to be shocked by the amount of Stepford wives on Mumsnet

[LoopyLoopsCorgiPoops]

So many women on here either this it's fine to do everything in the house and with the children, or don't think it's fine yet put up with it. I simply could not live with an adult who thought they were more important and more deserving of leisure time than me. Why do they all put up with it?

Yanbu. In this one respect it is worse for women now. Still expected to do majority/all housework and child care plus needing to work full time. It is still viewed as women's work even though women now do paid work! The babysitting thing is also ludicrous but it happens because of the same reason.

I'd love to be a Stepford wife. Everything would be so much easier.

I'm often surprised by how "goody two shoes" some women are. Not just on here, but at work too. I can tell most of the women at workplaces I've been at secretly disaprove of me doing competitive sport/living outwith a modern housing estate/doing things without my husband present not due to his working away/not always speaking of my husband in hushed tones of reverence, etc..

Its the sheer obedience to pointless rules that gets me. I tend to employ lateral thinking at times. This can cause great shock

Sootikin - he has DS two days a week. DS is the one area he does pull his weight.

The rest of the time he works from home as a freelance graphic designer or he plays computer games.

He doesn't do any housework.

I don't see it as the end of the world as it doesn't cause any huge problems and luckily I am in a position to be able to have a cleaner so it doesn't mean I have to do too much.

He is just a) lazy and b) not bothered

My only concern is for my DS as I will not have him growing up thinking women do house work / cook / laundry etc, so I am going to be making some changes for that reason.

I have sons and a daughter and bring them up to all help with chores at home and to work hard at school and they'll hopefully go on to have interesting careers - well that's the plan

As I've said I don't work at the moment but that's the key thing - I don't envisage being a SAHM forever - just until my youngest is in full time education.

DH and I used to both have the regular Mon-Fri, 40 hour week. Sunday was the cleaning day, we'd alternate cooking. I was never, ever one to think these were naturally my jobs, I never ironed his clothes (still don't), and was actually a lot more slatternly and lazy about housework than he was.

Then DH quit his job, became a self-employed personal trainer, and most days will be out seeing clients from 7am up to about 9pm. That's a long day! With traveling across London, he doesn't get home until about 10-10.30pm, up again at 5am the next day. He regularly does 6 days a week, sometimes 7. When he is not physically at the gym/seeing clients, he is at home working on building up his business.

I still have my Mon-Fri 40 hour job in the City, but I leave the house at 8am, home for 6.30. I'm now also 5 months pregnant. I do the majority of cleaning/cooking but I have drastically reduced my expectations of the amount of cleaning we actually need!

I really struggled in the beginning with this idea that I had a full time job, and was doing almost everything else myself. Until I just actually started seeing my husband physically and mentally exhausted and I just thought - it's not about feminism, Stepford Wives type behaviour, or perceived domestic equality. I am not going to demand my husband hoovers up every single week because of my worries about becoming a domestic slave. He is working extremely hard. He also has no expectations of me to do these things - he keeps saying we should get a cleaner.

It's about looking after each other. My husband is extremely supportive of me, of everything I do and want to do. He helps me all the time, in so many ways, when he is exhausted and just wants to sit quietly. If I can support my husband in his quest to raise a successful business over the next few years, just by making his life easier by just making sure he has food to eat and clothes to wear - it's no skin off my nose. I finally realised - the actual work is incidental. It is incidental that he is working his arse off outside the home, and I am here doing these domestic chores. We are both contributing to the mutual support we offer each other.

What Betty said.

Yes, betty, you have a great way with words

Absolutely what Betty said. Except fast forward a few years and in spite of having a traditional set up DS, 17, is teaching himself to cook .

Excellent post Betty

'We don't work equal (paid working) hours.
I work FT, earn three times his salary, three times his (paid working) hours so am out the house 9am-6pm.
He's SAHD with own PT business.
We don't think about who does what and who works what hours, we both have two kids, a house, social lives etc and we work equally on sorting all that out.'

That's pretty much how things worked for us for years, except I'm a teacher so I was out of the house by 7.15am and I had the holidays. We split the jobs and aren't particularly houseproud so dust didn't bother us.
I came home, played with the children and cooked dinner because I like cooking. I also did baths and bedtime because I wanted to.
It worked well for us because we really didn't give a stuff what other people thought, we'd lived together as students and as couple without children and I'd never felt like a house slave, so why would we change what worked when we had children?

See Betty I think that's fine as far as it goes. My DH also works long hours and travels a lot. And I support him absolutely in his career.

