Man goes behind his wife's back to get his 8-year-old daughter's head shaved

A man has admitted on Reddit that he took his young daughter to get her head shaved even though her mother loved their kid's hair.

The anonymous man said explained on the notorious 'Am I the A**hole' subreddit that his 8-year-old daughter, Anna, has "very thick, blonde and curly hair that my wife adores."

She loves it so much that he believes that she is 'obsessed' with it and often spends hours each day brushing and styling it and putting in different braids.

However, he adds that recently their daughter has been asking for her hair to be cut shorter as she "hated getting it brushed and every morning used to be a screaming fest between her and my wife."

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His wife would often ignore these pleas and hoped that their daughter would soon forget. This didn't happen and soon enough she started asking him if he would take her to get her haircut.

"I think Anna realized she was getting nowhere with her mom, because she started asking me to take her instead. I was reluctant to at first because I didn't know how my wife would react, but I agreed when I saw just how excited the kid was over something as simple as a haircut."

Realising that he would have to go ahead with it now, he decided to ask his daughter what haircut she would want. After flicking through a few magazines she chose "a really short clipper cut." He knew that although he was going to be in "deep s**t" that he had to go ahead with it as he couldn't tell her that she couldn't have the cut because her mother would dislike it.

"So we went ahead with the haircut, and by the end of it Anna couldn't stop smiling. She went around the salon showing it off to everyone and even asked me to take a bunch of pictures even though she normally hates having pictures taken of her. We did get one rude comment from an older woman at the salon, something along the lines of 'You can't even tell if she's a boy or a girl now', but Anna was way too excited about her hair to notice, and if she did notice she didn't care."

As you can probably guess, things didn't go down well as when they returned home his wife refused to look at their daughter and "locked herself in her room and cried then got in the car and drove off" and didn't return for a day. He adds: "I knew she wouldn't react well to the haircut but I wasn't expecting her to take it this badly. The kid's upset too and no matter how much I reassure her she still thinks she's in trouble for getting her hair cut."

Many people were actually on his side even if they did feel he had gone behind his wife's back to get the haircut.

One person said: "Not the a**hole, but crying, locking herself away, and driving off are not normal responses, even for someone who is really upset. Is something else going on with your wife?"

Another wrote: "This isn’t about Anna’s hair. It’s about her body autonomy. I’ve made a few comments elsewhere, but this situation has been sitting on my mind. What your wife has been doing and is continuing to do is sending the message to Anna that her body is not her own, and despite her own desires, she should put other people’s feeling about what she does with her body first. Is this really the message you want your daughter learning? Think about the long term implications of learning to give in to other people’s wants about her body."

A third said: "My mom never let me choose how I got my haircut, I’m now over 40 and still resent her for it. It’s just hair. Your wife is being way overdramatic."

One person did point out that he could have consulted his wife about the situation first: "Soft [you're the a**hole], but not for letting the kid have a haircut she wanted, that part is fine. For not taking the time and effort to sit down with your wife first and talk it out, try and see why she was so attached to the hair, try and get her to see that it's really the kid's call, look for a solution."

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