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????????????

I make damn sure my eggs are unfertilized in the morning!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Yes, mumsnet, full of harridans women who don't think having a pussy means becoming a skivvy any time they're in a relationship or that they were born for the pleasure of men.

My OH runs his own business and works all hours and rarely has any time to himself. If I can ease the pressure by doing all the domestic stuff, booking trips, buying clothes etc, then I will.

YANBU.

Full of harridans? I wish.

I started a thread under another name when DH did the washing and ruined my shiney new outfit. :( To be answered by a load of women who told me that I should be grateful that DH was doing the washing, as their DHs never did.

So in the 21st century, a woman should be falling over herself with gratitude for any household task done by a man, even if he makes a great big bollocky mess of it?

DH is not usually useless, by the way. The DDs refer to various household appliances as "Daddy's iron" and "Daddy's hoover", for example. He does get a bit fed up of my complete lack of housework genes though. I am good at the acutal tasks, but knackered all the time and completely disorganised.

'My OH runs his own business and works all hours and rarely has any time to himself. If I can ease the pressure by doing all the domestic stuff, booking trips, buying clothes etc, then I will."

Absolutely. That is a partnership. But that is a mutual decision based on circumstances, not an annumption based on the structure of the genitals.

I might be guilty here actually. I do pretty much all the cleaning, as DH just does not see dirt. I like things clean, so I clean. I also do pretty much all the cooking because I LOVE to cook. DH rarely gets a chance, and that is not fair really, as he likes it too. So I am going to change that. I do all the bill paying/paperwork/budgeting as DH has this infuriating habit of simply refusing to pay bills that he may not agree with... like the tv licence fee for example. I have paid that secretly for years and he says every now and then 'see, if you just refuse to pay eventually they stop bothering you' I got sick of having legal actions against us all the time, so just took it over. I do all the paperwork for the ILs too, as they also just refuse to pay bills. The stress of that wears me out so I just do it for an easy life. (I am sounding like a mug).

DH though does all the clothes washing, DIY, ironing and dishwasher stacking. Childcare is spread pretty evenly. He has alot of hobbies so I do more at weekends, but that is just how it happened rather than by design. He is always encouraging me to get out and do stuff, but i prefer staying home with him and the children really. Someone said earlier that they 'play to each other's strengths'. I like that alot. We generally do, I think. But yes, I need to back off on the cooking and let him do it.

Tasks that relate to being me.
Tasks that relate to being him.
Tasks that relate to both of us (household, childcare etc).

I take care of the first and whatever proportion of the third that has been agreed between us. If I do any of the second (or he does any of the first), it is either due to a request or a favour. But doing it does not create a precedent and normal service resumes.

There are lots of tasks that I hate doing and I am shit at doing them. But, tough. That's life. And the more I do them, funnily enough, the better I get at doing them.

"does not see dirt"

Very handy....

No, I truly think it is a mental block of some sort. His idea of clean and mine are utterly different. He seems incapable of seeing something is dirty. But he does heaps of other things. I don't paint the house, or garden, or repair the shower head or anything like that.

DP is fine thank goodness - very self sufficient & does equal share around the house etc.

HOWEVER this thread is giving me flashbacks re male flatmates I've house shared with over the years. Some true horrors who can't do anything for themselves & expect female FLATMATES (yes flatmates) to sort everything out. Lazy & pathetic. One guy had been in the army - he was very self sufficient and knew how to do it all - then one day he met a lovely woman, who virtually moved in with him and he stopped lifting a single finger to do anything other than play Playstation, while this PYT basically became his Maid & Mum. We were aghast!

Sometimes I think the Mums are at fault for doing everything for these guys until they leave home to flap about helpless in the world until "rescued". Other times this helplessness is a highly planned cynical manipulation. Thankfully I've been spared from ever knowingly meeting a women who likes to keep her man helpless, but I'm sure they exist - and yes I do go at some of the comments on MN I see.

My dh doesn't really see dirt either. I don't mean that he can't actually see it if it's pointed out to him, but firstly, he doesn't notice it, and secondly, even if it's pointed out to him it doesn't really bother him that much.

In his case, he lived on his own for several years, and although he can do lots of domestic jobs, he would always choose to do as little as he can get away with, as he just doesn't see them as important. So when he lived on his own, he only ever cleaned the house if he was expecting visitors. He did washing when he had run out of stuff to wear. He mostly ate a hot lunch in the work canteen and had a sandwich in the evening. He let the garden turn into a wilderness, and asked some friends round about once a year to help him blitz it.

