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

mrstittlemouse my dh shrunk stuff of mine once,years ago, I told him if he was happy for me to keep buying stuff to replace things he ruined then so be it - otherwise read the labels and act accordingly.

So, your men, if they got a new job in which they had to complete a manual task similar to operating a washing machine would be incapable of learning to complete that task? And would continue to do it badly, ruining the outcome and be fired?

Or would they ask someone who is already competent at the task to show them how to do it sucessfully?

With my dh, it's not that he can't do the stuff - he can operate the washing machine, do the ironing etc. It's just that he chooses not to. If I refused to wash any of his clothes he would eventually wash them - when he had completely run out of stuff to wear. But it's not normal to just wash your own stuff, is it? Most households put everyone's stuff in the washing machine together, but if I waited for dh to to dod that, I would be running out of clean stuff myself, and so would ds. I can't put up with that.

I'm guessing that DH doesn't go around in a grump at work, muttering under his breath, and doing everything in a very rushed do-I-have-to-do-everything-around-here sort of way. I certainly hope so, as we need his salary to pay the mortgage.

Sadly, that is how he does the washing.

We come from very different backgrounds. My Mum thought that life was too short to do housework. Even before she went back to work, she volunteered, we had foreign students, she fostered, she had a really busy active life. DH's Mum is lovely, but she hasn't ever worked outside the home, and doesn't have much in the way of hobbies at all. She has friends that she meets up with once a week, but that's as much as I've ever known about. So DH was used to a SAHM figure who kept the place spotless and ran around making cups of tea for everyone.

It has been quite a culture shock. For both of us.

We do a certain amount of that in our house. DH's work clothes are a bit of a chemical hazard, therefore have to be washed separately. He does this himself. Ditto climbing-ninja gear, which has a nasty tendency to have colour-run accidents and make everything else smell funny.

I could be a dutiful little wife and do it for him, but I don't want to, and it works fine this way in our house.

Although washing disasters do occur, they are actually rare. Most things, after they have been worn a couple of times, do not leak dye. The whole "separate washes for everything" regime, espoused by some, is the invention of detergent manufacturers trying to sell more product.

So there are men who can't see dirt, can't sort washing, can't cook fish fingers, can't match a tie to a shirt and can't shop for a family.

And these people remember where they live, hold down jobs, drive cars, play Call of Duty, understand the offside rule, download music onto their Ipods and know how to barbecue.

They are taking the piss.

I have a lot of sad, grey little baby clothes that say different. :( Plus a load of pair of socks that are one white, one grey.

Really? Apart from the aforementioned climbing-ninja gear, I have never had this problem. I do separate white stuff from everything else, so perhaps this is the secret, but nothing else.

I think a manufacturer should go out on a limb and advertise domestic appliances as power tools. They are tools, and they are powered.

Mrs tittlemouse - give him his cricket whites to wash and I bet he'd do it properly!

There seem to be many posts here where women are complaining that the men they live with do not hold the same standards of household cleanliness that they do. Fair enough. People are different.

What I genuinely don't get is why, where there is such a difference of opinion, the man's standard of cleanliness is axiomatically wrong whereas the woman's is without question right? Does possession of a vagina automatically endow the owner with final and unequivocal judgement over whether a house is clean and tidy enough?

When I lived with my (now ex-)P we had differing standards of cleanliness. Indeed, it was something that she used to regularly berate me about (along with being a crap father, a boring arse, a monosyllabic wanker, a first-class cunt etc). Since she moved out, the house is a bit less tidy on average than it used to be. And yet the sky hasn't fallen down, life as we know if continues, and we have had no outbreaks of food poisoning or infestations of vermin. It genuinely doesn't seem that big a deal to me.

Surely something in the middle would be right then though Snorbs? Not just accepting that the more tidy person has to just put up with the less tidy person's standards.

Like my example of having different standards to my mum (both women) so I make an effort to do more than I would just for myself because I wouldn't want her to be unhappy living in her own home? So we find compromises that we can both live with without anyone in the house being unhappy with them.

