As a society,are we not honest with the younger generation,about what being married and having children means to both sexes

[Bulldogautumn]

I keep seeing posts from men ,not understanding why their wife with multiple kids does not want sex...has no one explained to these men ,the responsibility that falls on women's shoulders when they gain a house a husband and kids .
And that the wife is touched out ,she's had enough,and sex can be an extra to do on her list ...When husband is not doing half of domestic shit .
For me personally,I after I had my kids ,and I remember it slowly dawning on me the amount of domestic chores that were now my responsibility..I had no idea of the amount of cleaning and cooking and shopping that would be my responsibility,with a family .
It totally overwhelmed me .I want to say to my daughter,don't get married,don't get a husband, don't have children..(but I don't )
For me personally,it felt like some huge conspiracy that no one told me about ,like I was sold a lie.
Maybe society needs to tell younger men ,that the sex they have in their 20 s , ,could be vastly different from sex in their 40s with house and kids .
And tell women ,just how much their life changes with all the added responsibility a family brings

We actually need to encourage women - if they want to marry - to not marry crap men, and to raise boys in a way that doesn't turn them into disgusting man-children.

My husband does at least half of the household tasks and child care stuff and I have never felt knackered/burnt out/touched out like so many women do talk about - to be honest it feels a bit alien to me - and my kids are still little 3 and 5 so I'm not looking back with rose tinted glasses - even in the newborn days, breastfeeding and through mat leave I never felt like I was doing it "all"

Men need to be less shit, and women need to stop tolerating the bare minimum

This was not my experience at all but my DH shared responsibility, he did more school drop offs in the morning than me as an example. I worked FT and did some voluntary work as well

Partner choice, efficiency level, health, number of children and economic viability all contribute. We have some control but some of it is chance.

A couple of my sisters had marriages that were bad and were doormats, they let it happen though. They complained but did nothing out it.

My entire desire was to get out of poverty as a child and young woman marriage and children were an afterthought really.

I think so too. I’m very vocal about telling my young adult daughters not to settle for anything less, so much so that neither of them are particularly interested in serious relationships, so maybe I’ve told them too much. Having said that, more of their friends (male and female) are single than in relationships.

My teenage sons both say they don't want to have children because it's "too much work"...

I think men are the source of so many women’s pain
Its this attitude that causes all the trouble. How do you expect a man to respect a woman and want to support her when that's what she thinks of men in general?

Men are not the enemy. Men don't understand women and vice versa. Do women spend as much energy trying to understand how exhausting it is to go to work, work with people you might not like, deal with an unreasonable boss, and need to accept it because all the responsibility of keeping a roof over their family is on their shoulder.

The problem is not men...or women. It's that we have become very self centred and spend all our negative energy blaming the other for all the frustration we experience rather than trying to understand why we might be frustrated in the first place and work out solutions TOGETHER.

That and as stated before, closing our eye to everything until we get what we want and then grow resentment day after day because what we git is not longer enough.

Men are no worse than women. It's not them against us but we need to learn to hear each other rather than convincing ourselves that we deserved to be heard more than they do.

@vivainsomnia

Men are not the enemy. Men don't understand women and vice versa. Do women spend as much energy trying to understand how exhausting it is to go to work, work with people you might not like, deal with an unreasonable boss, and need to accept it because all the responsibility of keeping a roof over their family is on their shoulder.

I don’t understand what point you are making here as it’s not the 1950s now, so for a lot of women you have just described their life.

Women "choosing better men" won't solve the problem. There are not enough better men to go around.

What on earth are you talking about. So many women are working full time and doing the vast majority of the home and child labour.

Meanwhile, Dave is on his arse twiddling on his fucking phone then getting pissy when his wife is too knackered for a shag.

I think things can be more shit for women regardless of having a helpful partner.

Women will always be the ones to go through pregnancy and birth and 2 years of fucked up hormones afterwards, plus likely more of an impact on work and needing to reintregrate back in.

I had gallstones after my second DC which is common after pregnancy due to hormones increasing gallstone production. So 7 months of feeling poorly before surgery, meaning more surgery after 2 c sections, having to juggle 2 little kids with recovery and more time off work.

And maternity leave and being the primary carer does set a precedent for the kids and their attachment to you. Mine are definitely clingier to me so i can absolutely identify with being touched out.

I think women know only too well the pressures of work and keeping a roof over their head - without a partner to carry any of the load. The vast majority of single parents are women, too many of whom don’t get even the minimal financial contribution to raise the children that too many men walk off and leave without a backward glance.

Men may not be the enemy, but its invariably women who get shafted when it all goes wrong.

What on earth are you talking about. So many women are working full time and doing the vast majority of the home and child labour
Then frankly the question begs as to why they continue with it. Comes back to women needing to take responsibility for their choices.

The vast majority of single parents are women, too many of whom don’t get even the minimal financial contribution to raise the children that too many men walk off and leave without a backward glance
Indeed, but an increasing number of men are going for 50/50 and cope just as well, and no, not just because they have new female partners, but because they learned to do it all just like single mothers do when they have no choice.

Crap fathers have crap mothers and partners who've left them to get away with it.

@vivainsomnia

Crap fathers have crap mothers and partners who've left them to get away with it.

