'My daughter is at that stage where kids pretend they are grown-ups with jobs. The jobs differ depending on who she meets or sees on the TV,' the Reddit user explained.
A concerned dad turned to Reddit for advice recently after some neighbors accused him of brainwashing his young daughter by letting her pretend to be a housewife. In a post that sparked discussions about why people look down on homemakers and stay-at-home-parents, Reddit user u/throwawayaita97 asked the r/AmItheAsshole community if he was wrong for encouraging his daughter in whatever she wished to pursue. "My daughter is at that stage where kids pretend they are grown-ups with jobs. The jobs differ depending on who she meets or sees on the TV," the Reddit user explained.
"In the last few months, she wanted to be a teacher, babysitter, truck driver, president, garbage collector, photographer, 'knee doctor' (after I injured it), scientist, witch, football steward (Last month I was watching a football match with her and she asked me why are the people in yellow not watching the game. When I explained they are there to ensure that no one goes to the pitch, she told me that's what she wants to do when she grows up because they get paid to do nothing lol)," he revealed. The 24-year-old single dad shared that he tries to support whatever his daughter fancies to the best of his abilities.
"I try to play along with every job she wants to do and buy her the required tools for it if I could afford it. For the steward job I got her a little vest and made her an official badge, she would stand in silence watching me and after a few minutes demand I pay her," u/throwawayaita97 wrote. He revealed that the young girl took an interest in the idea of being a homemaker after meeting one of his friends one day. "Last Saturday an old friend of mine paid us a visit, my daughter asked her about her job. My friend replied that she is a housewife so for the whole afternoon my daughter kept interrogating her," he shared.
"After my friend left all my daughter wants to do since then is to be a housewife. She already has three kids that she helps with homework and teaches them manners, and each one of them has a food allergy," the doting dad revealed. While he saw nothing wrong with his daughter wishing to become a housewife, some others did not take kindly to letting the child explore her likes and dislikes. "Yesterday we were coming back from the grocery store when we met some neighbors. They started talking with her when she told them she had just come back from the grocery store to make dinner for her husband and children. They gave me some weird looks and said goodbye," he recounted.
"A few hours later they knocked on my door, they wanted to have a private discussion with me. After I explained what was happening, they gave me a one-hour lecture about how stupid and ignorant I was and I should stop encouraging this because I was damaging my daughter. They told me we aren't in the 60s anymore and young girls shouldn't dream about being housewives anymore and demanded I stop brainwashing my daughter because her subconscious will start settling for being a housewife instead of dreaming about bigger things," the Reddit user shared.
He admitted that the confrontation left him doubting his parenting capabilities. "I haven't been able to sleep since then, I had my daughter when I was 19 and now I am 24, her mom wants nothing to do with her. Every day has been a struggle and most of the time I don't even know if what I am doing is right so the thought of unintentionally hurting my daughter is filling me with guilt," u/throwawayaita97 concluded. Fellow Reddit users were quick to assure the dad that he was doing nothing wrong. "I don't really get the sense of you [encouraging her to be a housewife], so much as you [encouraging her]. This week it's a housewife, next week could be an astronaut. It doesn't matter. You're not dictating to her, you're just letting her express interest and encouraging it. And hey. She's five. She'll change her mind on what she wants to be when she grows up a million times before she's 18, and then quite possibly end up doing something she'd never thought of anyway because life's like that," wrote ieya404.
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