'AITA for refusing to to 100% of the childcare when we hang out with my husband's friends?'

"AITA for refusing to watch my daughter when we meet my husbands friend?"

So, to start this of, I (26f) and my husband (27m) have a toddler (2f). I don’t know how everyone else has it, but our toddler creates so much chaos wherever she is. She is so curious, she explored everything all the time, loves to rearrange stuff and she runs wherever she needs to go. Basically, she is like what I’ve seen most two year olds be like.

At home, it’s fine. Of course I try to keep her in check. But we have of course childproofed our entire home.

The problem here is that one of my husbands friend and his girlfriend live just five minutes away from us. My husband and I get invited there almost every weekend, whether it’s for food or just coffee. They are lovely people, but their house is filled with stuff, it’s messy and overall the opposite of our home. No problem, they don’t have children and they like to have stuff around.

The problem is that every weekend, I spend three hours running after her, comforting her when she trips, making sure she doesn’t break stuff or put things in her mouth. It’s honestly tiring, and the fact that my husband just sits at the table and chat while I run around like crazy for so long irritates me.

When we got invited over two weekends ago, I told him I wouldn’t tag along. I explained my reasons and he told me that I was overreacting and that it’s a normal part of parenting. I told him that either way, I wasn’t coming.

If he wanted our daughter to tag along, he could bring her. So he did, and he came back after just an hour and was in a bad mood the rest of the day. I asked him how it went and he asked me if I felt happy with myself. This last weekend, we got invited over once again. I asked him if he wanted to look after her himself or do 50/50 with me. He didn’t respond and went there himself.

He’s been off with me the whole week, making passive aggressive remarks about my ”insane need to always be right”, and yeah, other stuff. I’m starting to feel like maybe I went overboard, because I know he has a much harder time keeping her in check than I have, and even I have it hard. AITAH for refusing to go there if that means I have to watch her the whole time?

Then coming to us isn’t an option, I don’t know why because before his girlfriend moved in he was here just as much as we were at his place, but after she moved in he has declined every invite to come here.

Edit/small update:

We’ve talked pretty short about it this morning and it turns out he got pretty embarrassed at his friends house. We will probably talk more about it, but yeah he pretty much realized the difference in how much we both put in.

Don’t know if I will make an update post, if people want it and if something changes or anything I will probably. If not, thanks for all the comments! I’ve tried to read both the top comments and the ones who got downvoted, and I think both were pretty helpful for what points I will bring up!

This is what people had to say to OP:

Armadillo_of_doom said:

"I didn't NEED to be right, I WAS right, and you had just ignored it. Our kid is a lot, and you are perfectly happy dropping the entire responsibility onto my shoulders. So we aren't doing that anymore. Your friends can come here if you want."

Different-Idea-8203 said:

NTA 😂 the toddler made him look like a jackass infront of the friend group on that solo trip!

OP responded:

Yeah, his friend had actually made a few comments about how bad my husband was doing alone with her, so he left because he felt embarrassed about it

Aidyn_the_Grey said:

NTA. He told you it's no big deal and that it's a normal part of parenting. Well, it's high time he gets a taste of it, and apparently it's quite bitter.

Pippet_4 said:

NTA. But your husband sure has been a lazy a$$hole. He just sat there how many times before while you ran after your toddler? wtf. And now he is acting like a toddler himself.

MizAnthropy_ said:

NTA. That was a really baller move on your part and he’s acting like a giant baby.

And TA122278 said:

For me it’s the irony of the man-child who says that “it’s a normal part of parenting” when he does absolutely no parenting and can’t handle it for an hour when he tries. Pathetic.

Two days later, OP shared this update:

I will start this of by saying that I’m very grateful for all the responses my post got, I tried responding to people and read all the comments, but I honestly got overwhelmed with all the attention it got, but still incredibly happy that so many wanted to help/give their opinion!

So, for the update, I added this in the edit I made on the original post, but the short answer I got was that he was embarrassed. His friend had made a few comments about how different me and my husband take care of her and how much more my husband struggles with her.

I’m sorry if this update makes no sense, we talked about very much later yesterday and we both brought up so many points, so I will share those down here, again I’m sorry.

1, I brought up his lack of understanding for the work I put in to be a good mother, also brought up that he always criticize my parenting but never tries to parent himself. He argued that I had taken the lead in parenting, forcing him to be a background character. This stems from the fact that he wanted to gentle parent to what I saw as an extreme.

He wanted us to forbid the usage of the word ”no”, other ways of telling her ”don’t” or discipline in any way. I refused this, I’m not strict or anything, but for gods sake, I need to be able to tell my child to stop doing stuff, especially when that can cause her harm. Still, he felt like I had pushed him out of the way, which I didn’t. He still parents her like that when they are alone, I just refuse to parent her that way.

2, He himself brought up that the way he has behaved during these last weeks was not appropriate and he told me he was very sorry for that. He told me he had thought it all over, but he also still felt like I played a big part in how he has felt and acted.

3, I brought up how whenever we go somewhere, our daughter becomes my sole responsibility and he just gives up on being a parent. To this point, I also brought up that before we had our daughter, he hated the idea of becoming the kind off dad he saw his family members be when he was little, but he had turned out to be just like that.

He denied that and told me that he wasn’t like that, because when our daughter shows him things or talks to him, he interacts with her when we are out. I told him that is the bare minimum. He disagreed and wanted me to drop that.

4, He backtracked from what he told me yesterday morning. From going from that he felt embarrassed to that I had gone out of my way to try and embarrass him on purpose apparently. This is not true and I explained my reasons to him. He still felt like I had refused to come with him just to make him look like a bad father infront of his friend.

We talked so much more, but I feel like that was the most important stuff. So in conclusion, he still feels like I am wrong, he is right. I can’t say anything to change his mind, he refuses marriage counseling or to take action to any of my points... I don’t really know what to do from here, I feel disappointed and frustrated with the whole situation.

This will probably be the only update I make to this because I don’t think this situation will improve in any way unfortunately.

Thanks again to all of you, even if the situation didn’t improve I still feel a whole lot more confident in myself and where I stand.