After snapping at her sister-in-law that she wouldn’t cater to all her cravings just because she was pregnant, a woman has taken to the Reddit community Am I The A**hole (AITA) with a complete summary of the backstory for some outsider assessments of the situation.
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The Backstory
The woman, OP, explains that her sister-in-law is six months pregnant and lives with her, her husband, and their children. The sister-in-law’s pregnancy is stated as being high-risk. However, the nature of that risk is not elaborated on.
Because of this, the sister-in-law cannot work. Additionally, due to the father not being “in the picture,” she lost her apartment and could have become homeless. OP and her husband do not charge her rent or ask for any other monetary contributions to the household.
OP does most of the cooking (other household chores are not mentioned). OP says that her family lives a healthy lifestyle, and she doesn’t like having too much junk food in the house as she is trying to raise her children healthily. They are not strict, however, and will often have a tub of ice cream or brownies for a week.
The sister-in-law has been having pregnancy cravings and constantly requests more junk food. As they are not wealthy, OP is reluctant to spend more money on food for one person and doesn’t want to upset or confuse her children with an adult being regularly allowed things they are not, such as having ice cream for breakfast.
In addition, the sister-in-law requests meals from the rest of the family to be cooked for her due to pregnancy nausea. It’s understandable, but cooking for the fussy kids is hard enough, OP says, without adding another palette.
The night before OP’s post, her sister-in-law again complained that there was nothing she could eat in the house, rejected the food offered, and asked if OP could get her some fast food from a store or outlet. Tired and frustrated, OP got short and snapped that she wasn’t responsible for the sister-in-law’s pregnancy and wouldn’t cater to her just because of it.
This caused her sister-in-law to cry, and OP’s husband felt stuck between them. Most people in the AITA community believe that OP’s position is understandable. “You’re going above and beyond in allowing her to live in your home and provide quality shelter and food for her.
Reddit Responds
Cravings are not necessities- they want,” says one comment. “She’s living in your house without contributing. She needs to stop being a choosing beggar,” says another. Another points out that while pregnancy cravings are intense, they shouldn’t necessarily be listened to—especially if the pregnancy already has complications.
“Plus, if her pregnancy is a high risk, all that junk food is not helping. All that sugar, fat, and salt content is not helping with her blood pressure or sugar, which could make things worse,” one user says. Other users question what makes the sister-in-law unable to contribute to the household.
For example, being unable to work an office job because of pregnancy is one thing, but being unable to cook or visit a store is another. “I get the “high risk” thing, but I work alongside a surgeon who is also going through a “high-risk pregnancy,” but she didn’t quit her job lol,” a person comments.
As previously mentioned, the nature of the ‘high risk’ is not elaborated on in OP’s post. Still, the most common reasons for diagnosing a pregnancy as high risk are lifestyle and health-related—both things that will be made worse by excessive consumption of junk food.
Therefore, we can’t help but speculate how truly ‘high risk’ the sister-in-law’s pregnancy is if she is incapable of basic household tasks and can eat pizza rolls daily. The general consensus is that OP is certainly NTA—not the a**hole.
There may, in fact, be no a**holes here at all, given how little we know about the sister-in-law’s situation—but we do worry that, given that she’s already six months pregnant and seemingly was entirely unprepared for it, OP will end up being a permanent caretaker for two more people than she should have to handle. What do you think?
Source: Reddit
