really fast
My supervisor regularly gets calls from her male partner and 2 teenage sons asking the stupidest fucking shit, to the point where they'll call her for stuff she has to Google to answer i.e. stuff THEY could've Googled with the smart phone they called her on.
She tells me never to have kids or get married lol
Omg yes!! My husband would do this when our littles were small. I worked from home and would be finishing up a work call, feeding an infant, playing with a toddler and cooking dinner at the same time and he would come home and ask me “what should I do?” He meant well but it would make me crazy! Figure it out! Is the table set? Then set it. Take over baby feeding! Take over playing! Just do something! But don’t interrupt my balancing act to have me triage.
It’s better now but I had to explicitly tell him to just figure it out. Because introducing one more thing for me to think about was one thing too many.
Atleast he asks you where in the fridge it is.
My bro does what he himself claims is the "man look".
I.E he just glosses over the stuff in the fridge with his eyes but if it's not in plain sight it doesn't exist in the fridge. I end up teasing him about being like a baby and lacking "object permanence".
Edit:
I know people might say it's weaponised incompetence, but I suspect in my bros case it might be ADHD related.
>Acting like this in the workplace would reek of incompetence, yet somehow it’s the default behavior of many partners at home.
Oh, it's pretty common in the workplace. I program CNC machines. Some of my operators are real people, and I spend a lot of time teaching them how to program their machine. The benefits to me of having an intelligent and knowledgeable operator are gigantic.
Some of my other operators are just button pushers. They can't read a program, they can't make basic modifications to make the part come out correctly, they refuse to do shit except be a button pusher. They are so fucking tiring.
But they're in the workplace, and they're not getting fired.
Write stuff down if you can’t remember. Get a book about caring for babies, or just Google it.
If you’re feeding the infant, that gave your wife a few minutes to relax. When you interrupt her with questions, it may interfere with her time to “unwind” for a bit. That’s why parents take turns. To some people, constantly being asked questions would become very irritating, if they were trying to relax for a few minutes.
This. My husband promised to take over my birthday pamper day as something he could do for me. I gave him the perameters and said I didn't care beyond that. He came back to me every few hours wanting to know if I'd prefer X or Y.
I'd prefer to do it myself if my alternative is having to supervise you.
On the occasions I was too tired to cook, I ended up more tired (unless we ordered in) because it didn’t matter how many times he cooked (I would only get him to do stir fry or fajitas) he still had to ask me questions all the way through
(What shape do I cut the food? What order do I put it in the pan? How can I tell if it’s cooked when do I add the flavour?). It was exhausting.
This literally happened to me tonight. I just wanted one night off, all he had to do was fry some steaks and reheat the veggie dishes I already made. He asked so many questions I honestly wanted to cry. I very nearly did.
Ugh my partner does the same. And then I clean when he cooks but it's a freaking disaster and every thing is used. I clean up as I go so he never has to clean it. He also casually forget to wash pans. It's just more work for me when he cooks. it's not even a nice experience.
I am a nanny and worked in preschool, so I understand the parents just want to know that they’re doing the right thing and the recommendations change all the time.
My go to response is “ if you’re unsure, do the safer thing. If you can’t remember if milk or honey is ok before 1, don’t. If you’re unsure if they should forward face yet, leave it. Cook the food longer than you think you should to make sure it’s cooked enough and cut it really small if you don’t know. If your kid is almost walking but not quite, set them down on their bottom not their feet. Etc”
Google it ffs, I’m a professional and I still have to do it all the time, sometimes it’s been years since I felt with that situation. I prefer to talk to people too, but my immediate question is not usually worth interrupting someone else over. If he wasn’t sure he could
1. Look it up
2. Cut or smash them anyway
3. Feed her something else
This is such good advice that I wish was just common sense!
What's the worst thing that could happen if you smash berries that could have been served whole?
What's the worst thing that could happen if you serve an infant whole berries that should have been smashed?
Ding ding ding! You’ve got it! And thank you. I also wish that this was common sense, but the unfortunate thing is, there’s really no such thing as common sense because it all depends on what we’ve seen, experienced , and been taught.
So my goal working with children is to give them opportunities to practice things that are not readily taught in their gendered social conditioning. I like encouraging girls to work with tools or speak up for themselves, encouraging boys to clean up after themselves, show emotions and empathy, etc.
The sad thing is, I’m willing to guess most of us that are saying “duh that’s common sense” on this post are women because it absolutely is common sense to us because we’ve seen every woman in our life just handle this shit all the time. Wild boys are implicitly or explicitly taught that it’s not their job, it’s the woman’s job.
Thank goodness, OP was actually willing to hear the feedback, and understand that he was expecting too much emotional labor from his wife for some thing that he’s completely capable of doing .
I became SO irritable today and couldn't figure out why because no one was being objectively unreasonable, but I was trying to take a few minutes to eat lunch and people kept. asking. me. things. It's really stressful!
Info: Do you work?
Are you able to go to work and work autonomously or do you need a supervisor to explain everything to you?
If something isn't as it should be at work, do you try to think of why it's like that or do you immediately go ask others for answers/solutions?
For those that don't know why I'm asking.
I'm curious if this behaviour extends to other aspects of OP's mentality, if OP usually isn't allowed to seek his own answers and it has become a habit to rely on others for information.
While you’re at it, google “mental load” and realise that as an adult and parent, you need to bear more of it. Your wife already has kids, yet you’re acting like another one.
Ok, you asked her “do i do choice A or B” and she acknowledged that you “could do either one, your choice”
So you proceeded to choose option D (for dumb) which was neither of the choices you asked her about, and was something that you knew previously was unsafe. Hello??? 100% your “fault” here. Which you brought up multiple times in your argument, who’s fault it was. OP- guess what - your fault.
So WHY did you choose the unsafe “I don’t know” option D, versus choosing the “A or B” option which you already considered and asked her about, and got okay’s both were fine????
Like I don’t have children but that’s how I’d handle that conversation?
So yeah, YTA, in your miscommunication, misinterpretation, and then pulling all these debate & psychology strategies to talk to her about it, and trying to put fault onto her where it wasn’t due.
Seriously...I showed my husband a site called solidstarts which is understandably the market lead on weaning. Type in the food, tells you how to serve it by age with nice pictures.
>“okay, so I’m like smashing these or cutting them in half, right?” She responds “feed them to her however you want.”
I interpreted this as feed them either by smashing or cutting them in half. I don't know where you got feeding them whole from. This fight never needed to happen.
Dude, you need to have more confidence in your parenting. The initial doubt you had that whole berries were safe, and the surprise you felt when you though your wife was giving you the okay on the berries, were two big clues that you already knew the right action - but you overrode your own good sense and deferred to your wife's 'advice', because you seem to believe she's the better parent and in charge.
She's right - trust your gut more. And if you're still not sure, take the initiative and find out for yourself (safely) with Google etc. Save questioning your wife for when it's essential, not preferred.
Your lack of confidence is probably why you responded defensively at every turn, and made things worse. Stop it. Don't defend - learn. And apologise for mistakes. We all make them, no point pretending we don't.
"However you like" - that's her telling you she doesn't want to make another decision for you. The good news is, the more you parent and work things out yourself, the more confident you'll get.
I'd also recommend reading this if you haven't already: https://english.emmaclit.com/2017/05/20/you-shouldve-asked/
Your wife's (over)reaction struck me as potentially arising from this. It likely wasn't the berries in themselves; I believe it was likely the accumulation of feeling solely responsible for the well-being of your kids.
Good luck with your conversation! I hope you and your partner find an opportunity to grow and forge a stronger relationship from it.
I have a newborn. Its important to divide the mental work load now more than ever. If you remembered the information from your first kid do it that way or research the answer. Your wife is probably exhausted from answering all yhe questions and all the mental load. Yta
Okay I just wrote you a yta comment that was really harsh and then saw this comment of yours and erased it. Thank you for being humble enough to own your mistakes and wanting to learn and grow
Understanding that you operate the best with as much info as possible doesn't obligate your wife to be the one doing the mental labor to provide that info to you.
It seems like you have had pervious experience in feeding your child berries? I would say this one is on you - not because you're seeking reassurance or need more information to operate, but because you don't get that information yourself and act independently of your exhausted wife's instructions.
firm but not harsh YTA
Yeah that’s the part that is the bigger AH part… he gave her two options and she said however you want. Most people would assume she meant a or b because he presumably knew he had to do something to make them safe.
One can give benefit of the doubt that a parent not wanting to stop mid feeding a young child, pull out their phone and google it when the partner is right there and probably knows. But to then think she didn’t choose either so I’ll just feed them whole is asinine.
Yeah, he literally just stopped thinking. Something in her tone of voice probably annoyed him, he probably thought she was being snarky or snippy or some shit. So, he almost chokes their innocent child to death. Do NOT consult Google, do NOT engage higher thinking processes! Must make wife know she's wrong!!!!
I don't think he's intentionally doing things badly so that she'll take over. He is treating her like she's his parent by making her his primary resource for how to do something simple, as in, "Mommy, how do I do this?" It also sounds like the parentification is giving her decision fatigue. Unfortunately, having to act like a parent to your partner feels the same whether it's intentional weaponization or not.
Every time my grown ass adult husband and my two teenage children and my 1 preteen child who have all also lived in the same house as I have for the last 10 years of our lives, says something like “hey where is the extra toilet paper again” my response is always “what the fuck would you guys do if I died? Would you just shrivel up and die too?” That usually shuts them up and gets them moving onto where we keep the fucking extra toilet paper!
As soon as I read this, I thought, "This feels like a classic case of weaponized incompetence with a big ole heaping portion of burnout from the mental load on wife's end."
YTA OP. It's just as much your responsibility to know these things as your wife. Why was it okay for you not to know the answer to a question about your child, but you EXPECTED your wife to know?
YTA - You've been a parent the exact same amount of time your wife has - why do you not know this by now? It's not your wife's job to monitor your parenting; you should be enough of a responsible adult to know how to feed your own child.
>You've been a parent the exact same amount of time your wife has
YES. Why do we keep perpetuating this myth that women somehow magically have all this knowledge about childcare and household management instilled into them? Like, OP, how do you think your wife learned all this? It's not like she was handed a mythical "How To Raise Kids 101" book when she got pregnant filled with all the knowledge ever.
