Husband and father of children (10y and 8m) continuously wants to ask our 10yo to watch our 8m old while we have sex. Child would NOT be told what we are doing of course, but I think this is totally awful and there’s no way I’d ever feel comfortable with this. I feel gross just thinking about it. He says it’s because of my past trauma as an only child in a very shitty home that I react to the idea the way I do, and it’s totally normal for healthy, loving families. He is the middle child of 5 and remembers all his life the older children were in charge of watching the younger children while their parents did their thing behind closed doors. I think THAT’S bizarre. He said the kids always thought it was “gross” as you never want to think about your parents having sex, but they ultimately didn’t think anything of it.

So tell us, Reddit, what is normal here?

Update: Thanks everyone for the comments. We’ve both read them all and husband has come around and now sees this is not as normal as he thought it was, and agrees that we should not be putting that kind of responsibility on our 10yo. Things are strained (tale as old as time) but we can at least add this idea to the list of non-solutions once and for all.