to beg women with lazy sexist arsehole DHs not to have more DCs with them

[BeeInYourBonnet]

Apologies as I'm sure this must have been done before, but some of the threads recently have been SO depressing. I've been on MN 8 years, and it never ceases to amaze me what total fucking arseholes some women are married to. These manchilds are pathetic.

I want to cry when I read that some poor woman is pg with no 3, 4 or 5, and admits that her DH has never helped with a single night wake-up, has hardly changed a nappy, provides no support emotionally or practically, is financially abusive, the list goes on....

I know its more complicated than this, but I just want to scream 'stop having DCs with these complete bastards' 'stop showing them that's its OK to check out of family life'

YY to women thinking it's so evil to be single

This is where pop culture has so much to answer for. Why can't we have more shows/films with a female lead who's single and having the time of her life? (and not portrayed as a slut for doing so)

Again, it's not about telling people what to think MrsKoala, it's about promoting debate.

The teenagers sitting in a class and thinking (for example) that housework and childcare is women's work, will hear quite the opposite from their peers who live in much more equal households.

Just like when people log on to Mumsnet and read the opposite of what their own relationship is like.

Of course some parents will be threatened by this and may take the decision to remove their children.

But for the majority left in school, I think it would be a massively helpful lesson.

it will take some changing, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't keep trying so eventually we can breed out the arseholes - of both genders. Took 30 years, but most people wear seatbelts now and a proportion of those who don't have been removed from the gene pool.

the campaign is 'you are worth more than this' or 'don't breed more jerks'. Also messages that soap operas don't show happy normal families because that doesn't make drama. In fact, perhaps a health warning on each one??

How do you think it should be approached then, MrsKoala if not through education?

Before I had safeguarding training at work, I didn't know the different categories of abuse. My idea of an abusivehousehold was one that included physical or sexual violence and/or neglect. I had never heard the terms financial or emotional abuse - which are more insidious and less obvious forms of abuse. It would be simple to incorporate teaching that into the curriculum, imo. Just simply giving people the terminology and definitions may help them to identify it later as abusive behaviour rather than just not ideal but since he is such a great dad, never mind etc.

The teenagers sitting in a class and thinking (for example) that housework and childcare is women's work, will hear quite the opposite from their peers who live in much more equal households.

Sorry, that made me laugh! Not if you teach in the areas i worked. IME not one teen has ever said they think the woman should not do all the work and all the childcare and owes the man sex and ocassionally deserves a slap!

I left a school crying once after taking 5 year 9 classes for an hour each on something called the geography of crime (how small actions ripple out and affect all of us). Every single one felt it was the victim who was left paralysed's fault for being injured because she held on to her bag when some muggers grabbed it - so she deserved to be beaten. Also she shouldn't have been walking thru a park alone - totally asking for it apparently

I agree MrsK, I used to live and work in a similar area.
If the predominant culture is one of acceptance of abusive behaviour in all its many forms, and the worth of a person is defined by their breeding abilities and the need to keep a man, it's a very uphill struggle to encourage debate or even understanding of why it isn't OK.

Totally agree about the terrible models for love given to us by "art".

I am reading - no idea why, it is a big huge pile of guff, just feel I ought to and never have - On The Road. It is tragic. Really, really sad and pathetic - and quite boring, as aimless druggy crap quickly becomes, whether real life or in narrative. It romanticises abuse and dysfunction. Even the characters in it are having a shit, hollow time a lot of the time. And the children - oh my god, there are children mentioned tangentially throughout (often with Dean Moriarty fancying them - whose real life basis was Neal Cassady who did actually marry a 14 year old girl, which was then and there legal) and you feel terrible just imagining their lives.
Neal Cassady grew up with no mother and an alcoholic father and dodged in and out of doss-house hotels, sleeping rough and reform school throughout childhood. As an adult he cheated and scrounged, and took an incredble amount of drugs and talked utter shit on them all the time, and abused and two- or three-timed (including with men, or at least a man, Alan Ginsberg) very young women / girls. And neglected his children. This is the sad character who is at the heart of "the great american novel".

I know there is a whole philosophical debate about morals and art and shit but if you have even an ounce of decency (or if you are a woman, or black) I can't understand how you can read On The Road and think it great.

Anyway that is just a side note on the romanticisation of men being shits, particularly to women, in art and literature.

If my daughter turns into a bookworm I am going to talk to her about all this

Don't forget music too Dusk. If i hear one more woman saying 'this is my favourite song' 'this is our song' or 'it's so romantic' about songs like 10cc i'm not in love, or Harold Melvin if you don't know me by now, or Meatloaf 2 out of 3 aint bad, or tainted love, i'll scream. How is having someone who wont tell you they love you, or tells you they will never love you considered fucking romance

And yet you're not a supporter of equality in relationships being discussed in school MrsKoala?

I am as long as it's not paternalistic and moralising. Doing the job i did it was a very fine line you trod with certain communities. I also had to question myself constantly about my motives, was i trying to impose 'my' or 'our' MC sensibilities in a victorian do gooder stylee? People have to come to their own conclusions whether we agree or not and i do not think school is a place for imposing societies morals. As a old marxist i do have issues with higher authorities thinking they know best.

Inside i want to shake them and howl into the wind. But the reality is that is not our place. It's often well meaning but morally dubious. It is the thin end of the wedge it think often. However, i am constantly torn about it. It's a paradox i can't riddle out. I see both sides of the argument. Sorry.

And most of all, a fucking spa weekend is NOT adequate compensation for being married to a totally lazy , disengaged man who can't be bothered to take part in family life. On the same note, equal time for hobbies is not practical or desirable when it would mean that there is no leisure time left in which the family can actually spend time together - as a family. Those two pieces of advice pop up on every single thread about selfish, lazy partners and they are never helpful!

