I Refused to Mother My Adult Sibling— I’m Not Here to Change His Pampers

Childhood resentment, gendered chores, and one brother who turned her spotless home into a rotting landfill, this is no ordinary sibling fight. She drew the line with locks, trash, and tough love. But did this woman go too far, or is it the only way to break the cycle? Read the full story.

An angry and desperate woman turned to Reddit seeking for advice about her explosive sibling conflict.

The OP shared, “My brothers are all pigs. We had a very traditional house where girls cleaned and washed dishes from the time we were old enough to walk and stand on chairs, and my brothers never did anything and as adults cannot even turn a washer on.

I’m very much resenting how I felt like I had to raise my own father and how holidays and weekends were always spent with my brothers and dads laying around and us cleaning. Even Christmas they got to play with their toys and we went in the kitchen. I do not care about excuses like ‘I was never taught’, we are all adults now and they can YouTube and Google whatever they do not know. ”

OP’s brother moved in with her, and then a nightmare began.

The woman shared, “I learned how to patch walls, change tires, change oil, etc. All the gendered stuff I was never taught so I do not see why he can’t as well. My brother got put out by his girlfriend after they just had their first kid because he does not help with anything.

Since staying with me, I have forced him to do stuff. When he first moved in my house went from my tidy, clean utopia to a disgusting mess. He would spit sunflower seeds on the flood, hide his food and dirty dishes around the house, spit chewed gum behind the coffee machine feet from the trash can, hide snack food everywhere, leave his dirty clothes everywhere even on the living room floor, etc.

Even when he ordered food for himself, he would eat at the table then leave it for me to put away for him. Anytime he took anything out of the fridge he would leave it on the table and would often leave the fridge open. I am not joking, I found maggots 3 times from his mess.”

The woman had had enough, but her brother wouldn’t accept any ultimatums.

The OP shared, “I lost it and told him to change his behavior totally or get out. Well, he started doing stuff but as badly as he could. He would put bowls in the dish washer so they would be filled with nasty water, mop with the same water for days on end leaving it smelling of rot, do his laundry by putting it in the washer and leaving it for me to finish, put food away by throwing it all over the fridge spilling food everywhere. The best was when he put the syrup away upside down on the top shelf with no lid on coating my entire fridge in syrup that took hours to clean, etc. Then he would say “I am trying you are just being a witch”.

The OP had to take extreme measures to save her life from her arrogant sibling.

The OP shared, “I lost my temper, and I know I couldn’t leave him on the street, so I divided the house. The cabinet doors all have locks from the previous owners, so I got him from dishes from goodwill and forbad him from using any of my dishes so he is eating off his filthy dishes.

I made it very clear that anything left on the floors (clothing, etc) gets a one-day grace period then it will be thrown away. Same with the few dishes he has as he would leave them in the sink until they started to grow mold. I started locking my bathroom door and he has to use the one in the basement which I refuse to clean. If his clothes are in the washer for more than 8 hours and I need to use it, I dump them wet on his bed.

Any trash he leaves laying around goes on his bed. If he orders food and gets up and leaves his leftovers, I leave them to rot, then they get thrown away (though twice he has left food out overnight and came out and started angry eating it whilst glaring at me. Both times he got food sickness). He destroyed my fridge again putting juice in upside down with the lid barely on once again destroying my food, so I mopped it up with towels and dumped the towels and all my ruined food on his bed then put a lock on the fridge.”

The woman is heavily blamed for how she acted with her brother.

The woman said, "He hates me and says I am terrorizing him. I say I was forced to mother him as a child but was never given the parental control to actually teach him how life works.

And since my brothers used my childhood to treat me like a maid, I will no longer parent them. My view is, some lessons have to be learned painfully. I will not gentle parent a grown man who cannot close a fridge door. Am I wrong here?

People of Reddit made a real storm in the comments section

• One user wrote, “Get him out. Why is he even living with you?”
• Another person commented, “Your brother’s real problem is that he is not sufficiently terrorized. Kick him out into the street. With any luck, that will cause him some real terror. If it doesn’t, oh well. At least he’s out of your house. And keep him out.”
• One more person wrote, “He’d have been out of my house right then, if he wasn’t already! OP, you don’t deserve the treatment he’s given you (or that the rest of the males in your family have), and he doesn’t deserve to live under your roof. If you don’t want him to be homeless, put a refrigerator box in your backyard, change the locks, and tell him he’s moving to Frigidaire Estates, and if he takes care of his new home, you’ll upgrade him to the model with the optional waxed paper skylight. Seriously, he’s not your problem. Kick him to the curb. Literally!”
• Another user said, “Change your locks. Put up cameras if you can afford to, because there very well could be retaliation. You grew up in this, so take it from an outside perspective, this is so much worse than it looks to you. As bad as it seems, it’s worse.”

And here’s another family drama from Reddit that provoked a fiery debate in the comments. One dad-to-be turned to Reddit to share a story of a family scandal between him and his pregnant wife. He can’t wait for his baby daughter to be born, but his wife’s quirk turns a happy anticipation into a total nightmare.