to think men cocking stuff up is neither cute nor endearing?

[DrSeuss]

I've thought this for a while but a post doing the rounds on FB yesterday brought it back to mind. A dad had sent a child to nursery wearing just dungarees, no top or jumper. Everyone was making comments along the lines of ah, he tried, bless him.

I wondered what people would have said if the mother had done that. Would they have found it sweet or just thought that a parent really should know how to dress a child?
My MIL is firmly of the frame of mind that men's mistakes are cute and funny. She expects me to share this view. If, for example, DH was supposed to pick up DS when I have had DD three days previously and he totally forgets what time school finishes doesn't leave work on time and arrives twenty minutes late, that's really endearing and he should be let off for his mistake.

I initially thought it was a generational thing but it seems not. A friend was unable to move from her bed following major surgery. She got a call asking when someone was coming to school to pick the kids up. She rang her husband who was meant to take care of this. He was thirty miles away, having forgotten. Cue all her friends bar me doing the whole, bless, so cute, so funny, don't be too hard on him thing. if she totally forgot her kids, would they say that?
So many other examples I could give. Why does anyone think it's sweet when men cock up? Why is it funny and endearing when my DH leaves the children's coats three hundred miles away in mid winter? Why does he get a verbal pat on the head? Would I? I doubt it. And guess who had to sort that one out?
If I make a mistake, I sort it out. I don't expect people to say that it's cute.

My dad used to look after us a lot when I was little, and while we weren't always in matching clothes, we certainly were dressed appropriately for the weather with combed hair, socks or tights and coats on, and clean shoes, and we had usually been fed something like pork chops, beans and home made chips followed by yoghurts if dad was cooking. If there was snow we would have hats and gloves on and be told to wear a vest. My dad is in his 70s.

You don't need to be a genius with 20 years experience in parenting to figure out that the baby isn't fully dressed, it's obvious

In all fairness I do have over 20 years of parenting experance and granted I did only glance at the picture and automatically assumed it was a hot day and it was one of these strange items of baby wear that I don't know much about I didn't even register what fabric it was in.
I tend to not pay much attention to social media stuff that makes men out to be incompetant

Some women imo like to do this makes them feel in control and better than a man they feed into thd notion that women ard the doers and copers of situations

I'm not getting how a bloke can be incompetant and that still be totally the womans fault

No, not cure at all.

But TBH I don't think the child was going to suffer dressed like that in warn weather. Perhaps he thought he would be cooler like that.

Being incapable is not endearing it's pathetic and irritating. Anyone can dress a child but then again anyone should be able change a fuse or put oil in a car.

I totally agree with you. It's just incompetent, not cute or endearing. Fortunately my DH is totally on the ball, and it's just as well, as I've recently had to (hopefully temporarily) surrender my driving license for health reasons so he's picking up a lot of slack. Quite frankly, on most counts he's doing a far better job than I did, in addition to holding down his full time job. The only area that makes me go is his choice of clothing for toddler DD - he chooses some odd colour combinations, but tbf he's not very good at choosing clothes for himself either so I let that one slide!

My dad was capable of washing, cooking and looking after us, no way would i accept a husband who wasnt. 'Luckily' dh was brought up by a single dad (not the martyr kind either)

YANBU!

The women I work with all carry on like this. 'Oh, DH is such a hilarious klutz, he wouldn't know which end of the baby is which. Lol, bless him!'

Then fume about how fucking exhausted they are from working full-time and being the only adult in the household who can keep a child alive.

Talk about pathetic enabling!

I didnt say it was the womans fault I said it is in some womens mindset didnt say it was her fault but she has to take responsibility for thinking oh he is just a man while her incompitant (sp) partner is happy as larry for her to do it all

I had a short stay in hospital, so DH looked after the (school age) DC. Everyone commented on how well he'd done and how lucky I was to have him.

DH is regularly away with work, but nobody tells him how well I do and how lucky he is.

Pisses me off.

YANBU!

Again I find myself living in a parallel universe to MN. I have never seen the word 'cute' applied to a man who consistently cocks things up when in charge of his kids, useless maybe, lazy perhaps, but not cute. What does annoy me though is when you get mums offering unsolicited advice to dads on some aspect of parenthood as they have by default assumed said father needs a hand because obviously as a male he just can't cope.

No it is totally pathetic, v. unattractive and so sexist it makes me feel a bit sick.

My DP is was indulged as a child by a mother who did everything for him, he can't cook, doesn't know the basics of menu planning or food shopping. He is sloppy in his house work and is very lazy leaving everything till the last second... Wait why am I with him

It makes me so cross and I don't know how to fix it, every time I bring it it I am either, A)a nag, B)having too high standards, C)Shouldn't want to change him if Iove him....

Sorry that turned into a bit of a rant, I just don't know what to do with him and I don't want to live on beans on toast in squalor

Why does anyone think it's sweet when men cock up?

Sexism, misogyny, patriarchy

YANBU. FIL's wife had just been readmitted to hospital when her PEG feeding tube came loose because she went back to cooking, cleaning, changing beds etc when she came home and he fucking let her

YANBU

YANBU. Fortunately I've only ever come across the attitude once that I can think of - DH once got congratulated for being 'brave' enough to take our 3 out for lunch on his own, which massively offended him! It's worth noting that I don't get congratulations for taking them out in my own...
Poor sod did once get an ear bashing off a new colleague of his for mentioning he was going to ask me to sew a button back into his shirt in a 'do it yourself you sexist pig' type way, but she wasn't to know he's partially sighted and it's not really worth him having a go without turning himself into a human pincushion

Definitely find it goes the other way too, lost count of the times people have commented on how amazing it is that my DH is the one who does the ironing, or when he [gasp] takes our children out somewhere. You know, normal grown up stuff.

