27-year-old husband expects stay-at-home mother of 2 to work full time, attend college full time, and take care of the kids: 'There are lots of people that work full time and go to school full time, you can make it work'

Author image for Emmy Pratt
Emmy Pratt • Senior Editor
Sep 4, 2025 8:00 PM EDT

You can only overwork yourself for a limited period of time. I'm sure we've all gone through phases in our lives when we were grinding hard 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and feeling the thrill of having so much to do with so little time. There is some pleasure in the Sigma Grindset; otherwise, people wouldn't do it voluntarily. But if you're barely sleeping and working as much as you humanly can, you'll get exhausted pretty quickly. You could maintain that for a year or two, maybe, but four years? Six years? Don't even think about it. 

Everyone has very different definitions of what "hard work" and "grinding" entail. For some, it means having three jobs and never having any time for socializing or spending money frivolously. For others, it means waking up early to exercise every day, even when you really don't want to. We all create our own standards for excellence, and someone else's expectations of you aren't always aligned with your abilities or expectations for yourself. A partner or family member might not expect you to rise to the occasion, even if you are capable. On the other hand, they might expect way more of you than they'd ever expect of themself. 

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  • The husband in this story is in the latter category. He wants his wife to go above and beyond in a way no human could, instead of pushing himself to do better and try harder.

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  • My husband wants me to work full time and go to school full time AND be the primary parent

    So I (24f) have been a stay at home mom for the past 5 years while my husband (27m) has been in the military. My kids are both school age now one is in kindergarten and one is in prek. The problem is we pay out of pocket for prek and it is not cheap. With that being said, my
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  • goal for when both kids were in school was to go to school myself and work towards getting a degree so that I could have an actual career. We've ran into a problem with getting fee assistance for my preschooler and now we are so broke we cannot even make our bills.
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  • I understand that with this situation we are in, it is more important for me to get a job than it is for me to go to school. That is something I'm completely fine with, what I'm not fine with is my husband telling me I need to do everything while he just goes to work and comes home. I've
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  • recently accepted a job that is noc 10pm-6am (that's the only shift I could get because of my children's schedule), so I go to work at 10pm, get off at 6am, rush home so my husband can go to work and get the kids ready for school, drop off is at 7:40am then 8am for my preschooler, get home at 8:30am and sleep until 2pm, pickup starts at 2:30 for my
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  • kindergartener and 3pm for my preschooler, then we'd get home around 3:30pm. My husband doesn't get home until 5:30pm which is when I'm making dinner. Kids are fed, bathed and in bed by 7:30 and then that leaves me with 2 and a half hours to hopefully catch a nap before I go to work.
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  • My husband insists that I go to school, his suggestion was night school, so while I'm working... not possible. His next suggestion was that I do it during the day... also not possible because I need sleep ??? And then to top it all off he
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  • tells me "there are lots of people that work full time and go to school full time, you can make it work". So idk what to do. Am I being unreasonable telling him it's one or the other, school or work?
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  • Edit: Thanks everyone for the kind words and reassurance. I got a lot of "you obviously know that's not unreasonable" comments and I would like to say that I genuinely questioned if it was or wasn't. My MIL agrees w my husband, and when I talked w her about it I really started to feel like "maybe I can do it I just don't know how yet” type thing. Nonetheless, my
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  • mind is at ease knowing it's totally not attainable (at least for me). I did tell him it's one or the other and we've come to an agreement! I would also like to clear up some things as far as what he does and doesn't do... he does split some chores w me and he is the breadwinner! However I am the primary/default parent like I said before and I manage the entire household including, but not limited to,... everything
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  • bombadilboy What's unreasonable is him not being a parent and expecting you to do it all.
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  • Corfiz74 Tell him to get a second job at night - if he thinks people need no sleep, then that should be no problem for him.
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  • Feeling_Feature_5694 Plus, he doesn't seem to bother with any household/parenting responsibilities, so he is way more a better 2-full-jobs candidate :]
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  • Chops526 You know what? Yeah! HE should get a second job so OP can have the time to at least do some online courses.
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  • trvllvr Well he doesn't want a trad wife or a partner. He wants a mommy, because he's a child too. Honestly, I'd divorce if this was his attitude. I mean if he won't step up to be a parent AND EQUAL partner, while OP does everything then she is just a married single mom anyway.
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  • Federal Tree8658 You should both write out your schedules and what you allot your time to It may be easier for you both to see your schedules visually and then decide how you can make this a more 50/50 partnership
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  • If after you do this and he still disagrees with the distribution of work then you have to decide whether you want to take additional steps (counseling etc.) or live with it Sounds like your schedule currently is not tenable for next 15 years
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  • jai_dreams Replying to Far-Dragonfruit-925...this seems like something reasonable people would be able to do in a healthy way. Unfortunately it doesn't seem like this guy has any interest in being reasonable or creating a healthy environment for OP.
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  • Wooden Permit3234 Seems like it would be a whole lot easier for you to live your life receiving child support for the kids. H I of an incentive your husband is dangling in front of your face, hoping you don't notice. Does it make financial sense to put kid 2 in expensive pre k? Is your income even more than that cost?
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  • FinePossession 1085 Who are these "lots of people"? And do they have kids while doing both? I work at a university. Students working full time and attending full time aren't common. Being a primary caregiver on top of that? Pretty sure your husband doesn't have a clue.
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  • Bibliovoria Students working full time and attending full time isn't common. Also, students doing both rarely get as much out of their classes, or do as well as they could if they could focus more on school.
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  • yourlittlebirdie Apart from a paycheck that doesn't even cover your bills, what exactly does this man bring to the table?
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  • TheBookyWookie Are you me from 10 years ago? I was 18, working full time on third shift at a factory, full time in college, and with a newborn and a boyfriend. I genuinely slept maybe three times a week through the weekdays. I was also expected to keep the house clean, do the laundry, and cook dinner. When I would try to sleep in on the weekends, my boyfriend would flip the lights on and talk to our baby like "when you grow up, you won't be lazy like mama, right? Look at her sleeping at 10 in th
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  • would flip lights on, scream, and rip blankets off me while I was in a de d sleep. It's been 10 years, I'm married to a good man (a good man, savannah!), with two more kids and I still have panic attacks if I'm woken too abruptly. I hallucinated all the time and got into multiple car wrecks from pure exhaustion. 10 hours of sleep for a full working week will do that to you. I say this firmly but gently. Leave him. Your life will only get better. This man intends to absolutely s k you dry and squ
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  • I finally got the nerve to leave when I watched him play with our little girl and I realized this is what she's going to grow up believing love is. And I want so, so much more than that for her. So I decided to model it and I left that night. Please, please reach out if you need someone to talk to. I really do understand what you're going through and it's terrifying.
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stay at home mom family drama sahm job mother work wife husband dad family full time mom college college student children Father reddit story Reddit
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