to be fed up of crap fathers being excused from basic parenting?

Completely agree.

Increasingly I think what keeps women with these men is loss of face/loss of status.

Financial reasons are much less likely to be what keeps a woman in a bad relationship than they were 30 years ago. It’s hugely important not to become financially dependent on a man and thankfully most women realise this.

But there’s still a stigma about admitting that the man you have had children with is a feckless lazy no mark or a cheat. There are so many posts on here from people unveiling a litany of appalling behaviour and then caveating with “but he’s a great dad”.

When women admit to themselves that they have picked a wrong’un and start to find their independence its such an empowering thing.

Why do we continue to lie to ourselves about how low our standards are?

Of course I've heard of that - experienced it, too. But some people on here seem to be saying that they think men can control whether or not the sound of crying wakes them when they actually are asleep. Which is nuts.

Nope
Im absokuteky sick of this 'you should have chosen better' bollocks. Lomg relationship, married, planned kids. Ex was perfectly competent and involved in the household gruntwork until kids were toddlers, early primary age. He used to slightly more freedom amd money we had to meet ow and fuck off. Ten years later he sees them about once a month, does nothing with them when he does see tjem amd knows nothimg about their daily lives. Its absolutely NOT always obvious. Contrary to popular opinion, people DO change. Im one of many who had threads about their husbands turning into strangers overnight.

You absolutely can control how deeper sleep you let yourself go into. The odd time my kids have slept out, I have been able to fully relax, had amazing deep sleep and woken up feeling fantastic. The rest of the time I know I need to be alert to their needs (disabilities), so I doze/sleep lightly.

If someone is letting themselves get into a sleep so deep they don't hear a baby cry, it's because they have decided their child's distress is not their problem.

@HazelMember this was exactly what I was about to write.
Once men think you can’t escape from them they start the abuse. Women frequently leave when the abuse starts impacting the child.
Some men like the 1950s set up, they want to appear a good family man. They go to work, want dinner on the table when they get in, sit in the armchair watching the telly, go to the pub.
Life isn’t like that anymore. They don’t like it.

I couldn't agree more.
What is it with women who want a baby with useless deadbeats without thinking it through?

I see this time and time again in here from women who are TTC with men who clearly aren't interested in parenthood - men who prioritise drugs, alcohol or gaming over their partners. Why are these women so deluded that their sperm donors are going to miraculously going to change? Even worse are the women who already have children and want more with their useless sperm donors.

I have known several women in real life whose partners have pretty much said "well, you were the one who wanted a baby". None of their situations have ended happily.

these women need to get real.

I meant I have never been involved in removing a child in the scenario I described.

Nope nope nope.
women are not to blame for men being shit.

There are loads of things my mum didn’t teach me that I figured out for myself as an adult. Men can do the same.

The internalised misogyny is breathtaking

That can't be right though - when you're asleep, you don't "know" anything, because you're unconscious. A person can't dial the sensitivity of their own hearing up or down based on whether or not they know someone else is "on duty". It isn't a matter of "vigilance", either. When you're asleep, you're asleep, and a noise either wakes you or it doesn't. It would be interesting to know whether women generally have more sensitive hearing than men or are lighter sleepers - maybe? But it can't be a choice, for either sex.

As for saying you've never slept through your baby crying - how would you know?

So the couple went through the ins and outs of parenting and expectations before conceiving and the father went back on his word?, or the mother's thought i wanna baby and knew the father was not on board and went ahead anyway

The father having a total personality change from being a perfect human being amd father andsuddenly turning crap may explain the first born

But if a father was so crap with one why on earth keep on breeding then complain about it afterwards, using the contraception fail only works so often biit of he is rhat crap why on earth sleep with him again?

How much effort does the mother do on planning before having a child?

So were the signs there and they were ignored?

And their children go on to have children with crap fathers because they are used to it

I couldn't vote.
This thread is so depressing.
These threads are rarely, if ever, started by women who have 'walked a mile' or have the imagination to figure out how other women find themselves in these circumstances. It drips with a kind of wilful la-la-la-stupid-doormat-grow-a-backbone privilege which absolutely lacks in grace and empathy.

These dynamics don't appear over night as a rule. There's usually a slow decline involving some plausible issue which becomes baked-in to the family structure and gains non-negotiable status: paternal anxiety, paternal depression following birth of first child are common starting points, with a woman trying hard to be kind and supportive while managing far more than her fair share, because who wouldn't, in the face of their suffering spouse, right? And surely he'll rally soon, if she only manages to hold it together for a bit and not overwhelm him? Just past this next hump, this next tricky developmental stage, perhaps it'll get easier once they're sleeping through, begins nursery or start school?

