Single Mother Wonders if She's Wrong to Refuse Individual Sweet 16 Parties for Triplets

As the cost of living including the prices of food and rent go up without showing signs of slowing down, parents are struggling with providing beyond the basic needs for their children. In a post, uploaded on the subreddit AITA, the user Perfect_Phone9777, a single mother, talks about the drama that followed her refusal to throw her triplet's individual sweet 16 parties, and garnered more than 2,000 comments on the subreddit.

The woman mentioned that she is a single mom to three 15-year-old girls and said, "Usually for our birthdays I give them $150 each to take their friends for dinner and they go to different restaurants." However, this year, for their sweet 16, the girls wanted a "big quarry with a DJ, a venue, and a lot of invites."

"A venue would be around $500 and with all the additional things like decorations DJ invites food it would be around $1200-1400 and that's the cheapest we can do. I can afford that once but they want three individual parties which would be over $4000."

She also thought of throwing three smaller parties but then refused to choose which one her girls would get to have their party on the actual birthday, as there was no way they could throw three different parties on a single day. 

She also says that she even thought of doing the smaller parties only for her daughter to tell her that they were not ok with having no DJs and drinks at their parties. "One of them is mad they can't have their sweet 16s. I told them the budget was 1200 and they could figure out how to spend it." 

The mother then writes, "I've tried explaining to them I can't afford it but they just told me to get an extra job."

The OP then asked the community if she was wrong for refusing to spend so much on them and Reddit users mostly said how it makes no sense to spend $4000 on birthday parties if you have to think about it. 

A long comment from a user talked about how the kids "need to start learning both the value of money and consideration of people's time". The user also talks about how if somebody wants a "celebrity gala" for their birthday then they should be the "one to earn it."

Another user talked about how starting work at a young age can help a teenager going into the young adult phase of their life. "Both my sister and I started working when we were 12 (babysitting and I tutored a little girl). Our parents had split up and both were poor so even covering the basics was a struggle. Kids can learn how much things cost and the difference between necessity and extras." the comment read. 

Another user just couldn't take the fact that the kids were asking their mother to take up an extra job just to be able to afford their birthday parties. "With their attitude-especially telling you to get an extra job- they would be getting nothing more than a $25 Amazon gift card from me." she writes.

According to a Pew Research Center analysis, soaring inflation rates affect parents and at least one in four US parents say that they struggle to afford food or housing. It was also reported that many working parents feel financial stress for paying medical or health care for their children at some point. In an age like this, it's hardly a surprise that a parent may feel the stress of spending $16k on birthday parties!

For further updates, take a look at the post by Perfect_Phone9777 on Reddit.