Think about being married without kids, and then think about being married with kids. These are two completely different phases of life.

Without kids, if one partner needs to work late or wants to go out with friends, the other partner doesn’t necessarily have more obligations. They just know they’ll have to fill their time without their spouse.

But add kids to the mix, and one partner working late or going out with friends means that other partner has child care duty longer and can’t do things like work or go out with friends. It’s a completely different situation.

In this story, one couple is in the married with kids life phase, and they argue a lot when the husband needs to work overtime.

Keep reading to see if you think the wife is overreacting when her husband needs to work overtime, or if the husband isn’t really understanding his wife’s perspective.

AITA for wanting to put in a little bit of overtime at work?

I work for a mostly-seasonal manufacturing company. We struggle some with balancing the work load with the number of workers.

If we extend our lead times so that all employees only work 8 hours, we lose jobs. If we hire more people, we end up being sent home early.

The solution is that employees know there may be times they are asked to work overtime.

Never anything crazy; no one’s pulling double shifts. A team of two employees may be asked to come in two hours early for a couple of days to stay caught up with their work because we just got a large job.

His wife knew occasional overtime was part of his job.

When we dated, she knew about all this.

After we got married, I would sometimes work a lot of overtime, but never stayed late.

I would rather go in early than stay even one hour late.

His wife hates when he works overtime.

We have a 3 year old and 6 year old with special needs.

She quit her job to raise them.

We will go through periods where my wife is livid if I have to work even one hour of overtime.

Live was different before they had kids.

I’m frustrated because before we had kids, she would often work crazy hours. She would call and say she was going to have to work late.

Sometimes she would work until 7, 8, 9, 10, or even 11:00 at night.

And let me be perfectly clear about something. I. Never. ONCE called her back to ask when she was coming home.

The only times I ever called was when it got close to 10:00 at night, and that was just to make sure she was ok.

He knows his wife has her hands full.

We have two young kids, and dealing with the special needs of the older one makes raising them an extremely difficult job.

My wife is a saint for doing it. So I stick to my rule of leaving work on time to help her, even if I have to go in early the next day.

I do absolutely nothing in the evenings. I turn down invitations to go places with friends.

Working overtime causes a lot of arguments.

But there are times when we have fights about my work asking me to come in early. (I say “we” fight, but it’s mostly her. I don’t try to defend myself because I never have and never will win an argument. I just apologize and try to be better.)

Right now, I’m working on a months-long project and the deadline is fast-approaching. I’ve talked to her about the stresses of this project and warned her that if it comes down to it, I may need to stay “late,” meaning until 4:30, for a few days in order to complete it on time.

I regret it though, because our last fight was about how my work takes advantage of me since they know that I’ll work overtime if they ask.

She doesn’t really ever want him to work overtime.

I explained the situation I described in the first paragraphs of this post. I told her that I feel like I can’t go in even an hour early.

And she said, “Why would you need to? Why would you have to work any more than 40 hours? Why can’t they get their crap together enough to figure this out?”

After working close to 40 hours a week and NEVER staying later than expected, I feel like I’m not allowed to go in early to meet this deadline for a project which will affect the entire company.

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Should I tell my family’s business to eff off because I’m not willing to put in a single extra ounce of effort into this project?

I wonder what would happen if the roles were reversed. What if she still had her job and worked a lot of overtime but he was a stay at home dad. Would he be upset when she worked overtime, or would he figure it out without complaint?

I think his wife is burnt out from childcare. If they can afford childcare, going back to work even part time might be good for her sanity.

Let’s see how Reddit responded to this story.

This person thinks the real problem is communication.

Yes, this makes a difference.

This person thinks his wife is burnt out.

Another person suggests hiring someone to help out with the kids.

When his wife was working overtime, it was completely different. When they didn’t have kids, if she worked late, he was free to do whatever he wanted. He could work late too, go out with friends, play video games, whatever.

Life is different now. If he works late, that’s more time she doesn’t get a break from the kids, and it sounds like she’s really burnt out. They desperately need someone who can help them out with the kids, or they each need to schedule in some sort of break.

This is a stressful phase of life, but if they can find a way to give each other a break once in awhile, it might really help.