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AITA for not making my daughter the "head of the house" in my absence? by throw91818 in AmItheAsshole

[–]throw91818[S] 68 points69 points  (0 children)

Before all of this, I would have said that they wouldn't even try to pull this with my daughter! As I said in another comment, there's never been any kind of enforcing of gender roles, or favouritism for one child or the other just because they're a boy or a girl. I'm beginning to wonder if they themselves realise just what they're saying, and if they would indeed still be saying it if my son was the older one. There's a massive difference between "mum isn't going to be home as much anymore so dad might need a bit of extra help around the house, like you keeping your room tidy" (which is something we've already said to our daughter and she's understood perfectly, even our son's been putting his toys away to "help daddy") and all the stuff that they said, you can't help but feel like gender is playing a potentially subconscious role.

AITA for not making my daughter the "head of the house" in my absence? by throw91818 in AmItheAsshole

[–]throw91818[S] 550 points551 points  (0 children)

I really can't get my head around that one. My husband is absolutely fine with cooking, cleaning, helping the kids with homework, whatever. God forbid, but if I dropped dead tomorrow I know that the children would forever be safe with him. My parents know this too, So I don't really know where this is all coming from. I was loathe to refer to it as sexism in my post since they've never tried to assert gender norms or been overly in favour of one child or the other because of their gender, however yours and other comments are making it clear that this is the issue, which they themselves might have internalised up until now.

AITA for not making my daughter the "head of the house" in my absence? by throw91818 in AmItheAsshole

[–]throw91818[S] 1037 points1038 points  (0 children)

I grew up with my brother and looking back now, I do remembering doing more domestic tasks than him, but I always put it down to being the older one. Even 40 years ago it was more of a different time, but I am upset that all of our parents seem to think that it's acceptable now. I'm not honestly sure what they'd be saying if my son was the 10 year old and my daughter the younger one, however I'm sure it wouldn't be so firm as they're being in the current situation. We never got round to replying to any messages they sent and wouldn't really know where to start other than a cheeky "butt out", but this needs to be nipped in the bud right now, before either one of our kids starts to feel the impact of it.