When you become parents and one decides to be the stay at home parent, both of you have to make some compromises. There are pros and cons for the working parent and the one who takes care of things at home. But one mom (we will call her OP), thinks that one of the harder perks she gives up being a stay-at-home mom is the lack of sick days. So she came up with her own solution for that, proposed it to her husband, and things have been tense on that subject since.
OP needed some advice, so she took to Reddit to explain what’s been going on.
Posting to Reddit’s AITA community, OP gave some details on her family and jumped into the issue she’s experiencing.
“So I'm a SAHM to 4 (10, 7, 3, and 18m). I homeschool and have since the beginning. I also have several chronic illnesses,” she wrote. “Generally I function okay. I'm tired all the time but our house is reasonably clean, I cook every meal from scratch due to food sensitivities, and my kids consistently test above grade level.”
OP is happy with her husband, and he makes decent money.
“Hubby is a salesman and makes a decent income. He is a genuinely great dad and husband and helps loads when he's home,” she shared.
“He gets 12 sick days a year (paid) on top of vacation time,” OP added. “He loses them at the end of the year if they're not used. He typically uses one or two sick days a year.”
There are times OP could really use a sick day or two.
“I told hubby if I had a full-time job I would get sick days,” she recalled. “I deal with my symptoms well most days, but some days I'm dealing with nearly fainting, extremely low blood pressure, dizziness to the point i can barely walk.”
And that's not all. “Other days I am in tremendous pain from Crohn's," she wrote in her post. "I told him I want to reserve six of his sick days for those kind of days.”
According to OP, her husband didn't agree with that plan.
“He says no, I function just fine and don't need sick days,” OP wrote. “I said either he gives me emergency days or I'll hire a sitter those days (we have no family nearby and i rarely get help if hubby is away).”
Her husband still wasn’t willing to agree. “He says I'm being unreasonable and I can just sit the kids in front of the DVD player on bad days.”
After explaining the situation, OP then turned it over to Reddit, and people there had feelings.
“You don't get to ‘reserve’ his sick days but you should work together to make a childcare plan that works,” one person replied. “If you're sick he can choose to use his sick days or you should have some sort of back up caregiver that can come in and help with the three kids. This has presumably been an issue for 18+ years so why haven't you talked about it before? Why is there no plan in place?”
Another Redditor thought OP and her husband ware in the wrong “for bringing four children into a single-income household wherein the SAHP is also chronically ill.” The person added, “like, y'all really don't seem equipped to juggle four kids, but you made the choice to have more kids than your household can sustain,” which is a very ableist stance to take.
“You’re not saying he HAS to take off — you’re saying you need someone else to step in,” another person clarified. “And if he can’t, you’ll hire a sitter. He’s saying you shouldn’t pay money for someone else to do your job. He’s effectively saying your job is worthless.”
“This isn't how sick days work, and you're asking your husband to risk his job,” another person warned. “If you don't want to teach the kids when you are sick you could send the kids to public schools. It could be considered irresponsible to want to home school your kids and have conditions you know will limit your ability to do so. Hire a sitter if you need one. If he's against this … you're both in the wrong.”
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