Is it right women do more?

@Chiseltip "Men have never, and will never, be any good at housekeeping. Why are you expecting any different?"

That's a load of horseshit

I know plenty of men who brought up kids after their wives died/left, care for elderly parents, and cook and bake.

They are learned skills.

And BTW I understand why a car with turbo has to be warned up before accelerating hard and not be shut down until it's idling.😏

Do you honestly believe this shit? Do you think the differences between men and women are genetic or learned behaviour? My husband, even though he has a penis has managed to do his share of the housework and I manage to care for my own car because we are functioning adults.

This is why women are continually fucked from generation to generation because people have such low expectations of men.

Double post

lol no 🤪🤪

but you skivvy away if you want

but then I assume you're a bloke so expect women to scivvy for you

If your DH asked you to always keep the car clean, and make sure you always get the turbo up to temperature before you accelerate hard, you wouldn't do it because you genuinely wouldn't be able to see the value in it.

Stereotypes are there because they are mostly true.

Men have never, and will never, be any good at housekeeping. Why are you expecting any different?

So if you are both working work has to be split equally. It is possible you could split things that he is better at maybe. My DH is good in the garden and some things round the house, so we split according to what works for us. Be wary though of weaponised incompetence which men will some times use. In other words doing things so badly that you look round one day and find you are doing all the domestic stuff and childcare because "you are som much better at these things". I have many friends who over the years have found themselves in this position.

This with bells on ! ^

In general though so many men do one or two things and then talk about them like they’ve scrubbed the whole house while our (women’s) days off are spent actually cleaning the whole house.

I see this type of comment a lot and also read threads where women who say their partner does half/at least half are lying to themselves or are blind to how much they're really doing themselves.

There really isn't any need for anyone to spend whole days off cleaning the house. That is a choice.

I'll be honest, my standards have raised since living with my partner and, whilst my house was always clean, its now tidier too. And more organised. Because of him.

And l, on a Saturday morning, it's me sitting in bed for an extra half hour drinking tea whilst scrolling through MN and he's the one up cleaning the kitchen and mopping the floor. .

But I've also seen threads from women who've moved in with a man who has higher standards of cleanliness being told he is 'controlling' and 'abusive' for expecting high standards of cleanliness or housework (from both of them - not expectations of her to take it over, he just wants her to match him). How dare a man feel a woman isn't pulling her weight! That's a criticism we can only level at men.

Sadly I have to agree with this.

When I met my first 'D'H he was living in a student house (even though he was qualified) and it was a shit-tip. I gave him leeway for that because he lived with 3 others. 😣

When we got married he was a shift worker, so as he wasn't there a lot, I had time to do most of the domestic stuff.
I got fed up of never seeing him and me spending all the time working - either at home or in my career, so I asked him to come off shifts.

He did and nothing changed. He still wouldn't do anything about the house saying "he was tired" or as I worked shorter hours I should do it. 😡

Eventually I had an epiphany and realised I was married to a disrespectful, idle slob with entitlement issues. I also realised that it was my own fault.😞

So I put my foot down and went 'on strike' by stopping cooking, washing and cleaning. I got my meals at the hospital I worked at (my work clothes went through the laundry there).😄

He wasn't happy and complained, so I just asked him if his arms were broken !😆

He started having an affair with an employee and I divorced him.

Now they are married and she has to put up with him.😆

Years later I met a great guy that used to be in the forces and knows how to iron, clean shoes and cook. 😃

The two whole days at home are spent looking after a one year old baby.

