Today I failed as a feminist.

Back2Two, this is how women get slapped down all the time.

Discussing the division of labour is trivial.

Wanting equality and respect in your relationship is trivial.

We should all be worrying about much bigger, more important issues.

You contradict yourself by acknowledging that perhaps some roles have been internalised, but that somehow that's not a feminist issue, it's just a discussion to be had between two people. If roles are so powerful that they can be internalised by intelligent, aware people who are doing their best not to internalise them, how can that not be an issue worthy of discussion?

Millions of couples have this discussion every day. Unfortunately for many of them, the internalisation of the roles is so strong, the slapping down is so crushing and the guilt for getting upset about something everyone is telling them is so trivial is so strong, that it effectively shuts women up about this.

And the upshot is, that the love and trust and respect many women have for their partners, is corroded and damaged because of a low-lying, simmering long-term resentment which they feel guilty for having (because wanting to be equal is so trivial) and can actually long-term damage a relationship.

And that is really, really sad. Because a lot of decent men who aren't aware of their privilege, find out far too late, that all those trivial little things that they deemed not worth discussing, have led to that gulf which means that when the children grow up, the couple find the friendship they once had, isn't there. They hadn't noticed, because the bustle of everyday life covers it.

The happiest couples I know, are the ones where the parties are real friends. You can't keep a friendship long term, if your friend is either exploiting you or you are exploiting them.

This isn't just a feminist issue, it's a real relationship one. Because it's deemed as too trivial to discuss, I'd hazard a guess that it probably causes as much trouble to relationships, as money or sex.

Luckily it looks as though the OP is married to a decent cove who wants to sort this out. So he doesn't think it's trivial either.

I agree. It's good you noticed. Don't beat yourself up about it.

I think this pattern happens a lot. The one who is pregnant and BF reads more baby books, takes charge of weaning etc... Weeks turn to months, and before you know it you are the only one who knows what LO likes to eat, how to meal plan for family. It becomes something you have to delegate to DH, where before you were equally domestically skilled.

I do think it is important.

One piece of practical advice; to do this stuff equally you really do have to give up control. e.g. My DSs eat more whiite bread and sugary cereal than they would if I did all the shopping (or so I like to think )

LOL Youngblowfish, don't beat yourself up about it, it's very very easy to fall into those roles because the whole of society, the workplace and our own psyche's inexorably steer us towards them without our noticing. Some people take a decade or so to realise the trap they've fallen into and by then, the low level resentment about the loss of career and the sheer bloody exploitation of it, has corroded the love and respect. It's brilliant that you and your DH have woken up to it so early, congratulate yourself on that instead of blaming yourself for falling into the line of least resistance at a time your hormones and sleep deprivations affected your ability to analyse and resist.

Agree Basil. And recognising unequal division of household labour as an issue is very very basic feminism.

The boundaries between the personal and the political are not necessarily a feminist issue, but of course can be. And in this example, as OP sees the division of specific tasks within the whole project of parenting as gender-linked, then it is a feminist issue.

What seems to be going on here is the practical application of the theory of equal division with the actual day to day things that need to be done. Now, I have a start point that the home should not be a battleground. That's not and never is an excuse for one partner to be a doormat. It is a reminder that the aim (usually) is domestic harmony.

Patterns of behaviour are often the result of evolution not conscious decision. I am wondering if you BF, therefore making feeding your task for biological reasons, and then from that you kept the feeding role as it changed. Then, only now as DC moved so close to family food, you've realised the biological role is redundant and it's time to change. This is normal.

You say DH was shocked too. That demonstrates he made no conscious decision that any particular task was 'yours' (whether for gender reasons or any others). It just happened. Family life is like that.

Home life isn't a competition and shouldn't be a fight. It's about making every family member as happy as possible (and I don't mean that just in the fuzzy sense, it's about pursuit of aims in life too). You don't need to be constantly vigilant to every nuance, or in this case every meal. Things can jog on for ages before realisations occur - and that's fine.

What matters now , post realisation, is what happens next. As you say DH was shocked, and his early reaction was to start planning his share of cooking for the whole family, I don't see a problem here.

It's not a question of ignoring it because of not agreeing, it's a question of ignoring contributions which absolutely dismiss and invalidate the OP's right to be bothered about this issue.

FGS you're first post Back2Two, told the OP that her concern was "rubbish".

That it didn't matter, because if it did, then she'd have noticed it 10 months ago.

Way to go to outright dismiss other women's feelings and concerns when they're asking for support.

I make no apology for urging the OP to dismiss posts like that.

for you OP - postcard "couldn't be bothered" www.jackyfleming.co.uk/pages/cards03.html

" while prancing around the kitchen in my pinny" if you were indeed prancing you have failed miserably.

Of course it is a feminist issue. In fact it is very very basic feminism.

Back - what you do as a SAHP is totally different to what you expect to do if you are both working out of the home (I have done both as a single paretn and its even different when you don't have a DH).

If both of you are working and one is doing 100% of the planning, buying and cooking of childrens meals despite having no conversation, discussion about it or indeed even any special aptitude which would imply and obvious division of labour into "specialities", then in my view that is something to be addressed.

And it is a feminist issue because I'd venture to guess that's how we were raised (certainly how I was) so tends to be our default setting.

I read some research looking into male and female division of labour where the couple had children. One of the things it specifically looked at was the division of labour where both partners said they were committed to gender equality/feminism. What the researcher found was that in these couples, although both partners said they split household/childcare work equally, actually they didn't.

Just so you know you are not alone. This is what makes fighting patriarchy so hard. It gets inside us.

Well done for noticing.

Ignore the posts that say ignore it because you're not allowd to give a shit about this.

Now you've noticed, you can get cracking on changing it.

Good luck.

If your ds is 14 months, he can eat the same as you. No additional meal planning, ditch Annabel Karmel, problem solved

I know that's not really the point of your op but it does sound like you're making a lot of extra work for yourselves.