AIBU - motherhood has ruined men for me

Yes yes yes. I am now a single parent and have no desire whatsoever to get back into a relationship with a man. I look at all my female friend's partners and do not envy their relationships at all- in fact I'm glad I don't have to put up with the shit they tell me about.

They often go hand in hand.

Children that grow up in dirty and unsanitary environments and go out with dirty clothes don’t thrive.

Not as clueless as you think.

If playing dumb would get me out of mind numbing time consuming daily chores, I would absolutely do it.

Unfortunately, being in possession of a moral code and respect and regard for my partner prevents doing this.

The exploiting of a spouse into domestic drudgery cleaning up after me and my children would do absolutely nothing for me and cause me to loose respect for myself.

I care about my children. I don't care about housework

Do you think women 'care' about housework because we really love laundry or something? Housework is something that needs to be done, so us and children have clean clothes to wear, pleasant hygienic place to live, food to eat, and so on.

“lol”?

What is funny about this sort of life? It sounds like he has zero empathy or respect for you. I’m literally furious on your behalf. I’m having a hard time understanding how you can bear it, let alone be amused by it.

How does this happen? I suspect some sort of continues brainwashing or gaslighting. Or does the act of having sex with a man regularly render a woman automatically subservient.

It would be fascinating on an anthropological level if it wasn’t so disgusting and upsetting.

I’ve just been away on holiday, and came back to a clean and tidy house. All the washing had been done, folded and put away.

When the children were small I worked away from home for months at a time, and was in charge of all four children (aged 1-6). He was just as competent as I am at almost everything.

Neither of us took extended maternity/ paternity leave, and I think that makes a difference.

So if no cooking or cleaning etc was done in your household you wouldn't care, if there was no laundry done no clean clothes for anyone you wouldn't care?
If your household became dysfunctional because it wasn't maintained and your children suffered you wouldn't care?

I care about my children. I don't care about housework.

I do think quite a lot of men are actually ambivalent about having children. They just sort of go along with it

You don't care about your own children?

I am (in all modesty) a very capable person and (I would say) did my share of the drudge jobs when the children were small. But I just didn't care as much as my wife did. It was boring. She had and has much higher standards but I just don't care enough about it. It's not that I'm lazy or incompetent. I just don't care.

You need to take some responsibility here for your choices. It's kind of obvious from your husband's background that there was zero reason to think he would be a good, hands-on father. He was raised by nannies. He doesn't know what being family oriented looks like. His whole adult life has been about building a career. I have no idea why you thought any of that was going to change when children came along.

And the reason men like this continue to exist is that they still find women to marry them and have children with them, who are then raised to think this kind of father is normal and then go on to find women to marry them and have children with them to raise thinking this kind of father is normal...

I completely agree with you.

Agree, I don’t find my partner attractive anymore and it’s because I do ALL the mental load and with a SEN child and complicated rescue dog I have struggled to hold down FT jobs and run the house. And I do everything organisational, filling in endless SEN forms, attending meetings, every bill, insurances, trip, day our, holiday, food, cooking etc etc. I often have to undo his mistakes which drives in insane, however I know it’s not deliberate, he’s just absolutely useless at thinking ahead on any level and probably neurodivergent.
what I do though is make him do all the cleaning, more childcare and most bedtimes etc. He does these with good grace and it’s the only reason we are still together. I hate the way that all our lives are essentially ran by me and rely on my organisational skills and incredible ability to multi skill!

Doesn't resonate with me at all.

My husband is highly competent at work & highly competent at home, including with our kids.

This is weaponised incompetence and just not wanting to do the boring stuff!

Where'd I say that?

I think it comes down to responsibilities. It's reasonably normal human nature that if something is not our responsibility we don't spend the energy to think about it. Hence the need for project managers in large projects, it's their responsibility to make sure that every job gets done by whoever is supposed to get it done, to the standard it is supposed to get done to. Everyone knows what is supposed to get done in general terms, but if it's not their explicit responsibility they won't do it.

In families, it is fairly common for women to start out with almost all the responsibility for the babies, specially if they bf. Most aren't great at then handing specific responsibilities and letting the men get on with it. Yes they wouldn't get it perfect initially, but they'd figure it out. Instead, we expect them to do it exactly in the way that we would do it, and take over if they don't. Which perpetuates the cycle of them feeling it's not their responsibility and so not doing it.

With dh, we divided the dc 'jobs' between us. Each takes the lead in their areas, they can ask for help from the other when needed but it's clear whose responsibility each is. And the other gets out of the way and only helps when asked, and doesn't dictate how the responsible person does their jobs, unless we need a strategic change of direction with something, in which case we all sit down together, agree on a way forward and redefine responsibilities if necessary. In reality it means that each ends up responsible for the things we care more about. I buy them clothes which are not awful and sometimes persuade them to wear them, dh couldn't care less. Dh spends time on their spelling and languages, I only half heartedly engage with that, which means that he has taught them more of my mt than I have.

Yes there are things he does which he doesn't do the way I would do them, and vice versa, but our dc have survived and done fine, and we and our relationship have survived too.

So it’s the woman’s fault? Please do expand on your theory here.

It's because for the most part it's probably the woman who pushed to have X amount of children and the man just went along with it to keep the peace, so they're not overly motivated to do the "kiddie" stuff and see it as the woman's job.

So many red flags. LTB.

My DH is a good dad and after years of nagging he has gotten much much better about proactively doing washing, ironing etc without me asking. I do however bear most of the mental load.

This thread reminded me of DC5’s school trip last month. I was due to be in the office that day and leave before she was up. I therefore packed her bag the night before (DH will often do her school bag, but I couldn’t risk anything be forgotten), and made her a packed lunch and put it in the fridge. I showed DH where it was and told him what she needed to wear the next day (school uniform on top with jogging bottoms so not the norm). His response was “oh I didn’t realise she needed a packed lunch”, to which I replied “it was in the email sent by the school”, to which he replied “oh I don’t read school emails we get far too many”. He then said I’d need to remind him of all this in the morning as he’d forget.

At this point I flipped and told him he manages to hold down a senior job, so he could remember or write down my instructions now, and it wasn’t my job to tell him a second time.

Of course I ended up texting him all the instructions from the train (he regularly forgets things - coats, water bottles etc when taking the DC to school), to make doubly sure DC was not going to go hungry or wear the wrong thing.

I think it’s that a lot of men do not see the value in certain things like the content of a decent lunch box or why it matters that kids are not still in pyjamas with bean juice down the front at lunch time or that little stains on the washing up should not be there - and a thousand other little things that they simply do not value.
But it is infuriating and I agree with OP and so many other posters. Men can be a PITA.

It’s infuriating! My husband is exactly the same, he says that he can’t do certain jobs around the home (like make the children’s packed lunches, or complete an online shop) because he “doesn’t know how” and yet he can work out solutions to very complex problems at work, and is considered highly intelligent, pragmatic and proactive by his work colleagues (I know because I also work in the same sector with some of the same people).

Trainer here. It’s harder than just doing it yourself and there are sacrifices along the way. The things that get missed, forgotten, ruined etc. It’s hard to let things go wrong when you know they will but it does work. If he’s willing. I have literally had to threaten to leave. Soooo many difficujt conversations. Only it wasn’t a threat. I was done. He’s still a bit resentful and I still occasionally get ‘I do this for you’ but hopefully it will just be the norm eventually.