Why do so many women in the UK, work full-time and also do the cooking cleaning and mental load at home..?

[GreenCandies]

Why ?

Why put up with it ?

I think this is the main problem, men massively underestimate the domestic and childcare load, however women can be just as bad. Those who’ve children have grown up seem to be the worst of all, younger women without children seem to have a level of humility and assume you probably have an enormous workload that they can’t imagine how they would cope with but those with grown up children seem to suffer from total amnesia. I work part time and couldn’t believe a colleague with grown up children implying I have a very relaxed easy life because I work part time even though I have a toddler and young children!!

But compared to someone who worked full time while raising their children, maybe you do have an easier life? Obviously it’s not going to be relaxed - I’m with you on that @Sunsettting

Oh the old chestnut of pink and blue jobs…

I think if you attributed an ‘hours per week’ time and motion study of mowing the lawn and taking the bins out versus ‘pink jobs’ (and corresponding mental load) - it’s piss all in comparison.

Not necessarily, I’ve worked full time and had help with the household chores, kids in childcare full time and had kids that slept through etc and found it much easier, where as juggling part time work then coming home from work, clearing up from dinner they’ve all had, getting everything ready for the kids the next day, being up in the night several times with toddler then long days with toddler trying to keep on top of even just jobs for that day is far less relaxing. This colleague did have a lot of local family and friends and I think this makes a huge difference. I remember times when had local close friends and we were always popping in and out of each others houses with our toddlers, they were much less hard work and although the chores to do they felt less like hard work as we chatted together while doing them, I suppose if she had that throughout her children’s upbringing plus a relative occasionally taking one of her children out for a couple of hours with their children , helping with birthday parties etc then life with children did feel a lot more chilled

Plus there is more judgement of women whose kids look scruffy/don't have food in for guests/don't volunteer backstage (to take one example where it's hugely female dominated and the other women can and do judge you, but not the dads, for not helping).

My dad was brilliant. He was born in the 1930s but did so much for us kids, cooked brilliantly, but also considerate things like making our packed lunches and making sure we'd remembered our jumpers.
He was a kind man, though, and I don't think it's very kind to watch a spouse exhaust themselves.

The other thing is the PRAISE. Often, men get such a lot of praise from women for doing quite normal stuff. Of course they feel like they're doing something special.

DH and DBIL get so much praise from my mum...for cooking...

And to add to the anecdata, my dad, also born in the 1930s, was the least hands-on dad you can imagine but has always been very generous with money and keeping cars running, sorting practical stuff in the house and garden etc. But if you needed a packed lunch, jumper or aspirin, you were absolutely on your own.

I agree. And I didn't even see it until I had a child. By which point it's a bit late because you want them to be well looked after (not just fed and dressed but also educated properly, their hobbies supported, health taken care of etc).

I think some things are also to do with modern men’s false perception of what fathers and men used to do, I was sitting in a baby group and 2 dads where chatting about how much better fathers they were able to be because of the extended paternity leave they had. I was absolutely shocked at their boasting considering my father did all
the things that were claiming men in the past didn’t so and was a brilliant father who came home from a full days work, bathed us, read us our stories, cooked meals etc. Granted he didn’t do much of the housework but to us as children he was a wonderful father. My husband is the same, works full time, away and long hours and had just the 2 weeks paternity leave but is a wonderful dad to the kids

I think social pressures play a huge role for both men and women.

Women - I feel like the standards have rocketed in terms of how pristine houses are perceived to be. All the houses I went to play dates at as kids were normal. Some nicely decorated bits, some piles of stuff waiting to be sorted/washing on the spare bed etc etc. I feel like there is definitely a subset of my daughter’s friend’s Mums that would be horrified at what I perceive as normal houses. (I’m not talking hoarding or dirty, but I think where the line is can fuel a lot of anxiety). Same with things like big display birthday parties etc, all got very OTT and you are having to do some work if you choose to swim against that. I don’t know anyone who goes a bit simpler who doesn’t have the occasional bit of guilt. Also not blaming women as a whole for this, as clearly it’s mainly a male issue, but the people wanting us to buy lots of stuff all the time are lined up against us.

