He Wants to Be Paid for Babysitting His Own Daughter. Is He a Jerk?

Wow…wanting to get paid for babysitting your own kid?

That’s a new one!

And I have a feeling I know which way the jury is gonna swing on this one, but let’s get all the details first before we make any assumptions, okay?

Read the story below and let us know what you think in the comments!

AITA for wanting to be pay for babysitting my own daughter?

“My (39M) wife (34F) and I live in at a suburban house with our daughter (10F, Emily). Our neighbour next door (48M, Walter) is a single father with two daughters (14F and 12F). We have been living here for a little more than two years.

My wife really likes watching scary movies but I have never enjoy them. I get too scared and end up having a bad time so I prefer to avoid them. Her friends sometimes go with her to the more popular ones but she also likes older, indies and foreign horror movies.

She has always had a hard time finding people that have this niche interest and that is why it was such a big deal when we met Walter and found out he also shares this tendency. They very quickly started to make plans to watch movies together. I was invited to be a part of this but refused.

I prefer to just stay at home babysitting Emily and Walter’s daughter while they are in their cinephile reunions. Sometimes they go to movie theaters but other times they just stay at Walter’s place watching stuf at his home cinema. They usually have to go to another town in order to catch a specific function of some weird movie so it is normal for them to come back very late.

They eventually started doing stuff outside of watching movies, like going out for dinner. Walter invited all of us, including the kids, to go with him to a restaurant that a friend of him owned but I said no because it was too expensive.

I don’t like that kind of places because I feel they are a waste of money and didn’t think the kids would enjoy it either. I insisted on staying with the kids and let the two of them go be themselves. This has became a regular thing and it is in a way a good deal for me because Walter pays for my wife’s dinner and she can’t no longer complain about me not taking her to fancy restaurants.

As both their movie and dinner nights had became so common, I have grown a little tired of the burden of constantly babysitting the girls. I talk to my wife and Walter about it and he explained that he usually does not like leaving his duaghters with babysitters.

He says he is really comfortable knowing that they are being watched by an experienced father like me instead of some teenage girl. He nevertheless agreed that it was too much of a load for me and offered to start paying me a standard babysitter fee each time he goes out with my wife.

I thought that was a fair approach to the issue but my wife was fully against it. She says I should not be paid for babysitting my own daughter nor the daughters of a close friend of our family like Walter. We have been arguing about this but she insists on this notion and it not open to change.

She even gets mad every time I talk to her about this. Walter promised me that he will convince her but he does not seem to have been able to do so either.

Am I the A**hole?”