to be fed up with posters on here defending men that are lazy or behave badly?

[Swankyswishing]

I'm fed up with it.

If someone posts that their husband or partner isn't pulling his weight with the children or in the house, replies say things like "Men need praise when they do things right" or "It doesn't come naturally to men, they need to be trained" or "Some men find babies daunting and prefer them when they're older"

Usually if a man isn't pulling his weight it's because he's lazy or a big child. I refuse to pander to my DH and he is expected to pull his weight in the house the same amount that I do. I refuse to make concessions or allow him to behave like an extra child just because he's a man!

Some people are lazy, or just happy for other people to do things if they are important to them, or don't see the urgency of a job. I am one such person in some circumstances. I wouldn't want to see someone else struggling, but I don't see the urgency/need for many of the domestic jobs that my sister does, for example. If she and I lived together, she would almost certainly think that I was "lazy" because we have very different priorities. I think this tends to be true of lots of partnerships. Communication is the important thing so that resentment doesn't build up.

And while we're on the subject it really grates on my tits the amount of threads on here where the female OP says "I sent my DP to the shops"

'Sent'? I don't know about anyone else but I 'send' my dog to his basket

I 'ask' my DH to go to the shop for me.

Fastweb, get over the fact that - shock horror - this thread is a thread about other threads. I am not going to argue about this with you anymore. Unless you are posting something relevant about this thread then I am not interested in what you have to say.

Can't say I've seen much defending men going on here actually.

It appears from my short sojourn that this site is peppered with mouth-frothing, bigotted man-haters.

Any complaint about a partner or spouse however minor seems to be followed by pages of "leave the bastard!!" "He's abusing you!" "You deserve better!" "Ring women's aid - GET OUT NOW" Its like a female only audience at the Jerry Springer show ("you go girl! Mmmhmmm").

Any tentative suggestion that possibly discussing the issue with the husband or making further reasonable constructive attempts to solve the problem before "dumping his ass" are shouted down by a chorus of "you're belittling the OP!" "How dare you tell her she deserves to stay in an abusive relationship!".

Any post from a woman moaning about anything male-related requires 100% complicit support "Poor you, yes he is a bastard, you're quite right to have chopped his balls off / cut up his suits / burned his house down" Any attempt to possibly point out the OPs own unreasonable behaviour, "well yes, he did stay out late but that was only actually AFTER you called him a cheating nazi pr*ck who should get himself to a whore and learn about basic female anatomy before he comes near you again with his filthy man parts" is deemed "unsupportive" and "disgraceful".

Thank God I'm not living in the UK and that I'm not male - I'd be hiding my bollocks under the bed in case my girlfriend decided I should swallow them to prove how much I love her cheered on by the Mumsnet feminist mafia.

ionysis, it did used to be much more like that on here but it's totally different recently, I've noticed.

WRT the DH's that are great in teh garden or tidying the garage. that's fine, it is but you aren't all living in the garage or the garden. it doesn't make sense to have a well manicured garden and spotless garage if the inside of the house is an inch thick with dust and there are no clean dishes to eat off. fair enough, the garden might be what he is good at but there are levels of priorities when it comes to household cleanliness and if a woman is struggling everyday to keep on top of washing, cooking and cleaning then i think its a bit of a cop out to justify her partner's lack of help in the house by saying "well he deals with teh garden and i wouldn't know where to start there if i had to"

LyingWitch, it was tongue-in-cheek, yes. And obviously women are entitled to light-heartedly moan on here about male partners and childcare etc. But for me - and I'm very new to Mn, so possibly being struck more sharply by it - there seems a very fine line between those light-hearted moans and the very diminished expectations of fair sharing of domestic labour/finances/childcare that so often feature in women posting about abusive relationships. The more a climate of 'aren't men useless?'/'Ah, give him a break, he's male' is fostered, even jokily, the more you will get abused women who appear to genuinely have little or no idea what might constitute a reasonable set of expectations as to an equitable division of labour around the house etc. That's what has horrified me in the time I've been on Mn - the number of women who post about an appallingly unequal and unhappy relationship and then say timidly 'Is this normal?'

