To think most men wouldn’t survive a year living the life of an average woman?

Because you don’t have a SAHH. If you were married to one that would be comparable. Many couples don’t want both to be work FT, then have everything else to do on top. Many can’t afford to outsource and want some down time. Nothing that hasn’t already been said.

I never said it should be at mums expense. That's why SPL take up is so low. Its just totally unfair that men are expected to just accept they get very little time with their children even though it upsets them.

The longer a man gets on paternity leave, the better the physical and mental health of the mother. Also he got as little sleep as I did, was as anxious about baby as I was, he helped me immensely with breast feeding. He deserved that time as much as I did. I certainly didn't need a year to recover from my pregnancy and C section, after the first two months he needed just as much as I did. Men deserve equal time with their children. I will never not believe that.

We didn't drop days and we don't work part time. We both work full time, condensed hours. Four on four off 10 hour shifts so 40 hours a week. It's increasingly common for people to work shifts and do condensed hours, I only know two people that work Monday to Friday 9-5.

Exactly. I understand that I have a mortgage to pay and it's not all about what benefits me personally.

Why can’t you apply that same logic to women who have chosen to work? Everything you’ve just said applies to me.

I also don’t think it’s unfair at all that you got 1 year’s maternity leave. Your DH did not go through pregnancy, labour and childbirth. Your DH did not experience significant blood loss or have a c-section. You physically deserved plenty of time to rest and recover, it’s incomparable. It’s bad enough mothers are hurried straight back out of hospital. Also, if you wanted to breastfeed, then you would have needed longer to do that- that’s impossible for Dad. You were more needed by your baby, so absolutely deserved longer. I’m all for Dads increasing their own paternity leave alongside Mum’s, but not at the expense of Mum’s own entitlement.

Part of being a grown up is making decisions that benefit your family overall, not you as an individual. My DH is very happy- he’s in a job with far more annual leave than the norm, minimal commute and reasonable hours. Both of us did jobs previously where switching to PT is much riskier professionally- he understands he has a mortgage to pay. It doesn’t work for every couple to both drop days.

I think it's really sad that you would resent living your husband's life but you expect him to live it.

We split everything equally because my husband deserves just as much time with our daughter as I do. Except for one day a week, there is always someone home with her, but half the time it is him and not me. He deserves that as her father. I would never dream of taking all the time with her for myself and expect him to finance it. How unfair. It already felt unfair that I got a whole year to spend with her on maternity leave and he only got six weeks, I would have been devastated to leave her so young, but he had no choice. He looked heartbroken going out the door every morning. I'm not going to take even more time away from him now.

Yeah I disagree with the OP too, and also for different reasons from @ThankYouNigel or @MrsBennetsPoorNerves I think? I'd really struggle with the lives my DH and my brothers have. It looks hard. And as I and my kids get older, my life is getting easier. I don't get harassed in the street any more now I'm mid 30s, and the heavy lifting of childcare is easing a bit now my youngest is a toddler and can talk.

I think someone mentioned the child bearing years as harder for women and I agree 💯 Physically and emotionally brutal for me, and DH life changed much less (which might Be why he's more keen on a fourth kid than I am!) I think now those years are behind me, my life looks set on an easier course than his. My job is nice - I have a coffee at a desk in a nice warm office and talk to my lovely colleagues about something I care about. I don't earn very much, and live a far higher quality life than I could afford because of my DH salary.

He has a physically demanding job, can't WFH, has the pressure of being the higher earner and less time with our kids (which gets more and more enjoyable for me as they get older). The hardest parts maybe don't match the challenges of pregnancy, morning sickness, labour, and looking after very young children, but there's less easing off as well. It doesn't look like his life is going to get easier any time soon.

And that's all true for my brothers as well, and they also have other challenges to contend with because of how we grew up i think - they've both got in a lot of physical fights when they were teenagers, and I think were expected to grow up quicker, while I was sort of expected to be "looked after" by them - even though my younger brother is nearly 10 years younger than me, he definitely has this idea that he has to keep an eye out for me and help me with stuff. Like, a lot of (perceived) responsibility from a young age. My older brother has the expectation of providing for our mum financially, looking out for her, making decisions for her, plus his own family. He seems fine with all of that, but I would be overwhelmed by the pressure. (Though obviously I am expected to provides the "care" for her as I was for my brothers - cooking cleaning laundry etc )

I am conscious of some power imbalances in my marriage - money and physical strength probably the two main ones - which I'm ok with because I trust him, and he would probably hate if it was the other way round. I think it works for both of us - he's glad to be a man, and I'm glad to be a woman.

Which would we wish for our kids is maybe the question that gives you more insight though and i genuinely don't know - both have glorious advantages and huge challenges.

It's great that you are happy with your life. That is absolutely something to be celebrated. However, your life is not the life that many women would choose for themselves, and that's fine too.

My life is very different from yours, in that I have always been the higher earner and I have a fulfilling career that I love. I'm not remotely interested in housework - it is something that has to be done but not something that gives me a sense of purpose or achievement. However, DH and I share it between us so it isn't my responsibility alone. I do love being a parent and was fortunate enough to be able to work very flexibly around my dd when she was younger. She's now an adult, and we are incredibly close.

So we both disagree with the OP, but for very different reasons. You wouldn't want to swap with your DH because you prefer to spend your time looking after house/garden/children. I would hate that, but I wouldn't want to swap with my DH either, because my job is much more interesting and better paid than his, plus I'm also closer to our daughter because we are more similar. As for all the boring stuff like housework, we split it between us so that just doesn't come into the equation.

