AIBU - motherhood has ruined men for me

I fear you might be right.

Oh my lord. That wins.

My DH said he’d cleaned the kitchen and I went to find dirty pans in the sink, stuff left out on the sides and table. He meant he’d wiped the surfaces. He is improving though to give him his dues.

Reading the whole thread it always comes down to one thing: men show no forward thinking and initiative unless they can look good in front of an audience. Can be observed at home and in the workplace.

An old saying springs to mind, Behind every man stands an exceptional woman,
Never a truer word said!

I agree... but we allow them to become crap. Most of them could do all the stuff we do, but they never learn early enough and then it just becomes easier to let mummy do it! I think we need to train them in early marriage/ partnership- you CAN settle the baby, you can do the supermarket shop. But we allow them to become crap and then it's just easier to do those jobs ourselves.
It helps if you have a hands on husband to begin with. Even then they need training and practice!!!

I don't agree with you at all, my son has 3 children

^

Here we go. NAMALT

Yes. We don’t have children but still identify with how utterly useless DH pretends to be around the house. I do literally everything but if I complain he says ‘oh you don’t need to do that, I’ll do it’ but then he does an absolutely shit job so I just have to redo it all. We had an argument about this the other day when I pointed out he hadn’t once changed the bedding in our 18 years together. He said, just ask and I’ll do it. But he couldn’t understand my point was why does it have to me who thinks to do these things. Why is it my job to ask? If I didn’t ask and I didn’t do it these things would literally never get done. I also clean the whole house but there is one room where he has all his stuff for his hobby and I generally just leave that. Occasionally I will go in and the filth and the mess is unreal. Literal rubbish, bin over flowing, clothes everywhere. I actually cried in frustration over this last week as we have people coming to stay and I know they’ll see in that room as husband likes to show off all his gadgets he has in there but I’m mortified for anyone to see in there. He says the house would be fine if I didn’t clean every week, he’d do it, but clearly the whole place would look like that room if I wasn’t keeping on top of it. It’s exhausting. Oh and I also do ALL of the ‘men’s work’ too like DIY (painting, laying floors, fixing things, cutting the grass, looking after the cars)

This is a good point. Having sole responsibility for a child does force a parent to think differently and comprehensively about what’s needed to look after them.

He absolutely does everything, I was on the phone to him the other day, he was the one in the garden with them, we exchange pictures of meals we make as he likes to get ideas for something different. The DIL doesn't work, she just sits k her phone on the sofa with the TV on, even if they come here, she has watched her daughter be sick over the floor, carried on eating her dinner and my son, husband and I have cleaned it up and put her in the bath.

No, YADNBU.

Dh once told me he'd cleared out our kitchen drawer...this meant he'd removed every item and left them on the table. That was it.

Oh and he never finishes the job. There’s always a couple of pots left in the dirty dish water. A room only half cleaned. Etc. I then finish off. So he says I did X but is clueless that I did 30% of that particular job.

Are you sure? My MIL would have said similar about my DH because he talks A LOT about what he does. It’s true that in the last year he has picked up more of the mental load and takes responsibility for more of the domestic stuff. But for years he just looked like he was. I was doing lots of the behind the scenes stuff. He didn’t clean the bathroom for years but went on and on about what he was doing.

I don't agree with you at all, my son has 3 children. He works shifts, he does all the school runs if he is home, he does all the cooking, cleaning, shopping, washing, gardening. Absolutely everything. I also see other fathers heavily involved too, the only ones that I see that don't have the same involvement is where the mother is a stay at home parent.

Tell him his penis shouldn’t get in the way of him learning and a uterus and breasts aren’t neural organs in charge of certain knowledge.

It’s taken me 11 years to firstly notice that and then get it to a fair enough place.

Eve Rodesky ‘Fair Play’ helped a lot.

100% agree. I was talking to my partner about this recently and he said “I’m just so good at it naturally”, which definitely isn’t the compliment he thinks it is. I don’t have a burning desire to make baby weaning or nap routines my life, I just HAVE to. I’m still breastfeeding so have to do night feeds but he’s never done bed time or given her a bath or made her a meal other than readybrek. I’m fed up of it tbh, I’m going back to work soon so looking forward to getting a bit of my life back outside of home.

And what are the consequences of him being unable to use the washing machine, as distinct from the consequences that would arise from an inability to undertake fundamental operations in his workplace?

I’ve read this post on the wrong day because I’ve tried to juggle my full time job, then pick the kids up from school, then rush DS to swimming before coming home, making food and getting DD to Brownies.

DH is in the last week of a job he hates, yet is still working overtime rather than help me out.

Tonight I put gammon in the slow cooker, and set a timer so that DH could turn the air fryer on for potatoes. Except he didn’t listen. Didn’t know what the timer was for, and when I got home he had a strop that I hadn’t told him, even though I clearly had. He then proceeded to turn the air fryer on, and I only realised half way through that he had turned on the wrong side (because apparently he didn’t know how to turn the other side on). DD had to rush her food, and she only just got to Brownies on time, while DH took himself off to his office to ‘finish up some work’.

My DH is about to take a very very important job. Something tells me he’ll manage it fine.

Motherhood is breaking the ceiling glass of our memories and experience of the world. Women are experts in doing everything needed and Men excellent to take the credit for 🤣🤣🤣

joke aside, choose your battle, take a deep breath. Things are important to be changed. Not everything. Not at all cost. Also men are only human and probably their ceiling glass much higher and bullet proof… it doesn’t sound great but “start by educating your husband”. He will be the exemple for your children.

hug.
👌🏼

DH is very senior in his organisation but can’t seem to find the washing machine or stack the drainer properly.

He has just graduated to dropping his own shirts at the dry cleaners, so progress 😂🤣😂🤣

I think my maternity leave was what did it for us. Whilst I wasn't working I was very happy to do all the domestic, mental load and child tasks. Only since I went back to work, he's got out of the habit of taking any responsibility, for anything. It's been a tough one to crack.

I agree with your post, especially this bit, ‘I honestly think that dad's are just not mums TBH.’

My children’s dad has always been hands on, always been involved in all things related to the children but some things come to me way more naturally than it does for him.

The craziest thing is, he isn’t even a lazy/shit dad and I still get fed up with the ways in which he handles this thing called life. He just isn’t a mum and that’s that

But they arrange wars very badly, on the whole . What’s that saying ‘No plan survives first contact with the enemy’ ? It’s repeated endlessly, proudly, by generals and War ministers. They don’t seem to think for a minute ‘So does that mean we are BAD PLANNERS? ‘. Nope, that’s just how war is…..

That would need a level of self-doubt that most men seem to lack. Even when incompetent they always seem to be filled with self-satisfaction and rarely afflicted by crises of confidence.

I don't believe for a second that anyone who's actually pressure washed a large area would say it's easier than hoovering

My house needs hoovering every single day (dogs).
My patio is pressure washed once per year.

Was it physically more challenging for me to get the Kärcher out, connect it and pressure wash everything, as opposed to grabbing the Dyson? A little. But pressure washing once per year is not equivalent to hoovering daily.