AITA for refusing to pay my daughter's bills because she is a stripper?

Dear Confessions,

My daughter is in university and we agreed prior to her attending that I would cover some of her expenses whilst she studied. I was recently informed by a colleague that she is now stripping at a club forty minutes from where I live. I am disgusted and disappointed by this.

I confronted her and she said she was struggling to live whilst at university and this helped her pay the bills I didn’t cover. I told her she needs to go and work at McDonald’s or something then rather than selling her body. She refused to do this and said that stripping is easy money and she earns more in a few hours than she would all day at McDonald’s.

I told her that if she chose to continue this then I would no longer be helping her with any money whilst she is at university and she is on her own. She was upset and said that I was being unfair. Her Mom agrees with her, she says that although she doesn’t approve of her choice of work, withdrawing money when I previously agreed to help is unreasonable. Am I the arsehole?

I think we need to start by exploring why you find stripping so offensive. It is always hard to accept that our children grow up and make their own decisions (especially when we don’t agree with them). However, I think we should note that as a woman, your daughter is likely sexualised by men all of the time. Men can even find a way to sexualise a woman in a McDonald’s uniform.

Your daughter is capitalising on the attention she likely receives in a range of different settings and by doing this in a club that has security, she is safer than she potentially would be leaving her night shift at McDonald’s or walking home from a party with her friends.

I think it is easy for men to underestimate the amount of attention women receive in all settings and she could be putting herself in more dangerous positions through other common forms of sex work typically done by students struggling to get by.

We wonder whether the way in which you found out had an impact on your opinion. You mentioned your colleagues telling you about your daughter dancing at a club. Could this be less about what your daughter is choosing to do with her body and more about what you think your male colleagues could be thinking?

By withdrawing all financial support when you previously agreed to provide it, you will likely not stop your daughter dancing at the club. She has already told you she doesn’t earn enough to live on. What will likely happen is you cause a rift between you two and she dances more to earn the money you aren’t providing. Or she may just tell you what you want to hear and carry on anyway.

The truth of the matter is that you need to decide whether you want to die on this hill. Will you lose your relationship with your daughter or her ability to be honest with you over this? Is it worth the cost?

As we mentioned above, there are other more dangerous forms of sex work she could be doing. It may also be the case that by withdrawing financial support, you push her to those more riskier lines of work. We have seen an increase in only fans over the past several years and whilst that is the safer of the options, depending on the degree she is doing, having her face online on sexual content could be damaging to any future career.