You're so lucky that your husband helps around the house

[zumabuma]

What is wrong with society these days? I am "lucky" that my husband "helps" me around his own house???!!
Helps???
This use of word I'd really bringing me to a rage just lately. This is supposed to be the 21st century when women go out to work too, why are young women still so "grateful" when their husband does something to "help" at home?
It's angering me. My DH is almost given angel-like treatment by female friends, because he's so "helpful."
He does his share. That's it!

Yeah, you follow your childhood. My mum doesn't cook and my dad cooks her home cooked food every day, even now and he works and she stays at home.

I think this article sums it up.

momminghard.com/i-dont-help-my-wife-you-shouldnt-either/

What began as a thread about some men being treated like super-human angels for chipping in with their share of the housework has degraded itself to a platform for women to poke at other women for their beliefs associated with part-time working/SAHP.

I have attempted to reason with and bring a couple of posters back to the point of this thread but I'm talking to a brick walls! I refuse to respond to comments that deviate from.the point of this thread, which was never to bash other women! It degrades MN and degrades threads like these.
Take your issues with SAHPs or full time mums, or part-time.mums somewhere else please.

I meant *full time workers and part-time workers!

Ill be landing myself into trouble here!

Great article Imaddicted

Im guessing some women will shoot me down for this just like the woman in my story did, but hey, here goes.
A story of my own which proves these gender/role stereotypes still play out today:
I work 3.5 days and it was on my 'day off' with DCs that DH returned home after finishing work early and doing the weekly shop on his way home (which he chooses to do btw)
He said "I mentioned to X today that on leaving work, I was planning to do the grocery shop on the way home. And she responded with,
"What?!! Isnt today her day off?! She should be doing the food shopping today, not you!"

The lady in question was in her late forties and someone I'd always considered quite a feminist. I was gobsmacked.

Yet, on the days I work, I often grab groceries on my way home and I'm sure she wouldn't even flicker at it.

With all due respect, the thread was inevitably heading a certain way when another poster and you went down the route of 'when i am not at work my job is childcare not housework'. People didn't just turn up and randomly have a go at all SAHP. People challenged the idea that if someone is at home they arent meant to so chores, something brought up by you ajd another poster.

People are sharing their experiences. Just because you may not like our experience doesn't make it less valid.

Eg. I think no man should be congratulated for doing basic chores or 'babysitting'. It's ridiculous that anyone would. But at the same time, I do know women who are totally unreasonable with what they expect of their DPs so will moan even if they are doing their share.

What this thread shows is that different people have different thresholds on theae things.
I feel quite happy that I'm not alone in thinking I am not 'lucky'to be married to a man who pulls his weight. I married him because he is a wonderul man in favour of equality and he isn't a man child.

Show your girls they are too good for the slave labour work

Slave labour work? Does your husband know you look at him as a slave and have zero respect for what he does in the home? Poor man, he must be miserable.

I was raised with the attitude I was too good to do this kind of thing.

So you were raised to be arrogant and judgmental. How lovely.

Some people might not have liked my mum's attitude, but It's served me well.

People didn't like your mums attitude for a reason - it's shitty and disdainful. Yes by all means absolutely teach your girls they can be successful and by no means have to stay at home, that housework is not down to them because they have a vagina etc etc. But you have gone to a complete extreme and look down on others for what they do. I had a successful career and became a SAHM after my first, it was my choice and I genuinely haven't regretted it for one second. I know when I'm old and look back on my life I'll cherish the memories I have raising my kids 24/7. I'm happy and my husband respects me. He definitely does more housework than me and cooks, he also works. It works for us and we are happy.

Stop being such a snob and thinking your superior because you don't cook for your family and look at house work as slave labour. I feel sorry for your kids and despair that you're bringing them up to be as rude and contemptuous as you are. Your mums attitude might have made you successful in the working world but you certainly aren't a pleasent person.

Completely agree. I wouldn’t have considered marrying a man that was not prepared to do his fair share in running the house he lived in. Who would?

People do april and then seem surprised that a man child looking for a mother figure/housekeeper doesn't magically change once a ring is on the finger/a baby arrives.