Sounds like Learned helplessness

Get a cleaner

I have been married 20 years, when dh moved in I had a business I ran from home that created some mess so it naturally fell to me to clean up. I n ever noticed dh didn’t do much until I started working full time out the house. Then we had kids snd it was worse, I spent years ‘nagging’ doing lists, and even accepting I do more. I made sure I worked less hours to allow for this.
But eventually I managed to find a way, I divided the day to day jobs up-
me - cook mon- Thurs, dishwasher, laundry ,
dh- cook fri-sun, hoover, bins, recycling
Then I chose some of the other jobs - bathrooms, dusting, general tidying of rooms.
I dropped beds, garden, oven, windows, ironing.

i just do ‘my’ jobs I don’t tell dh to do his or comment if he hasn’t done them or done them poorly. I just leave it. And he actually started doing them regularly and properly.! He still says from time to time’we’ need to do xyz and I agree ‘we’ do and do nothing. I have time for my hobbies and I’m a lot happier.

I work less than my husband - 5 days but only a few hours a day. When we were both FT, we split it. (Actually tbf he was better than me, I’m a “pile the mess into a cupboard and forget it” gal) now I’m on reduced hours, I keep on top of the cleaning and laundry. When we moved to this model, I did notice he got lazy - had lunch, left pans out, plate on side. Coffee cups everywhere, towel and dirty laundry on floor. After a couple of conversations I just stopped cleaning up after him. If the kitchen was a tip from lunch, I’d cook something eg straight in the slow cooker/oven so I could cook through the mess. He got the picture.

Definitely do not just suck it up for a year for his business. He will never expect anything else from you again and he hardly sucks it up for you! He just says excuses and refuses to try.. so why are you being a mug? Low self esteem? Was your mum a martyr too?

• pay for a cleaner frequently as a non negotiable
• Make him aware you will not be shouldering any extra childcare or household responsibilities as he starts his business- he will still need to do nursery pickup on x y days etc or cook/provide dinner on x y days
• delegate some tasks to him to own fully like dishwasher on before bed, floor hoovered or spray mopped
• Read "fair play" book by Eva someone.. I can't remember off the top of my head
• Make sure you have a good grasp of finances as he starts his business as most men under declare income etc so if worst comes to the worst and you split in the future, he will shaft you on child maintenance

Just read all your updates @NurtureGrow
Your husband is a misogynist. It really is that simple. Look at his actions. He doesn’t clean up after himself because he doesn’t want to. It really is that simple. He won’t listen to you because he doesn’t want to. He doesn’t feel it’s worth his time, but he does feel it’s worth YOUR time. He is showing you, in real time what he thinks his worth is, and what he thinks YOUR worth is.
He is manipulating you by saying he can’t tidy because of the business.
He’s manipulating you with his weaponised incompetence.
These are not the actions of a man who respects you and values your relationship, because respect cannot be compartmentalised. If he respected you and valued the relationship, he would listen to you, and he isn’t.

At the very least, he should be cleaning up behind himself, but by the sound of it, he can’t even be bothered to do that?

And of course he is passionate about women working outside the home. Misogyny doesn’t just look one way.

I agree with this. This was an issue early on in my relationship so I said, what'll it be: do more of this or pay someone else to do it? Unsurprisingly, he chose the latter. Unsurprisingly, I find the cleaners, make sure they are paid, ensure they have materials etc.

The stupid thing is, I actually quite like cleaning but there was no way I was doing it while he went off on his bike.

Cleaners are mostly women too, so I'm not sure it really sends the right message to children.

He's been like this since you met him, you say so in your first sentence, and yet you married him and had a child with him. If you thought you could "train" him to be a more functional adult you made a mistake. People only change if they want to, he does not want to.

Being pleasant is not the same as being a good person. You say he looked after the baby for the whole day when you were ill as if looking after his own child was an act of generosity. This suggests he does "see" parenting as his job either or you wouldn't think it was noteworthy. I would guess he is generally lazy and selfish about everything except what interests him; the daily grunt work of keeping a household ticking over is women's work.

Putting up with it or trying to make him see are not your only options. He will not change so you need to decide if you can live like this for the rest of your life. Lots of MNetters think posters rush to advise OP's to LTB but if it's obvious someone does not want to change why would you spend the rest of your life being a man's servant? You are feeling fed up after 5 years, how do you think you will feel in another 20?

