Can't be bothered to cook for son

[palmtreesands]

We only have limited fridge and freezer space so him buying his own shopping is not an option.
Dh eats at work and I like to take a massive salad to work among other things and pick so don't eat again in the evening.
Ds comes home from work expecting a home cooked dinner and I find it such a headache, if I haven't cooked or we've eaten I out as we sometimes do he expects their to be ingredients to make himself something to eat.... their often isn't and I am racing up the shop to buy him something to make but as I said food has to be included in his monthly contribution otherwise he'll come back with shopping that we don't have room for.
Aibu to let this stress me out so much, I'm hot and bothered and don't want the headache of feeding him but he pays £400 a month to live here so expects there to be food to eat and I can't be bothered with the hassle of always making sure there's something in when we don't have family meals.

He’s an adult with a job. £400 is towards the cost of heat, electricity, water, share of council tax etc (probably you doing his washing and so on as well!). It shouldn’t cover extra food. If he wants food over and above what’s in the cupboards/fridge then he needs to buy it himself, you certainly shouldn’t be rushing out to buy it for him.

@redskydarknight ah ok. I can't advance search for some reason. I used to be able to, but now if I try and search a poster it just says unavailable

If OP has agreed the £400 covers food, then it covers food.

It sounds as though DS is quite happy to buy his own food, but OP has told him not to as there is nowhere to put it.

Op did you move in with them or did they move in with you? I assume it was quite recently as you are not in the habit of cooking for the family. You also say, ‘you have a lot to learn’ as if this is all new to you. I’m trying to work out the dynamic as it’s odd.

I am also wondering how the finances work re the stepson’s rent and why you are in charge of getting the food. Was he already paying his father before you came along? How did it work then?

Are you made?
Why accept being a skivvy to him?
Tell your husband to cook if he wants but you are done.
I wouldn't do this for my own son, not a chance.
Tell the lazy sod to move out or buy his own meal to cook.

Talk about absolute madness.
Under pressure to cook a meal you won't eat for another adult.

I bet you really are the house skivvy.
Find some self respect and tell both men to sort themselves out.

He's not allowed to buy food and put it in the fridge though so what is he meant to do?

It is the strangest of dynamics and now a baby is going to be in this bizarre set up.

Most people eat at lunchtime and dinner time, it’s not an either or. Your DH eats at work so doesn’t eat at home? That’s odd as well. This entire thing just doesn’t sound like the way people normally choose to live. Could you all at least get a slow cooker or something so something can be thrown in and ready later, I can’t imagine food never being cooked at home. What do you all do at the weekends?

I agree. The lack of proper meals and only eating one meal a day which is salad, then picking at food….. beer taking up all the room in the fridge…. the can’t be arsed attitude…. the neglectful attitude of the DS. The more I think about it the more I’m starting to think that they are alcoholics.

Utterly dysfunctional feeding habits! It sounds like you all might need to consider what sort of effects your strange choices with food are having, on your health, your spending, your relationships. It sounds like the only one prepared to try any meal preparation is the son, but he’s not allowed to have his own food! You all need to sit down and talk, get the drinks out the fridge, learn how to prep meals, store and freeze, try and prepare a meal either together, or set up a rota so that a different person cooks each evening. Effort is all that’s required, from everyone.

Well it’s definitely not functional. It sounds almost surreal.

Why not? Why would you take £400 a week off of your son.
That's not how families should behave with eachother, how is he meant to save anything.
She can't be bothered to cook for him, what's she going to do when the baby comes along.
Were your wages taken from you?
What's wrong with people 😬

What baby? I must have missed something somewhere🤷‍♀️ If there’s no room for another fridge, how the heck are they all going to cope with a baby in the house?

What's wrong with people?

Like you, they don't RTFT.

I also think this is a wind-up* but that's not the problem. The problem is all the BoyMoms on here who think the sun shines out of their son's penises. Stop raising your sons to believe that women are appliances who exist for them to use at will.
I suspect this is where a lot of the failure-to-launch-cocklodgers are coming from. (See the catlodger thread.)

*As if 2 grown men aren't perfectly capable of making room in the fridge for food without the subservient wifey being involved.

You need to get a bigger fridge and let him cook for himself.

There is no mention or implication of pregnancy or baby in the OP’s posts, think someone’s misread something and then it’s snowballed…

Unless someone has referred to another of the OP’s threads?
sorry I haven’t quite RTFT.

I’m beginning to think this is a new script for the Royle Family.😂

@Tinkeebell

its very privileged of you to just assume that every family can afford to have another adult living there - related or not - and they not be contributing to the bills, mortgage etc especially given the cost of living crisis.

I'm sure that there's plenty out there feeding their babies baby jars and they never come to the attention of social services.
The family absolutely sound like they would benefit from some kind of intervention, but realistically that's unlikely to happen. Any change is going to have to come because the family want it or if she decides to leave.

Her eating habits might not be the norm but I don't think that they're that uncommon either, lots of people (women particularly) will say that they pick and don't eat full meals. And I'm sure some of the people saying how strange they are will have disordered eating habits themselves

As for the DS being abused, yes the dad never cooked and always fed him takeaway, I would definitely agree that that can be abuse unless of course they were always getting healthy takeaways which is probably unlikely.

But once again in your telling of this scenario you stop right before the part where she does in fact go out and buy the ingredients and cook for him, she doesn't say that she moans at him either.

And while a child who was neglected or abused may still feel the effects into adulthood, that doesn't mean that the abuse/neglect is ongoing.

If for example a parent refused to wash their kids clothes when they were small that would be neglect, but if they refused to wash their young adults clothes it wouldn't be.

But you're probably going to say that it would be abuse if he wasn't 'allowed' to wash his clothes, in which case I'm probably going to have to respond that there's a difference between being not 'allowed' and not being able to because they were using the washing machine for something else (like storing beer).

Also there are lots of parents who would have always made sure that there was homecooked meals who don't worry about what their young adults eat either!

I think the way the OP wrote the thread got peoples backs up, but if she had posted that her son filled the fridge with beer but then complained that there was no room for food meaning she had to go out every evening to buy fresh ingredients then I think almost everyone would have told her that the son was taking the absolute piss.

Excuse yourself.
Not privileged at all never have been.
Parents never took a penny from any of us and they lived through harder times as did their own parents who again never took money from their children either.
I get people are struggling with costs, but both parents are working and can afford money for alcohol so things can't be that bad. I'm sure if they calculate the cost of the booze in the fridge there's a few shopping trolleys that could be filled instead.
It's just pure greed and laziness from the parents.

Bullshit.

I wonder will he charge them £400 a week to take care of them when they're older should the need him to.

What a black and white view you have just because your family did things differently.
One way isn't necessarily better.

Many people say they were expected to hand up X amount when they were younger and that it thought them a lot about budgeting and the value of money etc.

Some families who do this are well off so it's not about greed, and many do it out of necessity because of the cost of living and they genuinely can't afford to cover all of the costs of having adult children in the home while the adult child gets to spend all of their wages on themselves.

Also the alcohol doesn't seem to be for the OP, she said its the DH and the sons beer, and she's heavily pregnant.

Also it's £400 a month that he's paying, not £400 a week which you keep saying.

£400 a month, not week.