Husband Wants To Sleep In On Weekends, Wife Calls Him Selfish For Not Helping With Baby

Being a new parent is exhausting, no matter which side of the crib you’re on. A husband who works full-time says he loves his wife and baby dearly but admits that waking up at 4:45 every day leaves him drained. So when weekends roll around, he just wants to catch up on sleep.

His wife, who stays home with their infant all week, doesn’t agree. She believes caring for the baby is a shared responsibility, even on weekends. Now he’s questioning if wanting to rest makes him selfish or if it’s perfectly reasonable to need a break from both work and fatherhood every once in a while.

A working dad, up early every weekday, asks to sleep in on weekends, but his stay-at-home wife insists he share morning baby duties, sparking tension

This scenario, one partner working full time while the other stays home with a baby, reveals one of the most common and emotionally charged tensions in new parenthood: the competition over exhaustion. Both partners feel drained, both feel unacknowledged, and both believe their fatigue is the “real” kind.

From a psychological perspective, neither the husband nor the wife is acting maliciously here.

What’s really happening is what family therapist Dr. John Gottman calls “negative sentiment override” when stress and fatigue color neutral requests as personal attacks.

The husband wants a few hours of rest on weekends after six months of early mornings and full-time work; the wife feels constantly on duty and unseen in her 24/7 caregiving role. Both are valid, but both are trapped in a loop of unmet needs.

The couple’s situation reflects a wider issue in modern family dynamics: the undervaluation of invisible labor. Research from the Journal of Marriage and Family shows that stay-at-home parents, particularly mothers, experience higher levels of role overload and social isolation compared to working parents.

Meanwhile, employed parents, especially fathers, report emotional exhaustion from balancing breadwinning pressure with increased expectations of domestic involvement. The result? Both partners end up feeling they “work harder,” just in different currencies.

Clinical psychologist Dr. Darcy Sterling notes that “arguments about sleep are rarely about sleep.” They’re about fairness, appreciation, and autonomy.

In this case, the husband’s plea for extra rest on weekends isn’t laziness, it’s an attempt to reclaim control over his time. For the wife, his refusal represents the loss of her time, since childcare never stops.

The healthiest solution, according to family counselors, is to replace resentment with structure.

Instead of reacting in the moment (“I’m tired, get up”), couples should negotiate predictable rest windows, for example, alternating weekend mornings or designating specific “sleep-in” days for each partner. This shifts the focus from competition to collaboration and builds mutual respect for each other’s labor.

Finally, both should remember that exhaustion is temporary, but resentment can linger. Their baby will eventually sleep through the night, and schedules will stabilize. The goal isn’t to prove who’s more tired, it’s to make sure neither feels invisible.

Because in a marriage, fairness isn’t about dividing hours equally; it’s about recognizing that love and labor come in different forms and both deserve rest.

Let’s dive into the reactions from Reddit:

These commenters suggested alternating or scheduling sleep-ins so both parents get rest

This group argued that full-time jobs are exhausting too and the husband deserves extra rest

These Redditors emphasized how draining childcare is and felt the wife deserves her own breaks

So, what do you think? Should a working parent get that extra hour of sleep, or should stay-at-home partners get the first crack at rest? Either way, one universal truth remains, sleep is the most valuable currency in any new parent’s world.