Woman breaks up after boyfriend expects her to take care of kids from previous marriage, sparks debate

Gender roles often expect women to care for children and manage a household without complaints, even if the kids aren't their own. A woman found herself in this situation when her boyfriend expected her to take care of his kids from a previous marriage. User u/Strongarm_Mickey7 broke up with her boyfriend due to this issue and shared her experience on Reddit.

"I broke up with my boyfriend," the 25-year-old shared. Her 29-year-old boyfriend has two kids, ages 9 and 7, from his previous marriage at 19 years old. "[It] lasted not long at all. We had been seeing each other for seven months officially three months, but our love had grown so deep so fast, that we decided to get an apartment together," she shared. "Here we are one month before our move-in day and he tells me that his ex is planning on taking him off child support," the girlfriend recounted. "That would require him to have the children every other week. Since I don’t have children, I felt that was a bit much."

The couple was moving in together in September, with the new child support arrangement starting in October. "I felt like that wouldn’t give us enough time to get a good rhythm in our place before bringing an extra set of humans to care for every other week," the woman expressed. "Keep in mind, he works from 11 AM to 8:30 PM and I work from 6 AM to 2:30 PM. That would have required me to be the guardian for the children until he got home and they would be asleep by then," she further disclosed the situation. So, the girlfriend expressed her concern about the setup and how this was a bit too much for her as she doesn't have children of her own.

"He lashed out at me saying 'As a future stepmother that is something you would have to do anyway,'" the woman continued. The woman disagreed with what the man had to say and at the same time, she felt it was out of the question as they weren't married. "If we were, It would be my job to help you, but this setup would be more like me raising the children on my own," she pointed out. The woman wondered if she was selfish for doing this. So, people took to the comments section of the post to support the woman and her decision.

u/Remote-Cloud1224 wrote, "My only complaint is I very seriously doubt that he plans to actually spend any time with the kids. He wanted to no longer pay child support, he’s fixing to have a double income household and he can just shoulder her with the kids since he works all day." u/Happy_to_be commented, "The biggest red flag is that he didn’t seem to ask you, just informed you of the new workload and living situation with the kids. This is not how a partnership works."

u/whatsasimba remarked, "'Our love had grown so deep so fast' is code for 'He love bombed me to try to lock me down before the kids came.' Super weird how she's not saying, 'Our apartment isn't even big enough!' It's almost like he made sure they got an apartment that would be big enough, and only just now sprung the kids on her."