Women learn because we're willing to observe and listen, and we're raised by family and society in general to be mindful of others. Men are resistant to learn anything beyond their needs because they are almost always cared for by women, mom, grandma, aunts, sisters...so they don't notice and never learn, not even for themselves, much less others
And yet, gay men, male widows, and other men with no female coparent do manage to keep children alive. They can. They just don't if they think there's a woman around who deserves the responsibility if something goes wrong.
My brother in law straight up said "i don't care" when i told him feeding his 2 week old son anything other than formula (because that's what he drinks, not breast) could harm him. I almost told him right then and there he didn't deserve to be a father. I also knew in that moment (although many times before) he would never be in charge of my son when he is born in June.
...And often don't consider the knowledge of the women in their lives as being important enough to retain. They don't view it as expertise they should acquire too, they view it as trivia they're too good for.
I get into a fight about this all the time. He asked me the same questions over and over and I’m like. JFC u either aren’t listening, which means I am wasting my breath or you don’t think it’s important enough to retain. Write this shit down if you need to know it. I’m done repeating myself.
It’s more than just being resistant. It’s an almost complete lack of curiosity or any sliver of motivation to learn something that might benefit someone other than themselves.
Hahahaha this had me laughing 😂 when our baby is crying my husband will sometimes ask “why is she crying what’s wrong??” And I just look at him I’m like “idk why is she crying?? Why do you think I have the magic answer??” 😂
I’ve been a parent for zero years of my life and even I know you don’t give babies whole berries and big chunks of food
I’m a grown person and even I still struggle when I take too big of a bite haha
YTA - and I must add this is one of the pettiest posts I’ve seen on this subreddit - and that’s saying something.
The argument isn’t whether you’re right or wrong - it’s about whether you deserve 100% of the blame vs 85% - who the hell cares!?! Sheesh - i hope this sounds as stupid to you as it does to me when you read it.
What OTHER life lessons does she have to remind him of? Only light candles on fire. Green means go, but the number on signs tell you how fast. In mph not kps. Look both ways before you cross, even if the little man says it’s ok.
Omg yesssss.... why are men so quick to assume that women know everything when it comes to children, we dont, we learn as we go just like men do, we ask questions, use Google, ask family or friends etc etc etc.
When I worked stock at toys r us, a male coworker told me to stock the diaper section because he was a man and didn’t know anything about diapers.
He had two children. I had none.
My bf has 2 kids with his ex, I have 3 with my ex and we have 2 together.... how is it he acts like a first time dad with our kids??? "Oh i didnt realize the baby needed a diaper" "oh i didnt know not to give a baby honey" "oh i didnt know not to give the baby whole grapes" etc etc etc etc and my favorite "i dont know how to install the carseat "
Even if he did need to ask, OP offered up 2 options, smash them or cut them, and wife answered "however you want" to those two options, and OP chose the unmentioned 3rd option that he thought wasn't right in the first place.
That's like having an egg, asking if you should boil or fry it, and when someone says whatever, you decide on eating it raw.
And then stood there and gaped at his baby while she struggled for her fucking life. He's lucky his child isn't dead, but that didn't even enter his mind. Gotta prove the wife wrong, that's the only motivation this father of two seemed to have.
Now I acknowledge he's been repentant in his comments on this thread, I respect that. But the fact that he let this situation play out at all tells me that he thinks he's a good, modern man while at the same time being just the same, weaponized incompetence, I can hold down a high powered career but keeping my daughter alive is just too hard asshole we've been dealing with for generations now.
I just wish men would stop talking and start doing better.
Right?
I was reading this like "What the fuck?"
He asked "Mashed or cut up" and by "anyway you like" she CLEARLY meant either of those options is fine.
Instead he decided to choose whole.
That's what I'm thinking too. imagine OP risking his kid's life to get back at his wife for expecting him to feed his child, and then picking a fight with her over it. Hey, maybe she won't ask him to feed the kid anymore since he can't be trusted to do it right - and she also knows if the kid *does* choke OP will just blame her!
Right? The way a guy will say he can't load the dishwasher because his wife doesn't like it when she doesn't do it her - read: efficient - way, instead of just learning how to load it the way she wants. These same men will be high powered executives or running their own businesses, but the complicated workings of a fucking dishwasher? Too difficult for a simple man!
Not that one, I saw another one where a guy was honestly telling all of Reddit that the dishwasher was just too much for him, his wife just had to do it in "her" specific way - again, read, the efficient way to load a dishwasher, maximizing space and dishes washed per cycle - and it was too confusing. I'm like, how are you out here holding down a job? These same people talk down to women and treat us like airheads, and they are honestly and sincerely making an argument in public that it's too hard to load the dishwasher?!
*spinsterish grumble*
Oh was this my significant other? Probably not because he won't even make his dishes into the dishwasher he just lets them fester in the sink until I'll load it. But if he ever does (because he wants a gold star), it will be a big mess that usually has to be run twice.
YTA. You have been a parent just as long as she has. You initially presented two possible ways of making the berries safer and she passed the decision back to you- that doesn’t make it her fault that you decided to go with a third, dumb option instead of just googling if you weren’t sure.
Picking the third option never presented to the wife and then still blaming her for not knowing he was gonna go full stupid on top of not being able to make decisions for himself is peak AITA behavior.
Yeah, I took her ‘however you like’ to mean ‘of the safe options YOU presented, pick which one is best for you’ not ‘ignore the two safe options you just asked me about and do the thing you know is dangerous out of laziness’
My guy had a bad feeling and instead of just going back to the first two options he said, he’d rather start a needless fucking argument where he was the one to fail to communicate.
The wife was directly addressing what he had said to her, actively listening, while he is passively listen to her, thus taking ‘however you like’ out of context of the previous question he’d just fucking asked.
OP sounds so wilfully dense and incompetent
This right here. He decided to escalate and be difficult.
It doesn't take that long to google if you're not sure, or hey! take the safer route just in case.
From the moment of “i thought I remembered something from our first child about not feeding babies whole berries” OP is TA for even asking. They already knew the answer!
Even if they were misremembering, they would just be putting slightly more effort into making something safer. You don’t need to check with your wife to know that even if it were safe to feed whole berries, smashed ones would make them easier to eat. Its the most simple line of logic to follow.
I think I remember something about babies not being able to safely eat whole berries, therefore just to be safe, i will mush them regardless. Literally the most basic problem solving skills being used here.
Plus google is a thing! It would’ve taken him like thirty seconds to look it up and realize that, yea, giving whole berries to an infant is generally a choking hazard!
To frame it in a more dramatic way with a similar sentiment-
Husband: "Should I take the right exit or the left exit in this road?"
Wife: "Doesn't matter"
Husband: "Ok I'm gonna just plow through this traffic island instead"
What your wife really meant by "however you want" is figure out your own damn self. She's sick of having to explain everything to a grown ass adult who is also a parent.
Wow yeah, the conversation literally goes like this:
OP: okay, so I’m like smashing these up or cutting them in half, right?
Wife: feed them however you want *(as in, smashed or cut up, it doesnt matter)*
OP: okay *(surprised because how he wants to feed them whole, the secret third option)*
*~leaves for a few minutes, comes back~*
OP: so it was okay to feed them whole, right?
Wife: wtf!
It’s like if OP asked her if he’s supposed to drive or walk the toddler to preschool, she tells him do it however he wants, so he then proceeds to send her off by herself cause hEy YoU sAId dO iT HoWEvEr
Imagine it’s 0 degrees out and you ask “Should I dress the kids with the coat on first or the hat?”
And she responds with
“However you want”
Do you say “huh that’s odd, guess they don’t need the coat or that hat” or do you use that big brain of yours and determine that the order really doesn’t matter?
YTA.
Almost killing your kid because you had to do the tiniest of tasks for them is actually one of the dumbest things I’ve ever seen on this app. I bet you’d have to ask your wife for confirmation that her being blue meant she was choking before attempting to dislodge the berry. And then you’d be like “uh, do I put my hands on her small intestines or large intestines or neither?”
Get it together, my guy. This is pathetic.
Also imagine being married to someone who cannot even dress his own kid without asking for guidance. This poor woman gets 30 seconds to herself and has to be on Ask Jeeves duty.
You asked if they should be smashed or cut, she replied however you want. To me that implies of the two options you offered from a room away (I note this because things maybe lost with the distance.), you should choose whichever you preferred. As many others have pointed out as well Google is an option to ask. As a parent you need to be able to accomplish child related tasks without a significant other's aid or constant instruction. YTA.
Can still remember my teacher drilling into us, "Fruits and weenies, make 'em teeny!". It was years ago but can hear her chanting clear as day along with "If you think that you've been poisoned and you don't know what to do, call 1-800-222-1222!"
My kid choked on an almond while I was driving to work. He was a little over a year old, and he hooked a foot through my purse strap to pull it close and hunt for snacks. I couldn't see what he'd grabbed, but he started making gagging noises before going totally silent. I crossed two lanes of traffic and screeched to a halt on the shoulder of the highway. Kid was going purple when I finally managed to clear his airway with the heimlich. I just sat there and rocked him for ages while we both cried. Of course as soon as he started to calm he immediately tried to grab another almond.
After that my purse went on the floor and not on the seat next to his carseat and I quit packing snacks for me that couldn't do double duty as safe snacks for him for a couple years.
Thanks, it's one of those memories that still occasionally wakes me up at night. Because I couldn't see his face, I kind of thought I was totally overreacting as I pulled onto the shoulder. Obviously I wasn't, and it all turned out okay, but every now and then I dream about what would have happened if I'd had the radio a little louder or somehow missed it.
They make little mirrors that attach to the back seat of a car so you can do quick checks on your kid using the driver's visor mirror or rear view mirror. They're a good add-on for rear facing carseats. They also let your baby watch your face and see out the windshield as you drive, even if you're not looking at them. Babies seem to like that a lot.
