To wonder why people think dad’s can’t cope on their own?

[BlaaBlaaBlaa]

Both me and DH have jobs which mean we work away semi-regularly. Often it’s just a couple of nights but can be up to a week.
I’m currently working overseas and will be away for 6 days. DH is more than capable of caring for DS, himself and the house.

We’ve just Skyped so I can speak to them both before school and work and he told me he’s had regular calls/texts from people asking how he’s coping! They went out to the local to watch the first half of the football last night and he said loads of people asked him how he was getting on and, again, if he was coping without me.

On the numerous times DH has worked away nobody has ever asked me that!

Why do people ask DH and not me? It’s like when I go out people ask me who’s looking after DS but nobody asks DH as the assumption is he’s at home with me.

It’s really irritated my jet lagged, sleep deprived brain!

Some people are quite weird about it. My spouse was a SAHD for 9 years. From medical professionals who would only ask me things even when he was the one answering (or writing that I had not attended an appointment which I've never seen the other way around when he's not attended), people acting like I tricked him or had to force him to do it or that we were doing it for some sort of ideological reasons rather than what we both wanted, and a lot of surprised people. While he and I got a few comments from men, I agree that it was and still is 95%+ women who do so. I found that more backhanded complimented me for him doing that than complimented him even when we were both there. The few he got were a bit on the snarky/patronizing side.

Once, at a work thing, a pair of women were really weird about it. They assumed once they heard I had kids that they were at nursery and when I told them they were at home with their father they got all faux concerned asking how I felt about that, did I feel he could handle that, and so on. When I said he'd been doing so for years now, they were like "Well, I guess he has a bit of experience then..." before going on at about how great some of the local nurseries are and how I should check them out like I didn't know there were other options .

Even now, I find it so odd, so many women ask me where my kids are when they see me without them. Thankfully not my friends but when out or events and even once at a funeral where we'd been told not to bring the kids (and some seemed surprised I was there), multiple women came up to me and asked me where my kids were before they even offered condolences. Like I'm struggling not to cry again and to support my husband through losing his brother, but sure, let's check childcare arrangements. I just said they were with friends, I don't even want to know how they'd react knowing that they'd been left with men not even related to them for a day.

Trouble is, men get treated as heroes if they achieve "everyone fed nobody dead". Women are expected to provide matching socks, ironed muslin squares and gourmet dinners as well!

When I was a Sahd I experienced a bit of "ooh, aren't you doing well, you dickless dolie"

It's not even around childcare though that these attitudes persist. I do all the cooking in our house (and wait for it, all the shopping and tidying as well) and I still get the 'Oh you have been trained well' type of comments when one of my wife's friends pops around when I am in the kitchen.

Equally my wife is very hands on when it comes to supposed traditional male roles, she gets a patronising metaphorical pat on the head from other men when she has just painted the front door or serviced the car. In fact her female friends are probably worse insofar as just asking her why she did not get me to do those chores as that is what men are good at.

Apparently I must ‘wear the trousers’ in our marriage because DH does a lot of the cooking

Trouble is, men get treated as heroes if they achieve "everyone fed nobody dead". Women are expected to provide matching socks, ironed muslin squares and gourmet dinners as well!

Expected by whom? From my admittedly anecdotal experience it is other women passing these kind of judgements.

My standard is that as long as my kids go to bed fed, in a safe cosy bed knowing they are loved that’s enough.

Some days I’m on fire and do the matching socks/home cooked dinners/everything “perfect”, some most days I don’t.

But they know they are loved and they are well looked after. If anyone has a problem with that I guess it’s their problem

I am very old my ?delightful mother pissed off when I was 6 (1950s) my lovely father worked full time and I was left in a safe house. I went to school and came home to an empty house. I was clean well fed and loved.
He did not think it was womans work!
Doubt if it would happen nowadays.....child protection etc

SoddingUnicorns

Schoolboy error there, just buy black socks, no matching required.

@PanGalaticGargleBlaster there’s 5 of us in this house, all black socks was the worst idea I’ve ever had I’ve rarely if ever got matching socks, the kids do for school but other than that I’m not that fussed

Don’t get me started on fecking boxers! 3 different sizes but all similar looking (both boys want pants like daddy). Luckily my massive pants have no danger of being mixed up with DDs

Pan I agree with your brother particularly about never being invited to coffee mornings and being generally ignored.

I've never seen anyone treat my husband as a hero except our kids. While he was a SAHD and now with him still doing basically all the cooking and most of the food shopping and being open that he chose his job to fit in around the kids, he far more often gets treated as a joke than anyone genuinely compliments his parenting. I get a lot of comments about how great it is that I've trained and gotten him to do things than anyone thinking he's doing anything on his own.