"So there are men who can't see dirt, can't sort washing, can't cook fish fingers, can't match a tie to a shirt and can't shop for a family.

And these people remember where they live, hold down jobs, drive cars, play Call of Duty, understand the offside rule, download music onto their Ipods and know how to barbecue."

WEeellll - no. DH can't see dirt or sort washing, he can do the cooking and clothes matching and could just about manage a shop but would probably forget non-food items such as bogroll unless specifically told, or he'd realised while on the loo that there was none left.
OTOH - he can't play Call of Duty or barbecue either (and he's a feckin Aussie! They don't have real barbecues, they have gas-fired hotplates - no different from an oven in reality)

Scarily, DH's brain goes into shutdown when I'm around. I tell him this, he acknowledges it, but it still happens. Take today - we went shopping for a portable air con unit for his office/DS's bedroom. They all come with an extractor hose that has a fitting for the window. Being in Australia, all windows have mesh covers to keep mozzies etc. out - and DH couldn't see how the extractor would work with the mesh being there. Until I pointed out that the protruding part would be on the inside of the window and therefore wouldn't affect the mesh...
This man used to be a precision engineer, it scares me. He says he was a very good one as well!

Snorbs - I know at least one couple where the man is more fussy about tidiness/cleanliness than his DW - and in one case in particular, this results in him doing the majority of the cleaning because she says, if he doesn't like it the way she does it, then it's up to him to do it "properly" (i.e. to his standards).

Snorbs, i am really sorry your Ex said such horrible things to you.

I am not saying my standards of cleanliness is more right than DHs.... it is just that there is a minimum standard that i can bear. That does make cleanliness my issue, which is why I tend to do the cleaning. There is a level of mess that stresses me out and with which I simply cannot live. DH is a seriously messy person. For example, we have a long haired dog that he brushes every day. He collects her hair and leaves it on the kitchen bench. (He wants to knit it into a jumper one day... seriously). I cannot live with a huge ball of dog hair on my kitchen bench, so i put it into a plastic bag and put it in the utility room. (If I had my way i would bloody throw it out, it is disgusting. ) When we were first married and I moved in, the inside of the fridge was so bad that there was mold everywhere... it really WAS something out of that 'How clean is your house' show. I cannot live like that, so I clean it. I am not saying that i am RIGHT (and certainly not just because I have a vagina) it is just that i cannot live that way. I no longer nag DH to clean, but i do really wish that he would just clean up after himself sometimes. Just wiping down the kitchen table after he has eaten a sandwich on it without a plate would make me happier really.

I think a lot depends on the man and his attitude.

My DH is one of four boys, raised in a very traditional family with MIL being a domestic goddess. He went to boarding school (all male) from 13.

However he is just as good at cleaning/cooking/sewing/washing as me. In fact he is probably a better catch than me because in addition to that he does all the driving and is brilliant at DIY/fixing things.

He and his brothers are all the same and have obviously all made the conscious decision to be interested in looking after themselves, despite the fact that their upbringing was very traditional.

Just to add in to the mix, I do think men struggle more than women with keeping several balls in the air at once.

When I have DD, I also do lots of chores at the same time as interacting with her in a fluid sort of way. DH however wants to do A then B then C then D and finds it hard to be constantly distracted.

As a result when I get home from work, he is still trying to tidy up and the house does look like a bomb has hit it! But he does DO the tidying, just takes him longer to get through all the jobs of the day than it would me (or is this because I am slapdash and he is fastidious?!)

Same as ClearAndPresent - my dh's standards of cleanliness are so low that I think very few people would put up with them, I don't think I'm being fussy. And dh's study in our house is an absolute tip. I don't bother cleaning it, as I can hardly get to any of the surfaces. He doesn't clean it so it's dirty. But as I hardly ever have to spend any time in there I can cope with leaving it like that, unlike the rest of the house.