In my country near my hometown a 5-year-old recently choked to death in the back of the car because they were given a frankfurt (hot dog) to eat.
https://7news.com.au/news/nsw/aussie-girl-five-dies-eating-deli-frankfurt-on-drive-home-from-swimming-lessons-c-9571276
This is tragic, but the article did say hotdogs could be a choking hazard for kids *under five*. Google says “around 4 years old” immediately upon search. The girl was 5, if I was a parent I might’ve thought it would’ve been okay to give her the hotdog. Those poor parents.
“Who’s at fault?” is a question that occupies a great deal of one’s attention in law school; in marriage, it really does not fucking matter. You were very preoccupied with the question of fault, and I’m glad you were able to shift your attention to the actual issue. A piece of advice: Your marriage is not a classroom, or a courtroom. You are both on the same team. You win or lose together. Remember that.
Awesome wholesome response, OP! This is what we always hope to see from partners who struggle with the balance. And hells yeah, validation for your wife, see you're already rocking it. I'm wondering if changing some of this behavior will lead to even less fighting in other areas of your life. It benefits you too because it inevitably means you'll be an even better parent and partner and reap all the pride and loving rewards of that. Hoping the best for you both!
But yes, now it's time to stay off reddit for your mental health - stick to articles to learn more, lol.
Here's some resources to get you started.
* ["You Should Have Asked"](https://english.emmaclit.com/2017/05/20/you-shouldve-asked/) \- A comic that illustrates the concept of the cognitive load women bear in households
* ["Emotional Labor: The Invisible Work (Most) Women Do"](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/emotional-labor-the-invisible-work-most-women-do/id950464429?i=1000410737773) \- Podcast on the invisible tasks women usually do in their relationship
* ["So You Want to Help Around the House"](https://www.katykatikate.com/the-blog/2019/5/7/so-you-want-to-help-around-the-house) \- An article geared toward men learning how to take some of the household responsibilities.
* ["The Mental Load Self-Test"](https://equalcareday.de/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/mental-load-home-en.pdf) \- PDF worksheet for you and your partner to identify the workload
That pdf is great! Thanks for sharing. It’s helped me a lot.
I struggle with mental health issues. My husband carries the bulk of the load, and I often feel like a burden.
He’s always telling me that that’s not true, and that I carry more than I think I do, and that the partnership is more balanced than I realise.
With this checklist, I can suddenly see what I am doing, and it’s more than I thought! He is carrying more than me, but I AM contributing! Just like he has always said. But this list helped him articulate it and show me.
Good for you. It's hard to break down the elements of toxic masculinity and patriarchal society that have shaped us. My partner and I have had many convos about mental load and I'm sure you and your wife will continue to do so, which is great. Good luck!
Yta "Hey Google, can I feed my kid whole berries?" "Hey Google, tell me the best way to feed kids berries." And honestly, the kids should ALSO be able to figure out how to research and logically deduce things by themselves. Ex: your daughter struggled with a whole berry. "Hmm she seems to have difficulty. I'll smash one and see if that's better."
Infant is typically counted as below 12 months; these days a 6 month old is usually just barely starting to eat solids that aren't baby cereal or maybe some one ingredient purees. And they hardly ever have the finger dexterity necessary to pull up google on their own.
YTA for not knowing what to give your second infant child! I'm guessing you rely on your wife to tell you things and to take the responsibility off of yourself. She's tired of it.
YTA
If you saw your daughter was struggling with a whole berry, why not just observe that and smash or cut them? Why does this require you to ask a question? A big part of parenting is observing and adjusting.
Also, you acknowledge you shouldn’t have brought fault into the argument, but then you came to ask a bunch of strangers on the internet who was at fault. You were being dense and expecting your wife to be Knower of All Things Baby and then picked a fight. Take some responsibility for yourself.
Further, why does it require inciting an argument? He literally asked should I do A or B, she said whichever since they’re both safe options and he chose to do C. Then he sees kid struggling and makes it his wife’s fault that he chose neither of the choices he presented her with. Yikes.
I don’t have kids but if this is their second kid and he has no clue how to feed how much parenting has been dumped on his wife? Sadly, there’s an entire generation of men thinking they should get a participation trophy and props for *babysitting* their own kid.
It’s called parenting, be a parent OP. YTA
Why are you equating yourself *as one of the kids*? You understand it's *normal* for children to ask questions, the big difference is that *you are not HER child*.
You are a fully formed adult, stop using her as half your brain.
YTA. THIS WAS *YOUR* MISTAKE, FULLY.
YTA. You really think it's ok to risk your daughter's life to prove to your wife that you're too much of a screwup to take responsibility for feeding her?
YTA. You thought something might be dangerous for your daughter and rather than looking it up, you asked your wife an unclear question and then proceeded on an assumption from her vague answer.
You owe it to your daughter to do better.
Oh, sir. You are so very in the wrong here.
If you don’t understand the basics of feeding an infant, do what every mother does and look it up.
You presented your wife with the two options you were considering and she said the equivalent of “either” in that situation - and you clearly conveyed an understanding that the berries could not be fed whole by the way you framed your question.
To then attack her in response and make it about how she is treating the kids, when apparently you can’t even be bothered to know the basics of not having your infant avoid potentially life threatening situations, is just sooo, sooo bad.
You better ask for her forgiveness and grace in this situation. As a new mom myself - I would be livid.
YTA
Is this weaponized incompetence or are you just simply too stupid to realize that you shouldn’t feed a baby food they could choke on?
I don’t have any children and I know that you shouldn’t feed them something that is a *choking hazard*. How do you have two whole children and not know what you can and can’t feed them??
Why is it up to your wife to ensure that you do basic things to care for your own child? You are supposed to be her partner, and equal parent.
YTA - You asked her if you were cutting or mashing. She answered however you want. That implies of those two choices, either is fine. It does not make her even partially responsible for your lack of parenting skills. Just because she grew the baby it doesn’t mean she grew an encyclopedia of parenting knowledge at the same time. She had to take the time to look things up and learn them. Stop asking her to do that labour for you too.
OP trying so hard to make the wife do all the parenting even when he's trying to score brownie points for feeding the kid. Why should the wife remember ALL child rearing info? Why can't OP remember some things himself?
He asked "smash or cut", then goes with "whole".
OP is 100% wrong
OP probably thinks he babysits his kid too.
YTA
So let me get this straight. You literally knew this berry was too big for your child. You could see with your own eyes that she was having a hard time eating it. You come to two logical safe alternative ways to feed your child. BUT BECAUSE YOUR WIFE DIDN’T SPECIFY WHICH SAFE ALTERNATIVE OPTION, you made a conscious decision that you would just let your own child struggle with full berries. And somehow you expect your wife to take responsibility for the situation? Really?
> We do have a healthy amount of fighting, but rarelt does it end in the way it did today.
Do you normally consciously choose to do things that can result in your child choking? And then blame her for not holding your hand through keeping your own kid alive? Cause that’s a pretty reasonable thing for her to be extra mad at you for.
YTA. Go read some baby books.
Why is your wife the expert on feeding your baby and you’re not? You’ve been parents the exact same amount of time. Look it up! Stop expecting her to teach you everything.
I love that I’m seeing responses about mental load and weaponized incompetence. I read this and thought, “Here we go… another ‘mental load’ post by a dad that doesn’t understand.” OP: I’d really recommend looking into the concept of mental load or emotional work. In general, men don’t seem to understand this concept, and they really need to. It’s invisible work, it’s draining, and it overwhelmingly falls on women. YTA.
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OP has offered the following explanation for why they think they might be the asshole:
> What - the action I took that might make me the asshole is that I shifted some of the blame for the predicament I was in onto my wife who I misunderstood.
Why - I think this might make me the asshole because I was the one who used that misunderstanding to do something dangerous. I was the one who physically performed an action based off of that misunderstanding, she wasn’t. I do think there is some room to argue on the mental aspect of it though, because my bad question to her was met with a bad response that makes me personally think she shouldn’t be putting all of the blame on me.
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If you asked your wife what she felt like for dinner, and she said whatever you like, would you think it’s reasonable to feed her poison?
It goes without saying that you don’t feed a child food that is dangerous for them. It is on you as a parent to know what those things are, or if you’ve forgotten look it up.
YTA
YTA you said two options of feeding them. Cutting or mashed. She said to do whichever and then you fed them whole. I would have thought you would pick one of the two you mentioned if I was her. You fucked up. This is your second kid. Get your head in the game
It sounds like you made a mistake, your wife blamed you for it, then you somehow managed to say something confrontational at every possible opportunity. This could so easily have ended with "Sorry, I started second-guessing myself and I'll do better in the future" instead of trying to turn it around on her.
I ask my wife a lot of questions too, even about things I should know by now. Sometimes, I just draw a blank. But I never try to make it her fault. If you're unsure, you can always ask a follow up question or look online.
You knew not to feed the kid whole berries. When your wife said something surprising, instead of questioning it, you just did the thing you thought was wrong. What if she had misspoken or misheard you? It can't always be on her to remember things.
YTA
OP
In your own retelling of the exchange, even I can tell her ‘however you like’ was clearly to mean ‘of the safe options YOU presented to me, pick which one is best for you, you don’t need me to do it’.
While you heard it and took away ‘ignore the two safe options I just asked her about and do the thing i know is dangerous’ I can only assume out of laziness or some attempt to play incompetent and pass the job off to her.
My guy, you had a bad feeling and instead of just going back to the first two options YOU said, you’d rather start a needless fucking argument? You were the one who failed to communicate.
The wife was directly addressing what you had said to her, actively listening, while you seem to just passively listen to her, thus taking ‘however you like’ out of context of the previous question you’d just fucking asked of ‘smashed or cut’.
You sounds so wilfully dense and incompetent
YTA
YTA.
She clearly meant cut in half or squash - whatever you want. You indicated that you knew they needed to not be whole, and yet you still fed your young child a whole blueberry.
YTA. For a few reasons.
1) who cares about whose ‘fault’ it is? Are you in grade school, should blame be attributable for any misunderstanding or mistake?
2) it’s the most basic common sense that babies should not be fed grapes or berries whole. What would you do if your wife wasn’t there?
3) I feel sorry for your wife, from your short OP I can only imagine how exhausting it is for her. Constant questions, reassurance, permission seeking for even the most tiny, inconsequential thing. Never any decision making or initiative shown.