I don't think it's particularly generational, actually. My parents are in their mid 80s, and my dad has always pitched in. He did all the heavier housework and it has always been his job to clear away meals and wash up/sort out the dishwasher. I don't think I ever saw my mum make a cup of tea in her life. He didn't rate cooking much, so she did all that until the last few months of her life, when she trained him up to do some basics so he could manage when she was no longer here.

Our friends are all in our 50s, and in most couples, the blokes do much of the cooking. We women do most of the driving (and no, not just when the blokes have been drinking) and when the kids were younger,the dads did lots of the ferrying around of kids. I couldn't tell you the last time I set foot in a supermarket. Dh always does it and when the kids want to know what's for dinner, they know better than to ask me. They go straight to dh. When either of them want cooking advice from Uni, they call him, not me.

My point is that I have never encountered this. It is who you are drawn towards and your value base.

What I mean by slave labour work is dashing around meeting everyone's needs. Dh doesn't do that and neither do I. There is no need it's 2017, not 1900

And yesI look down at anyone with anyone with the attitudes expressed in the op. People like that utterly disgust me.

My mum encountered opinions like this when I was a child and she used to go absolutely crazy at anyone who said it, and they never dared say it again. I have never encountered it, as in real life there are plenty of men on the school run or looking after children.

I also raised my first 2 children 24/7 so I have no problem with women not working full time. You have got me wrong. I just do not understand why people allow these attituds, especially if you have girls.

I wouldn’t have considered marrying a man that was not prepared to do his fair share in running the house he lived in. Who would?

Neither would I. Likewise my husband wanted a partner who would share too hence we both work. We don't consider either housework or employment to be for one gender only.

I think the first few weeks after giving birth are a time when housework should not really be expected from the person at home, ditto when looking after a sick child, if there are medical issues for the SAH parent and so on.

At other times, I do think that someone who is at home with a small child should be getting more than 50% of the tasks done. It's OK to use a playpen with a crawling baby or a bit of TV here and there with a toddler so that the house is not like a war zone the whole time! Nobody expects a spotless house under such circumstances, but it's possible to put laundry on, stack the dishwasher and assemble a basic meal when you are looking after a baby.

I do housework. I have cleaned all kitchen this morning, bathed all the children, been to town to get food shopping as dh is at work.

That is not what I mean by slave labour.

It makes my blood boil. It makes men seem incapable of things that they should and can easily do. Especially the babysitting their own kids

Do you argue against these opinions when people say these things? In a I don't know what you mean as I didn't chose a useless man, sorry are you from the Victorian age or I would prefer you didn't express your outdated ideas in front of my girls as I view it as inadequate parenting. I would and people should challenge anyone that says these things, or to me they are a shit parent.

And if I were you op, then I should change your friendship group or these so called friends will negatively influence your poor kids.

So Animal what do you consider as slave labour if it's not doing housework etc? What jobs do you feel you are too good to do? I'm confused.

For what it's worth I agree with you, I can't stand the men are 'helping, how amazing' attitudes and I do have a few friends who tell me how lucky I am, I feel sorry for them and am glad my girls are growing up in a home where me and DH share chores, cooking etc, actually he does more than me and we're happy that way.

Kokeshi: basic house tasks are obviously do-able whilst in the home with DCS. It's the full house clean that isn't.
I have 1.5 days at home with DCS and work the others (aside from weekends when both DH and myself are home) and there is no way that I could tackle the whole house in that time with 2 DCs.

People are not saying that the parent at home should do nothing, the issue is that when some men do any form of housework/child-rearing some of us are considered 'lucky' for their 'help '

Picking up mans pants and cups, treating him like a baby, ironing his shirts and buying his clothes, acting like his mother.

Same vice versa. I make my own lunch, get my own clothes ready, tidy up after myself, buy my own clothes. I am lucky I haven't seen any of my generation of men like this, but if course I have seen it in the older generation. I am lucky my mum was so ahead of her time in how she raised me, so yeah it pushes my buttons immensely that there are still women out there that entertain this behaviour.

I also don't cook, but I do all DIY as dh has never been in to that type of thing. Again noone has ever commented in it being out if the ordinary. I thought my generation were better than that, clearly not.