Family visits should not require hourly billing.

This one somehow does though…

At one gathering, an aunt is told to pay her niece to go play.

They are cousins.

See why five dollars an hour feels strangely transactional.

AITA for not wanting to pay my niece to hang out with my daughter during family visits?

I have two young kids—one is a 3.5 and the other is a baby who was born very premature and has some developmental delays.

As you can imagine, life is full and a bit overwhelming right now. I’ve been trying to stay connected with extended family, but a recent situation has been bothering me.

At our last family gathering, I was told that I needed to pay my niece (10 yo) $5/hour to hang out with my 3.5 yo daughter while the adults visited.

Cousins should be allowed to just play with each other, right? Now a family member wants it turned into a babysitting gig.

Not babysit—just play with her while we were all in the same space. I ended up sending money because I felt put on the spot, but I left feeling really uncomfortable.

It’s not that I don’t believe in paying kids for actual babysitting work, but this feels different. These are cousins spending time together in a shared family setting.

Now she’s feeling uncomfortable with the situation.

It makes me feel like my daughter is being treated as a burden rather than just part of the family.

Now we have another gathering coming up and I’m dreading it, because I feel like there’s this unspoken expectation that I’ll keep paying for my kid to be included.

It’s making me want to pull back from future visits altogether, which I know might cause tension.

Let’s see what reddit has to say about this scenario. Many readers have advice on this and some have even been in a similar situation.

This person has advice!

This commenter has lots of questions to ask before making a judgement.

Another redditor asking questions. Hmmm, maybe she needs to talk to her niece.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a woman who is annoyed that her brother is making their mom’s international trip all about how broke he is.

And finally, someone who has been in this situation has an opinion, woah!

She reluctantly paid her 10-year-old niece $5 an hour simply to play with her toddler during a family gathering.

With another visit approaching, she worried that paying for her daughter to be included would become the new expectation.

Family bonding gets weird when somebody starts a timesheet.