It's hard to have a baby on the way, especially if you're working. When this dad to be is conflicted, he takes to the popular Reddit forum to ask:

'AITA for agreeing to extend my work trip a week before my wife is due?'

My (40M) wife's (38F) official due date for our daughter is September 19, and this will be our first baby.

I work as an external auditor, and my job involves international travel. I had a non traditional education path so compared to my similarly junior coworkers I am quite a bit older and don't have the accolades and connections they may have.

The perks of the job and the fact I work for a corporation many people interview at every year makes it easy for bosses to think they come first in your life and that we are under skilled and over paid.

Therefore, I really want to show that I am a dependable worker and that if they are going to start 'cutting the fat' so to speak, I will not be the one they are laying off.

While the job comes with a lot of perks, most of them are things we can only enjoy while working, like business class seats and nice free dinners when we travel or work after a certain time. The salary itself makes it so that my wife still has to work at least part time if we want to raise a family in NYC, have savings, and still stay afloat.

My wife currently is not working and I feel like we are just one monthly paycheck away from not being able to pay our mortgage. And while she has basically accepted that her job field is hostile towards mothers and that she'll be content with staying at the junior level she is at, I feel like I need to climb the corporate ladder ( which I am still about two rungs from the bottom) and prove myself to be indispensable.

Work has had me in Europe for the past two weeks. One of the superiors with me is also my mentor who I really admire. I was supposed to fly home on Monday because they allowed me the next week and a half off.

But he called me today and told me they really needed my help for something else for the next five business days. Days run late so my earliest flight out would be a sometime next Saturday afternoon.

He said he'd be forever in my debt for this and that he'd fight for this to be reflected in my annual bonus. I sensed that he really would be really grateful and I've always been striving to earn his admiration, so after some thought, I agreed.

Now came the hard part and I called my wife to tell her. She was absolutely furious and cried over the phone saying she was already mad that this supposed family friendly firm sent me on this business rip but to extend it was insane.

I told her that we'd be putting the extra bonus money in a college account and she could be happy to see it grow, but she refused to hear my reasoning.

I told her I'd try to tell my mentor else had to close up the project and that I had to get a flight on Friday, but she started yelling that she could literally give birth tomorrow and called me a Neanderthal for not understanding.

I told her it was for my career and our future. AITA? I feel like if I don't impress my higher ups somebody else will do so before I even walk on to a plane home.

Let's see what Reddit had to say.

randomcpa writes:

NTA. Yeah no. He is in an industry where right now they need him more than he needs them. If he walked out right now he’d have another job by the end of the week. Every single firm needs experienced staff and so does his. OP is just high off of working for a firm with brand recognition which only means anything to people who work at those firms.

gildedlady disagrees:

YTA and I pity your wife.

While everyone else has figured out that going above and beyond isn't worth it because it rarely nets you anything tangible, you've bought into that 80s/90s work yourself to death for maybe the promise of advancement of mentality, haven't you?

It also strikes me that the job seems more important because hey, you get that business class travel, amirite?

A pregnant woman is almost always going to feel vulnerable to varying degrees, but this close to labor she 1000% needs the support of her loved ones out there and you're just brushing off her concerns because you're too busy brown nosing.

bunnyhunter187 writes:

NTA. I guess, I am going against most. I came from extreme financial instability through out my life, lack of food at times, electric being turned off.

I agree, Missing your child’s birth is almost the worst thing you can do.

♦️BUT One thing is worse to me- bringing a child into this World and not being able to provide for your child. ♥️

Well, seems like the jury is out on this one. What do YOU think? Is OP TA?