Just goes to show that it takes all sorts really. If everyone agreed hen there would be no fabulous juicy debates

"EdithWeston, why should a woman have to train her man though? That is exactly the sort of response and point I am referring to. Women aren't trained to do things, we just do them. There is enough "stuff" to do on a daily basis without women having to train their husbands too as if they were a puppy".

If you want the result, you put in the effort. If you are happy with the status quo, then you won't need to seek changes.

If you do want changes, then you are on a hiding to nowhere if you expect them to happen magically without effort on your part.

In a perfect world, no "training" would be necessary. But if your cohabitant is less than perfect, your choices are to put up with it, or change it.

I'd much rather change it.

And of course it's not a one way street - I was pretty useless with car maintenance for a long time. The training DH provided in this has been invaluable. He taught me how to iron too - I just don't see the need for it, but I can do it now and actually do do it sometimes.

what i mean is, everyone in the house should make sure the basics are covered daily (dishes, washing, cooking and generally putting things back where they belong). it doesn't take much though to check the wash basket for dirty washing and bung it in teh machine, or to check the machine when you get home from work to see if there is any to be hung, or to check the line to see if any needs brought in. it shouldn't be a case of one adult asking the other adult to do these basic things as these are the sort of things all adults need to do to keep themselves clean and fed. it should be in every adults' mind everyday that there will be washing to do, meals to be made and dishes to be washed, that is basic stuff. once that is covered, things like dusting, hoovereing, cleaning bathrooms, gardening, car maintenance can be divvied up according to strengths.

HereTheScaryThing - it's not that a man shouldn't share domestic chores, it's more that people (men and women) have different priorities and ways of doing things. If you are used to doing things a certain way and your partner then helps or takes over that task it will help harmony if there is tolerance if it isn't done the same way or to the same standard. This could either be because the task is new to someone or because they just don't see the importance of doing it in a particular fashion. I don't think this is always (or even usually) down to gender.

My DP restacks the dishwasher because he doesn't like the way I do it. I'm happy with that. I tend to say "I'll let you stack the dishwasher", unless I want to get all the dishes out of the way - in which case he will accept that it hasn't been stacked as efficiently as he would like.

ionysis That's scarily accurate!

verlaine i sort of agree with you. i get the different priorities thing but i am not altogether convinced it's always a genuine case of people having different standards. I know this proves nothing except that my EX was a bit of a knob but he would use the 'standards' argument and also the 'i dont know how you liek it done' argument as a way of getting off doing things. like he would leave a wash in the machine all day and then only hang it when really pushed, but then say, 'it doesn't need to be hung outside, it'll dry fine in the house' well yes it would, but it would take 3 days without heating on and if he did this everyday (he never did it 2 days in a row, he made sure he wasn't asked too often) we would have a massive back log of washing.

There is a lot of rubbish about men on here that suggests they're less capable of certain things because they're men. An individual may struggle with certain things but it's not because of a Y chromosone. Just as the absence of one does not make women naturally competent at eg looking after small children.

(or the time he literally transferred everything from washing machie to tumble drier, and i mean literally put his hands in the machine, pulled out the bundle and put it straight across into tumble, no shaking anything out, no reducing it to smaller bundles, no checking for things that couldn't be tumble dried, which meant i then had to go through it all reducing it down, shaking it and checking what was safe to tumble. i was cross with him that day so i left all his stuff in as i thought it would teach him a lesson if things shrunk.)

Fastweb, get over the fact that - shock horror - this thread is a thread about other threads. I am not going to argue about this with you anymore. Unless you are posting something relevant about this thread then I am not interested in what you have to say.

Don't worry about it, I've already worked out the why.

I'm not sure why anybody minds so much how other people divy up the household tasks. As long as no one member is over burdened/unhappy with their lot, and no vital task will be left undone should one spouse be out of action, does it really matter ?

DH does stuff that mainly falls in the catagory seen as bloke stuff.

Bar the laundry, I hate hanging and putting away clothes with a vengence. And he folds better than me.

And bar the shopping. Cos I get "things coming at me too fast down the converyor belt" angst, so only go once a month.

I do anything DIY with cement or leccy though, cos I love it.

