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The original was posted on /r/nostupidquestions by /u/X on 2023-10-03 00:18:49.
The context of me having been a babysitter:
When I was in high school I did typical high school stuff, and I was trying really hard to get good at skateboarding. One day this little kid pestered me to teach him how to skate, so I did. I’d spend maybe an hour on random days after school showing him how to ollie and eventually his parents noticed me showing him stuff outside the house and asked if I’d baby sit him (and they’d pay obviously).
So that was the first kid I babysat and it was a LOT of work actually, it wasn’t always just teaching the kid to skate, he was obsessed with Steve Erwin and had so many pets that I had to keep alive while the parents went on a vacation. 1 snake, 2 cats, an aquarium (15+ fish of various species), 1 bird, a dog, and multiple hamsters in a tunnel system thing.
I had done such a good job keeping the house running smooth with out issue that the parents told other families about me and i ended up babysitting a bunch of different wealthy-ish families kids.
Most of the time I established good relationships with the kids, being more like their friend than an authority figure and I enjoyed it a lot, but it was very tiring because it was always some situation of like 5 kids, or a bunch of pets, or a spreadsheet of allergies, or a learning disability etc. So eventually I stopped, but also i was older and headed off to college.
The Situation where I learned its apparently a red flag:
I’ve been out of college for years now, live in a different state, have a full time job etc. I was talking to this woman I was interested asking about plans for the weekend and she said ‘oh I cant do anything I agreed to watch a friends kids’
I laughed, mentioned I could relate, asked how many kids its gonna be, if they had allergies, if she’d babysat them before etc. trying to get a conversation going.
She said ‘what do you mean you can relate?? do you have kids of your own?’ So I responded saying, no I don’t have kids but I used to babysit quite a number of them so I know what its like and how much of a pain it can be.
Her response was ‘Ew, why would you babysit kids? that’s weird, guys should NOT babysit kids’
This response REALLY turned me off and I thought SHE was weird. I didn’t press the matter and we changed the topic but I’ve stopped perusing anything with her.
The reason I’m Asking reddit:
It’s really more so to gather information and opinions from a larger audience of women.
I asked a couple of my guy friends and they all agreed that its a bit weird to read into a guy having been a babysitter but the conversation ended pretty quickly because we all have a quick nod where I feel validated that im not a crazy person and move on to other things.
But what threw me for a loop was when I asked two women who I’ve known for a couple years about it they both sort of held this general opinion of ‘well shes kind of justified in feeling that way’
I asked them for an explanation but what they provided me was very insufficient because they were wishy washy about it and changed the subject.
I just want to understand:
- If a lot of women might feel this way
- Why women may feel this way