Dad Refuses To 'Watch' His Daughter So His Stay-At-Home Wife Can Go To An Appointment
She was pleading with her husband to stay with their daughter because she was experiencing a medical emergency.
SDI Productions / Canva Pro A husband has been accused of not being able to empathize with his wife after she asked him to look after their daughter so she could go to the doctor.
Posting to Reddit, a 32-year-old man claimed that he was annoyed at his wife interrupting his working hours because she was having a medical emergency and didn't want to be responsible for their daughter when she was gone.
He refused to 'watch' his daughter so that his stay-at-home wife could go to an appointment.
In his Reddit post, he explained that he's the sole earner in the household while his wife is a stay-at-home mom due to health problems that caused her to leave her previous job. Together, the couple have a 1-year-old daughter.
Since he began working from home, he noticed that his wife treated him as if he was available for any and every problem. However, he works long hours and needs to be dedicated to his job as he explained he'll lose his position if he isn't online during his designated hours.
"She interrupted my work several times already. I had a conversation with her about it and asked that she stop asking me to do things until I'm done working and she said 'okay' but it happened again days ago when she barged into my office with our daughter all of a sudden telling me to keep an eye on her while she visits the clinic," he wrote.
She barged into his home office to tell him she was experiencing a medical emergency and needed help.
He paused his work session because he was taken off-guard by his wife's demand. She explained to him that she suddenly started feeling pain in her stomach and needed to see a doctor. He tried to argue, telling her that he had important work to do and couldn't stay with their daughter or keep her in the office with him.
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She promised him it wouldn't take long, but he still refused, asking if she could call her sister and have her come over to watch their daughter. He claimed that asking her sister would be the most reasonable option, but his wife got mad and pointed out that this was an emergency and his work could wait.
Still, he tried to come up with more solutions on who could watch after their daughter while she was gone, including calling his wife's sister himself and asking her to come over. Frustrated, his wife stormed out of the room with their daughter, accusing him of being selfish with no empathy for her situation.
"My sister-in-law came some 20 minutes later and my wife left then. I tried calling her to check on her but she purposely hung up on me a few times. When she got home she was still pretty [angry] at me which I don't get because I think that I provided a solution that allowed her to go to her doctor's appointment and allowed me to resume my work session."
Instead of being satisfied with her husband's "solution," she argued that he was being a horrible father and husband for not being able to provide support and help when she needed it the most. He made her wait 20 minutes, while in pain, for her sister to show up before she could leave, and that didn't sit right with her.
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"She's now refusing to speak to me altogether. I think my compromise was reasonable, I don't really get why she got so mad over it."
People agreed that he was being incredibly unreasonable for not helping his wife out during an emergency.
"I'd be with you if this hadn't been a medical emergency. Why couldn't your wife have gone immediately and you waited with your daughter for those 20 minutes?" one Reddit user questioned. "I get that you had work to do but I'm sure you could have spared 20 minutes so your wife could've got medical attention sooner."
Another user agreed, writing, "She needed you to do the bare minimum as a father and husband and you told her no, work is more important. You couldn’t have paused working for half an hour or so to watch YOUR KID long enough for YOUR WIFE to go seek immediate medical attention while waiting for your sister-in-law, whose time apparently is flexible enough to drop everything for an emergency."
"What on earth can possibly be more important than your family?"
Another user added, "I kinda agree with your wife. Sounds like you are incapable of empathizing and this is concerning. Even if she is a stay-at-home mom, an emergency doctor's visit should be treated with priority."
"Did you even ask her what was wrong or try and see what was going on before obsessing over how inconvenient she and your child are to your work?"
Work is important, but the health of your spouse and your relationship are more important.
All this woman needed was for her husband to care about the medical emergency she was having and look after their daughter while she went and got some help for her stomach pains. Considering it was his own child, there's no such thing as "watching" or "babysitting" the baby, and his reluctance to do the bare minimum showed his wife that he wasn't that committed.
His selfish behavior could have damaging effects on the future of their relationship.
There needs to be a balance between professional lives and personal ones because work should never take priority over the well-being of a person's family. If this man was in a position where he couldn't tell his boss the situation that was happening with his wife and be allotted some time away from his desk to look after his daughter, he should probably look for a different job.
Nia Tipton is a Chicago-based entertainment, news, and lifestyle writer whose work delves into modern-day issues and experiences.