To give some background, my mother was a stay at home wife for the vast majority of my parents marriage. Once my sisters and I were old enough to watch each other/ourselves, she ignored us and would lay around watching TV all day or go out shoppingfor hours at a time. All housework and cooking was done by us kids.

My dad works in the trades as a tool and dye builder/mechanical worker. He wasn't around a lot when I was young because he constantly worked service. When he was home, he would work 50+ hours a week.

The issue is that my mother had a shopping addiction and blew every penny my dad made faster than he could make it. This came to a head in 2008, when my parents almost lost the house because she had racked up so much debt.

Since then, my dad made my mother get a job to help pay off the hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt she racked up. She currently works two part time jobs (a total of 23-30 hours a week) as one of 2 cleaning ladies for a church and a funeral home, dusting, washing windows, taking out the garbage and vacuuming carpets.

Before anyone asks. -No, she never took any responsibility for racking up that much debt. -As of today, they still owe $130k. -dont ask me why my dad refuses to divorce her. My sisters and I have all tried to convince him to leave.

On to the story!

I (33F) was talking to my mother (62F) about my dad (70M) retiring.

She says its not fair that he should get to retire while she still has to work. I made the argument that if he applied for his government pension (CPP) he could at least drop down to a part time job. He's getting older and doing manual labour for 44+ hours a week is hurting him.

She immediately started ranting that she knew all about manual labour and that it wasn't that bad.

I told her that while cleaning was physical work, pushing a vacuum did not count as manual labour and that she has no idea how hard my dad works as a tradesman.

She immediately got mad and yelled at me that I had no idea how hard her job is. Then stormed out of the room.

Later that day, my sister called me and chewed me out for bullying our mom and making her job out to be easy.

So AITA?

Edit. In case it makes a difference. I work as an industrial electrician and build robot lines. So I work with people who do the same job my dad does.

Edit 2. Before you come at me that cleaning is manual labour. Just keep in mind that my mother is not going into lived in homes and having to pick up after people. She is going into already clean buildings and doing spot cleaning. She also only cleans certain rooms in both buildings because they have other cleaning staff.

Also, I'm not saying that cleaning isn't physical work or doesn't require effort. I'm saying that pushing a vacuum is not the same thing as working with heavy machinery.