But what we are both very clear on is that this should not mean he is the secondary parent. Or that the DC should see me doing all the boring chores and he going out to work to earn the big bucks.

In our set up it would be very easy to fall into a 1950's pattern. But we think it's better for our DC not to allow this. Sometimes we have to poke one another to remind ourselves though .

If children can see that their parents have equal intellectual input into the significant decision-making in the family, I don't really think that who puts the bins out, who does the school run and who does the red-eye travel matters much at all. Taking complex decisions about your joint life as a family and ensuring that everyone's views and needs are robustly defended and considered is, IMO, the healthy family model and not much else is terribly important.

I agree Bonsoir, it's also about the respect between members of a family too.
My family tends to run on logic, as do most of the arguments vigorous discussions. Attitudes and opinions are frequently challenged, but if there is a logical solution that's the one that tends to win. Or a compromise is reached.
Still works that way almost 30 years later, with two almost adult children added to the mix.

Ah well Bonsoir it does matter to DH and I.

DH may well be out of the house more than I, but when he is here it's important to him to show that he is perfectly capable and it's not beneath him to do family stuff...

We can't be 50/50 cos he's just not here. And even we can't solve that little conundrum . We just try to mix it up a bit so everyone is involved.

We've just had five days off. Now what have we done. Supported a big school event, bought DD's birthday present together and run ourselves ragged on Friday sorting out various admin jobs that needed attention, I did the birthday treat day and DH had a rest but snurgled about with DS doing boy stuff, went out together on Sunday, went out together on Monday. I have shopped and cooked. DH has tidied and binned and ironed his shirts - which is unusual. All the beds are done and the laundry;s almost up to date.

Back to work today. DH has gone already - I will go in about 20 minutes. I will be home at 6ish. DH will be home at 8.30ish. At 6ish I will have a gin, do dinner, tidy around and we will be even stevens.

The DC are at home today and old enough to look after themselves - the cleaner will be in at about 11 to hoover and mop and have a dust.

All as it should be. All happy - 21 years down, children near grown, still together, looking forward to growing old together. We did what worked for us in a traditional way and looking backwards I wouldn't change a thing.

Back to doing what you feel suits you and your family without worrying how it is perceived by others. Works for me, MIW.

wordfactory - I think you are talking about an issue that doesn't have much to do with work. Sometimes, in some families, one person thinks they are "above" certain life tasks. I was chatting to someone who does a very lowly job the other day and I had to laugh internally when he explained that he left all the school related stuff to his wife (who also works in a lowly job) - subtext "it was beneath his dignity".

I know plenty of WOHMs (here in Paris) who think it is beneath their dignity to do anything school related either. There is a flourishing outsourcing industry for absolutely everything child related here - you can employ a homework supervisor for your DCs through an agency and you never need even meet the person .

But this has nothing to do with work I think - it's about a person's poor self-esteem and the need to "prove" their worth by bragging about not doing what they perceive to be menial tasks.

amrried it sounds like you mixed it all up a bit .

But from MN threads this weekend, you can see there are still far too many men who will have used this weekend to do nothing in the home or with the DC.

Because we had a long weekend and we both had time Wordfactory. Those times are few and far between. Bonsoir does make a good point - I don't mind doing household stuff - quite enjoy it actually. DH doesn't and the funny thing is neither do his SILs - they think it's beneath them and moan and carp constantly because I think their mother spent a lifetime behaving like a drudge, expecting no-one in the family to do anthing and whining about it. Neither of them have ever worked full time in a demanding job either but they don't iron, they hate cleaning, they are very feminist and adamant about equal rights but I have yet to fathom equal to what. They have done nothing and met partners who do little more or less in spite of their RG universities and proclaimed intellectual superiority. What example does living in skint disorder provide for their dc?

My MOL (RIP) was absolutely confounded and horrified by me. She herself had zero education - she was a peasant in bourgeois disguise. She constantly needed to assert her superiority and was ruthless in adopting a superior attitude and absolutely never doing any sort of menial task (think: walking to the shops. Oh no. She drove. She didn't do any sort of housework or cooking or... anything). I completely confounded all her behaviours with my expensive education, international career and clearly very much more illustrious family by cleaning my own loo and serving at my own table.

Bonsoir you may be right.

DH balks at the idea that men find doing things with and for their family beneath them. Not their jurisdiction IYSWIM. What sort of idea is that to give your DC? Ugh.

And some women are complicit in perpetuating that idea. Particularly when their men are high earners. He earns oodles of cash so he shouldn't have to bother with the small things. Agian an idea we find sickening. Imagine groing up thinking your parents thought of family life as a small thing.