In a Reddit post shared to r/AmITheAsshole (AITA), Reddit user u/SchemeLong4640 asked their fellow Redditors whether or not she was in the wrong for some comments made to her father.
“I am a wildlife biologist. I have a master’s degree in Wildlife Conservation and am hoping to go for my doctorate soon,” she said.
“I have worked in this field since I was 16, and am very passionate about it,” she added. So, when she met up with her family for Easter, her mother asked her to explain a little bit about her job to everyone else.
Then, the issues came up
Despite being “excited” to talk about her work, the poster soon ran into an issue.
“My father would respond to almost everything I said with ‘hmm, I don’t know about that…’ she said. “At first, I tried to ignore it, but it just. Didn’t. Stop.”
Her first response was to joke the comments away, but she says that when she light-heartedly pointed out she had two degrees in the subject, her father accused her of being disrespectful.
“I responded, ‘I’m sorry, but it’s disrespectful of you to insinuate that you know more than I do about my field,’ she said.
In fact, the subject of her post was “AITA for telling my father ‘I do know about that’?”
The comment caused rifts
The poster said that the family dinner became tense after she asserted herself.
“I finished the meal, helped with the dishes, and said goodbye before leaving, but on the ride home I got a phone call from my mother asking me why I felt the need to aggravate my father and why I had to ‘talk back,’” she shared.
“I am a 28-year-old professional, this feels insane to me. AITA?”
People had thoughts in the comments
“Your dad is obviously uncomfortable with the idea of you being an authority, does he have any post-grad education?” one site user asked.
“Your dad sounds rude but your mum was 100% wrong with the phone call. SHE instigated a conversation about it specifically because it’s what you have studied, you weren’t ‘aggravating’ your father, he was insulting you,” advised another commenter.
“You (or your parents or your grant committee) paid a freaking fortune for you to become an expert in a field. You’ve worked hard and you’re accomplishing something. Your parents should be proud of you. You should be proud of yourself,” yet another commenter opined.
What do you think?