My DH cleans like a teenage, you know - just enough to say he's done a task. For example, he will clean the kitchen by loading the dishwasher but he will forget to wipe and sweep and the saucepan will be left soaking. So I'll end up coming in and finishing off.

I used to get very upset but then I realised it was wasted energy. He was simply cleaning to a standard that he was happy with.

We do things differently now. He does tasks that I never do. He does all the laundry everyday. He does all the bins. He fixes everything. We split the cooking. A cleaner comes once a week and does the floors, surfaces, bathrooms etc. Our child tidies the sitting room every evening (her toys and straightens the cushions on the couch.) He makes the bed. He unloads the dishwasher in the morning and when I am cleaning the kitchen I'll give him a specific job.

I actually believe your husband that he doesn't see things the way you do. I've been guilty of looking at the rain not seeing the clothes on the line. DH doesn't tell me off when he springs by anymore, we just accept that we are both different.

Could you try splitting by tasks instead of areas or turns?

It's been 5 years OP and you chose to have a dc with him. He won't change, I agree with that woman why bother asking.
Either accept he won't leave the house clean and tidy for you or split up. Banging your head against a brick wall is getting you nothing but resentment

You need to approach it like this OP:

"So DH, presumably you're not a total piss taking wanker who thinks it's OK to do the bare minimum in the house you live in as a grown adult. So on that basis, you're happy to agree a cleaning rota, yeah?"

I've been with my (otherwise lovely) DH for 20 years and never stop beating that drum.
He has chores assigned to him that he MUST do. And I pass anything that is remotely within his skill set over to him to sort out. I've accepted I'll never get to escape delegation unfortunately.
That leaves me to do all of the ad hoc stuff that he is apparently blind to (dusting, hoovering, washing, cleaning out the fridge, cleaning out cupboards etc).

I've made it clear in the last few years: "You do your share, or I leave you"
(I've got a good job and we dont have kids, so he knows I can comfortably set myself up in my own place if I need to, and it's not a hollow threat).

HRFT just wanted to say we are both women in my marriage so sex doesn't play a part in it. But we are polar opposites. She would look at a room and think "this is clean and tidy", whereas I would think this is disgusting and needs a clean. Everyone has different standards depending on how you grew up, and everyone lives differently. She knows that having a nice house is important to me so she helps with the housework and tidies away after herself. But I accept that my cleaning is a little OTT and I can't expect her to develop the same kind of anxiety around it. We have a lovely home. I'm a SAHM so to me divide and conquer means "she's at work all day, so I'll do my part and look after the kids and tidy as I go". Then on a Sunday we both muck in and clean/tidy where needed to reset for Monday.
My point sorry, is that she is another woman but she is a lot like your DH. And I don't expect her to clean a room for me entering. I expect her to tidy her shit up after herself, or tidy/clean if there's an obvious mess. But to come home from a 12hr shift and then start cleaning skirting boards? I don't think that's fair x

Every day lately I read something like this on here. I just don’t know who these men think they are!
I would be embarrassed if I thought someone was running g round after me cleaning up my mess.
My dad did his bit, my ex had many faults but always cooked, shopped and cleaned. My sons do the same now. Men are regressing it seems to me.

I suspect that it is very hard to change this dynamic once it is embedded. My husband cleans (and shares everything else) but I didn’t ever intend to act like his mum so I never have done. I’d like to think he wouldn’t be a lazy, selfish arse and expect me to do everything but I’ll never 100% know.

I wouldn’t have any more children with him OP unless things do change as I’ll only get worse for you and you’ll be run ragged.

I’ve been asking my husband to help me with housework since we met almost 5 years ago.

This is the problem.

If I'd met someone like this, I wouldn't have married him.

I've been married and I now live with a partner. I've never had to train a man, ask him to help or had anything other than 50/50 contribution to running a house.