Woman promises stepdaughter stroller, gets sent expensive link, says 'never mind.' UPDATED 2X
Refusing a family member of something always comes with the risk that everyone else will band together to talk about how unfair you're being. However, you're the only one who can measure your own boundaries.
In a popular post on the AITA subreddit, a woman asked if she was wrong for refusing to pay for a pushchair for her stepdaughter. She wrote:
"AITA for refusing to pay for a pushchair for my stepdaughter?"
My stepdaughter(20) is pregnant and due in January. My husband and I originally said we would buy the pushchair for her when she was a bit further along as she is high-risk and has had several miscarriages and we didn’t want it to linger as a reminder if the pregnancy failed. She picked the pushchair she wanted and we said we would order it for her this month.
A couple of weeks ago I mentioned the pram to her and she asked if her nan had spoken to us about it. I said no and asked what she meant. She then said that she had been shopping with her nan and had found another pram she wanted. This pram was almost exactly the same but was £500 more than the one she told us she wanted from us.
I told her that we couldn’t afford to spend that much on the pram and she said that her nan and grandad are putting £100 and the nan on the father's side is putting £100 towards it and she wanted us to pay the rest. I spoke to my husband following this conversation with her and he said we can’t afford it and said he thought we were buying it outright and not just contributing.
We have now told her we are not buying that pram for her as we can’t afford the amount she wants us to pay and that the original plan was for us to buy the one she originally chose outright and not just contribute to it. Even with £200 towards it we still can’t afford it. She has now called us unreasonable and said we aren’t being fair. AITA?
People had plenty to say about the situation.
RB1327 wrote:
NTA. If you can't afford it you can't afford it. Frankly, if she's 20 and isn't on solid financial ground in the first place, then an expensive pram probably shouldn't be a purchase at all. Give her the amount you planned to spend on the original pram, then she can decide how to combine that with the other contributions to choose something.
Illustrious-Shirt569 wrote:
NTA. She can ask for what she wants, and you can choose whether to buy it. I would not buy her one she doesn’t want though. Get her something else critical for the baby and let her sort out whether spending insane amounts on a pram is worth it. It’s seriously only used for a blink of an eye in the baby’s life. That kind of thing can be found barely used so easily.
Europeangirl101 wrote:
Obviously NTA and geez, her entitlement, smh. There's one thing to ask your opinion about getting a more expensive one and actually wanting to impose it on you. She's just obnoxious and rude. I suggest you just contribute to it like everyone else even if you originally wanted to buy it yourself, but if she insists, just give her the original money and let her say whatever she wants.
Or even better, say it's this amount or nothing and she can go whine to her nan dearest if she was the one putting ideas in her head.
Hairy-Capital-3374 wrote:
NTA. I don't understand why people pay such excessive money for something baby is going to outgrow quickly.
Ok_Conversation9750 wrote:
NTA. Does your stepdaughter even have a concept about what birth control is??? She's only 20 and has had "several miscarriages"? WTF??? She sounds at best naïve, at worst, spoiled/entitled as hell.
After receiving lots of support, OP jumped on with two updates/clarifications:
EDIT: For those who don’t know the British pushchair and pram they mean a stroller.
EDIT: The reason we won’t give her the money towards it and were going to buy it outright ourselves on our card is because she has a habit of spending money she is given on things not related to what she asked for/needs. She has previously been given money for food when she didn’t have any and spent it on cigarettes and alcohol.
Clearly, she's NTA here, her stepdaughter needs to learn to control her expectations.