Basic Trope: A marital relationship in which the wife takes care of her husband as though he were a child.
- Straight: Alice makes peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, with the crusts cut off, for her two school-age children and her husband Bob to take to school and work.
- Exaggerated:
- Alice waits on Bob hand and foot, and the only difference between her relationship with her children and her relationship with Bob is that the latter involves occasional sex.
- Downplayed: Alice and Bob can both be immature, but she is usually the one willing to step up and get serious when needed.
- Justified:
- Alice wants to make Bob happy.
- Bob is sick or injured, or even disabled, and Alice needs to take care of him
- Bob is a Bumbling Dad, and Alice is Closer to Earth
- Making Bob dependent and obedient to her is Alice's way of dominating the household.
- Bob's brilliant, but an Absent-Minded Professor. Without Alice, he might make peanut butter and jelly sandwhiches without remembering to use peanut butter and jelly.
- Bob is a Manchild, but Alice loves him regardless, so she doesn't mind.
- Inverted:
- Despite being a grown woman, Alice acts like a moody hormonal teenager who expects Bob to drop everything for her on a whim.
- Alice treats her young children more like adult members of the family.
- Subverted:
- Alice, sick and tired of this status-quo, adds poison (or maybe just Blazing Inferno Hellfire Sauce) to the sandwich in hopes of getting rid of Bob or making him want to get off the couch and make his own damned sandwich.
- Claire discovers Alice and Bob's ageplay relationship and assumes they are like this all of the time, but Alice assures Claire that Bob is quite mature outside of the bedroom.
- Alice seems like the mature one in the relationship, until Bob antics push her over the edge and she throws a tantrum like a bratty girl.
- Double Subverted: Bob decides he doesn't want this kind of sandwich and whines until Alice makes a new one for him.
- Parodied:
- Alice gets up to tend to her crying baby, and then hears Bob crying in the living room because he dropped the remote.
- Alice asks Bob to take out the trash, and he pouts and stomps and says "No!" like a 2-year-old, complete with eventual tantrum.
- Alice wakes up from a good night's rest, seeing her baby right beside her...wrapped in Bob's pajamas. Her eyes widen in shock:Alice: Oh my god, I put the wrong kid in the crib.
- Zig Zagged:
- Bob acts childish but when it counts, he acts quite mature. The second he can though, he reverts back to acting like a manchild.
- Bob and Alice intermittently parent each other.
- Averted: Alice and Bob are equally responsible (or irresponsible) around the house.
- Enforced: Closer to Earth.
- Lampshaded: Alice readily admits that she feels like Bob is one of her children.
- Invoked:
- Alice marries Bob, who is blatantly a Manchild.
- Bob's parents get him married, knowing that it would be only way to get him out of the house.
- Exploited: Alice knows that Bob acts childish and will expect her to mother him. Alice deliberately does a poor job so it forces Bob to grow up and help.
- Defied:
- Alice breaks up with Bob during the dating stage (or divorces him) when she sees that he is just too childish to qualify as a good husband, and that a) he isn't likely to change anytime soon and b) she sure as hell can't change him.
- Bob breaks the relationship off because he feels like he's being treated like a child and hates that Alice patronizes him and doesn't trust him like any other adult.
- Discussed: "Did Alice make Bob's lunch today?"
- Conversed: "What is she, his mother?!"
- Deconstructed: Alice becomes stressed, and Bob and the kids might see (or never stop believing) that women are just household servants.
- Reconstructed: Alice and Bob both pull their weight around the house. Alice learns to say no sometimes, and Bob takes responsibility. The relationship is running smoother, and Alice doesn't feel resentful or "used" or stressed, or taken advantage of. And Bob has a sense of purpose and more self-respect.
- Played For Laughs: Bob is a Bumbling Dad with a Closer to Earth wife.
- Played For Drama:
- Bob is a Henpecked Husband; by keeping him dependent on and obedient to her, Alice asserts her dominance over him. This may also involve Double Standard: Abuse, Female on Male.
- It's a Secret Test of Character from Bob.
- Alice is in an unhappy marriage/relationship with a Manchild.
- Alice and Bob are both rather immature, with Bob as the needy child and Alice as the selfish neglectful parent figure.
- A car crash took away most of Bob's mental faculty and Alice is pained by how little of the Bob she married is left, but she is too oath bound to violate "till death do us part".
- A December–December Romance or Grow Old with Me story about Bob, who suffers from dementia reverting to childlike behaviors, and his wife, Alice, has to be his daily caregiver despite her several health issues.
- Untwisted: Bob repeatedly mentions being spanked by his wife, which is slowly revealed to not be part of a kinky game but he is actually afraid of being punished like a child.
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