AITAH for not telling my wife I got a vasectomy?

Me and my wife have been discussing for years that we wanted a large family. After we had our first child (a boy) we decided to wait 2 years to have another. It’s now been a little over 6 years and it has been a roller coaster. We have completely different parenting philosophies as she does not believe in spankings or discipline at all for that matter. She thinks our 7 year old for whatever reason is able to rationalize between right and wrong. Our biggest argument occurred last summer when our son threw a rock at woman while we were hiking. We were above them on the trail and it hit her right on the head to wear she was bleeding so heavily EMS had to be called. I was embarrassed and so livid that when we got back to the hotel I snapped pushed him on the ground, stood over him, and gave him a piece of my mind. My wife was not happy and in turn took our son, got a different hotel, and told my mother in law that she was contemplating on leaving me because she fears for the safety of our son.

That was the only time I ever snapped at our kid and there have been so many other times where I’ve wanted to. When he raised the window on our dog head and nearly decapitated her…I had to back off. When he urinated in our neighbors pool in front of his young daughters….I had to back off. We’ve done therapy and counseling. Needless to say that till this day nothing has changed. I decided to bring it up in one of our counseling sessions that I was considering getting a vasectomy and she flipped to the point where our entire ride home she was bawling because she felt as if I was giving up on our dream of having a big family. Her argument was that I was thinking about myself and weaponizing my body as a means to enforce my ideals instead of talking to her. However, thats thing. I’ve spent the last several years telling her that what we’re doing with our son is not working. The gentle parenting, therapy, medication is not working so the best thing I can do for myself at this point is not have any more children with the person who will not let me have any input when it comes to disciplining our child.

So this week I actually got the vasectomy and my wife was unaware from the time I scheduled to the day of the operation and I told her during breakfast. She has threatened to divorce me because she “does not want to spend the rest of my life with someone who will go to such lengths to get their way”. Every time we’ve discussed me getting a vasectomy she’s said that “I’m blowing things out of proportion “ and that having children were apart of our future. At this point, I don’t even care anymore.

in AITAHby Booty_Snuggler

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WarDrums0nVenus

The child has been violent. The parent standing over the child happened years after this kid got violent.

LoneStarTexasTornado

This is the only instance OP admitted to. That doesn't mean it's the only time he's expressed violence. How many things has he thrown, how many walls has he hit? We don't know. What we do know is that he thought putting his hands on a 7 year old and using his size and strength to intimidate him was an appropriate response....

Tyler-gunderson3012

You seem to forget that the kid nearly took a life

LoneStarTexasTornado

-1

Nope, but you seem to think that's an excuse to be physically violent with a child instead of correcting and teaching them...

Tyler-gunderson3012

The wife simply jumped the gun. Had she let things play out, the chances of OP verbally scolding the kid were a hell of a lot higher than him beating the crap out of the kid, since he has much better self-restraint than a lot of people would have. And trust me, verbal scolding (at least in my childhood experiance) yields much better results

The mother on the other hand is doing NOTHING to rectify the situation. She's not practicing gentle parenting, she's practicing permissive parenting, which fosters this kind of behaviour. On top of that, this kid is showing Psychopathic tendancies, both in the form of attempting to hurt an animal AND nearly killing someone

LoneStarTexasTornado

The conversation I was replying to had nothing to do with the child's behavior, but rather the father's, so allow me to clarify...

The child NEEDS to be taught right from wrong. The child absolutely COULD HAVE KILLED SOMEONE by throwing rocks. The child absolutely DID cause physical harm to both an animal and another person. None of this is acceptable or representative of normal early childhood development for their age.

The mom is absolutely using permissive parenting or rather no parenting which is not helping this child whatsoever. On the other hand the dad is displaying violent parenting which will also not help the child whatsoever. The person I was actually replying to suggested that beating a child's ass is the solution that is needed in this case, which is unequivocally wrong. There are literally hundreds of studies now that show ZERO positive developmental outcomes from hitting a child. A suggestion for permissive parenting would have also been unequivocally wrong, and there are studies to back that up as well.

