Please don't give my husband more paternity leave.

I couldn’t cope without my clothes being ironed and I wouldn’t ever give my kids non ironed clothes, perhaps there’s something wrong with me.

everything except pants are ironed including bedding.

But I have a cleaner who does it because I have a disability. She spends 2 hrs a week ironing then hangs it all up, it’s such a treat.

Well, yes.

and suits (and most other things that absolutely need to be ironed) are done at the cleaner’s…

We do own an ironing board and a small steamer. The ironing board is used a few times a year and the steamer is usually reserved for travelling.

I would have liked my husband to have more paternity leave.

We used Shared Parental Leave and on a practical level, like pp, one of the main benefits I have found is that we share the load completely when it comes to parenting and running the house. We don't "look" equal, we are.
On an emotional level, it took a long time and many rounds of IVF to have our babies and it broke our hearts that he had such a tiny amount of time off with them at the beginning. I would not be so flippant about the importance of fathers bonding with their children.

Poor you. How did that work out?

Well depends how use useless your own husband is. Shared maternity leave should mean exactly that, the father taking care of the child not just getting in the way. If there’s an equal split of division then yes very beneficial to the mother but if the father is fucking around not doing anything then I would probably be questioning why I ever had kids with this idiot man child.

I don't buy anything that needs ironing.

Imagine wanting other families to have less access to paid time after having a baby because you married someone so utterly shit.

I wear a lot of linen clothes....I iron them. I don't find it a chore....each to their own.

Ignoring the ridiculous article and focusing on the more, up ‘pressing’ matter… I iron everything except gym clothes made out of Lycra/dryfit, etc. I cannot stand unironed clothes. I don’t like seeing them crumpled in my drawers, hanging on hangers, or on my body in the mirror. I don’t like looking at DH in an unironed top.

I don’t care what anyone else does with their laundry though.

I don't have a dryer, so they either come off the washing line straight and can be hung in the wardrobe straight, or I hang them up for the creases to drop out.

I have a couple of dresses that need ironing but I rarely wear them because of this. My partner irons his shirts for work.

Anyway, back to the article. I wouldn't want Tilly's husband around either as he sounds like a massive twat, but more fool her for having a baby with him.

The reason we found it beneficial to split maternity leave (I had 9 months then he had 3) was that it broke the "mum as default parent" trope - I wasn't his boss in a childcare heirarchy. He was making the decisions and doing all the mental load. It made it easier to then resettle into an actually 50:50 balance once he returned to work. Obviously the equality we have now isn't solely due to that decision 15 years ago, but I think it set us on the right path.

I sort of agree. For me the first 6 months was learning to be a mother, learning a new rhythm after years of working, making friends and connections - some that stayed with me for years, having new mums over etc etc etc. I didnneed a husband in the mix. We both found that first year quite stressful. The house was tiny so there was no getting away from each other to reset etc.

When my husband started working full time from home about 5 years later, we had another period of adjustment while we both got used to it and the difference of him being home all day every day.

To have done both together wouldn't have worked for us.

However, better family benefits when the kids were a bit older would be welcomed - so its easier for him to be able to take time to go into school/nursery for the nativity, parents sessions, to see a sports match or a choir event....without having to use days leave and then leave us short in the school holidays.

My husband isn't useless. But I didn't need him those first 6 months. Baby 2 and 3 slotted into our life and rhythm. Having him home then would have disrupted all our routines. Any child of mine that found pre-school a bit tough would find going even tougher if Daddy was at home.

6 months paternity to follow mums maternity - yes yes yes.

Not the point of the article I know but I was offended by the pile of ironing comment in the OP 😅: I do agree with this PP about not ironing everything. I try to keep it to an absolute minimum, using a dry cleaner for DH’s big shirts and just have a few bits to do each week, exactly like shirt dresses or linen stuff this time of year. In my experience though, people I know who brag they never iron - and say they only buy stuff that don’t need ironing - often wear extremely creased clothes and so do their kids actually. I like not wearing creased clothes so I don’t mind ironing a bit but more power to you all who don’t give a shit. Genuinely. 😂

As for the paternity, DH got 12 weeks which was amazing but he’s very hands on. The longer the better, I say. It helps with not establishing or reinforcing this kind of relationship where the baby is only really settled by their mother, who also happens to be the one who deals with the domestic side of things. The only ‘advantage’ I had with settling our DC was with breastfeeding but there was no excuse otherwise. We decided to bottle feed alongside it from early so my DH did his fair share with feeds.

My partner irons his shirts on the rare occasion he needs one (usually for a choir concert). Most of my dresses don't need to be ironed but if they ever do (extremely rare!) it will be for an occasion that also requires an ironed shirt so my partner will iron both. I'm definitely not ironing anything only to hang it in the wardrobe for another 15 months!

Her husband is clearly useless.
BUT do women want men to have more maternity leave? Is it a priority for us really? Personally I’d rather have better paid maternity leave, longer maternity leave options, more childcare funding, complete reform of the CMS. I think there’s many other things that could be improved around young families before this.

I wonder if giving dads more maternity leave is really about trying to look like they’re supporting women but actually it’s probably not that helpful for many women and obviously zero help for the ones who are doing it alone. Is it to attempt to support marriage? Bond men and their kids to reduce family conflict? Make it look like men and women have equality from the start of life? Again how much is that really a benefit for women.

I don't generally buy clothes made of fabrics that look crumpled when unironed. Thin cotton shirts do look terrible without ironing but life is too short - there's loads of fabric types out there that look fine without ironing.

I do own an iron. 90% of its use is for iron-on nametags and craft projects. It has an occasional few minutes use on cloth as I do have one item of clothing (that I only wear very occasionally because it's too much faff) that looks better after ironing.

DH chooses to wear unironed shirts when he needs to wear a shirt. His choice, and he's in charge of all laundry in the house (he hates it when I put a batch on as he plans for when there will be room for the next batch on the airers and if I do anything it messes up his system) so he hangs the shirts on hangers when damp so they don't look too bad. He does 50% of the housework overall because he's not a misogynistic arsehole. He took 3 months of paternity leave when I went back to work and it was hugely beneficial to both him and to DC.

I really wish women would stop having sex with misogynistic arseholes. The laws of evolution ought to have made them extinct by now, but somehow women keep choosing to procreate with them.

It reads like satire, either that or ai feel truely sorry for her, her husband sounds like an awful mysogynist arse. Makes my DH who can be a mysogynist arse at times (according to my standards) sound like a saint.

Poor Tilly, ahe needs to get out of there asap. The answer is not less paternity leave for her DH, its to leave this dispicable man.

I got rid of my iron and ironing board during the first lockdown. Just suddenly thought, I don't want to be ironing anymore and haven't since then! My husband mostly wears T-shirts and they dry hung up, so don't crease. Everything else doesn't seem to crease that much and is dried in a way that it won't.
I'm very happy I made that decision - life is too short to iron!

This. Plus over time you learn to spot clothes that will need ironing and don't buy them.

Yep. Get them out while they’re still warm and it’s no problem.

He granted me six weeks of celibacy leave…

“A man on paternity leave should be a good guest” noticed she didn’t say father. Both sound vile. What a pity for the child

I love ironing 😀
But dh does all the cleaning and hoovering. And works full time.

Tilly has outed her DH as a lazy CF. If he was a lazy CF before the children came along then maybe she should not have had them. Or married him. He sounds awful.

Life is too short for ironing everything!

Just hang your clothes up - only iron shirts or something that wrinkles in the wash like linen.