As an adult, every second of free time feels worth its weight in gold. There’s a job to juggle, meals to cook, errands to run, workouts to squeeze in, and if you’re a parent, good luck finding even two uninterrupted minutes. So when plans do come together, most people try to make them count.
This woman’s friend group thought they had a solid system: once a month, the girlfriends meet for dinner, and they rotate who covers the bill. Simple, fair, and easy—until it was her turn to pay. That’s when she realized her friends also expected her to cover the babysitter for all of their kids—something she refused, since she doesn’t have any of her own.
Her friends were not happy with her answer, but she thinks they’re asking for too much. Read the full story below and decide who’s in the wrong.
The woman met up with her friends for dinner once a month, and they all took turns paying the bill
Image credits: Andrea Piacquadio / Pexels (not the actual photo)
But when she found out they expected her to cover the babysitter too, she was stunned, since she doesn’t have kids herself
Image credits: imustbedead / Pexels (not the actual photo)
Image credits: babysitter-payment
Image credits: Kampus Production / Pexels (not the actual photo)
Finding a babysitter can sometimes be just as hard as getting everyone in your friend group to meet up
As people take on more and more responsibilities with age, be it work, family, or other reasons, it might be more and more difficult to maintain friendships—or stay in touch regularly, at least—especially with a big group of people.
If you, as an adult, have tried arranging a get-together with a friend group, you likely know how difficult it can get. (Sometimes even two people are enough to make it impossible to find a date that fits both.) While one friend works a weird schedule, the other one is looking after two kids, the third one is constantly in and out of the country, and the fourth one is busy doing who knows what—getting such a dynamic group together might require all stars to align and three more miracles to happen.
That’s just one example of a group of adults that would likely encounter difficulties trying to end up in the same place at the same time. Others might find it difficult for more comparable reasons, such as kids, for instance, as it was in the OP’s friends’ case, which can be solved by hiring a babysitter.
That might be easier said than done, though. A 2023 survey found that the vast majority of parents face troubles trying to find a person to look after their bundle of joy. Roughly half of the respondents said they get time away from their kids at least once a week, but if it was easier to find a sitter, more than six-in-ten of them reportedly would.
Image credits: Jep Gambardella / Pexels (not the actual photo)
Taking a little time away from your kids every once in a while can actually be a really good thing
According to the 2023 survey, not being able to find a babysitter affects parents in many ways. For instance, four-in-five of them say that not getting time apart strains the relationship with their partner. Other respondents—nearly 70% of them—believe that spending time away from their kids sometimes is beneficial, because it alleviates the mental load of being a parent.
These reasons arguably make hiring a babysitter, upon finding a suitable one, a worthy investment; even though it seems to be getting more and more expensive. Statista revealed that the annual household expenditure on babysitting and child care has been somewhat steadily growing for the last decade or so (with 2018 and the pandemic years being an exception).
Even though hiring a babysitter can quite significantly add to the parents’ overall expenses of a night out, expecting your childless friend to cover such expenses—even if for the night when it’s her time to pay—might not be fair. At least that’s what the majority of netizens in the comment under the OP’s post believed, and they made sure to let her know.
Readers shared their opinions in the comments, the author replied to some of them