Male social groups - all my husband’s good friends pull their weight. So it’s very obvious in a social situation from when we started having babies if there was a useless man - even stuff like taking the baby off for nappy changes etc. - it becomes very clear if some men aren’t doing their bit and that kind of soft social pressure is huge I think. I have no idea how you replicate that out of those social groups though. We’ve been quite embarrassed a few times when my husband has kept an eye on friends’ kids at big gatherings (stuff that I don’t even blink at such as when a friend was breastfeeding her youngest so my husband took our DD and her older child off to the park, she thanked him so profusely he was quite embarrassed).

It is so noticeably terrible with some men though, it definitely should be discussed more.

A better question would be, if you're in a relationship and have had a family with a man who over time has done less and less domestically, how do you force him to step up?
If he's hiding behind his job, or practises weaponised incompetence, or refuses, or 'forgets', and you know your children's welfare depends on someone doing it. How many times do you let dentist appointments go unarranged? Uniform unwashed? How dirty do you let the house get?
Or do you have to just LTB? Sell up, uproot the children and end up doing all you currently do with less money and without even his limited input?
Maybe you do. But equally maybe women stuck in situations they can't control, because you can't make an adult man do these things, maybe they choose the least worst option.

The point about male social groups is spot-on. I think that your social circle is as, or more, important than your upbringing in forming attitudes. My male friends would be horrified if any of the group didn't pull their weight with the housework. And as a young parent, those of us who lived far away from home are likely to look to our friends for advice and role-models rather than our parents. I am very aware that not all male friendship groups are like that, though.

My Mum died when I was very young, and I was raised by my wonderful Dad. I have (inadvertently) lived my life how I was raised - as in my childhood there was never an expectation set that men could not do anything - my Dad did it all. It didn't even occur to me that I would get into an unequal partnership, and when I had boyfriends who had those ideas we soon went our separate ways. I don't know what DH would have been like with a less tolerant wife, but with me he more than pulls his weight, and I don't have to nag him to do it either.

I think a lot of it is not men consciously thinking I won’t bother doing that but that the work is invisible to them and society in general. Its like when some working mothers (I am a working mother btw too) say that they do everything a SAHM does and work when actually their children go to childcare, someone else is entertaining them, cleaning up after them, feeding them and all the other tedious extremely time consuming things that’s a SAHM would be doing. Although I totally get it’s infuriating for it to be implied they’re leaving someone else to bring up their kids when the workload to do with the children outside of childcare hours is still huge for mothers. Until we put all this unpaid work into society’s consciousness then no one except those doing the invisible work will notice it’s even a thing, especially men

I'm not sure I agree that the work is invisible to men. Very few of them are so naive they think meals cook themselves and laundered clothes appear by magic in the wardrobe.
I think what tends to happen is they decide their contribution is their salary, and that bringing that in entitles them not to be bothered with domestics.
Unfortunately the SAHM role perpetuates this. Because if men have grown up with this, it's very powerful modelling of tradional sex based roles during formative years.
Rather than trying in vain to garner equal respect for domestic duties, which will never happen as they don't make money, which is our societal yardstick for value, and their benefit is limited to the family concerned; the way forward imo is to break the link between man as provider, woman as domestic support.
We are still early in the transition from traditional models to equality of responsibility for work and home. Women have made theirs, forging successful careers, outearning men in some cases. However men have lagged behind in making theirs. Perhaps inevitably as the domestic grunt work isn't nearly as appealing as the being the important man who earns the money.