But other than that, pretty classic gender lines house jobs wise.

Never the less we have still have managed to raise an 11yo boy that can mop floors, vacum, use washing machine, dishwasher, breadmaker & pellet stove, dust, tidy, strip a sofa, put covers back on sofas, empty littler trays and cook.

I don't care what anybody thinks, I am not swapping opening packets cooking, for being eaten alive by mosquitoes while fighting our nurotic lawn mower four times a week.

I see myself more of a "spend lots of money in garden centre" sort of gardener. Sort of..... artistic director.

verlaine - yes, i know you're right.

She's enabling him to be lazy because she just gets on with it (albeit loudly moaning about it)
I always hope that it's not a man thing mainly because I know that my DH would n't do it. But then, the BIL has been enabled by his mummy too, before he was with my sis. My DH has looked after himself (even though lots of women in his life have given him every opportunity not to!), and in his words "you just get on with it, don't you"

In actual fact, in our household, I'm the lazy one, and DH does more around the house than I do. (and yes, i'm milking that for all it's worth while i'm pg )

"of course their is lots more to it, men or woman, their is still chores to be done, recovering from the birth, adjusting to a new routine, more sleepless nights, and that's not including if you have a baby who just wont settle, be that just a grumpy baby, or a baby who suffers from colic, ill heath, reflux etc..."

altinkum - don't tell me that! I'm living in complete denial that it'll be hard!!

"I'm not sure why anybody minds so much how other people divy up the household tasks."

when people start a thread about their lazy OH then they invite opinion. this forum wouldn't work if people weren't allowed to give their opinion on things.

this forum wouldn't work if people weren't allowed to give their opinion on things.

As long as your opinion doesn't differ from the majority of course at which point you'll be set upon by the hounds...

I always find that the "poor man" bit comes just before all the usual suspects flock in with "Leave the bastard" for the next few pages.....

my pet peeve is ' maybe he's depressed' posts after a woman describes an abusive bully of a husband.

oh mine is "maybe she is depressed" when someone describes a neglectful and lazy mother

when people start a thread about their lazy OH then they invite opinion. this forum wouldn't work if people weren't allowed to give their opinion on things.

My query is why they hold THAT particular opinion, rather than an objection for them having AN opinion.

If sorting out many of the trials and tribulations of a relationship were as simple as getting everybody in a partnership to do the same jobs, in the same way, in exactly the same proportion the issue woild have been solved eons ago.

Except in my house, where there would be dark muttering and lots of over dramtic waving of arms to beat off the mosquitoes as I took my place at the helm of the lawn mower.

Unless the household activly promotes an idea that these are girlie jobs and these are boy jobs and gets all chuntery/overly full of praise when a child steps outside of tightly defined gender lines it is doesn't have to be a shortcut to perpetuating a stright jacket for our kids of both genders.

AFAIC As long as the kid learns to do ALL the jobs, at the very least to the point of basic competence, it does them no harm to see parents sharing according to personal strenghths/prefences and divving up the ones they both hate on a quid pro quo basis.

I'm leery of giving DS the idea that my labour has more value when I'm slapping cement around than when I'm trying to beat the laundry mountian into submission.

I think its possible making a priority of the nature of the tasks being equally spread (rather than the equality of the burden being the priority, and so sharing it according to preference) could set him up for thinking that the nature is the most important aspect of any job, becuase it dictates how menial/degrading a task is.

And I don't see what I am most inclined to do as either menial or degrading. If I did I'd be clinging to that lawnmower for all I was worth.

"I'm not sure why anybody minds so much how other people divy up the household tasks"

this is what you posted fasweb. i was trying to point out that people respond to what someone posts.

if someone posted saying, i do all the cleaning cooking and childcare and my OH does all the diy, garden and car maintenance and we are really happy with this arrangement then other posters wouldn't respond with alternative suggestions, as there is no issue. it's only when people post moaning about an imbalance that otehr posters reply with "well it should be split chores 50/50" or "you should both do the amount of chores that gives you each the same amount of free time". people only post these responses when someone is compaining of the imbalance, it's not like people often start OPs dictating what the domestic balance should be in all households.