It's the thoughtlessness aspect that really boils my piss about this. I live alone and so have naturally learnt over time stuff like changing plugs and putting up shelves. If I don't know something I google it, look up instructions and so on. My secondhand washing machine came without a manual and the labels on the buttons worn off, so I had no clue how to use it. I looked up the make online, found a manual, and labelled the buttons on the machine using a sharpie pen. Yet even with a new, labelled machine and manual, many men would just stand there looking helplessly at it.... So much stuff is perfectly obvious with a moment's thought, but they just don't bother.

Two men I know confessed they purposely act helpess so they dont have to do housework. First one (early 20s) got his act together and keeps a clean and tidy flat now. Second one (40) said it as a joke and there was a moment we both looked at each other and knew it was true. He's my ex, and once suggested he liked the idea of being a SAHD. I was torn between being utterly gobsmacked and tears of mirth; pointed out he'd need to actually show some aptitude around the house first. Because I was not going to work full time, clean, cook AND put up shelves!

Now being early 30s and single, it seems the shortlist of available non-abusive men dwindles to nothing when you apply the capability/housework criteria.

I get a bit of this...from women my own age.

DH and I are both freelancers. We work around the children (both at primary school). We are very lucky that we can do this. Due to the nature of our work, I do all the morning stuff, school run etc. DH than does the pick up, taking to any after school clubs. It works well for us. I do the bulk of the house stuff as I work pt and dh works ft, late into the night.

From the way some of the school Mums talk, you would think that dh is SuperDad. He is great with our dc, but then so am I. He does loads with the dc, but so do I.

He is a fab Dad and so he should be because they are his dc too. I'm a fab mum but no one ever tells dh how lucky he is that I do so much.

Double standards. Low expectations. Infantilising crap. Boils my piss and then some.

My DH would do something like the dungaree thing. But he also dresses himself inappropriately - he'll happily wear jeans and a woolly jumper to a summer BBQ, for instance. Just part of his ASD. Clothes are clothes.

But yanbu. It's not cute nor endearing when men do things like this. No mother would receive an affectionate eyeroll if she did it.

Dh and I had very traditional, divided roles for decades - I was sahm, he worked away a lot. Now he's retired and I'm not able, he's had to learn to do a lot. He tries swinging it sometimes, but gets 'the look' and tends to learn. Not having had a chance to learn something is fair enough, but trying to be cute about it - nope - seriously unsexy.

YANBU - it really annoys me that DH continually wants praise for taking the DC to an activity on Saturday mornings, because, he points out, "it's more than a lot of dads do." At first, I told him in was great he was taking an interest in the kids lives, but I don't really think that the fact that he's stuck at it needs a weekly celebration.

In the same vein, I have to take a really deep breath when he occasionally asks if there's something he can do to "help me" around the house.
It's your house, too, mate. Look for something that needs doing, and do it. I'm not the work coordinator, nor your mum. It's nice that he wants to contribute, I just get really frustrated that the house is apparently "my domain" and the implication that he's just too hapless to figure out what needs doing himself.

(He also refuses to buy his own pants, socks, or shirts. Father Christmas brings everyone a set of pants and socks, the rest of the time when he moans to me that he's running low on clothes, I point out to him that he can easily buy his own, but he'd rather wear stuff that's falling apart than lower himself to do a half-hour's shopping.)

I didn't know if this thread would be about parenting or politics - men being incompetent and leaving it for women to sort out isn't endearing either way.

I don't know, with regard to politics, I would actually find it rather endearing if the men in power would finally admit that they are incompetent, and allowed women to sort things out.

Like, worldwide, declaring that they tried this patriarchy thing for thousands of years, and it doesn't work and leads to wars and famines and instead of waiting for feminism to sort things out like (sort of) happened in Europe, just handed power to women (or just took some of it away from men) and allowed women to sort things out.

Because the problem is not, as such, that women get all the responsibility for childcare, the problem is that women get absolutely NO decision-making power as reward for it, and are lucky if in case of divorce they're allowed to keep the children.

Childcare and housework are the only areas where you are lauded as the only competent one, but get no reward apart from empty words.

I mean, in the workplace, if you are the only one who can (or does) keep things going, and everyone admits it, you usually get more money and power.

DH is a very hands on dad and takes dd to a club on a weekend and is quite comfortable taking the kids out on his own, looking after them on his own etc. I get judged for it though! I can't possibly be a good mother to leave DC with DH!! I should be taking DD to the club as well. Yet when all the other kids are taken to the club by only the mother no one bats an eyelid. One particular mum (a good friend of ours) fusses around him constantly asking if he needs help, sometimes trying to take over and all while asking where i am, what im doing thats more important etc. Why can Annoys me no end. DH is perfectly capable of looking his children (although he has had his fair share of wardrobe mishaps). So many people think men aren't capable of looking after their children and shouldn't have to.

I recently stayed in a Neuro ward and the amount of fathers/ husbands who came in at visiting time and the first words out of their mouths were where is X,y,z or can't wait for you to come home the house is a tip etc . Some men (and women) just don't want to grow up and find partners / have parents or friends who cement this idea it is acceptable and cute not to be able to cope.