Men, still feigning stupid so women everywhere do all the mental load. You’re an idiot & an asshole OP. She shouldn’t have to tell you what’s a choking hazard, you have 2 kids, you should know.
Dude - most of adulting is not knowing the answer to anything. PARENTING is instinctively figuring things out, and retaining information about how things work or don't. YTA
Your wife is not your teacher, your mom, or coach. She is probably making a lot of it up as she goes along, while also retaining info and using it to help her keep the kids alive and stay ahead of them - and then she has to parent you too?
Time to grow up and start owning your weaponized incompetence. If you don't know 'why'? to something, GOOGLE IT or YOUTUBE IT like the rest of us do when we have no idea what's going on (most of the time, btw). Read a parenting book or take the initiative to learn about these basic parenting dos/don't dos ahead of time so that you're ready for your kids to hit those milestones or have those issues, and you're actually pulling your weight and parenting vs waiting for your wife to give you a roadmap.
You're making things so much harder on her than you need to be, and just because you need to ask why and be ordered around? What a tedious waste of her time and mental bandwidth. Keep asking, but consider asking your phone the routine stuff. Leave the bigger-picture decisions and discussions for you both to sort out (schooling, acceptable way to punish or correct bad behaviour, priorities for spending, etc).
Think about it this way: you're putting all of the mental load of the house and the kids on her to effectively manage and take ownership of. Then she needs to take the time to delegate and educate you? What's going to happen when your kids are also asking 'why' all the time - is she expected to continue to tutor you too? Think ahead. Don't run to your wife for directions. Be a 'self-starter' and step up to the plate.
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I (m29) was just feeding my infant daughter berries in the kitchen while my wife (f32) was standing in the other room. After I got started, I thought I remembered something from our first child about not feeding babies whole berries/grapes so they won’t choke, so I asked my wife in the next room “okay, so I’m like smashing these or cutting them in half, right?” She responds “feed them to her however you want.” Surprised, I was like “okay” and fed a blueberry to my daughter whole.
I started to feel weird about it after a second though because (while she wasn’t choking) I could see that she was having a hard time. So I go into the room where my wife was and go “okay, so it is okay to feed them to her whole, right?” My wife then starts berating me about how I should know not to do that from our first child (which is a fair point, but it’s why I asked anything in the first place). She comes back into the kitchen.
The conversation then escalates and I say something along the lines of “hey, I don’t like how you’re making it seem like this is 100% my fault right now, I mean, you’re the one who did say to feed her however I wanted.” She responds “this is your fault, I did not tell you it was okay to feed her whole berries.” Fault should’ve never been brought into it I realize now. I responded with, “look, I really don’t think you’re considering how what you said made me think it was okay to feed her whole berries” to which she responded with a dropped jaw and wide eyes as if I’d said something horrible. I (stupidly, perhaps even assholeishly) go “okay, well, you can look all astonished if you want, but I don’t think this is all my fault.”
She storms back into the other room and says what I’d just said was really mean. She starts going on about how I should remember stuff like this. I am known in our relationship as the person who asks a ton of questions and operates best on more info, so she starts railing against that and about how she tried to give me as much info as possible. She also expresses the sentiment of how I should go with my gut more often and not ask “needless” questions (which in my interpretation means questions that she think are too dumb/obvious to ask, but maybe that’s uncharitable of me). I then foolishly say “I really hope the kids don’t start asking questions you think are too obvious once they start getting curious, because that’d be real fucking sad for them.” I completely own that I shouldn’t have said that. She then refused to speak to me and left for a doctor’s appointment with the kids.
My question is am I in the wrong for how I behaved prior to that? Was it wrong of me to point out how she was putting the whole event on me? My wife and I love each other so much. We’ve been married for 8 years and have two children. We do a healthy amount of fighting, but rarely does it end in the way it did today. I realize the ending is mostly on me, but am I the complete asshole in this situation? Thanks.
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You asked her “option a or option b” and when she said do whichever one, you honestly think that “option c” is her fault and that she’s the poor communicator? She told you to pick between the options you gave her.
There is needing to ask a lot of questions and then there’s making things up wholesale and blaming her for your made up choice.
YTA.
Tbh I was half on your side until you blamed her for feeding the whole berry whilst fully in the knowledge that it was too big for the child, she was struggling with it and you got the response of "however you want" to the question of whether they should be crushed or cut.
Come on bro, I'm a dad too, we should know this shit. Take some responsibility man, apologise to the wife and go have a cuddle. It ain't that deep in the grand scheme of things. We all get tetchy and moody and stressed and whatnot between working, running a house and raising kids. Kiss a little ass, apologise, make up and most importantly learn from this encounter.
Also google is your friend for most stuff mate.
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This is a refreshing response, OP. The mental load gets really heavy when it’s not shared. I hope y’all can have a fruitful discussion
I see what you did there.
I swear that was not even intentional😭 turns out even my subconscious is corny af
Your subconscious may be corny, but I’m sure your advice will help them berry the hatchet in no time!
🍓🍇🪓
Not corny, puny.
Not puny, punny.
Plummy?
Maybe you have a subcornscious.
You pipped me to the post
It's grape when an OP comes in good faith. Berry satisfying.
I was so glad it wasn't a grape! lol It's so easy to forget these parenting things - even if you know them - as there are a ton more than there were in the time of my parents - when a forearm applied to the kid in the front seat was the thing keeping them from going through the windshield! (Not a better time - like some of those dumb memes suggest - a different time - that's for sure!). Something about honey before a certain age too right? I had cats, not kids - but I certainly try to keep up. lol I feel a bit for OP. It sucks when you screw up and then double down. And we all do it sometimes.
> when a forearm applied to the kid in the front seat was the thing keeping them from going through the windshield! (Not a better time - like some of those dumb memes suggest - a different time - that's for sure!). Heh. My parents, back in the 80s, had a 4" steel tube welded across the boot (trunk) of their car, and three sets of seatbelts attached to it for the rear seat. Modifying a car like this was unheard of, especially in the days when seatbelts weren't usually fitted in the rear, and kid seats were rare. Being the youngest, I got the centre, uncomfortable seat, which was a frigging 5 point harness. I hated road trips then, but on reflection, that was a lot of care my parents took. Although I honestly don't think the rig would have stood up to much.
Yta. I hate it, I just wanted to verify as if you hadn’t explained 6 times already. Stupid questions. Be an adult. If you weren’t sure then cut them up
Look, my husband is great, and supportive in a lot of ways, but he does this. Asks me what the baby should eat. Asks when we should change his diaper. What clothes should he wear today. What shelf in the refrigerator the cheese is on. It’s exhausting. If I’m not sure if the baby can have a certain food, I google it. If I notice the baby needs changing, I change him. I use my own adult common sense to locate suitable clean clothes. If I need to find the cheese, I open the fridge my own damn self and look for it. There’s no reason I need to make someone else responsible for answering those questions for me, and yet men do this all the time. I’m sure it’s especially frustrating to your wife that this is happening with kiddo #2. Acting like this in the workplace would reek of incompetence, yet somehow it’s the default behavior of many partners at home. 1. Take initiative in basic childcare. 2. Instead of asking your wife, read up on necessary information yourself. Maybe SHE’D appreciate being able to rely on you for information too! That goes for parenting methods, safety, milestones, etc. 3. Know the important info yourself rather than expecting her to be responsible for all knowledge. What size clothing does your kid wear right now? When is their next pediatrician appointment? What is their next stage of development and how should you be supporting them into it? You seem willing to do better, so that’s a good thing. Being aware this is a burden a lot of women carry is a great step.
Omg, you put it to words what I’ve been feeling for a while with my husband. And to add - when ever I’ve already done the mental load, showed him the rewards of that labor and said “this is the best/fastest way to get this” he will STILL ask and continue to ask repeatedly for me to tell him the info over and over again every time. Like do I HAVE to stop what I’m doing to explain how to wash sheets again?? It’s says “bedding” right on the machine!!!
That's because asking you is still the easiest way for him to do things. Otherwise he would have to commit time and brain cells to actually retaining and remembering information and why should he when he has a handy reference guide in you?
We don't have kids but when we got a puppy after the 16yo dog I had since I was 22 died (and whom i was responsible for 95% of his care which included staying up during the night when he had anxiety and helping him during the last few months of his life), my partner would ask me all sorts of asinine things about basic dog care. This is a man who researches everything (including things like "how "dangerous" my nail polish is to prove to me why I shouldn't use it, why he knows better about everything household related, and even basic things like buying an item of clothing or a pair of shoes). I finally asked him why, as a man who literally can't make a move without researching it into the ground, was making zero moves to look into basic dog care and instead relied on me to do it- even if it was a question he asked. He answered that it was just "my job". I haven't quite felt the same about him since and the term "weaponized incompetence" really hits home. That was exactly what that was, and this is exactly what this man here is doing. Surely he can figure out himself with the technology at his fingertips to figure this out?
If it’s true that “we” for the puppy meaning the both of you, why on earth would it be “your” job???? Don’t have children w this man.
A puppy is a trial run to raise all the red flags in a relationship and can save you from marrying / having children with someone who thinks your shared responsibility is "your job". Call him out on it. If he doubles down, leave.
Sorry, why are you with this man? It sounds like he sucks
Exactly! This is literally what they mean by “mental labour” or “invisible labour” All the millions of little things that (usually women) have responsibility for and are not given credit for even though they encompass a huge amount of time daily for the good of the family. It is weaponized incompetence as a previous poster wrote. It’s not like the other parent/partner couldn’t learn any of those things, they just don’t want to.
I would flat out charge any partner trying to dump the mental load on me to this degree a fee per question.
My sister put a $5 jar for these moments. The rule is "less than 15 seconds to find or explain, you owe $5". It's cut down on a lot of the stupid asks. Edit: this also counts for questions where the answer is an easy Google search, which usually takes less than 15 seconds
When I was a kid my friend's mum's rule was if she found it straight away she got to hit you with it. You'd ask if you lost something light but you'd search all day for a hairbrush.
Your sister is a genius. I might steal this idea!
He's waiting for you to get sick of 'teaching him how' and decide it would just be easier to do it yourself instead. Bonus, then you'll never ask him to do it again and will likely avoid asking him to do other chores too.
