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Trigger Warning: parental death; emotional neglect;

Mood Spoiler: tentatively happy ending, maybe

Original Post: June 13, 2024

I’m (19f) living at home, working a part-time job, doing some freelance stuff and taking some online courses all in preparation for attending college next year. My sister (25f) had her 1st child 8 months ago. The father isn’t involved and only pays CS.

My mom is excited to have her first grandchild and is constantly offering to look after the baby so my sister can feel at ease working full time and afterwards, will have some time for herself to relax. The thing is, about 70% of the time I’ll be the one looking after the baby, and while I admit that I enjoy it and like spending time with him, I can’t help but feel mad because they don’t have any consideration for my time. Mom would drop the baby while I’m in the middle of my lessons because “you can always watch the recordings later” or “just ask someone to tell you what it was about”. Or when I’m working in my freelance stuff because “looking after the baby doesn’t really require much” when I complain about getting delayed in my projects.

My breaking point happened last week when my mother and sister left the baby with me for a whole day because I mistakenly told them I didn’t have to work and would be staying at home to catch up with some pending stuff and study. I told them both irresponsible and they called me a spoiled brat. That night, my grandma and other members of the extended family were calling and sending me messages about the importance of helping family, and to understad that my sister doesn’t have it easy being a single mom. I got mad and sent a message to the family group chat saying that they were right, helping family is important and we all should be supportive of my sister. I then proceeded to write a schedule in which all of us could take care of the baby. Because one aunt goes to visit grandma on mondays and wednesday’s mornings they could babysit those days. Eldest cousin and her siblings ar at ther home fridays afternoon??? well, they can babysit that time… and so on. I left saturday mornings and tuesday evenings as my time to babysit. My sister and my mom were very pleased with the arrangement. The other family… not so much. And when someone pointed out that my sister didn’t get the baby for a whole day, discussions about my sister being an irresponsable mother started, with my mother trying to defend her.

AITA for causing this??? How come they were expecting me to be my sister’s unpaid nanny, but then they get offended when the same thing is being forced on them?? I may be the AH because I caused this and don’t regret it one bit.

Relevant Comments:

Commenter: NTA You aren’t a spoiled brat. Your sister is a spoiled brat. She chose to bring a child into this world thinking other people would parent him for her.

The only person responsible for this baby is your sister.

OOP: I blame that on our mom. When my sister told us she was pregnant and that the father woul’d be involved, our mother assured her if she kept the baby, then she would help her whenever she needed, as she’s already retired and like I said, was excited to have her 1st grandchild.

Commenter: If your mom assured her that she would be the one to help her whenever she needs it, why is she turning around and dumping the baby on you instead?

OOP: I might have a theory on that. Way before my sister got pregnant, we (mom, sister, me) were talking about the future and the theme of marriage and kids came up. I must have around 14?? at the time and I proclaimed I would like to be childfree. Mom didn’t took it too seriously at the time, kinda like “you’ll change your mind when you grow up”. I didn’t.

So i think she is in part doing to to convince me that babies/children aren’t that bad, because sometimes when I was babysitting she would go aaaawwww about how I would be an amazing mother and how good I am with children. But I don’t want to. I love being an aunt and was pretty excited about nephew being born too, but the constant babysitting pretty much drained me out. I might change my mind on having children in the future (adoption or surrogacy, which I’m sure my mom woul’d approve either), but being pressured like this isn’t helping.

Sis getting a nanny or babysitter:

I already suggested hiring a nanny several times, but my sister claims that she wouldn’t feel at ease leaving her child with an stranger. I then agreed to babysit certain days according to my schedule, but they wouldn’t respect it. I did get payed to babysit a few times, but they would make a big deal out of it and I would end up feeling guilty, so I stopped asking for any payment.

Commenter: NTA Its nice to help out every now and then when you can but you have a life too. Your family shouldn’t expect you to babysit and just be fine with it when you clearly have a busy schedule and now that they have a taste of their own medicine all of a sudden its a problem.

OOP: I think most of the problem is that they don’t consider what I do aside my part time job (a tutor at a children’s academy), “worthy” of being bussy. I work as a freelance editor of audio and video, but they just see it as me being in my laptop just because, and I take spanish courses 4 times a week, along with audio engineering stuff 3 times a week. Both require me to do homework and in the latter case, work on projects. But they still don’t consider that a big deal and I’m honestly too tired of explaining to them why both are important.

Commenter: I absolutely love this. Well done. How much time off from the child does your sister get at present?

OOP: I think is easier to tell you how much time my sister gets with baby. She’s a paralegal at a law office, works from 8 to 5 monday-wednesday and friday. Between commuting and she and mom saying she needs time to eat and rewind, she gets the baby around 7 pm. Thursdays are home office, but because “home office is stil work”, she won’t watch the baby until the evening. Weekends: she’ll have the baby on saturday evenings (mornings too, unless she goes to have brunch/coffee/whatever with her friends, not every saturday, to her credit), and Sundays is half-half, because we usually get together with the rest of extended familly and in the evening paternal grandparents will visit to bond with nephew. So, objectively, She does not really spend a lot of time alone with baby.

Commenter: That was a beautiful way to address that. Everyone always says but family until it comes back on them.

OOP: Hahaha, thank you!! I admit I got the inspiration after reading several reddit posts and comments dealing with similar issues. I was like… “What if I did…??” and while I don’t necessarily regret taking that route, there’s this little worry of having going to far. As I said, the family is having a big discussion about this.

(to another commenter): Honestly, I wasn’t being all that serious. I mostly was angry and just wanted to prove my point. But given how it all blew up was way more than what I hoped for.

Update (Same Post): June 20, 2024 (1 week later)

OK, a lot of things happened. Honestly, I’m still not in the mood to provide a full update. The main points are: My sister did tried to impose the babysitting schedule I made and the family wasn’t happy. Mom, Sis and I had a big discussion, hurtful things were said on both ends and I’m currently staying with my BFF and his GF (total sweethearts, but not a feasible long term arrangement, even though they have said I could stay with them as long as I need). The family is complaining non stop and I’m feeling guilty because technically, I’m the one who caused this by creating the schedule in the first place, maybe I should just sucked it up, and I do really feel sorry for my nephew. All the family usually gets together on sundays and this time, my grandma’s eldest daugher (Mom’s eldest sister) is comming from another state. This is kind of like a big thing since she’s granma’s golden child (in a good way) and kind of like the leader of the family. I’m both hopeful and nervous. If someone can solve this shitshow, is her, but at the same time I’m worried about her blamming me like everyone else. I’ll provide a full update then.

Also, sorry for not having the time to answer all the comments and PMs, like I said, a lot of things happened. But here’s some of the questions some people asked:

My relationship with mom and sis: It was pretty good before my sister got pregnant. We (sis and I) always knew that she was more favored by our mom because they had more common interests, while It was the same case for me and my dad. This wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, think it more of a If one of us wanted to visit a frie…

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AITA for forcing my family to babysit (so i won't have to)??

AITA for forcing my family to babysit (so i won't have to)??

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Do NOT comment on Original Posts. Latest update is 7 days old per the rules of this sub.