Mumsnet Talk

quick and easy test.

everyone right now ask these questions to your dh/dp
you have to factor in age ofchild and number

we're going to church. it takes 10 minutes to walk there, we have to leave at 9:30 and aim to be home by 12o'clock. the service ends at about 1/4past 11 and there's tea and biscuits afterwards.
1) how should the child/ren be dressed?
2) what do we need to take with us?

his answers:
1) vest shirt jumper trousers nappy tights
2) nappy couple of toys wipes drink food.

he got that all right. well done dh. we do do it every single week though and he never gets the bag ready!
you try it...

DH would have put child in the car with heating on and looked for spare clothes or improvised.
Why do we assume men are thick?
Dh is as competent as me. He has always been involved and hands on.
For my part I have never assumed he will do things as I do and have let him get on with it without assuming my way is right or sighing at him if he does differently to me.
I would lose a great deal of repect for him if being in charge of a small child turned him into a useless arse. It's really not a man thing. My brother was a widower with a two year old. His parenting gene kicked in just fine.

I would like to know what happened when you got to the car .

did you take the toddler off him and sort said child out with clean clothes ?

or did you point him in the direction of the spare clothes and let him get on with it ?

Not standard in my house.

If DD wet herself, it would be sorted immediately by DH.

I went away for the night on Thurs and DH noticed baby DS had a temp and didn't seem well so took him to walk in centre (after organising a baby sitter for DD) to find DS has tonsillitis.

So, no not standard for my DH.

as Pagwatch said, it's not a man thing.
It's a crap/lazy parenting thing.

How long does your DH spend with your dd usually? My DH is very similar, will shout me or even ring for (what I think are) simple things. However, I'm a SAHM and he works FT so I do lots of things automatically...pack bags, know its time for a snack/drink, wee before we leave the house etc. If he doesn't often have dd on his own, maybe he's just finding it tough to tune in to his instinct.

My DH can be pretty dippy and it's fair to say he lacks domestic initiative but he would not have stood outside a car with a pee-soaked toddler. He wouldn't have spotted the temperature, though.

This isn't really a male thing though, is it? Aren't there just as many dippy/ no initiative mothers?

The OP and a fair few sound rather domineering so the partner is probably rather brow beaten and really can't make those sort of decisions.

FGS this is ridiculous

these are presumably intelligent men who, if they had pissed themselves / spilt water down themselves, would have taken their own trousers off and got into the warm car, adn looked for something to dry themselves with?

So it's not because it didn't occur to them. It' becaue they are being lazy and leaving it all up to you because you are the woman.

A bit off track I know. ... but the country is run by men and from this site my opinion of men is at an all time low and I spend many hours wondering how different things would be if it was at least a 50/50 between men and women. When I read posts like this I despair.

Of course it isn't a male thing. I'm sure they manage to use initiative in other ways? It's because he thinks it's your job to know this stuff and not his.

I mean, surely everyone's come across people like this at work? Why haven't you sorted X out. Because it's not my job so I don't know how to do it. When in reality, anyone with half a brain cell could have worked it out, they just didn't see that they needed to!

And it's not an "inbuilt male" thing but it does seem to occur more in men, in my experience. Perhaps it's an "entitled male" thing in that case then.

Sounds like my DH, he is good if you give him a list of what to do, but he just cant think out of the box!!

He seems to have lost the ability to change nappies if he is with her and I am elsewhere in the house/garden.

Yes I am a bit bossy and domineering, it's true. I'm sahm for now, due to return to work soon, we have weekends together. We have discussed, I'm slacking off the responsibility a bit so he can pick up a bit. Agreed we've got ourselves into an unbalanced situation. Yes I spat feathers at the car and more fool me because I sorted her out while he packed baby up.

The 'logic gene' is not missing... I'm sure these men function perfectly well at work, where I'm sure the use of logic is required of them from time to time.

My dh would ring me and ask how t sort it out!
He would like spot temp

A lot of men don't get it unless it's spelt out to them - if you'd fallen off the face of the earth (instead of stying a few paces behind him) then he'd probably have figured it all out and coped admireably but you came along so he didn't have to! My dh would be like yours but I am told by a very reliable source that when I did keel over while out for a walk one day and disappear into hospital for a spell that he coped really well and knew where everything was kept in the house plus kids schedules
I'm amazed to this day as he reverted to helplessness as soon as I was vertical again

So, basically, he just can't be bothered then. Nice.

My DH is a bit like this but probably wouldn't have left her outside, he may have got her changed and put on siblings clothes wondering why they were so tight - i might add this is a very intelligent man is all other areas however I have just about had enough of the 'useless' parenting side.

There are so many of these threads at the moment, is there something in the water?

In all fairness, if you had the bag with you, he had no reason to even consider the possibility that there were clothes in the car. I certainly wouldn't have thought of that as I don't keep spare clothes in the car myself.
It seems a bit gormless that he didn't even put dd in the warm car though. Maybe next time, tell him to deal with it rather than say "I'll be back soon" which roughly translates as "I'll sort it" he was only doing what you told him

1 - ridiculous. Even if he couldn't find clothes he could have got car open & warmed up and wrapper her in his own jumper/coat/whatever he could find.

2 - meh. babies whinge. sometimes it takes parents a while to work out why. I can forgive him that one.

My DH used to do sahd one day a week for a year with dd1. Now I have been off work for 2 years since pg with dd2, and I sometimes often have to remind him when dd2 is likely to need a nappy change if he's with her and not me during the day. It's like he forgot.

Having said that, he would have improvised with the first thing (soggy toddler) and put her in the car, and he would definitely have noticed the temperature, he's very on top of those kinds of things. Down to the individual, I think.

I am trying really hard to convince my 19 year old son that no one buys this 'men can't do x. Men just don't get it. Men can't chose presents. Men can't see what housework needs doing'
shit anymore.

It appears I am convincing the wrong person.

<sigh>

That's hilarious Lafaminute!