Parenting the Husband/Playing With

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • Basic Trope: A marital relationship in which the wife takes care of her husband as though he were a child.
  • Played Straight: Alice makes peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, with the crusts cut off, for her two school-age children and her husband Bob to take to school and work.
  • Exaggerated: Alice waits on Bob hand and foot, and the only difference between her relationship with her children and her relationship with Bob is that the latter involves occasional sex.
  • Justified: Alice wants to make Bob happy.
  • Inverted: Bob treats Alice like his daughter, except with sex.
  • Subverted: Bob pulls his weight around the house.
  • Double Subverted: But then comes down with the flu and expects Alice to drop everything and take care of him.
  • Deconstructed: May lead to (or be part of) power dynamics, or even a Secret Test of Character. Alice could become stressed, and Bob and the kids might see (or never stop believing) that women are just household servants.
  • Reconstructed: Alice and Bob both pull their weight around the house. Alice learns to say no sometimes, and Bob takes responsibility. The relationship is running smoother, and Alice doesn't feel resentful or "used" or stressed, or taken advantage of. And Bob has a sense of purpose and more self-respect.
  • Parodied: Alice gets up to tend to her crying baby, and then hears Bob crying in the living room because he dropped the remote.
    • Alice asks Bob to take out the trash, and he pouts and stomps and says "No!" like a 2-year-old, complete with eventual tantrum.
  • Lampshaded:
  • Averted: Alice and Bob are equally responsible around the house.
    • Alice and Bob are not living together. They may not even be married.
  • Enforced: Closer to Earth
  • Invoked: Alice marries Bob, who is blatantly an Adult Child.
  • Defied: Alice breaks up with Bob during the dating stage (or divorces him) when she sees that he is just too childish to qualify as a good husband, and that a) he isn't likely to change anytime soon and b) she sure as hell can't change him.
  • Discussed: "Did Alice make Bob's lunch today?"
  • Conversed: "What is she, his mother?!"
  • Played For Laughs: The typical Bumbling Dad with a Closer to Earth wife.
  • Played For Drama: Bob is a Henpecked Husband; by keeping him dependent on and obedient to her, Alice asserts her dominance over him. This may also involve Abuse Is Okay When It Is Female On Male
  • Played For Bow-Chicka-Wow-Wow: Age-play; for example, Bob wears an adult diaper and acts like a baby, and Alice cares for him, followed by sexual favors. (As always, this can be Fetish Fuel for some and Squick for others.)
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