To be a bit shocked by the attitude regarding menfolk

[Gemsy83]

I.e on so many threads 'they've been at work- they should have a hot meal waiting for them'
Why does being at work all day seem to negate the need to ever cook a meal for oneself/family?

Ephiny, my DH is an able-bodied grown man who's more than capable of doing stuff himself. I cook for him, wash and iron for him because I can get it done in the daytime when I'm doing those things for the dcs, then we get more time to spend together when he gets in in the evening. He never expects me to do stuff for him. I do it because it makes everybody's life easier and more pleasant. If he got in at 6, made himself some food, started doing his laundry and ironing, I'd hardly see him to spend proper time with him. It just makes more sense all round to do things for everybody at the same time. When the occasion demands it, he does all those things for me too. It's just that for the bulk of the week, he's not here, so he can't.

See, my thinking, Samay, is that if I get all the housey boring stuff done in small bursts during the week whilst DH is at work, we don't have to spend the weekends sharing the cleaning. We can go out as a family. I used to bloody hate it when we were both in full-time work, and seemed to spend every weekend cleaning the house.

As an annoyinga sid dh hates having a meal ready when he arrives home as he wants to sit, rrest a bit- as did I when I was breadwinner.

ATM I am home whilst DH cobbles together study and work; I cook but he washes the diishes. When I am back working and he is more home absed it will stay that way becuasse I am a nutrition control freak better cook and Dh doesn't mind washing up.

Why does it always seem to come down to battles over roles and the like? Why not just divvy stuff up proportionately and get on with it.

Well, I don't think I've seen these threads, but I the attitude described does piss me off no end.

My mum works 3 days a week, and when she does she leaves the house before my dad at 8ish and gets back around 7-7.30pm. She then turns to and cooks him a meal from scratch, and apologizes if it's not ready to go on the table the moment he gets in. My dad 'can't' cook and insists it's just too hard for him to learn. If left to himself he eats cheese and bread for dinner, so if my mum is away, she prepares food for him to have.

Even though my mum presumably knows this is strange, given she has two sons and a son-in-law who all enjoy cooking. Nevertheless, if she happens to ring me in the evening she will invariably ask what I've fed my husband and express shock if he has cooked his own dinner after being at work all day. DH works from 9-5 and has virtually no commute: I doubt he's any more tired than I am most days!

I think it depends how old the kids are.

Looking after babies / toddlers can be very hard work, so then its probably fair to share the evening chores.

If he comes home at 7pm and starts cooking when is he going to see the dcs .

When i was SAHM and dh worked long days i was doing the cooking and he was doing bathing and bed stories because he missed the dcs.

I did online shopping, double cooking and freezing, had w/m and d/w so even with 3 dcs i cant say i had it harder than dh.

Maryz. In our case the children have a hot lunch so have an easier cold tea. We, dh and I, have a hot dinner. At he weekend we all eat together.
Maybe cooking for me is a bad example as it's something dh is good at. I do most other stuff.

MaryZ absolutely.

exepting Sn and the loike, we eat what teh chidlren do: a little compromise both ways. And sometimes even DS2 takes leftovers tos chool for lunch in a thermos food flask PMSL- how 1970's are we?

What it has seemed to eman though is that within the constraints of the ASD diagnosis two ahve, my boys are eceptionally good eaters who don;t make a fuss- much to the amazement of the Mum who asked ds2 what he wants for tea (visitng tonight) and was told 'anything youa re having- after ten yeras it is paying off.

Well fine if you're both happy with the arrangement I guess, it's none of my business. Just could not imagine living like that myself, but then we're all different!

We do have a cleaner so neither of us has to do much housework other than basic picking up after ourselves and some laundry, neither of us could bear the thought of getting up on a Saturday after being at work all week and having to start another 'shift' of cleaning the house. Definitely recommend this to anyone who can afford it (unless you're the kind of person who enjoys cleaning, apparently some do!)