This child needs a parent! Right now they have two equally but opposite disasters, neither of which are doing anything to actually help their child who is clearly in need of help.

Tyler-gunderson3012

I agree, as a victim of child abuse at an early age i believe beating the shit out of a kid is extreme. But the op clearly has better restraint than that and believes spanking, a form of disipline that isn't straight-up hitting the kid hard enough to cause actual damage, should only be used in the most extreme of cases. And in this case he would have rather verbally scolded the kid despite shoving him moments prior

But the OP's behaviour is not the main issue here; the wife's is. People often mistake permissive parenting for gentle parenting. Gentle parenting is sitting the kid down, verbally scolding them, figuring out the problem and taking tge proper measures to solve the situation, a sort of middle ground if you will. Had she actively tried this tactic, spoken to OP about this and possibly enforced this from a young age, perhaps the kid would have turned out better as a person

LoneStarTexasTornado

We can agree to disagree on what is the main issue here. Honestly OPs wife isn't here for me to comment to her on the absolute stupidity of permissive parenting, but OP is here for me to tell that hitting your kids is never beneficial and spanking IS hitting.

Also, your last statement goes both ways. OP could have actively tried that tactic and spoken to his wife about it from a young age. Unfortunately, it seems neither of them has actually learned about HOW to parent in order to discuss good parenting techniques, and they don't seem to communicate effectively on top of their lack of knowledge. Neither of them are doing anything to help this kid and they both suck equally in my opinion.

We require people to pass a test on their knowledge and skills to drive, but there's no test to raise a whole human being 😅

Tyler-gunderson3012

Parenting is a trial-by-error experiance. My adoptive parents are foster careers and i've got older siblings with kids, so i've seen a fair amount of different parenting tactics and how the kids turned out

LoneStarTexasTornado

Observational learning is a valid way of gaining experience, but if your child was still struggling as this child is, I'd expect you to pick up a book, attend a class, and find other ways to educate yourself as well. These parents are stuck in their "I want" and "my way" and are absolutely failing this child. Neither of them show remorse or concern for the child. They're both displaying awful conflict resolution and modeling terrible behaviors to their kid.

Just in this story kid has seen: - if someone disagrees with me I can just do what I want anyway - if I ignore problems or leave the problems will go away - if I'm bigger and stronger I can be mean to people weaker than me - if I cry and manipulate I might get my way

Both parents model the first two, so those are especially reinforced.

LoneStarTexasTornado

The OP mentions therapy, which should be a place they can all learn better options, but I have to wonder if they are actually following through with the therapists' suggestions.

I'm not a therapist, but I can tell you from dog training, there are situations where I share advice, give instruction, and everything is going great when I'm there. Then I leave and the pet parents do what they do until I return for their next appointment.

Sometimes I see amazing progress. Sometimes I see an escalation in the bad behaviors we were working on. There was one family who had a dog who was destructive and had resource guarding tendencies. We worked extensively on "drop it" and trading the dog for whatever inappropriate item she had. The dog absolutely understood that if I let go of the item I have, I'm going to get something awesome instead. And the family knew to always have high value treats available to trade - I helped them put a little dish in every room.

When I returned one week, the family said the dog had snapped at the adult (25ish) daughter.

Absolutely awful! Bad dog, right? Well yes, and no. The daughter had caught dog chewing on her shoe, chased her and pulled it from her. The exact thing the family was told NOT to do because that INCREASES guarding behavior and can lead to a biting situation until the behavior is trained out. Previously this dog had always growled and tried to move away when someone tried to take things from her, but in this case, she snapped at the daughter. Thankfully the dog did not actually bite her, but it was a huge escalation from the dog.

There were other factors here as well, of course, but generally advice and techniques that would have improved the situation were ignored while behaviors that made the situation escalate were continued. The point is, we can give people all of the advice and instruction and tools in the world, but sometimes they choose to do things in a way that causes further harm regardless. This may be one of those situations where there's a professional trying to help and that help is not being applied.