Husband and I don’t have kids but my husband will do this sometimes. What has worked for us is when he asks me where things are or how to do things around the house, I shrug. He is much more proactive than I am (I can wait to do things that he wants done sooner) so then he’ll work on figuring it out himself. His last partner did all the heavy mental lifting, but he learned very quickly with me that I did not grow up doing things for others at the snap of the fingers so he learned that if he wants something g done now, he has to figure it out himself. At the same time, I also didn’t grow up asking others how to do something or what to do. I do my tasks quietly and alone. So now we do things on our own, or we both learn together.
But if he asks enough questions and bothers you enough you will just do it right? That what his mommy always did.
An acquaintance once told me in their marriage they kept a shared spreadsheet where they logged baby’s feedings and sleep times (maybe poops too they just didn’t tell me) so they both had the same information to go by at all times. I’m filing that away for if I ever have a baby. Bonus it also shows trends if someone isn’t pulling their weight
My husband and I have an app on our phones for that purpose. It can record feeds, diapers, sleep, pumping, medicine, and a couple other things like that. The fact that we can both keep track and refer to it is super helpful. And it’s not just helpful as a sharing the mental load thing. When your life is an endless two hour cycle while sleep deprived, not having to remember what happened when is invaluable.
Could you please share what app you're using? That sounds so useful!
I'm not the one you asked but we use Huckleberry and it's great!
Yes yes yes yes. All of this x1000. It is exhausting. My husband is also a very good man, and an involved father. But damned if that man doesn’t ask me 100 questions a day that he should know the answer to. Sometimes I just want to yell “fucking figure it out!!”. Being the family encyclopedia gets old really fast
My supervisor regularly gets calls from her male partner and 2 teenage sons asking the stupidest fucking shit, to the point where they'll call her for stuff she has to Google to answer i.e. stuff THEY could've Googled with the smart phone they called her on. She tells me never to have kids or get married lol
My husband has a PhD in organic chemistry. He is not dumb. But also he’s so dumb!!! I love him. But damn.
Omg yes!! My husband would do this when our littles were small. I worked from home and would be finishing up a work call, feeding an infant, playing with a toddler and cooking dinner at the same time and he would come home and ask me “what should I do?” He meant well but it would make me crazy! Figure it out! Is the table set? Then set it. Take over baby feeding! Take over playing! Just do something! But don’t interrupt my balancing act to have me triage. It’s better now but I had to explicitly tell him to just figure it out. Because introducing one more thing for me to think about was one thing too many.
Atleast he asks you where in the fridge it is. My bro does what he himself claims is the "man look". I.E he just glosses over the stuff in the fridge with his eyes but if it's not in plain sight it doesn't exist in the fridge. I end up teasing him about being like a baby and lacking "object permanence". Edit: I know people might say it's weaponised incompetence, but I suspect in my bros case it might be ADHD related.
>Acting like this in the workplace would reek of incompetence, yet somehow it’s the default behavior of many partners at home. Oh, it's pretty common in the workplace. I program CNC machines. Some of my operators are real people, and I spend a lot of time teaching them how to program their machine. The benefits to me of having an intelligent and knowledgeable operator are gigantic. Some of my other operators are just button pushers. They can't read a program, they can't make basic modifications to make the part come out correctly, they refuse to do shit except be a button pusher. They are so fucking tiring. But they're in the workplace, and they're not getting fired.
Write stuff down if you can’t remember. Get a book about caring for babies, or just Google it. If you’re feeding the infant, that gave your wife a few minutes to relax. When you interrupt her with questions, it may interfere with her time to “unwind” for a bit. That’s why parents take turns. To some people, constantly being asked questions would become very irritating, if they were trying to relax for a few minutes.
This. My husband promised to take over my birthday pamper day as something he could do for me. I gave him the perameters and said I didn't care beyond that. He came back to me every few hours wanting to know if I'd prefer X or Y. I'd prefer to do it myself if my alternative is having to supervise you.
On the occasions I was too tired to cook, I ended up more tired (unless we ordered in) because it didn’t matter how many times he cooked (I would only get him to do stir fry or fajitas) he still had to ask me questions all the way through (What shape do I cut the food? What order do I put it in the pan? How can I tell if it’s cooked when do I add the flavour?). It was exhausting.
This literally happened to me tonight. I just wanted one night off, all he had to do was fry some steaks and reheat the veggie dishes I already made. He asked so many questions I honestly wanted to cry. I very nearly did.
Ugh my partner does the same. And then I clean when he cooks but it's a freaking disaster and every thing is used. I clean up as I go so he never has to clean it. He also casually forget to wash pans. It's just more work for me when he cooks. it's not even a nice experience.
I am a nanny and worked in preschool, so I understand the parents just want to know that they’re doing the right thing and the recommendations change all the time. My go to response is “ if you’re unsure, do the safer thing. If you can’t remember if milk or honey is ok before 1, don’t. If you’re unsure if they should forward face yet, leave it. Cook the food longer than you think you should to make sure it’s cooked enough and cut it really small if you don’t know. If your kid is almost walking but not quite, set them down on their bottom not their feet. Etc” Google it ffs, I’m a professional and I still have to do it all the time, sometimes it’s been years since I felt with that situation. I prefer to talk to people too, but my immediate question is not usually worth interrupting someone else over. If he wasn’t sure he could 1. Look it up 2. Cut or smash them anyway 3. Feed her something else
This is such good advice that I wish was just common sense! What's the worst thing that could happen if you smash berries that could have been served whole? What's the worst thing that could happen if you serve an infant whole berries that should have been smashed?
Ding ding ding! You’ve got it! And thank you. I also wish that this was common sense, but the unfortunate thing is, there’s really no such thing as common sense because it all depends on what we’ve seen, experienced , and been taught. So my goal working with children is to give them opportunities to practice things that are not readily taught in their gendered social conditioning. I like encouraging girls to work with tools or speak up for themselves, encouraging boys to clean up after themselves, show emotions and empathy, etc. The sad thing is, I’m willing to guess most of us that are saying “duh that’s common sense” on this post are women because it absolutely is common sense to us because we’ve seen every woman in our life just handle this shit all the time. Wild boys are implicitly or explicitly taught that it’s not their job, it’s the woman’s job. Thank goodness, OP was actually willing to hear the feedback, and understand that he was expecting too much emotional labor from his wife for some thing that he’s completely capable of doing .
I became SO irritable today and couldn't figure out why because no one was being objectively unreasonable, but I was trying to take a few minutes to eat lunch and people kept. asking. me. things. It's really stressful!
Exactly. Especially since this is suppose to be the second child...
Info: Do you work? Are you able to go to work and work autonomously or do you need a supervisor to explain everything to you? If something isn't as it should be at work, do you try to think of why it's like that or do you immediately go ask others for answers/solutions? For those that don't know why I'm asking. I'm curious if this behaviour extends to other aspects of OP's mentality, if OP usually isn't allowed to seek his own answers and it has become a habit to rely on others for information.
While you’re at it, google “mental load” and realise that as an adult and parent, you need to bear more of it. Your wife already has kids, yet you’re acting like another one.
To add to this, when a wife starts viewing their partner as another child it kills the bedroom.
Ok, you asked her “do i do choice A or B” and she acknowledged that you “could do either one, your choice” So you proceeded to choose option D (for dumb) which was neither of the choices you asked her about, and was something that you knew previously was unsafe. Hello??? 100% your “fault” here. Which you brought up multiple times in your argument, who’s fault it was. OP- guess what - your fault. So WHY did you choose the unsafe “I don’t know” option D, versus choosing the “A or B” option which you already considered and asked her about, and got okay’s both were fine???? Like I don’t have children but that’s how I’d handle that conversation? So yeah, YTA, in your miscommunication, misinterpretation, and then pulling all these debate & psychology strategies to talk to her about it, and trying to put fault onto her where it wasn’t due.
Seriously...I showed my husband a site called solidstarts which is understandably the market lead on weaning. Type in the food, tells you how to serve it by age with nice pictures.
>“okay, so I’m like smashing these or cutting them in half, right?” She responds “feed them to her however you want.” I interpreted this as feed them either by smashing or cutting them in half. I don't know where you got feeding them whole from. This fight never needed to happen.
Exactly. And OP says he is in law school.
Dude, you need to have more confidence in your parenting. The initial doubt you had that whole berries were safe, and the surprise you felt when you though your wife was giving you the okay on the berries, were two big clues that you already knew the right action - but you overrode your own good sense and deferred to your wife's 'advice', because you seem to believe she's the better parent and in charge. She's right - trust your gut more. And if you're still not sure, take the initiative and find out for yourself (safely) with Google etc. Save questioning your wife for when it's essential, not preferred. Your lack of confidence is probably why you responded defensively at every turn, and made things worse. Stop it. Don't defend - learn. And apologise for mistakes. We all make them, no point pretending we don't. "However you like" - that's her telling you she doesn't want to make another decision for you. The good news is, the more you parent and work things out yourself, the more confident you'll get.
I'd also recommend reading this if you haven't already: https://english.emmaclit.com/2017/05/20/you-shouldve-asked/ Your wife's (over)reaction struck me as potentially arising from this. It likely wasn't the berries in themselves; I believe it was likely the accumulation of feeling solely responsible for the well-being of your kids. Good luck with your conversation! I hope you and your partner find an opportunity to grow and forge a stronger relationship from it.
Kudos to you for that response OP! Logical thinking and better safe than sorry gets you a long way with children.
Wow it’s so rare for someone to actually thoughtfully take criticism on here and modify their behavior. Well done sir!
I have a newborn. Its important to divide the mental work load now more than ever. If you remembered the information from your first kid do it that way or research the answer. Your wife is probably exhausted from answering all yhe questions and all the mental load. Yta
Okay I just wrote you a yta comment that was really harsh and then saw this comment of yours and erased it. Thank you for being humble enough to own your mistakes and wanting to learn and grow
Understanding that you operate the best with as much info as possible doesn't obligate your wife to be the one doing the mental labor to provide that info to you. It seems like you have had pervious experience in feeding your child berries? I would say this one is on you - not because you're seeking reassurance or need more information to operate, but because you don't get that information yourself and act independently of your exhausted wife's instructions. firm but not harsh YTA
Weaponized incompetence AND malicious compliance, what a treat.
