Cleaning is a necessary evil, and in today’s story, it sounds like both husband and wife are on the same page about wanting a clean home.

The problem is that the wife feels like she’s doing all of the cleaning, but her husband is willing to clean only if she’ll watch the kids while he’s cleaning.

He doesn’t want to leave the kids unsupervised.

Let’s see how the story plays out…

AITA for insisting my wife needs to watch our kids while I do chores?

I (30M) and my wife (34F) have two young children, ages 1 and 2.

They’re a handful, as you can imagine.

I believe that when chores need to be done, it’s more efficient for one parent to do a chore while the other watches the kids.

I’m always open to discussing and switching roles based on preferences and moods.

His wife expects him to multitask.

The issue is that my wife often gets upset with me for not being more productive while I’m watching the kids.

For example, she’ll cook dinner and expect me to clean the house while watching the children.

I’ve explained that watching the kids is a full-time job, but she insists I should be able to multitask.

He wants his wife to watch the kids while he’s cleaning.

The frustrating part is that when I do chores, she doesn’t watch the kids.

Instead, she’ll start another task like cleaning a room or doing laundry – things I’m willing to do if she’d just supervise the children.

Without supervision, the kids naturally get into trouble.

His wife was upset that he was playing with the kids instead of helping her clean.

This came to a head today when my wife burst into the kids’ room where I was playing with them, upset that she was doing all the chores alone.

I offered to do all the chores if she’d watch the kids, emphasizing that someone needs to supervise them.

She didn’t respond, so I went to clean the kitchen.

While I was doing this, our 2-year-old climbed an exercise bike, got stuck, and had a meltdown.

He and his wife don’t see eye to eye on supervising the kids.

I expressed my frustration about how she seems to never want to just watch the kids, yet gets mad if I do.

There have been worse incidents in the past when the kids were left unsupervised.

She accused me of attacking her.

AITA for insisting that watching our young kids is a full-time job and that we need to take turns doing chores and supervising the children?

For children that young, yes, they need to be supervised and it can be hard to do that while cleaning, maybe not impossible, but hard.

Let’s see how Reddit reacted to this story…

Maybe his wife should take a parenting class.

Here’s the perspective of a mom of a 2-year-old…

Multitasking is impossible.

Couples therapy might help with communication.

This reader is worried about the wife’s views on childcare.

It seems weird that his wife doesn’t think someone needs to be watching the kids.

They’re pretty young to have so much freedom.

If you liked this post, you might want to read this story about a teacher who taught the school’s administration a lesson after they made a sick kid take a final exam.