to think that some women collude in the infantilization of men and to wonder ^why?^

[seeker]

There are SOOOO many threads along the lines of "Where do you buy your dp's clothes?" "Oh, I never take dp shopping with me""What shall I cook for the freezer for dp to eat while I'm having the baby"

WHY????????????

Chickens - sounds like your brother will be just fine. He understands that independence is something to be proud of.

YANBU - until I came on Mumsnet I really believed that households ran like mine more or less i.e. you both do your fair share (however, that share was divided). I really like what Gay40 said about making a cup of tea in the morning etc. We do that in our household. I have a very good friend whose DH has never done that for her since she had the first of their 3 children! Obviously he forgot where the kettle was when the first child was born!

Sorry seeker, I didn't mean to take the thread in a different direction. Must leave now anyway, visitors just arrived.

Have a nice all.

With the clothes thing (been out for the afternoon so only just got back to this) - hubby's so hard to buy for because of his height/waist that basically the entire family jump and buy stuff when they see things that are suitable (M+S discontinued the trousers that fit him)! My mother does, his mother does, I do, he does - he just has clothes so low on his mental radar it often doesn't occur to him but he's getting better since he got a job which is more dependant on looking civilized. (You try buying trousers for a picky 6 foot 7, somewhat rotund bloke!)

It's the only thing he'll look to me for guidance on - I've got a much better eye for colour and things generally, and the other thing I'm good with is spatial awareness with furniture... oh and DIY - I'm fantastic at DIY - he's the one who drilled through the lighting cables and caused a massive repair bill.

We play to each other's strengths basically - he's very good with figures and budgetting, he's very good with remembering to do house stuff, we go about 50/50 on cooking but I tend to plan meals and write shopping lists - but clothes? No chance!

Part of it's our different upbringings though - I was the oldest child of a single mum who went to pieces when dad left - I was getting the bus into town, doing the weekly shop and coming home again aged 11, building flat pack furniture at the age of about 8 after the incident when my dad hammered screws in leaving us with a coffee table that collapsed everytime you put a mug on it (Ikea stuff's just more advanced Lego really!). He very much had a more conventional family with parents who parented - I had to pretty much figure stuff out for myself because my mother was preoccupied with the divorce from hell and a chronically ill baby... I grew up fast.

Hubby's still old beyond his years in many ways - except when ill when he regresses to about the age of four and drives me fucking insane!

He did manage to end up in A+E loading the washing machine with laundry once though! Figure out how he did that one if you can (cos I never bloody well did).

nice day all

As for the illness thing - again I'm pretty sure with us it was down to upbringing. He's very much one who was sent to bed by mum, brought cups of tea on demand and allowed to rest it off (his sister's the same). In my house it was only death that warranted a day off school - you just kept going because you had to. Perhaps that's a woman thing though - it seems to be more so.

I do have a much better immune system than him though - a cold fells him completely, I can push through one - but then again - I work with kids which is like military boot camp for immune cells.

My brother's very independent too - again, my mum was working long hours by the time he was a bit older (she was out till 10 lots of evenings covering meetings) - we figured out how to cook basic things like baked potatoes and stuff so we could fend for ourselves when being latchkey kids so to speak. Plus we'd both have got a clip round the ear if we malingered and didn't pull our weight!

cookie - I feel just as you do. I would not dream of making any kind of judgement on the way friends and family conduct their relationships. So long as it's all consensual and both parties are happy, it matters not one jot what I think.

But people often do have a tendency to judge things they don't understand. And since cooking and cleaning are so often seen as just chores to be done, it's sort of understandable that someone might struggle to see why a woman would really choose to do this, day in, day out, for her partner with no (or not much) obvious reciprocation. Not that it justifies making an issue out of it, as happens with you and me it seems. But it's at least a possible explanation.

:)

cookie - just seen that you've left the thread. Hope you have nice afternoon too!