My ds is 3 and has a cooked lunch a pre-school, generally second helpings (all freshly cooked on site by their 'chef' lol), and two good sized snacks, by dinner time he doesn't want a full meal, more a snack so he'll have homemade soup, beans on toast etc. whereas DH and I do want a full meal. We still sit with him whilst he eats and we all chat, it's just we eat later.

At weekends we eat together.

I think really the problem occurs when one partner starts to see the other in a servile role, and starts expecting that only they will do certain jobs. Thankfully that hasn't happened in our situation. For example, the other day I had to go out unexpectedly, quite a long way away, and was quite a lot later back than I'd expected to be. I got in to find DH, on his return from work, had tidied the house, put the bins out and made the dinner (according to my meal planner). And I hadn't asked him to. And I wasn't surprised that he had. I guess we just work it that whoever's there does what needs to be done. More often than not, it's me who's here.
Ephiny, I'd bloody love a cleaner though

I like samay's approach.
I've never cooked for dh and he'd never expect me to.

I only have one child, so yes he does work harder than me, he's got a stessful job whereas I get to stay at home and enjoy ds, but he can feed himself, clean up his own mess, do his own laundry, chip in with keeping the home he also in clean and tidy, look after/spend time with his child too when he's here.

If it works for a couple, that's great.
Their solution is to lead separate lives in the same house so there's no conflict over cooking, cleaning, washing and ironing.

It must impact on the time they spend together, but it works for them. There's no way you should expect your partner not to share the workload - how you choose to share: is up to the pair of you.

Actually, I think the problem is more when one partner doesn't realize how much work the other partner's tasks take.

My dad thinks that by spending 15-20 minutes loading the dishwasher and perhaps handwashing a couple of dishes, he's done the same amount as my mum, who will have shopped for the food and cooked a meal from scratch, which never takes her less than half an hour and often nearer 45 minutes-a whole hour.

My dad uses not cooking as an excuse (possibly subconsciously) not to recognize how much more work my mum is doing. I think there's always a risk of this if two people have very defined and unshared tasks.

I work outside the home, my DH is at home. He does not do what I would do if it was other way round, cos he is studying when DCs at school. But when I get home, between 5 and 6 most nights, I cook the meal, cos it gives me a break between work and home. DH gives DCs a snack to keep them going, then we have tea together. It works for us, but I know is not ideal.

Maryz- just to pick up on your point about children vs. adult meals, in my house my youngest is ravenous straight from school, and has pickiness related to her autism, so I feed her what she likes then. My older teen is vegetarian and often fixes herself something if she is hungry before I'm ready to cook (which isn't always easy if the youngest is needing my attention). They both have a hot dinner at school. DP and I generally eat later when we have a chance to sit down.

I don't fetishise eating together as family time, because I feel we get plenty of that in other ways.

Come on, whichever way round you work it, the person who is at home during the week does the cooking during the week. That's part of the deal, surely. You can't expect one person to get in at 7.30pm and start cooking. If they want to now and then, that's fine, and perhaps they will help with the washing-up. But it always amazes me that people don't have this worked out to their satisfaction.

If you both work, even if one of you is only part-time, then of course that changes things and you need to re-negotiate.

If he's working at home, that's different. He wouldn't leave a big pile of mess in the corner of his office and expect that it would be tidied up if he worked out of the home, so why should he do it at home.
Part of it is, I think, that I'm so bloody knackered by 6pm that I want everything done during the day, not cluttering up the evenings. We've got a small house, and if I'm tired, and want to sit down and relax, I don't want someone on top of me sorting stuff out, ironing, cooking, tidying up, whatever. So possibly I do so much for DH for entirely selfish reasons.

Jesus, I can't believe there are people out there too sour and slothful to cook a meal for someone who has been out at work all day.
Unbelievable.

UQD you contradicted yourself. One minute you're saying (in your opinion) how it should be done. The next it's 'it always amazes me that people don't have this worked out to their satisfaction'.