THE OVERNIGHT SHIFT WIFE

A 24-year-old mother says her family is so broke they cannot even make their bills, and now her husband wants her to work full time, go to school full time, and still be the one running the house.

For the past five years, she has been a stay-at-home mom while her husband, 27, has been in the military. Their children are finally school-age: one is in kindergarten, the other in pre-K. But pre-K comes out of pocket, and that expense has pushed the family to the edge. She says the money situation has become so tight that they are struggling just to keep up with bills.

Her original plan had been simple enough. Once both kids were in school, she would go to college and start working toward a degree. But with the finances falling apart, she says getting a job had to come first.

So she took the only shift that would fit their lives: 10 p.m. to 6 a.m.

She laid out the schedule in plain terms. She would work overnight, rush home so her husband could leave for his job, and then get the kids ready. She would sleep during the day, then handle pickup, dinner, baths, bedtime, and everything else before heading back to work that night.

That, she says, is where her husband's plan went further. He wanted her to go to school too, either at night or during the day, and told her, "there are lots of people that work full time and go to school full time, you can make it work."

She wasn't so sure. "maybe I can do it I just don't know how yet," she wrote, asking whether it was unreasonable to tell him it had to be "it's one or the other."

In an edit, she said she had started doubting herself because her mother-in-law agreed with her husband.

Then she came back with an update: "we've come to an agreement!" She told him it would be one or the other, at least for now.

She also clarified what her days already look like. Her husband may be "the breadwinner," and he does help with some chores, but she says she is still "the primary/default parent," the one managing the entire household and doing "everything 😂."

In a second edit, she added one more complication: the family had applied for military child care fee assistance, but her husband had not turned in the proper paperwork until that day.

Even so, she said she wants pre-K because it helps her mental health, and she wants to contribute more to her family. "I would really like to contribute more to my little family and to be a productive member of society," she wrote.

For now, her plan is to go back to work until her husband gets out of the military. After they move home and she has more support, she says, she wants to pursue a degree then.