What?? So you are blaming women for how a man CHOOSES to behave?

What?? So you are blaming women for how a man CHOOSES to behave?
I'm saying there isn't a men vs women, men are shit, women are amazing. Amazing women don't pick shit men.

Every woman I know who brings an equal income to the household either make sure their OH have equal responsibilities or quick them out.

Many women who stay with men they constantly moan about are those who want their man to do more at home and with the kids whilst also benefit from the reward of the finances he brings in.

No way will I be talking to my own children about what the experience of having children did to their parents' marriage at times...

I agree. Suddenly becoming the primary do-er in the home is rubbish and it’s often the slow creep that leads to such enormous resentments and feeling like theres no way out.

But there’s still the prevailing belief that babies need mum most and it’s just not true. But it requires being steadfast from baby stage about sharing.

How many are willing to share the good bits and not just the bad bits. How many want to give up some mat leave so dad is alone at home with baby while they’re at work? Or leave him to make choices about things or do things in a different way.

you can’t have it all without outsourcing or giving up some control to your partner.

Many women become good parents by learning to parent and anticipate their needs during their time at home alone. Men don’t. They parent with a peanut gallery. They often dont get to develop or trust their parent instincts because someone has an opinion or jumps in to “help”.

stop solving their problems , stop help and hovering, stop offering advice or putting out clothes or leaving instructions. They are not idiots they can figure it out. Unless you actually think your child will come to harm them bugger off and leave them do it. Not just for days out or an evening. As part of life.

Not everyone’s family life is like yours. 🤷🏻‍♀️ Some children - boys and girls - are growing up seeing how their parents can work together really equitably as partners. Dh and I both have professional careers. No family help. No nanny. No childcare at all now they are school age. We balance the school runs and the household chores. I’m actually off work for the past year due to illness, so I’m doing slightly more of the school runs and the other stuff because self-employed dh realistically is earning for all of us now.

But even being a company director and a high earner, he does the school runs too and is usually the one doing the 9pm pick up from sports practice (because I’m in bed by then!). I cook dinner every night but he does the dishes and cleans up the kitchen. He does a lot of the running around to parties and activities on the weekends. He does all the garden care and DIY and the bins. He takes the dc to the shop with him so I can have a nap. He takes them away on holiday solo (so do I, but this year they’ve been to Wales, lots of weekends camping, took dd bike packing, last summer he took them to France for 2 weeks). He is mostly home every day from 4pm to help with homework and getting everyone to activities (he keeps up on work emails on his phone running them around).

Yes, sure, having children is work and adult life takes effort. But let’s not put our children off it because we choose bad partners to do it with. Let’s normalise relationships and parenting with partners who carry the load and are fully engaged. My life would definitely not be easier or happier without Dh or my children. I hope my dc one day have what I have modelled for them.

I disagree you can do both, I breastfed for 3 years collectively and took full mat leave - my children go to my husband if they need anything just as much as me.

I still don't get the "life is drudge" feeling

We are average earners and don't out source much other than the odd takeaway, we do have extended and cheerfully willing family support which I imagine helps a lot.

I also don't have particularly high standards and expectations, you won't find me unable to sleep because I haven't hoovered or I forgot to hang the washing out. I feel life is so much easier when you just stop caring about the little stuff, no-one had a happier life because they washed their curtains more frequently than someone else.

I've known all along what hard work it is to have kids and a job/career, particularly without a lot of family support. And it never ends - my mum has allowed herself to be burdened with the care of her ill brother, who has 4 brothers who could share the load, because....well, she's a woman, what else would she be doing with her precious life, other than skivvying around after others?
That's why I didn't have kids. But I'm cold and pragmatic and can apply reason to a decision that most people make based solely on gut instinct.

Who exactly 'sold you a lie'?

I knew it was going to be a lot of hard work and I watched The Waltons and had my children before social media.

Thinking more on it, I think the younger generations are much more clued up now though. It’s one of the benefits of social media and the internet. When I think back to when I was in my 20s I knew lots of people getting married and/or having babies, but I don’t know a single 20-something year old even interested in marriage or kids now, and none that have actually got children/married. Most that age seem to be career driven and self-focused and there’s no denying the birth rate is generally declining.

Of the people in their 30s and 40s that I know that have children, most have just one child out of choice.

So I think times are different now.

To be even more honest from everything I read on mn and saw on social media before I had children I expected it to be way harder than it actually is.

Pregnancy I didn't love through HG but the second half and birth was fine, and not as hard as I expected, breastfeeding literally couldn't have been easier * the toddler years were literally the best years of my life and now they are older the logistics of school and nursery aren't that bad either - I saw someone say it is another full time job to keep up with all the school/nursery emails and admin - at absolute most its 3 emails in one day if that's a full time job I will gladly apply for it!

*I do appreciate that all of this is pretty much luck of the draw

edit for typo

Most women work now after maternity leave. I was back at work 3 months following a c section, doing nightshifts.

Well, if the low quality men are not given the chance to breed, that will be a good thing surely?

I’m teaching my son and daughter that both their parents are responsible for household chores and childcare. And leading by example.
So as PP wrote, don’t choose a shit husband to start with.