People rally around woman seeking extra pay from husband for more household duties

Splitting household chores within a family can be a very tricky affair. Both partners should ideally do equal amounts of work to maintain the prosperity of the house. Also, they should give kids some basic duties to know how to do these things. However, all of these things are easier said than done. Reddit user u/Maleficent-Credit202 put up a post revealing how she was in a dilemma with her husband about deciding who was in charge of keeping the house clean. The post has received 11K upvotes and 1.9K comments on the platform.

The woman starts the post by sharing that she worked as a "steamfitter." She had been working in the profession for a while and was part of the supervision. She writes, "With bonuses and incentives but not counting benefits, I earn over $100 an hour." The woman also had to go out of town for work as her kids were old enough to care for themselves if they had their dad at home. Her youngest child is in middle school, while her oldest is a junior in high school. Thanks to both of them working, the couple can save for their retirement and "splurge" on the kids and themselves.

She writes, "My husband is upset because I decided to pay for a cleaning lady." They had to do it. After all, the husband and kids did not do a good job of keeping the house clean and tidy while the woman was away for work. She also did not like returning home to a mess, which caused a few fights within the family because the woman felt like they expected her to come home from work and clean up after them. The solution of getting a cleaning lady worked well, which benefitted the kids as they had more time to study and partake in extracurricular activities. However, they were still expected to do some basic cleaning.

However, her husband wanted to save money and tried to convince the woman that they should cut down on calling the cleaning lady whenever she was home. He was asking her to do housework to save money. The woman shared, "I said that I work 14 days in a row and that those are 13-hour days. Yes, it is mostly paperwork, but his job as a teacher isn't much more physically challenging." The woman gave him two choices. They could completely get rid of the cleaning lady, provided the husband and kids kept the house clean.

Otherwise, he could pay her by the hour to do the extra housework when she was home. The post concludes with the woman writing, "He is upset with me and says that I'm being financially manipulative. I think if he and the kids did what they are supposed to do when I'm away, none of this would be an issue." People on the platform sided with the woman and voiced their support for keeping the cleaning lady and criticized the husband's solution in the comment section. u/Specialist-Fox-5777 said, "NTA, you make more than enough money to pay for cleaning services. Tell him to look at it this way: it's cheaper than marriage counseling or divorce."