To be frustrated and angry that women are still expected to be the "emotion keepers" in families.

[seeker]

And if we don't stop doing it, our daughters will still be thinking they are responsible for "keeping men sweet" in 30 years time?

And then of course there is male-on-female rape (again, I am not arguing that men are never raped). This is the ultimate female responsibility for men's emotions. Despite of all the progressive talk about it, so many publications still present rape as the woman's fault. She is the one who dressed too provocatively, she is the one who should not have been outside late at night, she is the one who should not have been drunk, should not have tempted. She is the one who did not manage the man's emotions right.

Oh, autumn- I wish I could express it half as cogently as you do- thank you!

seeker, I am glad to be useful. Thank you for starting this thread.

Autumn I fund your long socialsciencetastic posts irascible and dismissive to anyone not in agreement
Mn is a discursive forum we all observe,opine based on own subjective opinion,posts read,and experience
You dont know every woman but you too opine about emotional work if folk you never met

And don't even start me on the countless men's blogs about how South-East Asian women are soooo much better than European ones as they are much more loyal, submissive, uncritical, and supportive. I am yet to see a female blog praising the ego-stroking skills of mail-order grooms from Vietnam.

I agree. There is far too much misogyny on the internet and elsewhere. I agree as well that what women should be talking about is improving their lot and the lives of other women. I just think that it's not all a case of women are the givers and men are the takers.
Where I differ from most feminists is that I think that men and women's brains are different and we will probably never have a society where men do as much of the childcare etc. as women. That shouldn't excuse men from doing their fair share though. I'm not talking about individual relationships here but society in general. What I would like to see is a society where women have the same (or more) respect than men. I don't think they have at the moment.

Autumn you chose to discuss the gripes of your relationship with dh,
his so called bitching.your eye rolling.and the emotional work you feel you endure
I can legitimately comment.what do you want a stiff upper lip,English refrain so you're not doing emotion keeping

Why on earth do people resort to the ad hominem? So pointless and unproductive.

scottishmummy, I don't think we can manage a conversation. I guess you can equate disagreement with dismissal. Yes, I dismiss your opinions because I disagree with them. However, I provide constructive explanations every time. You chose to ignore these explanations, such as my explicit recognition above of the diversity of individual family situations (e.g. replies to inde). Thank you for your very generous permission to not do emotional work. But I do not require it.

inde, I share your pessimism about equality, definitely in the short term. And discussions about biological differences is a whole large bag of very unhappy cats. My personal very subjective and not well-referenced position is that it is pretty much impossible to separate biology from social conditioning when it comes to people. If you are interested, this book is absolutely fantastic: www.amazon.co.uk/Delusions-Gender-Science-Behind-Differences/dp/1848312202.

This is no ad hominen, there are vigorous posts which is good
So op how do you keep men sweet?why do you presume other women also keep men sweet?
What do you want to see done about keeping men sweet?

RTT.

Autumn,you may not like content of my posts,that's your prerogative
We shall both contribute,I expect maybe not concur,there's room for divergence
I think propensity for emotional work isn't necessarily gender,I think it's personality,experience

So a you saying unequivocally that the is absolutely societal expectation for women to be the ones to do the emotional work in a relationship? That no women has ever been held responsible for make behaviour?

Male behaviour, that should read.

Rtt

I have. I don't think you have.

Seeker you've constructed your own value laden summary and question to me
Maybe to have ta-da moment to trot out some links and validation of your question
I think individually there are gender and personality differences.you may consider you've kept men sweet,and using the global we you assume others do too

Ad hominem again!

A straight answer would be good!

More ad nauseaum than ad hominen
You've constructed a subjective laden question,waiting to ta-dah with links/ stats
You're not seeking my opinion you're looking to validate what you already think

No. You have stated several times eliptically that you think that I am wrong- that there is no societal expectation of women to do this work. I just want to be sure I understand you- particularly as I find your posting style a little difficult. I have no interest at all in scoring points, or whatever motive you are ascribing to me.

And there is nothing value laden in the question - "in your opinion is there a societal expectation on women to do the majority of the emotional work in a relationship?"

Since has this become this a thread about domestic violence?

Or about what happens on relationship threads?

Less than 2 hours after it started, after only about 50 posts in. It has however changed to the fact that women tend to 'do' Christmas-ignoring the fact that many of them love doing it. I don't start in August but I do love doing Christmas-especially the artistic side. I arranged playdates (horrible word), cooked the meal etc because I was there-how DH was supposed to manage it when he was out 7am to 7.15.pm I don't know -(and I would have hated to be out those hours). When I was teaching full time he was the one that took time off to do orthodontist appointments because I couldn't. Parenthood is a partnership-if you don't like the way you are doing it then sort it out with DP.

Children will do what you do. The eye rolling isn't an equal adult type thing-it is the sort of thing that I do when I have no control e.g. a member of the public being irritating. I have decided that even then I shouldn't be so cowardly. A good example was a branch of a well known coffee shop last week. I was 2 people behind a man who got the wrong order-where upon he was extremely rude to the young person serving. The woman behind me and I rolled our eyes. However the woman in front said to him 'there is no need to be quite so rude'-he blustered and insisted he wasn't rude 'she just calmly pointed out that he was-he had been apologised to and the mistake had been corrected and his response was just unpleasant.

We should all do it -all the time.

Exotic do you think that you might be extrapolation from your experience to the generality just a bit? Can I ask you the same question I have signally failed to get scottishmummy to answer- do you believe that there is no societal expectation for women to do more of the emotional work, the smoothing and appeasing than men? Do you genuinely think that women are never expected to take responsibility for men's behaviour and feelings?

Of course there is Seeker!!!!

I genuinely don't think women take any more responsibility for men's feelings than men take for women's feelings. Men are often irritated by women and yet say nothing or appease them, just as women do for men.

Yes-but you really don't have to do it!! Do you think that your DD will do it seeker-and if so why?