I think this is the crux in a lot of situations - many of us don’t intend for this situation and it creeps up - and lots are in a position not to have an easy way out of it, little equity or high price rentals in areas their kids are settled and often little in way of savings

I'm also in a social group where men pulling their weight domestically is normalised. Any man whose words or actions suggest that housework is women's work finds those kind of jokes fall flat, and gets snide comments when he's not there from both the other men and the women. Equal partnerships are also nornalised - DH and I are child-free and this dynamic is obvious whenever we visit our parent friends. There's no such thing as "the women cook and tidy up while the men go and sit and talk about politics" because the women will most likely do the latter as well, with or without the men.

Indeed there isn't actually a division between the "female social groups" and "male social groups". If someone's hosting a gathering, than any given group of my friends in the kitchen with the food, or in the garden chatting about current affairs, or looking after the kids, will probably contain both men and women. I can't imagine being in a social group where gender segregation by activity was even a thing.

How to replicate it? Well none of the above was an accident. I grew up in a household where traditional gender roles were encouraged and wanted none of it for myself. As a young adult I gravitated towards like-minded people and the ones who became my closest friends are the ones who broadly shared my views. And we talked about it all in our 20s, we all bonded over rejecting traditional gender roles! (And there are plenty of LGBT people in our social group, it's not really heteronormative in any way.)

Social groups where women went on girls' nights and had to live up to some weird trad ideal of femininity/where men went on lads' nights and had to live up to a trad ideal of masculinity were just not for me. I found those people boring and I avoided them.

the way forward imo is to break the link between man as provider, woman as domestic support.

This is bang on. Unfortunately the point at which women are best able to break that link is early on in the dating process, and that's the point at which a lot of women are most taken in by the protector-provider model as being the most attractive. Result - a lot of men buy into it and validate themselves according to it, because it works in terms of getting dates.

It's always seemed obvious to me that if you go looking for a protector and provider, you'll find a man whose self-validation stems from those things, and he'll prioritise them going forward. And if you go looking for a man who holds certain traditional gender values then you'll find a whole lot more of the same in time.

Because many men still live in outdated times where they think housework, childcare and cooking is a woman's job. Doesn't help that their mothers waited on them throughout life until them moving out of the family home

So the comment is "why do they (the women) put up with it"

What do you do to stop it? I'm genuinely asking - if the man doesn't want to do it (or doesn't consciously, or unconsciously think it's his job to to it), then he wont. You can nag, you can outsource, you can do lists, you can go on strike, you can cry. You can threaten to leave. They won't take the mental load if they don't want to. They'll assume you're the parent who takes the kids to the dentist, they won't notice long hair, they won't be able to leave meetings to pick up if nursery phones you.

I am such a feminist. I really would not have picked a shit man on purpose. And he didn't look shit before we had kids. But it transpired he really did not think it was his job to be the main carer of our children. (nor did he do DIY, garden, or decorate for that matter).

I did divorce him in the end by the way, although this wasn't actually the main reason.

Well i asked on this thread what the OPs financially abusive DH was like when they first started dating and paying on dates and he was Mr 50/50 Yet MNers will still swear blind that this proves a man believes in equality

www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/5564724-my-husband-wants-me-to-pay-more-towards-the-bills?page=4www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/5564724-my-husband-wants-me-to-pay-more-towards-the-bills?page=4

Well this kind of back fired on @GreenCandies !

Another common factor that is often overlooked is age gaps where it's common for a man to have an advantage in career progression in the early years, and male-dominated careers tend to have higher earning power. Couples will make choices that make most financial sense so that biases towards prioritising the male career.

That doesn't excuse laziness in free time, but it commonly contributes to uneven time that affects domestic load.

Feminism and "equality", innit.

While women eagerly started to work and financially contribute to their household, and mistakenly thought this is equality, they missed one big issue: men weren't catching up on the home front. It's been decades, and we're in 2026, and men still haven't caught up. They have no incentive to, either. I know feminists are going to hate hearing this, but real changes starts with women's behaviour and choices. I think the quality of men we see today is a direct reflection of the terrible state of women. It's dire.