Feminist Pub XX - may the summer rains wash the patriarchy down the plughole

Cross post.

Thanks EBear, but I am enjoying the grungy corner of the pub. I'm picturing a nice dark real ale, a slightly grotty floor and perhaps a dog-eared copy of Dworkin lying on the windowsill ...

Hi dragons.

I know couples like this too - it's depressing.

My dad still insists - quite sincerely - that he just didn't have the skills for multitasking and being good at coping with small children that my mum has. Now he has grandchildren, amazingly, those skills have developed - but only for a limited amount of time and offset with lots of more 'fun' things.

May I pull up a chair in that dark corner near the door?

Come over into the light and talk to us.

Hi Jeanne

I know a few couples like that too. The sahd just doesn't do everything with the children that his wife would do if she was home. The dcs are fine, the house is in a reasonable state, but none of the extras get done if she doesn't do them.

That's not the way it works in our house. Dh works part time while I am ft term time, so he goes to anything he can with dd2, swapping his days off if necessary, because I generally can't take time off in term time. Dd1 is at secondary school, so her stuff tends to be in the evenings, so I go to her school stuff while dh stays at home with dd2.

I do get loads of comments about how lucky I am to have him, where nobody would ever tell a man he was lucky to have a wife who does the stuff dh does. It's normal for a woman to work pt and do loads of the childcare/school stuff, but when a man does it it's praise worthy.

Hello!

May I pull up a chair in that dark corner near the door?

Yes, I was hearing it at work, slightlyeggstained.

Surely part of becoming a parent is realising that you will have to put up with some really boring stuff over the years. You can't (shouldn't) just pick and choose the fun bits.

I have a friend who's DH has not attended one single play, assembly, presentation, he lost his job a while ago and decided they would switch roles, he'd like to be a sahd, in reality he does nothing and friend now works and does everything in the home too. I've taken their dc to birthday parties because he'd miss out if his mum was working, as dad would just refuse to take him, because they are boring, because they are full of nattering women.
On the few occasions the parties have been held in a pub he turns up then though, insisting his wife go to work, that's it's crazy for the family to lose money when he's at home. He'd buy a pint then piss off into bar leaving the dc with me, but somehow him just walking through the door was enough to make him The Best Dad Ever.

Wow. You work with some colossal dicks EBearhug. (Er, assuming you're hearing this at work that is).

In contrast, while I have heard the term "pass" from colleagues, it's been ones who appear to consider childcare equally their job (& use the term to women too "so if your DH is visiting the in-laws, does that mean you've got a pass for the night?" so it doesn't seem gendered IYSWIM?).

And the way they use work as an excuse to get out of going to school concerts or special assemblies or whatever, then laugh about how clever they've been.

The marriage thing is weird, because don't the stats say that married men tend to live longer than single men?

I hate the pass thing, too. Why not just say, "I need to check if we've got anything else planned at home"? I usually have to say that, and I live alone, so don't have anyone to coordinate with.

herring Thank you for that link. I'm going to donate.

kickass nope wasn't ill or anything at the time. I mean I'd lost a little weight as my dad had died suddenly, but nothing drastic. I think the thought process went something's like, "why have they got married out of the blue?, they've been together 13 years and have a dd, so it's not a having a child out of wedlock or living in sin because they've been doing that for years, she has no money so he can't want her for that, hmmmm, got it, she must be dying!"

INicked, why would they think that? Because he couldn't possibly just love you for yourself? That seems like an extreme assumption. (Unless you have some serious health problem, in which case my apologies for the blunder, and much sympathy)

DH and I thought about just picking a name to become our joint name, but decided to go with his as he'd already changed his name once, was born in N Ireland and was starting to look a bit dodgy security wise. I hated my last name so was happy to do that. I kind of wish we had changed to something else, but having got green cards, the process would have been a whole load harder if we'd done that.

We were hanging out the washing on Saturday afternoon and heard the church bells start up. I said to DH it must be a wedding, and he said it sounded far too happy for wedding bells. Just an instinctive response from him that marriage=misery for men. He was baffled when I pulled him up on it and said that if marriage is so awful for him he's welcome to leave. FFS, at "best" (from their point of view) men get sex on tap and a domestic servant. More likely they get a companion, someone to share raising children, to half the responsibilities of life and at least half their meals cooked for them. What's so fucking awful about that?!?!

Why is it a negative stigma for men to be married? Aside from that they're generally expected to stop shagging about (but often don't). Bizarre.

Some of dhs family thought he'd married me because I was dying!

After we married I only changed my name with hmrc/council and couldn't be arsed with filling forms with everything else. At the time, I really didn't give it any thought, it hasn't been an issue as I'm very very rarely addresses by both names, and when I am, I don't realise they are talking to me. Dds school just changed it to dhs after dd told them were married, and when the call me mrs xxxx I've ignored because I didn't realise they meant me.

After reading lots of threads here, I want my own name. It's unique and I like when people when get it wrong and say how they haven't heard it before. My surname is one (only) interesting thing about me and I actually like it. Every now and then someone will say "oh I met a xxx once, are you related?" I've talked about it with dh, and he said he doesn't mind, it's just a name, but at the hosp last week, when they called for me with my own name, he asked why they used wrong name and why hadn't I changed it? looked hurt when I gave him a "wtf I have bigger things to worry about" look. Didn't have time to address it and it got brushed aside.

Mil tried to tell me I was very lucky that dh wanted to marry me and if he was good enough to do that then the least I could do is change my name. I repeated her argument back to her just swapping him for me, and explained that he was welcome to change his name to mine. We agreed that both of us keeping our own name is probably best. I think we're both lucky to have each other, but tbh I think he's the one who benefits most from actually getting married due to our respective jobs and pensions etc.

Sharing/mutual overkill there. Oops.

Totally agree Buffy. If any man thought he was doing me a favour by marrying me rather than sharing my mutual delight at the prospect, he could FOTTFSOF.

"n a world where there are already very few incentives for men to get legally shackled,"

Well, don't get married then, I'm sure womankind will be devastated.