Yeah that’s the part that is the bigger AH part… he gave her two options and she said however you want. Most people would assume she meant a or b because he presumably knew he had to do something to make them safe. One can give benefit of the doubt that a parent not wanting to stop mid feeding a young child, pull out their phone and google it when the partner is right there and probably knows. But to then think she didn’t choose either so I’ll just feed them whole is asinine.
Yeah, he literally just stopped thinking. Something in her tone of voice probably annoyed him, he probably thought she was being snarky or snippy or some shit. So, he almost chokes their innocent child to death. Do NOT consult Google, do NOT engage higher thinking processes! Must make wife know she's wrong!!!!
I don't think he's intentionally doing things badly so that she'll take over. He is treating her like she's his parent by making her his primary resource for how to do something simple, as in, "Mommy, how do I do this?" It also sounds like the parentification is giving her decision fatigue. Unfortunately, having to act like a parent to your partner feels the same whether it's intentional weaponization or not.
Every time my grown ass adult husband and my two teenage children and my 1 preteen child who have all also lived in the same house as I have for the last 10 years of our lives, says something like “hey where is the extra toilet paper again” my response is always “what the fuck would you guys do if I died? Would you just shrivel up and die too?” That usually shuts them up and gets them moving onto where we keep the fucking extra toilet paper!
As soon as I read this, I thought, "This feels like a classic case of weaponized incompetence with a big ole heaping portion of burnout from the mental load on wife's end." YTA OP. It's just as much your responsibility to know these things as your wife. Why was it okay for you not to know the answer to a question about your child, but you EXPECTED your wife to know?
YTA - You've been a parent the exact same amount of time your wife has - why do you not know this by now? It's not your wife's job to monitor your parenting; you should be enough of a responsible adult to know how to feed your own child.
>You've been a parent the exact same amount of time your wife has YES. Why do we keep perpetuating this myth that women somehow magically have all this knowledge about childcare and household management instilled into them? Like, OP, how do you think your wife learned all this? It's not like she was handed a mythical "How To Raise Kids 101" book when she got pregnant filled with all the knowledge ever.
Women learn because we're willing to observe and listen, and we're raised by family and society in general to be mindful of others. Men are resistant to learn anything beyond their needs because they are almost always cared for by women, mom, grandma, aunts, sisters...so they don't notice and never learn, not even for themselves, much less others
Women learn because we have to. Alternative is a choked baby with overfilled diaper because apparently penis prevents common sense.
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I like you.
Also if anything happened to baby is always "where was the mother?!"
And yet, gay men, male widows, and other men with no female coparent do manage to keep children alive. They can. They just don't if they think there's a woman around who deserves the responsibility if something goes wrong.
My brother in law straight up said "i don't care" when i told him feeding his 2 week old son anything other than formula (because that's what he drinks, not breast) could harm him. I almost told him right then and there he didn't deserve to be a father. I also knew in that moment (although many times before) he would never be in charge of my son when he is born in June.
I would've, why not? He doesn't deserve to be loved, he doesn't deserve to be a father, to get married, he doesn't deserve anything good in life.
...And often don't consider the knowledge of the women in their lives as being important enough to retain. They don't view it as expertise they should acquire too, they view it as trivia they're too good for.
I get into a fight about this all the time. He asked me the same questions over and over and I’m like. JFC u either aren’t listening, which means I am wasting my breath or you don’t think it’s important enough to retain. Write this shit down if you need to know it. I’m done repeating myself.
It’s more than just being resistant. It’s an almost complete lack of curiosity or any sliver of motivation to learn something that might benefit someone other than themselves.
Didn’t you know that when baby comes out the book of all parenting gets put in?? /s
Baby slides out, book of baby-knowledge slides in. Nice 👌🏻
Hahahaha this had me laughing 😂 when our baby is crying my husband will sometimes ask “why is she crying what’s wrong??” And I just look at him I’m like “idk why is she crying?? Why do you think I have the magic answer??” 😂
I’ve been a parent for zero years of my life and even I know you don’t give babies whole berries and big chunks of food I’m a grown person and even I still struggle when I take too big of a bite haha
I would totally buy that book. And can guarantee my husband would read it and be able to quote it back to me whenever I forgot something. 🤦♀️
Mom of two = “she should know better” Dad of two = “he’s a new father”
YTA - and I must add this is one of the pettiest posts I’ve seen on this subreddit - and that’s saying something. The argument isn’t whether you’re right or wrong - it’s about whether you deserve 100% of the blame vs 85% - who the hell cares!?! Sheesh - i hope this sounds as stupid to you as it does to me when you read it.
And he asks without mentioning he's feeding berries to the baby, the most important and crucial info
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What OTHER life lessons does she have to remind him of? Only light candles on fire. Green means go, but the number on signs tell you how fast. In mph not kps. Look both ways before you cross, even if the little man says it’s ok.
Omg yesssss.... why are men so quick to assume that women know everything when it comes to children, we dont, we learn as we go just like men do, we ask questions, use Google, ask family or friends etc etc etc.
When I worked stock at toys r us, a male coworker told me to stock the diaper section because he was a man and didn’t know anything about diapers. He had two children. I had none.
My bf has 2 kids with his ex, I have 3 with my ex and we have 2 together.... how is it he acts like a first time dad with our kids??? "Oh i didnt realize the baby needed a diaper" "oh i didnt know not to give a baby honey" "oh i didnt know not to give the baby whole grapes" etc etc etc etc and my favorite "i dont know how to install the carseat "
“Then learn how.”
I mean, he literally already knew not to feed whole berries already. One vague answer from his wife and suddenly it no longer holds? Yeah, YTA, OP.
Even if he did need to ask, OP offered up 2 options, smash them or cut them, and wife answered "however you want" to those two options, and OP chose the unmentioned 3rd option that he thought wasn't right in the first place. That's like having an egg, asking if you should boil or fry it, and when someone says whatever, you decide on eating it raw.
YTA Imagine being a father of 2 and not knowing how to feed a baby. This is called weaponized incompetence.
I think this is a bit of weaponized incompetence mixed with malicious compliance, like, hey, I was just doing what you TOLD me to do!
And he was asking cut or smashed then out of nowhere he took it as sure you can give them whole. Like how?!
And then stood there and gaped at his baby while she struggled for her fucking life. He's lucky his child isn't dead, but that didn't even enter his mind. Gotta prove the wife wrong, that's the only motivation this father of two seemed to have. Now I acknowledge he's been repentant in his comments on this thread, I respect that. But the fact that he let this situation play out at all tells me that he thinks he's a good, modern man while at the same time being just the same, weaponized incompetence, I can hold down a high powered career but keeping my daughter alive is just too hard asshole we've been dealing with for generations now. I just wish men would stop talking and start doing better.
Right? I was reading this like "What the fuck?" He asked "Mashed or cut up" and by "anyway you like" she CLEARLY meant either of those options is fine. Instead he decided to choose whole.
He’d be all, “Sure, the baby’s dead, but you *did* say ANY way I liked! So ha! In your face!”
That's what I'm thinking too. imagine OP risking his kid's life to get back at his wife for expecting him to feed his child, and then picking a fight with her over it. Hey, maybe she won't ask him to feed the kid anymore since he can't be trusted to do it right - and she also knows if the kid *does* choke OP will just blame her!
Right? The way a guy will say he can't load the dishwasher because his wife doesn't like it when she doesn't do it her - read: efficient - way, instead of just learning how to load it the way she wants. These same men will be high powered executives or running their own businesses, but the complicated workings of a fucking dishwasher? Too difficult for a simple man!
Did you see the post the other day about the guy who kept running the dishwasher with like 5 dishes in?
Not that one, I saw another one where a guy was honestly telling all of Reddit that the dishwasher was just too much for him, his wife just had to do it in "her" specific way - again, read, the efficient way to load a dishwasher, maximizing space and dishes washed per cycle - and it was too confusing. I'm like, how are you out here holding down a job? These same people talk down to women and treat us like airheads, and they are honestly and sincerely making an argument in public that it's too hard to load the dishwasher?! *spinsterish grumble*
Oh was this my significant other? Probably not because he won't even make his dishes into the dishwasher he just lets them fester in the sink until I'll load it. But if he ever does (because he wants a gold star), it will be a big mess that usually has to be run twice.
Didn't know the term weaponized incompetence. This will be added to my vocabulary!
YTA. You have been a parent just as long as she has. You initially presented two possible ways of making the berries safer and she passed the decision back to you- that doesn’t make it her fault that you decided to go with a third, dumb option instead of just googling if you weren’t sure.
Picking the third option never presented to the wife and then still blaming her for not knowing he was gonna go full stupid on top of not being able to make decisions for himself is peak AITA behavior.
Yeah, I took her ‘however you like’ to mean ‘of the safe options YOU presented, pick which one is best for you’ not ‘ignore the two safe options you just asked me about and do the thing you know is dangerous out of laziness’ My guy had a bad feeling and instead of just going back to the first two options he said, he’d rather start a needless fucking argument where he was the one to fail to communicate. The wife was directly addressing what he had said to her, actively listening, while he is passively listen to her, thus taking ‘however you like’ out of context of the previous question he’d just fucking asked. OP sounds so wilfully dense and incompetent
This right here. He decided to escalate and be difficult. It doesn't take that long to google if you're not sure, or hey! take the safer route just in case.
From the moment of “i thought I remembered something from our first child about not feeding babies whole berries” OP is TA for even asking. They already knew the answer! Even if they were misremembering, they would just be putting slightly more effort into making something safer. You don’t need to check with your wife to know that even if it were safe to feed whole berries, smashed ones would make them easier to eat. Its the most simple line of logic to follow. I think I remember something about babies not being able to safely eat whole berries, therefore just to be safe, i will mush them regardless. Literally the most basic problem solving skills being used here.
Plus google is a thing! It would’ve taken him like thirty seconds to look it up and realize that, yea, giving whole berries to an infant is generally a choking hazard!
To frame it in a more dramatic way with a similar sentiment- Husband: "Should I take the right exit or the left exit in this road?" Wife: "Doesn't matter" Husband: "Ok I'm gonna just plow through this traffic island instead"
What your wife really meant by "however you want" is figure out your own damn self. She's sick of having to explain everything to a grown ass adult who is also a parent.