So I do all the housework, shopping, cooking, gardening etc, otherwise I would be waiting for ever for him to do it, and my standards are a bit higher than that. But I didn't make him like that, he has never seen domestic stuff as a priority, even when he lived on his own.

I think domestic things are not a priority for my DH. As for seeing dirt, he once dropped a can of cat food on the floor (I was in hospital) and it splattered. When I got out of hospital several days later the splatters were still on the floor. That drove me nuts, he was surprised to see them when i pointed it out.

We are both at home right now (job hunting and semi retired). I think I do about 2-3 hours housework/cooking/admin stuff a day, but he is on the go the whole day doing things, repairing things, sorting things and gardening so actually, there is an argument to say I am not pulling my weight as much!

My MIL to a tee. Her sister actually asked me who would look after DH while I was in hospital having DS. I told her he could eat from the frezer, get a take away or the bugger could starve! My MIL thinks I am very harsh because I expect DH to do his own Christmas shopping, write his own Christmas cards and maybe email her about when we are going on holiday. I think that someone who's dominant husband has actually been a large part of her long term mental health problems and who has schooled their daughter to the point where she married a, guess what, dominant husband who played a part in giving her mental health problems, really ought to know better. She claims to be a feminist and is indeed highly educated but basically needs the word welcome tattoed on her forehead. My former boss took a party of kids on a four day school trip. Before doing so, she made and labelled all the family meals, made fairy cakes for the school party and put the kids' party clothes in bags ready. She claimed that this was necessary due to her DH being unablt to do any of this. I think in her case it was partly about not wanting to think that anyone could cope without her.

Just remembered friend's tale about her DH whoo claimed that he could not tell when the bathroom needed cleaning. "How strange," she replied. "There's a pixie who phones me. I'll give him your number."

It doesn't bother me is very different to not seeing dirt though.

I can absolutely be a bit of a scruff; mess doesn't bother me that much so long as there's one tidy room to escape to. I see the mess, I just shrug and go into the living room.

But I live in my mum's house. And I am aware that the mess that we can both see, that doesn't bother me does bother her. So I plan things into my days at home that mean when she comes home the mess is confined to certain places. That I clean things before I would be unhappy with them, knowing that she will be unhappy with them before I get to that stage. I make the effort to do that because I love and respect her.

So if I can do that, with mess and a level of dirt that don't actually bother me - what could difference would being male make? Surely they only can't see the dirt if they aren't looking for it. And if they aren't looking for it, knowing that you will be bothered before they'll be bothered; are they showing a level of regard for you and your time and feelings that you're happy with? (You might be, they might do other things that make up for it, I'm not slagging them off, just saying that it isn't a man/woman thing to have different standards)

TheShrieking... yes, I have watched kim and Aggie's show and pointed something out once and he said in complete truthfulness 'I don't think that is that bad'.

Ah, my dh's bachelor pad also resembled a burgled property. But it wasn't just untidy, it wasn't very clean either. I helped him clean the house when he was putting it on the market. The upstairs windowsills were completely black - he never cleaned the upstairs, because visitors only ever saw the downstairs, and he only ever cleaned when he had people coming round.

have you seen this:
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/1038398-working-mothers/AllOnOnePage

I especialy love Elephants' comment: "the writer is moaning on about his mother not freezing meals in advance before she went into hospital. Selfish cow!"

Agree with the man flu bollocks. DH tried it once.
ds1 (with help from ds2) could sort clothes and food out and get their younger sibs sorted. I reckon they could get them off to school and all be clean fed and dressed. And sort out tea in the evening. And put washing on etc.
I don't expect them to actually do this, but they could and I think it is right.
They will sometimes do their own washing and sometimes ds1 will cook us tea. They have household chores.
My friends think this is odd, cruel even, but I won't be needing to make them food or wash their clothes when they leave, and they won't be perpetuating the whole men are useless at domestic stuff bollocks, and dd will expect men to share chores.

DrSeuss - love your friend's quickwitted comment!

My DH is another who does not see dirt. I have not cleaned his office for a year, to see whether or not he would do it - the dust bunnies have grown to the point where they could eat the furniture but he doesn't notice them unless he drops some paperwork in one. STILL doesn't do anything about it bar moaning though!

ShriekingHarpy - it wasn't a DH-bashing thread, it was a woe-is-me-for-my-new-clothes-are-ruined thread.

But, to be fair, he does have a blind spot with laundry. As far as he is concerned, it all goes in together and on the same cycle - dark things, bright things, pale things, all together, delicate (like my lovely things :() in with cotton at temperatures that fry them, the whole caboodle. :( :( :(

I'm buggered if I'm going to be grateful for that!