My point to the OP has always been that it’s the opposite for me- I could tolerate and survive the life of an average man for a week, but I would resent every minute of it and I would absolutely hate to swap with my DH and spend so much time away from my children, home and garden. The original post is so negative about being a woman- I have a fantastic life as a woman!

It's wild that a thread about how men couldn't possibly manage the hard life of a woman has devolved into a discussion about cataloguing and filing the scribbling of young children. 🤣

So you think your kids will care as adults. My DS is 21. After a clear out we came across all his school books from GCSE. I asked if he wanted to keep them and he told me I was mad and why would I want to keep all that kind of shite

I don’t know the answer to this.

What I do know is that it’s not possible to see or experience the ‘inner life’ of my husband or my teenage sons, what he thinks or worries about and what impact that has on him. Yes, I can categorically say that the childbearing years are obviously much much harder on women.

But overall, I honestly don’t know what invisible worries men/boys carry with them that women/girls perhaps don’t. Where does resilience come from? Why are suicide rates so high in young men? Who knows the answers!

@BlueandWhitePorcelain that sounds awful. I hope you eventually got the help you need.

If you'd like a comparison of how medical treatment is as a man, so far I've been waiting for six months for a cardiology appointment to even start treating the constant atrial fibrillation I've got. I still don't have an appointment and this could potentially kill me, or at least seriously damage my heart.

Plus I've got arthritis for which the sum total treatment I've had was a single physio appointment. The physiotherapist went noticeably pale when she heard the loud crunching sounds my knee makes and declared that there's nothing she can do. As far as I can tell I've got to wait until my knee completely disintegrates and I'm pretty much immobile before I can get it treated seriously. I can't even get prescription-only painkillers; I have to cope with paracetamol.

I've no doubt that the NHS is doing a poor job in treating women but believe me, if you're a bloke in your 50s they're not exactly rolling out the red carpet.

The fire hazard of memories is one of the best phrases I've ever heard 😂

Thank you for your concern, I can sense your kindness

I am really organised, I always have been. I do loads of gardening and DIY, so it makes sense to have boxes with paintbrushes, boxes with gardening tools, etc in the shed. Everything is useful, works, no duplicates, zero tat. Makes for efficiency- I’m often sanding and re-decorating a room during a child’s nap or couple of hours at pre-school, so time needs to be used efficiently. Tidiness helps with that. Similarly with my loft- boxes with Christmas things (see-through, so you can see), boxes with wedding memories, baby boxes, etc. I keep old letters, cards, photos and art work (of course not all of it 😂). I love physical photos and books, not looking at them on a screen. They matter to me, doesn’t harm anyone else 🤷🏻‍♀️

I was like this at school, very quickly worked out to 100% exams, etc. I don’t know any other way to be 😂 I really like to do things well wherever. I’ve always been highly praised for studying and paid work, but sadly I think doing things well in your own home is really poorly regarded nowadays. It has the most value to me.

I do actually have other hobbies, both academic and physical ones. Travel too!

This might be one of the saddest things I've read on Mumsnet. I mean that sincerely. Nothing wrong with being a SAHP, nothing wrong with doing more cleaning than other people do, nothing wrong with spending loads and loads time on things other people don't think are important, but to spend your one and only wild and precious life filing your kids art...

When I think of the chaotic splurges of creativity my kids are prone to - 15-20 paintings in an hour, plus god knows what that gets sent home from school/ nursery. The joy and value is in the moment, not in the fire hazard of memories which no one will care about but you. The odd painting, yes, but filing hoards of them...

Have you tried a different hobby? You only have so much time on earth, and you're in the fortunate position of not having to spend your time at a job you don't like. Is there really nothing that might make your soul sing more than this? (If not, it's great that you have the time to spend on this, and I'm truly happy for you. But surely you can see that it's not the sort of thing every woman would consider spending a moment of her life doing, unless it makes her soul sing too). It doesn't make you a good mother (which I'm sure you are, but not because you do this). It makes you a normal person with plenty of free time and a very eccentric hobby.

Fully. Gone.

Man I wish I was friends with Stacey’s ‘Sort Your Life Out’ team. Those are my people 🥲 I could only dream of a pantry like Dilly Carter’s- first home making project once the little ones are back at school, that’s for sure!

Yep, you've lost it.

I have a large display area in my kitchen. I don’t want to rush through this. I like to take everything down, carefully remove blu tac without tearing them and wipe down everything behind it. The work then needs naming and dating on the back (if not already) then filing in the concertina/bigger pieces go in a separate proper zipped up storage holder in the loft which DH is under very strict instructions to file. I love laying out all their new pieces and deciding which will go where, cutting them out and/or mounting as required. It is a very soothing, creative process. These are my memories of my children’s childhood, to show them as adults and GCs hopefully too.

People can laugh, but these things can be very beautiful and enjoyable 😊

Lol, only taking half an 29 minutes to hang up some pictures is not "dropping the ball"

I wonder if consultant gynaecologists/obstreticians would say to men, suffering hyperemesis gravidarum for weeks:

”It doesn’t matter if you can’t eat, so long as you can keep water down!”

Then prescribe two anti emetics, out of the four, that the man had already tried and didn’t work, instead of the first line treatment anti emetic, as recommended by the Royal College of Obstretricians and Gynaecologists - because it costs £28 for a box of 20? (Preferring instead hospital admissions for several days to acute beds at £315 plus per night, when the man is too dehydrated to pass urine?)

Not embarrassing, just highly disciplined and organised- traits which have always served me well. Fail to prepare, prepare to fail. Why that should be any different home I don’t know. I don’t think it’s cool to ‘drop the ball’ in your own home.