AIBU to think my husband did not go too far with the comment?
Husband and I have two boys. Our eldest has just started school this September and our youngest isn't even 4 weeks old.When we had our first, DH took 6 months paternity leave because his workplace offers it. He then spoke to work and took another 6 months unpaid. We got used to looking after our son and sharing everything, and honestly it was lovely. My side of family have never really understood it. A lot of the older women in my family made comments about why DH would want to take so much time off and seemed to think it was strange. His family are much more progressive about it. His dad actually said that if he'd had the opportunity to take a year off when his children were young he absolutely would have but it wasn't really a norm back the. Not saying it is the norm now but lots more places are starting to at least offer 6 months paternity.
We've now had our second baby and DH is doing exactly the same thing again 6 months paid paternity followed by 6 months unpaid. It works for us financially and more importantly, it's what we've both agreed we want.
Last week we went to my aunt's house. She's in her early 80s and was meeting our new baby for the first time.At one point the baby started crying and DH took him from me to settle him. DH too does a lot of the nappy changes, feeds, getting up in the night etc because we're both his parents and that's just how we've always done things.My aunt watched DH with the baby and said to him, "Isn't that your wife's job?"DH laughed and and carried on.
Her daughter, who is in her 50s, then joined in and started ranting at DH about how men and women have different roles, how he shouldn't be doing everything for me, etc. DH initially tried to laugh it off but she kept going and eventually he snapped.
He told her: "oh fuck off If you focused more on your weight nosey what I do for my family wouldn't matter to you." The room went completely silent. I was honestly shocked. I agree that she was being incredibly rude and I don't think there's anything remotely wrong with DH taking paternity leave or looking after his own children. But I also think bringing her weight into it was completely unnecessary.
DH says he doesn't regret saying it because she'd been going on at him for ages and he wanted to shut the conversation down. He also pointed out that she had no problem criticising our marriage and parenting while apparently being offended when he responded. I think he could have told her to mind her own business without commenting on her weight.
My family now think DH needs to apologise I have told my mum to just let it go if the aunt and her daughter are that upset about it, its not as though she sees my husband often. This is not the first time someone has snapped at the them, it happened over summer from a different relative.