And dh doesn't play COD or understand the offside rule. He does manage to hold down a job, although how he manages it I'm not quite sure, if he's as disorganized as he is at home. For example, he very rarely leaves the house without coming back in for something he has forgotten. And he has done things like book a train journey for the wrong day (resulting in having to buy another ticket at great expense) and booking a bed and breakfast for the wrong night (resulting in having to cancel it at short notice, so no refund, and book another one).

He is just very absent-minded - the sort of person who would sit in a complete tip of a room, playing the piano, oblivious to anything else going on around him.

I've recently moved in with dp after several years of living by myself during which time I was perfectly capable of doing all my own washing, cooking, shopping, ironing and cleaning; all to a perfectly acceptable standard. I am really quite shocked by how critical dp can be when I don't do things the same way that she does them (mashing potato incorrectly anyone?!)

Whilst I am still pulling my weight, I have to admit that I've started shying away from certain tasks. Looking for alternative chores that might be less likely to attract criticism, not just sitting around doing nothing.

That may be true TSH and I think you're absolutely right that there isn't one single cause, but it's also true that in general women are judged more harshly on their home and the appearance of not only themselves but their family.

Unequal promotion and salary increases for women, and the difficulty men often have in negotiating flexible hours plays into the idea that women, in general, have more responsibility for their homes and children.

thumbwitch, I too know a couple where the man is much more obsessed interested in cleanliness and tidiness than the woman is. As the woman is a SAHM and he works long hours she does the majority of the cleaning but to his standard. Doesn't seem right to me.

thisismyboomstick, I know what you mean about the "You've done this differently to me so you've done it WRONG!" thing. But although I used to do the same as you - shying away from the contentious areas - in hindsight I think that was the wrong way to deal with it. All it got me were additional accusations of laziness. It might be better to discuss it openly.

If my DP started claiming he couldn't sort washing or remember to buy toilet roll he'd be finding himself somewhere else to live.

One term at uni I had to live at home, and my mother had an overnighter as some conference and she asked me to make spag bol for dinner for me and my dad. I was a bit late getting back from uni, and rushed into the house to find my dad preparing said meal. Me: Sorry! I can do it now!. Father : Do you ASSUME that I don't know how to make spag bol????? Me : No! Absolutely not! You carry on! It was delish. I don't know why my mum said this, as it was a standing joke that you didn't want to ask how to cook something if they were both in the room cos it would turn into a massive argument between the two of them as to how to make whatever it was properly.

She grew up with 4 sisters, her mum and her aunt, as her father died very unexpectedly when she was 10 leaving my grandmother to bring up 5 children under 12 (which she could as she was a teacher before she married, and hadn't married particularly early either - this was the 1940s when he died), and the lesson learnt was that you should never been dependent on someone else because you never know what might happen - hence my mother and all her sisters are professional women, none of whom stopped working when they had families.

DP grew up in a more traditional set up of working dad and SAHM (who is pretty trad and can't understand why women (not men, of course) are leaving having children until their 30s, but that's a whole other thread), but is more than capable of looking after himself, possibly because before we moved in together (about 7 years ago) he'd never lived with a girlfriend, just girl friends, all very strong women who certainly would not have been picking up after him.

And he's a very funky dresser!

I don't knock those who have a very definite split between work and domestic duties, but it does concern me that if something did happen to the one in charge of all the practical stuff, how would the other cope - isn't it a little unfair leaving a partner in the dark about money etc?

Friend's DH claims he can't operate the dishwasher. My four year old loves sorting out the dishwasher and seems quite able to operate one dial and a button!

the only thing i do for DH is buy his clothes. he cannot pick clothes that are not sludge brown and or cheap that look cheap. everything else he can do.

my DF otoh is completely useless and my mum does everything for him. was shocked at age 16 when i found out that she picks his clothes out for him in the morning (he was wearing a lilac checked shirt and a red and black stripy tie. he had appeared in court like this ) i don't know if it he milking it or he is genuinely useless at doing anything for himself. he went from darling only son to my mother.