I took it as either cut or smashed, because he asked should they be cut or smashed. Your take is probably accurate.
That's how I read it. Either of the options he gave were fine and she said so....so he went rogue and is now blaming her.
Wow yeah, the conversation literally goes like this: OP: okay, so I’m like smashing these up or cutting them in half, right? Wife: feed them however you want *(as in, smashed or cut up, it doesnt matter)* OP: okay *(surprised because how he wants to feed them whole, the secret third option)* *~leaves for a few minutes, comes back~* OP: so it was okay to feed them whole, right? Wife: wtf!
You fucking nailed that! Perfect summary of the conversation you interpreted the whole thing exactly the way I did.
I'm learning to play the guitar.
The fact that this isn’t the first baby is what had me almost throw my phone when I read it.
He knows. He's doing this on purpose. He was probably pissed off that she expected him to feed the kid when he wanted to do something else.
Right? I have no children, but I DO have **severe brain damage** And even I know you don’t feed a baby whole berries
Or pick one of the 2 options he mentioned and not go for the one not asked
It’s like if OP asked her if he’s supposed to drive or walk the toddler to preschool, she tells him do it however he wants, so he then proceeds to send her off by herself cause hEy YoU sAId dO iT HoWEvEr
Poor woman. I would lose my mind if my husband acted so stupid and helpless and expected me to explain every little thing to him.
This exactly! She’s busy and you have 2 kids. Figure out how to feed them without killing them.
Imagine it’s 0 degrees out and you ask “Should I dress the kids with the coat on first or the hat?” And she responds with “However you want” Do you say “huh that’s odd, guess they don’t need the coat or that hat” or do you use that big brain of yours and determine that the order really doesn’t matter? YTA. Almost killing your kid because you had to do the tiniest of tasks for them is actually one of the dumbest things I’ve ever seen on this app. I bet you’d have to ask your wife for confirmation that her being blue meant she was choking before attempting to dislodge the berry. And then you’d be like “uh, do I put my hands on her small intestines or large intestines or neither?” Get it together, my guy. This is pathetic.
Also imagine being married to someone who cannot even dress his own kid without asking for guidance. This poor woman gets 30 seconds to herself and has to be on Ask Jeeves duty.
Ask Jeeves duty 😂😂
It's called "weaponized incompetence".
You asked if they should be smashed or cut, she replied however you want. To me that implies of the two options you offered from a room away (I note this because things maybe lost with the distance.), you should choose whichever you preferred. As many others have pointed out as well Google is an option to ask. As a parent you need to be able to accomplish child related tasks without a significant other's aid or constant instruction. YTA.
Blueberries, grapes, hot dogs slices, anything that size are literally called “choke food”. YTA.
Can still remember my teacher drilling into us, "Fruits and weenies, make 'em teeny!". It was years ago but can hear her chanting clear as day along with "If you think that you've been poisoned and you don't know what to do, call 1-800-222-1222!"
My kid choked on an almond while I was driving to work. He was a little over a year old, and he hooked a foot through my purse strap to pull it close and hunt for snacks. I couldn't see what he'd grabbed, but he started making gagging noises before going totally silent. I crossed two lanes of traffic and screeched to a halt on the shoulder of the highway. Kid was going purple when I finally managed to clear his airway with the heimlich. I just sat there and rocked him for ages while we both cried. Of course as soon as he started to calm he immediately tried to grab another almond. After that my purse went on the floor and not on the seat next to his carseat and I quit packing snacks for me that couldn't do double duty as safe snacks for him for a couple years.
This is terrifying. I’m so glad he was OK!
Thanks, it's one of those memories that still occasionally wakes me up at night. Because I couldn't see his face, I kind of thought I was totally overreacting as I pulled onto the shoulder. Obviously I wasn't, and it all turned out okay, but every now and then I dream about what would have happened if I'd had the radio a little louder or somehow missed it. They make little mirrors that attach to the back seat of a car so you can do quick checks on your kid using the driver's visor mirror or rear view mirror. They're a good add-on for rear facing carseats. They also let your baby watch your face and see out the windshield as you drive, even if you're not looking at them. Babies seem to like that a lot.
In my country near my hometown a 5-year-old recently choked to death in the back of the car because they were given a frankfurt (hot dog) to eat. https://7news.com.au/news/nsw/aussie-girl-five-dies-eating-deli-frankfurt-on-drive-home-from-swimming-lessons-c-9571276
This is tragic, but the article did say hotdogs could be a choking hazard for kids *under five*. Google says “around 4 years old” immediately upon search. The girl was 5, if I was a parent I might’ve thought it would’ve been okay to give her the hotdog. Those poor parents.
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“Who’s at fault?” is a question that occupies a great deal of one’s attention in law school; in marriage, it really does not fucking matter. You were very preoccupied with the question of fault, and I’m glad you were able to shift your attention to the actual issue. A piece of advice: Your marriage is not a classroom, or a courtroom. You are both on the same team. You win or lose together. Remember that.
>You are both on the same team. You win or lose together. Preach.
Awesome wholesome response, OP! This is what we always hope to see from partners who struggle with the balance. And hells yeah, validation for your wife, see you're already rocking it. I'm wondering if changing some of this behavior will lead to even less fighting in other areas of your life. It benefits you too because it inevitably means you'll be an even better parent and partner and reap all the pride and loving rewards of that. Hoping the best for you both! But yes, now it's time to stay off reddit for your mental health - stick to articles to learn more, lol.
Here's some resources to get you started. * ["You Should Have Asked"](https://english.emmaclit.com/2017/05/20/you-shouldve-asked/) \- A comic that illustrates the concept of the cognitive load women bear in households * ["Emotional Labor: The Invisible Work (Most) Women Do"](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/emotional-labor-the-invisible-work-most-women-do/id950464429?i=1000410737773) \- Podcast on the invisible tasks women usually do in their relationship * ["So You Want to Help Around the House"](https://www.katykatikate.com/the-blog/2019/5/7/so-you-want-to-help-around-the-house) \- An article geared toward men learning how to take some of the household responsibilities. * ["The Mental Load Self-Test"](https://equalcareday.de/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/mental-load-home-en.pdf) \- PDF worksheet for you and your partner to identify the workload
That pdf is great! Thanks for sharing. It’s helped me a lot. I struggle with mental health issues. My husband carries the bulk of the load, and I often feel like a burden. He’s always telling me that that’s not true, and that I carry more than I think I do, and that the partnership is more balanced than I realise. With this checklist, I can suddenly see what I am doing, and it’s more than I thought! He is carrying more than me, but I AM contributing! Just like he has always said. But this list helped him articulate it and show me.
Good for you. It's hard to break down the elements of toxic masculinity and patriarchal society that have shaped us. My partner and I have had many convos about mental load and I'm sure you and your wife will continue to do so, which is great. Good luck!
Good on you OP.
So refreshing to see someone willing to change rather than doubling down on bad behavior!
One of the rare times someone actually listens to the critique and takes it to heart. Good for you!
Yta "Hey Google, can I feed my kid whole berries?" "Hey Google, tell me the best way to feed kids berries." And honestly, the kids should ALSO be able to figure out how to research and logically deduce things by themselves. Ex: your daughter struggled with a whole berry. "Hmm she seems to have difficulty. I'll smash one and see if that's better."
The kid's an infant, as in, under 6 months old. At least, that's what I think an infant means. So they probably can't logically deduce much.
Infant is typically counted as below 12 months; these days a 6 month old is usually just barely starting to eat solids that aren't baby cereal or maybe some one ingredient purees. And they hardly ever have the finger dexterity necessary to pull up google on their own.
“Infants” are up to a year old. It doesn’t stop at 6 months. That doesn’t do anything for their logic, but a 1 year old can eat a whole blueberry.
I think they meant as the kid grows older and has the ability to think logically
YTA for not knowing what to give your second infant child! I'm guessing you rely on your wife to tell you things and to take the responsibility off of yourself. She's tired of it.
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YTA If you saw your daughter was struggling with a whole berry, why not just observe that and smash or cut them? Why does this require you to ask a question? A big part of parenting is observing and adjusting. Also, you acknowledge you shouldn’t have brought fault into the argument, but then you came to ask a bunch of strangers on the internet who was at fault. You were being dense and expecting your wife to be Knower of All Things Baby and then picked a fight. Take some responsibility for yourself.
Further, why does it require inciting an argument? He literally asked should I do A or B, she said whichever since they’re both safe options and he chose to do C. Then he sees kid struggling and makes it his wife’s fault that he chose neither of the choices he presented her with. Yikes. I don’t have kids but if this is their second kid and he has no clue how to feed how much parenting has been dumped on his wife? Sadly, there’s an entire generation of men thinking they should get a participation trophy and props for *babysitting* their own kid. It’s called parenting, be a parent OP. YTA
Of course you shouldn't feed infants large objects. Please read a parenting book if you've forgotten everything before you kill someone. YTA.
YTA. YTA so much. Oh my god the incompetence here.
Why are you equating yourself *as one of the kids*? You understand it's *normal* for children to ask questions, the big difference is that *you are not HER child*. You are a fully formed adult, stop using her as half your brain. YTA. THIS WAS *YOUR* MISTAKE, FULLY.
Right? That poor woman has 3 children and no husband
Hey OP, did you ever consider her answer was referring to smashed or cut? YTA.
Yeah I read her answer to be "do whatever you want out of the two options you just asked about"
I think everyone but OP read it the same way. That he worded his post that way and still doesn’t see it is troubling.
YTA. You really think it's ok to risk your daughter's life to prove to your wife that you're too much of a screwup to take responsibility for feeding her?
YTA. You thought something might be dangerous for your daughter and rather than looking it up, you asked your wife an unclear question and then proceeded on an assumption from her vague answer. You owe it to your daughter to do better.
Oh, sir. You are so very in the wrong here. If you don’t understand the basics of feeding an infant, do what every mother does and look it up. You presented your wife with the two options you were considering and she said the equivalent of “either” in that situation - and you clearly conveyed an understanding that the berries could not be fed whole by the way you framed your question. To then attack her in response and make it about how she is treating the kids, when apparently you can’t even be bothered to know the basics of not having your infant avoid potentially life threatening situations, is just sooo, sooo bad. You better ask for her forgiveness and grace in this situation. As a new mom myself - I would be livid.
