Wife Who Asked Husband To Spend 'Quality Time' With Kids While She Was Out Finds Him Asleep When She Returns
"Dads get tired too."
GENETTICA / Shutterstock The best way to parent children — especially four — is to do so as a team. An equitable split of responsibility when it comes to taking care of the children is not only important for your relationship together, but also for your relationship with your children.
One woman, who posted a viral video on TikTok recently, likely felt that her husband wasn’t pulling his weight when it came to spending time with their kids, so she gave him the opportunity to do so.
The woman asked her husband to spend "quality time" with their kids while she went to the grocery store, only to return to find him fast asleep.
“I asked my husband to please spend some quality time with our kids while I went to the grocery [store],” Sammie Head posted in a TikTok video.
However, when she returned from the grocery store, she found her husband fast asleep on the couch as their four kids ran rampant around the home.
“A true talent to sleep through the chaos," the mom wrote in the video's caption. "In my next life, I wanna be a dad!”
While the video was likely meant to poke fun at the situation, it points to a deeper issue that many families find themselves in.
As terms like "weaponized incompetence" and "daddy privilege" become mainstream terminology, it's become clear that moms often feel like they're the "default parent," responsible for a majority of childcare tasks. And when fathers do take on these tasks, they're often praised for doing the exact same things mothers do while it's simply expected of the mothers.
"Motherhood is mandatory," Zawn Villines wrote in a Liberating Motherhood substack article. One the otherhand, "Almost all fathers can slack off," Villines explained, "confident in the knowledge that someone else will do the work for them."
In the comments, many people noted that had the tables been turned, the mother would be judged far more harshly than the dad, whose behavior many wrote off as a side effect of being "exhausted," as if mothers don't experience this same level of exhaustion — if not more. As Villines wrote, "For dads, parenting is a less conflicted experience. When they show up, they can enjoy it more. And when they don’t, they experience far fewer consequences than mothers."
Parental responsibilites aside, many people noted how dangerous it was for the father to be asleep while the kids ran amok. Many people shared their concerns for the safety of the children, criticizing the father and accusing him of being negligent.
“Not sure the story here but I feel this. Dad should be present no matter how tired kids safety is #1 and those kids are too young to have dad sleeping,” one user wrote.
Parenting is a tough job and no parent should be expected to be perfect.
Mistakes are bound to happen as a parent, whether you're the "default parent" or not and no matter how parental responsibilities are divided, so it's crucial for parents not to beat themselves up when they do.
If it feels like one parent is taking on more of a mental load than the other, David Schramm, a family life expert at Utah State University, has advised parents to be open with each other about the "invisible work" they may be taking on and discuss how to better divide responsibilities.
Isaac Serna-Diez is a writer who focuses on entertainment and news, social justice, and politics.