You didn;'t take the thread in a different direction, cookierookie - I think you missed what I was complaining about. As I said - NOT people who have discussed and planned the way work is divvied up, but people who allow men to be incompetent and thereby perpetuate the mindset to the next generation. I am sure your dp, like mine, is QUITE capable of doing what needs doing. It's the ones that aren't that baffle me.

It's not as if it's difficult or anyhting!

I think a lot of women also put up with guys who are lazy dicksmacks because they have little self-esteem.

It's very simple. In the relationship, Do unto others as you would have them do to you.

If you wouldn't treat your spouse like a skivvy, then why take it in return?

The man flu thing, fuck that. I soldier on if and when ill. So does DH. No way I could abide some grown person acting like a titwank at the first sign of a sniffle.

I have a son and two daughters and none of them is being brought up to believe that women are skivvies because they have a pussy.

Cookie- re: the point about how society has progressed: I don't think it necessarily means people cant choose the individual set up that suits THEM (provided both partners are happy and have the capacity to adapt should circumstances change) . In your case, you say your dh is perfectly capable, its just a mutual decision for you to do all things domestic and for him to work. And presumably, if he lost his job, you'd step Into his shoes and vice versa. That's a partnership.
But my point About society is hugely important , because its only through society and culture changing that people have grown to have choice about these things. Do you really imagine that every 1950s or 60 s housewife Was truly fulfilled and stimulated with her lot in life? And that every husband was truly happy to feel his role was to be the sole provider and then come home and administer any discipline on the children? Because I don't. I think there were a lot of bored housewives who wanted something more, and a lot of distant fathers who wished it was culturally acceptable to be changing nappies and looking after the kids. Now that society is changing, people can choose polarised roles if that's what they want, but its not forced on them through a lack of alternatives- thats the important issue

Well, my mother had a whole raft of sayings that she trotted out when she suspected we were deviating from the path of equality.

"Always have your own money and then no one can tell you how to spend it" was one, and

"Sort out the big rules BEFORE things happen" was another...by which she meant don't toddle and have a kid before you've firmly established who will do what.

I agree with you op.

Good point about the buying of clothes if I let my Dh buy all my clothes I would look like a sex worker very glamarous woman all the time.

yanbu. I notice this too and it is irksome.

I think this mindset about men being incapable of doing household-y stuff can be really unpleasant for the men in question too. Just as cookie and martha point out they enjoy doing the tasks they do, some men also enjoy these things. My parents live next-door to a farm, and often the farmer's old dad comes round with some eggs for my mum. One time (and mum swears he looked over his shoulder to check he wasn't being overheard) he told my mum that he really enjoys cooking but only get a chance to do it at Christmas because then it counts as a favour to his wife. Otherwise it's 'her' territory.

It is a funny story and I know farmers aren't generally famed for their lack of sexism, but you have to think it's absurd that this poor bloke quite fancies cooking and can't! And I guess he must be reasonably good or he wouldn't be turning out a Christmas dinner once a year.

(Sorry, that did sound daft -'some men also enjoy these things' sounds as if it should have a comedy 'newsflash' attached, but sadly it really does seem to come as a shock to some people that men can enjoy this stuff.

Well, I do buy my DP clothes because I care about how he dresses and he doesn't But I don't think that infantilizes him.

Everything else in our relationship is pretty much equal though - we certainly split housework and childcare pretty evenly, both contribute financially etc. I wouldn't put up with worse behaviour from him than I would from a woman because of his gender.

Totally agree LoudRowdyDuck.

And the same extends from household tasks, to aspects of childcare. I bet loads of men would happily get more involved with the practical day to day childcare, but sadly some women see this as 'their territory'.

Looking at it from the children's persective, rather than just what the mother (or father) wants, I'm sure it's far more emotionally healthy for kids to see their parents both getting stuck in to the daily routine - cooking, shopping, cleaning, earning - rather than thinking that certain roles 'belong' to a particular gender!

I buy DH clothes, generally as presents as he likes them very much when he gets them, but freely admits that he doesn't have an eye for what suits him/looks good. That is as far as any 'infantalising' goes.