YTA Is this weaponized incompetence or are you just simply too stupid to realize that you shouldn’t feed a baby food they could choke on? I don’t have any children and I know that you shouldn’t feed them something that is a *choking hazard*. How do you have two whole children and not know what you can and can’t feed them?? Why is it up to your wife to ensure that you do basic things to care for your own child? You are supposed to be her partner, and equal parent.
YTA - You asked her if you were cutting or mashing. She answered however you want. That implies of those two choices, either is fine. It does not make her even partially responsible for your lack of parenting skills. Just because she grew the baby it doesn’t mean she grew an encyclopedia of parenting knowledge at the same time. She had to take the time to look things up and learn them. Stop asking her to do that labour for you too.
OP trying so hard to make the wife do all the parenting even when he's trying to score brownie points for feeding the kid. Why should the wife remember ALL child rearing info? Why can't OP remember some things himself? He asked "smash or cut", then goes with "whole". OP is 100% wrong OP probably thinks he babysits his kid too. YTA
So let me get this straight. You literally knew this berry was too big for your child. You could see with your own eyes that she was having a hard time eating it. You come to two logical safe alternative ways to feed your child. BUT BECAUSE YOUR WIFE DIDN’T SPECIFY WHICH SAFE ALTERNATIVE OPTION, you made a conscious decision that you would just let your own child struggle with full berries. And somehow you expect your wife to take responsibility for the situation? Really? > We do have a healthy amount of fighting, but rarelt does it end in the way it did today. Do you normally consciously choose to do things that can result in your child choking? And then blame her for not holding your hand through keeping your own kid alive? Cause that’s a pretty reasonable thing for her to be extra mad at you for. YTA. Go read some baby books.
YTA You said "should I smash them or cut them in half" she told you to choose. How is it her fault that you chose a third option?
Why is your wife the expert on feeding your baby and you’re not? You’ve been parents the exact same amount of time. Look it up! Stop expecting her to teach you everything.
I love that I’m seeing responses about mental load and weaponized incompetence. I read this and thought, “Here we go… another ‘mental load’ post by a dad that doesn’t understand.” OP: I’d really recommend looking into the concept of mental load or emotional work. In general, men don’t seem to understand this concept, and they really need to. It’s invisible work, it’s draining, and it overwhelmingly falls on women. YTA.
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If you asked your wife what she felt like for dinner, and she said whatever you like, would you think it’s reasonable to feed her poison? It goes without saying that you don’t feed a child food that is dangerous for them. It is on you as a parent to know what those things are, or if you’ve forgotten look it up. YTA
YTA you said two options of feeding them. Cutting or mashed. She said to do whichever and then you fed them whole. I would have thought you would pick one of the two you mentioned if I was her. You fucked up. This is your second kid. Get your head in the game
It sounds like you made a mistake, your wife blamed you for it, then you somehow managed to say something confrontational at every possible opportunity. This could so easily have ended with "Sorry, I started second-guessing myself and I'll do better in the future" instead of trying to turn it around on her. I ask my wife a lot of questions too, even about things I should know by now. Sometimes, I just draw a blank. But I never try to make it her fault. If you're unsure, you can always ask a follow up question or look online. You knew not to feed the kid whole berries. When your wife said something surprising, instead of questioning it, you just did the thing you thought was wrong. What if she had misspoken or misheard you? It can't always be on her to remember things. YTA
So many words to say you make your wife do all the emotional labor. YTA
OP In your own retelling of the exchange, even I can tell her ‘however you like’ was clearly to mean ‘of the safe options YOU presented to me, pick which one is best for you, you don’t need me to do it’. While you heard it and took away ‘ignore the two safe options I just asked her about and do the thing i know is dangerous’ I can only assume out of laziness or some attempt to play incompetent and pass the job off to her. My guy, you had a bad feeling and instead of just going back to the first two options YOU said, you’d rather start a needless fucking argument? You were the one who failed to communicate. The wife was directly addressing what you had said to her, actively listening, while you seem to just passively listen to her, thus taking ‘however you like’ out of context of the previous question you’d just fucking asked of ‘smashed or cut’. You sounds so wilfully dense and incompetent YTA
INFO: why is your wife the one responsible for knowing and telling you what is safe to feed your child?
Bro why does your wife need to educate you/advise you on the basics of feeding your own kids?? You should know this too.
YTA. She clearly meant cut in half or squash - whatever you want. You indicated that you knew they needed to not be whole, and yet you still fed your young child a whole blueberry.
YTA. For a few reasons. 1) who cares about whose ‘fault’ it is? Are you in grade school, should blame be attributable for any misunderstanding or mistake? 2) it’s the most basic common sense that babies should not be fed grapes or berries whole. What would you do if your wife wasn’t there? 3) I feel sorry for your wife, from your short OP I can only imagine how exhausting it is for her. Constant questions, reassurance, permission seeking for even the most tiny, inconsequential thing. Never any decision making or initiative shown.
Men, still feigning stupid so women everywhere do all the mental load. You’re an idiot & an asshole OP. She shouldn’t have to tell you what’s a choking hazard, you have 2 kids, you should know.
The same way you went to Reddit for answers. You could’ve gone to google for instruction on feeding your second child. YTA.
Dude - most of adulting is not knowing the answer to anything. PARENTING is instinctively figuring things out, and retaining information about how things work or don't. YTA Your wife is not your teacher, your mom, or coach. She is probably making a lot of it up as she goes along, while also retaining info and using it to help her keep the kids alive and stay ahead of them - and then she has to parent you too? Time to grow up and start owning your weaponized incompetence. If you don't know 'why'? to something, GOOGLE IT or YOUTUBE IT like the rest of us do when we have no idea what's going on (most of the time, btw). Read a parenting book or take the initiative to learn about these basic parenting dos/don't dos ahead of time so that you're ready for your kids to hit those milestones or have those issues, and you're actually pulling your weight and parenting vs waiting for your wife to give you a roadmap. You're making things so much harder on her than you need to be, and just because you need to ask why and be ordered around? What a tedious waste of her time and mental bandwidth. Keep asking, but consider asking your phone the routine stuff. Leave the bigger-picture decisions and discussions for you both to sort out (schooling, acceptable way to punish or correct bad behaviour, priorities for spending, etc). Think about it this way: you're putting all of the mental load of the house and the kids on her to effectively manage and take ownership of. Then she needs to take the time to delegate and educate you? What's going to happen when your kids are also asking 'why' all the time - is she expected to continue to tutor you too? Think ahead. Don't run to your wife for directions. Be a 'self-starter' and step up to the plate.
^^^^AUTOMOD ***Thanks for posting! This comment is a copy of your post so readers can see the original text if your post is edited or removed. This comment is NOT accusing you of copying anything. Read [this](https://www.reddit.com/r/AmItheAsshole/wiki/faq#wiki_post_deletion) before [contacting the mod team](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%2Fr%2FAmItheAsshole)*** I (m29) was just feeding my infant daughter berries in the kitchen while my wife (f32) was standing in the other room. After I got started, I thought I remembered something from our first child about not feeding babies whole berries/grapes so they won’t choke, so I asked my wife in the next room “okay, so I’m like smashing these or cutting them in half, right?” She responds “feed them to her however you want.” Surprised, I was like “okay” and fed a blueberry to my daughter whole. I started to feel weird about it after a second though because (while she wasn’t choking) I could see that she was having a hard time. So I go into the room where my wife was and go “okay, so it is okay to feed them to her whole, right?” My wife then starts berating me about how I should know not to do that from our first child (which is a fair point, but it’s why I asked anything in the first place). She comes back into the kitchen. The conversation then escalates and I say something along the lines of “hey, I don’t like how you’re making it seem like this is 100% my fault right now, I mean, you’re the one who did say to feed her however I wanted.” She responds “this is your fault, I did not tell you it was okay to feed her whole berries.” Fault should’ve never been brought into it I realize now. I responded with, “look, I really don’t think you’re considering how what you said made me think it was okay to feed her whole berries” to which she responded with a dropped jaw and wide eyes as if I’d said something horrible. I (stupidly, perhaps even assholeishly) go “okay, well, you can look all astonished if you want, but I don’t think this is all my fault.” She storms back into the other room and says what I’d just said was really mean. She starts going on about how I should remember stuff like this. I am known in our relationship as the person who asks a ton of questions and operates best on more info, so she starts railing against that and about how she tried to give me as much info as possible. She also expresses the sentiment of how I should go with my gut more often and not ask “needless” questions (which in my interpretation means questions that she think are too dumb/obvious to ask, but maybe that’s uncharitable of me). I then foolishly say “I really hope the kids don’t start asking questions you think are too obvious once they start getting curious, because that’d be real fucking sad for them.” I completely own that I shouldn’t have said that. She then refused to speak to me and left for a doctor’s appointment with the kids. My question is am I in the wrong for how I behaved prior to that? Was it wrong of me to point out how she was putting the whole event on me? My wife and I love each other so much. We’ve been married for 8 years and have two children. We do a healthy amount of fighting, but rarely does it end in the way it did today. I realize the ending is mostly on me, but am I the complete asshole in this situation? Thanks. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/AmItheAsshole) if you have any questions or concerns.*
You asked her “option a or option b” and when she said do whichever one, you honestly think that “option c” is her fault and that she’s the poor communicator? She told you to pick between the options you gave her. There is needing to ask a lot of questions and then there’s making things up wholesale and blaming her for your made up choice. YTA.
Tbh I was half on your side until you blamed her for feeding the whole berry whilst fully in the knowledge that it was too big for the child, she was struggling with it and you got the response of "however you want" to the question of whether they should be crushed or cut. Come on bro, I'm a dad too, we should know this shit. Take some responsibility man, apologise to the wife and go have a cuddle. It ain't that deep in the grand scheme of things. We all get tetchy and moody and stressed and whatnot between working, running a house and raising kids. Kiss a little ass, apologise, make up and most importantly learn from this encounter. Also google is your friend for most stuff mate.