AIBU to wonder why women still accept unequal relationships?

@Dontlletmedownbruce Hard disagree.
My husband is Priority 1 for school for our little girl - if she's sick or they need to make contact I expect the office to call him first. In my line of work I cannot answer my phone nor leave quickly whereas my husband can do both of those things in his.
I'm not falling into the misogynistic trap of "Mother as Default Parent" that so many other women seem to just accept.

You literally said ‘why are women so incredibly weak’

Why would she be asking why men act this way when her question is why do women act this way?

She's clearly asking why women behave the way women do. It obviously upset you that she pointed out many are raising misogynists and lazy arseholes, and certainly it would have been better to say "and obviously men are just as much to blame for their poor parenting and poor outcomes for children" - but she is focused, right now on why women do what women do.

It's not hard to accept, she's allowed to focus on any topic she wants, and you are being unpleasant and pedantic and there is simply no need.

What’s funny OP is you are part of the problem you are allegedly complaining about.

wanted to add - have you considered that all the women before you in your genetics have all likely experienced inequality, and their life efforts have all accumulated in you existing.

Hundreds of women have gone before you, each of them having a baby and caring for that baby allowing the next one to be born.
You’re the end one in that line.

if be so disappointed if in 200 years time or whatever, I knew a future woman of my dna had this narrow minded perspective 🫠

You can try to be condescending but your words speak for themselves. You have consistently blamed women for who men choose to be: either because a woman raised him or a woman dates him. Yet nowhere have you asked why men act this way. Don’t pretend that you just asked why women accept it. You also blamed mothers for raising men to be this way.

When you acknowledge the accountability of fathers and men in relationships maybe I will believe you are anything more than a goady misogynist.

You should question where your misogyny comes from? Maybe you were raised with the belief that women are responsible for what men do?

I suppose a lot of it is being raised to do so, and much of it must be natural temperament. Women generally seem weaker in temperament, which means willing to put up with absolute shit much more readily, and more desperate to please than men, partially through fear, partially maybe genetics.

I was always a stroppy cow, thank God.

I can make allowances for being a weakling who tolerates the intolerable in younger women who perhaps haven't seen women who do better up close.

For many, it's like being a fish swimming in a filthy aquarium - how can you imagine what a clean tank of water is if you've never experienced it?

But I have no patience left for women over 30 who are cringing doormats and apologists for their shitty Nigels.

Do better, or stop whining and just put up with it.

There are also plenty of seemingly smart women who end up quite happy to jack in good jobs, studies and skills to pander to their families’ whims while the men get to further themselves.
Then squark that it isn’t fair later.

Women aren’t weak. Clearly they have kept the human population going for centuries DESPITE being treated like shit mostly by men. Who do you think are having the next lot of people??? It’s the women on this thread and all over the world who are juggling a thousand plates and carrying the mental load. They do it because they have babies. And they are more important than most other things.

So come on now. You are so ignorant and clearly have very little actual life experience! I find it hard to believe you are a woman / or have ever had a relationship because I think the answers to your question are blatantly obvious to almost all women. You definitely don’t have kids… when you do it will be an absolute eye opener for you!

I don’t seem really angry at all. I just think you are part of the problem, you clearly blamed women in your OP asking why they are raising the next generation of men to treat women badly… and yet you just deny that’s blaming women. You can’t seem to see your own misogyny.

Men often fall into patterns of laziness and selfish behaviour once their kids are born, at which point it becomes a lot harder to walk away for women, both from a financial and practical POV.

Coincidentally, it also becomes a lot easier to leverage a woman's guilt against them by forcing then to either do more themselves or allow their children to suffer, leaving women to take on the mental load as well as a lot of physical and practical work, which makes it harder to leave because they don't have the capacity to plan and execute a split, and, again, dont want their children to suffer a divorce/don't want to give up time with their kids/don't trust their husband to provide for them on a practical or emotional level if they are no longer in a relationship.

I would suggest that most women with children would more readily accept a less than equitable split of work/responsibility over a divorce or rather sake of their children, and men know it, so the pattern continues.

Yeah my husband does more of the ‘housewife’ stuff, washing, cooking etc…I manage all of the finances and everything admin related, Christmas and holiday shopping etc.

I think @Tinnybinnylinny that you have a biased view here because it is the unhappy people who start threads about their terrible husbands. We don't start threads saying isn’t my husband great, he does his share (or more) because that’s not in people’s nature. Plus these threads would be met with a slow clap by people who tell you that you shouldn’t be patting men on the head for doing their share, they should just be doing it.

Close to my heart at the moment. DS1'S dad is bad news. Bad, bad, bad fucking news. I met up with another of his ex victims today, and she said he was truly nonplussed that at his first attempt at discarding I grabbed our newborn and all our stuff and hightailed it out of there, and blocked him for evermore. We think he was waiting for me to beg and plead and fawn like all the others.

People on MN don't like you saying that autism is a superpower, but dear God sometimes it really really really fucking is. Because once you've seen through someone, fuck social norms, that person is out of your life.

When it comes to unequal partnerships re kids I think biology has a lot to do with it. Women have a stronger instinct from birth. Then have maternity leave so by the time they return to work they are much more equipped to deal with the child and household etc. Many women are controlling about their new babies and don't 'let' Dh do certain things, others are happy to accept help but are critical and don't allow for mistakes to be made, although most new mothers make stupid mistakes but usually at home alone with no one to watch and criticise. Then there are the men who don't offer and the women don't think to ask, then there are the useless men who don't want to help. All these situations lead to unequal share before baby is even a toddler.

Add to this the biological fact that children want mothers more and mothers want children more. I work with kids and when a child is sick we always ring mother first unless told to ring Dad. In my experience most mothers would be upset to not be the first called or the one asked to make a decision. The children ask for mother when upset or lonely or sick. This is not a reflection on their relationship with their father but a biological thing.

I think these patterns start in early parenthood with many couples. if the woman doesn't push back it continues throughout the child's lives.

What I think is a child has two parents and who an adult chooses to be is on them. (My mother was raised in a very gendered household and did the opposite in her own household.)

And yet you chose to shift all accountability for male behaviour onto their mothers and their wives.

Did you forget what you wrote or maybe you just didn’t understand the words you used:

Yet - why are women still raising male children to treat their partners/wives like crap (not all men, and of course no one posts when it’s a happy life

So you blame

1. their mothers for how they behave (but not their fathers)
2. The wives / partners for putting up for it (but not the men for how they choose to be.)

But you aren’t blaming women for men’s behaviour. Sure.

I guess your misogyny is internalised which is why you don’t see it.

Most of it is money and/or status of being a couple

But the younger generations are learning it will reduce just slowly

I’m getting close to 50 and I’m watching the second innings of it where women are responsible for elder care in a generation where life is being prolonged with all sorts of medical interventions that never would have happened in previous decades leaving elderly people living longer but with extremely poor quality of life.

It is a crisis of our generation and it will get worse before it gets addressed.

It’s easier to accept it than be the one to make a stand.

Many people like to pretend they don’t have agency, that they are the mercy of how others treat them. It stops them having to truly take responsibility for where they are in their lives, the shit parent they chose for their children etc. They just carry on pretending that it’s all someone else’s fault.

They’ve been trained from day 1 of being born, how to “be a woman” and we’ve been taught to serve, soothe, support and sacrifice. It’s so ingrained in our culture it’s hard to see it, until you get to 50 and then you scream about it!! Arghhhhhh