Stay-at-home dad wonders if he's wrong for revealing it's a 'cakewalk' compared to old office job

Life works in different ways for different people. While some might enjoy a desk job, others might like to do things that take them places and allow them to have new experiences daily. A variety of factors might make two people have a different outlook towards a similar life. In one such scenario, a man who goes by u/ZestyCowlicks on Reddit shared how his wife was upset because he admitted that being a stay-at-home parent was easier for him than an office job. He took to the online forum to ask if he was wrong.

"When my wife and I decided to start a family, she expressed she wanted to be a stay-at-home mom, so we made a plan and set everything up so that she could stay home during the early years," the man wrote for context. "We had our first kid, but she didn't do too well being the stay-at-home and had a hard time with it. We still wanted our kids to have a parent at home with them, so we swapped out since her salary was close to mine." The man has been a stay-at-home dad with reduced hours of remote working for two years now. "For me personally, it's easier than any job I've had in the past, even the manual labor one, but I recognize that that's just my personal experience," he admitted.

The couple also communicated very openly about their situation, so there were no hard feelings between them. "One of her friends from her work invited us and other couples over for dinner. While there, the other couples were talking about childcare in general and some of the women started sharing their experiences of when they were home," the husband recounted. "My wife was talking about how she had disliked it and mentioned our arrangement when one of the women said to me: 'Oh, I know you're just itching to get back to having it easy.' I responded that I already have it easy and that for me, being a stay-at-home dad was a cakewalk compared to my office job."

"I didn't see the point in agreeing with something that just isn't true for me. On the way home, my wife asked why I couldn't have just agreed with the question and played along," the dad continued. "I asked her if she felt bad or guilty that she had a hard time with it and she said no, so I told her to just forget about it then because there's no reason for me to lie to make a bunch of other people feel better so long as it's fine between us." The next day, the wife came back from work and asked her husband if he had another "easy peasy day." The man wrote, "She told me how all day she had to hear from her friends what a smug a*****e I was for making light of their experiences by saying it was a cakewalk."

The man acknowledged that it could be hard for some people, but he didn't feel like lying about his experience. People took to the comments to express their opinions on the situation. u/joolyrancers commented, "People were sharing their experience and you shared yours. Simple as that." u/GlitterDoomsday wrote, "People don't want the truth. They want comfort, so you either sugarcoat your truth or play along. One of the several ways socializing can be tiring is that people are naturally insecure and this is reflected in conversation."