This then becomes paired with a sunk cost fallacy narrative: the woman is working so hard to support her partner to become a more effective parent (usually by over-functioning to her own detriment) that it feels like all that effort, worry and exhaustion will have been wasted if they split up.

And please, who is actually able to LTB with the ease and lack of critical disruption to structure and finances, as the phrase blithely suggests? Only to face having to hand their DC over to be ineffectively or neglectfully parented by a resentful, moody, anxious or depressed man at regular intervals?

Yes, it is frustrating to watch, but I can assure you that it won't be a patch on how awful it will be to live. So give women a break. The shame and shade is not theirs, but should sit with the dusty menfolk whose weaponised incompetence and manipulation has placed the mother of their children in an unforgivable bind.

100% agree. This is what a lot of women don't ever acknowledge that men aren't fussed about kids. I don't want kids and if a bloke wanted me to have them I'd kind of think I was doing him a favour too? I'm not sure how much a partner can demand when it was them that wanted to have the kids in the first place. Ofc it's different if the man really wanted kids, but tbh I've never met one who did!

The thing is if all these ambivalent men would grow a backbone and say "no" to kids and get a vasectomy, women would hate that even more. So I think you just kind of have to accept this is how life is. If you push for more the bloke will probably get overwhelmed and leave. It's shitty but that's what a lot of men are like. Of course if you don't want to accept that you can always NOT have kids! Funny how that never seems to be an option...

At this point if mumsnet is to be believed, there are more present stepdads than there are men raising their own kids. I guess maybe because stepdads don't have to do much with the kids so it suits them.

And women choose to procreate with these men knowing how they are, some even keep
tne child after the man who equally has a right to decide says he didn’t want a kid.
only innocent one is always the child not the man or woman usually

So many women actually do enable lazy, selfish behaviour from their DCs dad and then go on to have more DC with him.

'He works very long hours' - Well yes, because he has a nanny with a fanny at home to take care of his every need.

'He doesn't see what needs doing' - That's because he doesn't do any housework.

'He can't cook but he takes the bins out once a week, and does the DIY' - Yes he can cook, he just can't be arsed to Google a very simple, healthy dish. Bins once a week? Yeah that's a fair swap for cooking every bloody meal. DIY you say? And how often does that need doing? Every day? Every week? Every month? - No, didn't think so.

'The kids only want me when they're upset' - Well of course they do, you're the one who's there all the bloody time, taking care of them.

If a single parent, of any sex, was physically unable to wake up to a child in a moment of crisis where serious harm was caused, and it was demonstrated that should that incident happen again they would most almost certainly be unable to wake up again and there was no other responsive adult in that scenario we would remove that child from said parents care.

Social worker - now adolescents but previously family safe guarding

can honestly say never actually done that -
the classic heavy sleeping male only sleeps through as he knows mum is there vigilant

I think this is unfair.

There are lots of things I could do and probably get away with - be lazier at work, ruder to people, drive unsafely, steal small items. The chances of being caught at any of these things are pretty low, and, even if caught, serious repercussions lower again.

I don't because I have a basic morality, not because I'm being 'enabled' by my company/the police/society not enforcing it!

If (some) men are only lazy and useless because their 'wimminfolk' enable it, then why aren't the women equally lazy and useless? Who is "making" them act like vaguely responsible adults?

True, I just don’t see the point of 2 people being sleep deprived and grumpy. I preferred my partner to support in different ways. However when I stopped breastfeeding my husband took over putting the kids to bed. It helped with the transition.

My exh was great around the house before we had kids. He always put his family above everything too. For some reason the kids seemed to wake up the sexist bones in him that I didn’t know existed

Right I am a man and it fucks me off the number of men who don't step up and be dads. The blokes that go to the pub rather than home after work, who play football or go to watch it and don't take the kids, the dads who don't even know when their kids birthdays are. The dads who fuck off and never give a penny. The dads driving flash cars when the kids are dressed from charity shops.
My dad had a group of tough working class men around him, they and his brothers were all grafters who lived to put food on the table and clothes on their kids backs. My dad was a greengrocer and when I started school some kids didn't like me, I realised 40 years later when my mates older brother pointed out that they would have gone hungry if my dad hadn't have given credit (or free veg to a couple of families) why.

You man up and graft, you work as a couple with your partner to give your kids everything you didn't have...or am I just old fashioned?

The signs are usually there to see during dating - how they treat family/friends, how much they help around the house, their attitude to their job etc. I don't understand why other woman are choosing have babies with these lazy men.

Yes and no. I've seen superstar men turn to incompetent jelly when presented with the reality of fatherhood

You simply can't tell

(Disclaimer: happens with women tooe, etc, but seems to happen far less frequently. They somehow 'step up')