I don't know what I would do without DP. He is infinitely more competent than me in almost every way. It's great, but sometimes I feel like there's something wrong with me. In the back of my mind I always think that I'm the one who should be nagging him to do the washing/cleaning etc, when in reality it's the other way round. I fucking hate housework and if we ever break up I can see myself becoming one of those old women you see on the telly when the RSPCA come to visit, with a house full of cats and boxes of old crap lying everywhere under six layers of accumulated muck. :(

My partner's mum seems to have expected him to do a lot of simple things from a young age. He would mind his sister while his mum was working, make their dinners, tidy up, build furniture etc. I think that set him up well.

My brothers are a different story. My mum appears to have done everything for my dad (he would apparently get up on a Sunday morning and order a 'full English' with a snap of the fingers!!) and now my two brothers are utterly useless too. My sister and I used to be quite bad - my mum wouldn't let us use to washing machine, for example, and all our meals were cooked for us, but we're sorted now. My brothers have my mum do EVERYTHING for them. They're 19 and 23 and can barely even cook their meals and I doubt either of them have ever done any actual cleaning, beyond picking up their dirty clothes and putting them in the wash basket.

I actually feel bad for them. Yes, they let my mum do everything and that's their fault; but this is all they've ever known and my mum perpetuates it terribly. Unsurprisingly they both have pretty low self esteem. I'm a graduate and my sister is on the road to uni at the moment, having gained qualification as a nursery nurse already. One of my brothers works part-time in Blockbuster and the other helps out my dad at his work.

It makes me sad and angry with them, and with my mum to a lesser extent. I feel sorry for whatever poor girl they end up with. They're lovely boys, but...

Hmm, I really don't think it has anything to do wiht whether a bloke has lived by himself or not before moving in with a woman.

You hear so many stories of men living by themselves quite happily for years, and then suddenly losing the ability to load a dishwasher as soon as they move in with their girlfriends. Or even worse, having a pretty equal division of labour, until the first baby comes along -when suddenly all that egalitarian living goes out the window.

I don't think it's about what lifestyle a bloke has had, it's about his attitude.

I also shake my head in amazement to see this sort of stuff being perpetuated by so many women of today - yes, here on MN too.

MIL is a traditional type - when she had to go in for some routine surgery when DH was about 6 or 7, him and his older brother and sister were left with DH's dad for the week whilst she was still in the ward. She'd prepared a few days meals and done laundry in advance, although FIL was able to take the week off work so he didn't have to juggle childcare and work (he was self employed for years and owned his own firm). What happened? MIL came home to find the house a pig tip, with the three kids at the next door neighbour's house who'd moved in 3 months earlier.

The idea that a grown man should be able to look after his own children for a week with MASSIVE amounts of support was clearly alien to him. I've never quite got over my disgust that MIL found that scenario acceptable, or that FIL thought it was too. I think the point about this power balance meaning that women think they have some power in the relationship (i.e. a sense of control) when they are SAHPs for years at a time rings true. Although in my own parent's case, keeping my own father out of the daily affairs of running a household just meant that when my own breadwinner father became too ill to work in his late 40s, my mum ended up having to cope with paying bills/arranging family healthcare appointments AND working 40hr weeks in an unskilled job because she'd been out of the workforce for so long.

None of this is a situation we should admire, and both DH and I are taking great pains to ensure ours understand the message of being self-reliant and the sense of TEAMWORK that every relationship should have. It's one of the most important life lessons they need to learn.

My dh seems intent on infantilizing himself I'm afraid. I do stand up to him and try to stop it, but it's hard sometimes because he catches me off guard and before I know it, I've turned into his mother

Some men just seem to want somebody to look after them and the house, and will go to great lengths to achieve that.

Who are these men who are letting themselves be dressed up by their partners like some fucking Ken dolls?
A nice shirt/t-shirt/jacket as a present every now and again is acceptable, but getting your partner to dress you? That's just weird.