Mom gets called out for not babysitting grandkids, 'you didn't even raise us, now this.'
In theory, it's healthy to call people out for toxic behavior, no matter who they are.
But the cultural scripts around family often blur the lines, and behavior that would be unacceptable from a colleague or friend can become normalized in the name of 'blood.'
In a popular post on the AITA subreddit, the OP asked if they were wrong for snapping on their mom at a family gathering.
They wrote:
AITA for 'shaming' my mother about not taking care of our kids?
My sister just had her first kid. I have two kids. 6 and 9. My mother was never a hands-on grandma, which is completely fine. I learned my lesson early on about asking her to babysit. She would either tell me yes and cancel at the last minute or get mad at me for asking. Now, this by itself wouldn't be a huge deal.
However, my mother was the kind of mother who would drop us off at our grandparents all the time. Holidays, we would get dropped off the second day off and picked up 3 days before school started. We spend every weekend with them. Grandma would pick us up from school and make us lunch. And besides that, every time one of us asked her to babysit, she said, 'I already raised my kids.'
Even if we were just asking her to keep an eye on the kid while we hopped to the store. So it really is the hypocrisy that gets me, not her not babysitting. I couldn't care less about that. So my sister had her first kid about 4 months ago. We had a family dinner on Friday where everyone got to meet the baby.
So we were all mingling, and my sister asked mom at one point if she could watch the baby on Friday for one hour so she could pick up her MIL from the airport. My mom started to say her usual sentence, and my brothers and I jumped in and finished the sentence for her and laughed. My brother then offered to watch the baby.
We thought it was over, but mom was offended and went on a long rant about disrespect. My sister was confused and said, ' I just thought you might want to bond with your granddaughter,' to which I said, 'She didn't even raise us. What makes you think she would want to spend time with our kids?' I admit I was mad. Because she was acting like she was that martyr who never had time for herself.
When she literally never had us and when she did, my older brother and I took care of everything in the house. Including childcare and house stuff. Obviously, my mother got furious, saying that I was ungrateful. My older brother intervened And said that we weren't ungrateful, but we couldn't ignore the matter of fact.
The fight escalated, and my mother stormed off. My father called us and told us it was entitled to shame mom for not babysitting. Are we the a**holes?
Edit: My father is not mentioned because this story is not about him, and it doesn't make sense to talk about him. There is more to the story with him, of course. But this story was about an interaction between us and our mom. The only involvement our father had was the short call at the end. That's why he isn't mentioned much.
People let it all out in the comments.
Chocolatecandybar_ wrote:
NTA. As long as it's ok for people to not be natural caregivers, it is not to be a non-caregiver and wanting to be treated like the saint who sacrifices for everyone.
kat_Folland shared their observations:
I don't know what others will say, but my judgement is NTA. What she did to you was called parentification. Adults are not supposed to make their older children take care of the younger ones. You were right.
And if the words spoken were as you described, you could have been much harsher. Your sister apparently didn't notice how mom reacted to babysitting asks when it wasn't her kids.
And OP responded:
My sister's husband is in the military so for a lot of our kids' younger years she wasn't here. Plus she is the youngest and we coddled her. Which is I guess why she was so surprised.
whatdoido2102 wrote:
NTA there’s a whole generation of these grandparents. Those that used their own parents as free and constant childcare and now barely look at their own grandkids with that lame ass excuse of already raising their kids. Then they want to be treated like they were the best parents.
Like ok you don’t want to watch your grandkid, but don’t act like you were wonder mom or something and don’t get mad when we don’t all pretend along with you.
Megmelons55 wrote:
NTA. We hear so many stories where one or both parents claim all these bragging rights for having and raising kids, when in reality those kids get dumped at another person, or family member's home. It's gross. Part of raising kids is, ya know, actually raising kids. Good on you and your brothers for calling her out. Maybe she should sit in that guilt for a while.
OP is definitely NTA, their mom just doesn't want to hear the truth.