This, this is it!
Drives me nuts! Especially as there probably isn't the money for the bloomin' spa anyway!.

Tit-for-tat is never the answer!

I don't think there's anything paternalistic or moralising about teaching equality.

To me, it's a basic human right and the more people who are taught that, the better.

That's so true NannyOgg

No-one ever suggests the woman should go out for a few beers with her mates.

A spa weekend?

I'd rather shit in my hands and clap thank you very much.

I love a spa, me. It isn't some kind of magic compensation award for having a shitty partner though! I go to a spa because I want to, not because I have to hide from my shite life in an over-priced sauna.

But is that not an assumption that the sort of women who find themselves in these relationships are probably not MC MrsKoala? Sorry if I've misunderstood you- I do see what you are saying re: the 'culture' in certain areas-mugging etc- and I do agree with you to an extent, but I think that a lot of the relationship issues that have been discussed in this thread and elsewhere, transcend class, wealth and education- MN being a classic example, loads of the women posting about their wanker partners are highly educated and fairly well of (or they would be, if 'D'H didn't hide the bank cards)

Hope no-one thought I was victim blaming in my OP.
I didn't mean to be. I just find it all so frustrating and sad, for everyone involved.

And if most of us believe there's no changing these arsehole men, then supporting and educating women seems the only way.

My OP was a bit simplistic and flippant, but maybe some sort of MN campaign would be a constructive way toward.

I agree with Morris about the having more children in general issue. I keep reading threads from women who are clearly really struggling wih their existing children and yet are pregnant again. I would never say so to an individual woman. But I just want to say 'you are in charge! Exercise some agency over your life!'

I know it's hard for women ground down with no self esteem, which is why I would never post it, just support them. But still. I have two, both happy healthy babies who sleep through. My DH is not a wanker. But there is absolutely no way on earth I'm having another!

MrsKoala, as a feminist I struggle with being "culturally sensitive" in advice to girls, because feminism is not mainstream and to be sensitive to any given prevailing culture is probably to be sensitive to a load of patriarchal charter-to-exploit.

I have to say, the ones that blow my mind on mn are the step-mothers who married a man on his second marriage who are confused that he is foisting taking any interest in his own children on any available woman going (whoever the mother is). If a man has been married before, you have had a good chance to see how he treats women and families!

I do not think school is a place for imposing societies morals

Are you joking? School is the biggest vector for socialisation out there. It's how we all end up being good little capitalists and consumers, etc and so on.

I guess it's okay to teach those kinds of morals, how to be a good worker and contributor to the economy, but not the kind of morals that will keep women out of misery.

MrsKoala, many WC people do/did not have such crappy unequal relationships; your sensibilities may be less MC than you think.

The attitude to crime I understand: in a choice between personal safety and property, you let the property go. That's what I have taught my teen. It's about self-protection not necessarily victim-blaming, but teenagers can be very black and white in their thinking (and mine thinks the world is split between people who think like her and "idiots".)

I had more children with someone who was emotionally abusive. My reason (now I look back) was that I was constantly made to feel I was in the wrong, so never realised why I was so miserable. I genuinely thought I was unreasonable and over emotional because of the insidious manipulation he used against me. I wanted more children because children just love you, and I was very unhappy, and I wanted more small people to keep me busy (because my depression was worse when I wasn't) and have a nice, simple, fun time with. It is HARD to get away from someone who is trying to control you. They make you feel like it's your fault and you find yourself trying to please them and believing that you couldn't possibly make it on your own. In my case, I wanted out of the relationship so much I hoped he would die, yet I was so afraid of his anger that I stayed. Now that I am out of it he is still trying to control me through the kids. I can look back and see all the things he did, and be amazed I stayed, but when I was in it I blamed myself.

Sorry Karma - i meant i judge myself for being a MC do gooder. Not that it doesn't happen in all realms of life. I was talking very specifically about widening participation outreach programmes which focus on very deprived areas. It was more in response to the idea that some of the peers would argue with those in the group with different opinions. And sadly in my experience you do not get any voices of dissent.

I studied a module on womens studies at uni and i remember the lecturer telling us all about how men didn't do equal share of chores/childcare - up to that point that had also been my experience. All the other women in the class put their hands up to point out that in fact their fathers did half the cooking, cleaning etc. The Lecturer looked at them quite disgusted and said 'urrghh you're MC post feminists'

Anyway. No, it happens to all groups/classes, however ime mc girls are more likely to feel outrage and indignation at the suggestions of inequality, compered to their peers from more deprived areas.

What a patronising thread.

'They just want someone to love them'

FFS. What a patronising simplistic woman-hating cliche.

It's all so easy for you in your nice conventional lives.

Most of these comments stink of classism and misogyny. Why the 'us' and 'them' attitude? Is it because it could easily happen to any of you? You could wake up one day and discover something about your 'DH' that will make your whole life implode.

You don't understand how privileged you are to able to have the exact number of children you always imagined in a socially acceptable relationship.

Why shouldn't others in crappy relationships have all the children they want and get rid of the lazy H once they're done? This is not because they 'want someone to love them' because that is just patronising bullshit, but perhaps they are just trying to create the kind of family they have always wanted. I certainly feel sorry for my DD that she has to cope with her dad's and my awful co-parenting relationship without any siblings to share the burden. Things are easier when you can talk to someone who is going through the same.

Yes, it's important for women to keep their wits about them. But that means their own wits, not those imposed by Mrs Smuggy Smug from high horse-ville in middle-class-shire.