PanGalatic Black socks for the win 90%+ here are plain black socks with the occasional novelty ones and thermal ones for me when it's cold because I've poor circulation. All the socks here go in the sock box and people pair them when they need them. I've yet to have anyone care.

Equally, when was the last time you heard a single women say. "what I am really looking for is a nice but not terribly career driven man who wants to be a stay at home dad while I work full time and provide for the family".

Do single men go around saying the equivalent, though? I'd think it was properly creepy/red flaggish if I heard a man say that. Which is maybe why I'm married to a man who earns less than me!

SoddingUnicorns I find underwear more annoying than socks. No matter that they're all very different sizes, styles, and brands, the three of us who wear boxers keep finding the others' boxers in with our stuff and sorting my daughters' pants from each other always ends up being a futile effort. No matter who puts the laundry away, someone will end up with some of the wrong pants. We just correct it as surprise pants appear as we clearly have underwear gremlins moving them around.

We have underwear gremlins too! DS2 (he’s 4) came down in a right pickle the other morning because his dad’s boxers were in his drawer! He looked hilarious

I remember my DH getting fussed over at a party once because he’d taken the baby away to change her nappy. By sensible people! Sensible people who were telling me I’d “got him well-trained”!

He also used to get comments from strangers about being a hands-on dad when he was out with the baby in a sling. I was very . “Hands-on Mum” is never a thing you hear...

See when I eventually have kids they'll be raised by two men.

So does two men parenting - with one being a SAHD - cancel out the perceived incapability of one?

@SoddingUnicorns

Get one of these for each child/adult

www.amazon.co.uk/ArtMoon-Washing-Protection-delicate-laundry/dp/B019WKRYH0/ref=lp_3313509031_1_2_sspa/261-7047671-5465235?psc=1&s=kitchen&tag=mumsnetforum-21&ie=UTF8&qid=1530272574&sr=1-2-spons

All socks and pants go into their respective laundry bag.

I work away semi regularly and do shift work the rest of the time. Due to that DH is probably the primary carer. He manages at that role far better than me and still works full time. Yet friends and family still take the piss about how ‘little I do’ yet I know for a fact if the roles were reversed no one would criticise him for doing what they perceived to be ‘less’. I don’t do less. I do the admin side of life, childcare and taxiing when I’m around and general house shit when I have free time. However on top of my two jobs I’m also studying for a masters so it’s pretty accepted by DH and I that my ‘free time’ isnt Actually free. And that’s cool with us. But you’d think by reactions of others that we were reinventing society with our set up.

DH went away with friends for a few days not long ago and I joked on social media about how ‘operation keep the children alive until their proper parent returns’ had commenced. You’d think I’d offered the kids up as sacrificial lambs and that I was utterly failin in my womanly duties due to the response 🙄

I’ve also had grave warnings and questioning along the lines of ‘aren’t you afraid DH will leave you because he has to do everything?’

My SIL is a SAHM, and every week her DH works away for two or three days mid week, she can't cope with 2 DCs and has her sister or her parents come and stay over, and any time she goes away overnight with her friends he takes the DCs and goes and stays with his parents which is only 5 minutes away because he can't cope. They are both playing the useless card.

Dads can definitely manage on their own. If there were awards for father of the year it would be the guy who lives in the house across from me. He does everything for them plus works from home full time. The boy is now ten and the girl is eight. They go to school every morning immaculate, girl in a pony tail. School projects galore leave the house, some days he walks them down, others he cycles with them. I hear them singing in their rooms at night and they are the loveliest kids ever. All down to him.

If mum and granny come to the house, granny sees to the children and mum sits through in the front room on her own. Apparently, mum works down south!!!!!.

Most of the women in DH's family haven't ever worked; they're all SAHM's bar one. So of course when I bugger off away with friends or with work or for a night out there's outraged cries of "think of the men, how will they cope, I'll have to come over and cook supper for you all lest you starve" etc.

Fortunately DH, despite being a bit of a bellend and riling the children up, is actually quite responsible and capable of feeding, bathing, clothing and protecting them enough to ensure nobody falls out of windows or off roofs. They all think he's positively marvellous to tolerate a wife who abandons him, whilst also thinking only a very terrible mother would choose to continue working when they have children.

It's a mad world when people assume men and Dads can't cope. DH is a cracking Dad. The DC adore him and he adores them; the whole "only Mummy can fix it" thing just doesn't happen in our house.

My XH worked to perpetuate the stereotype of 'not being able to coooooooopeeeee'. Whenever I was away or in hospital having another baby, he'd instantly take all the kids round to his mum's. Once we divorced, he only had them round at his girlfriend's house until they were old enough to pretty much care for themselves. He quite literally could not cope. But that was because, on a day to day basis, he did fuck all, and any requests to him to step up and help would be met with 'but I work all day!'.

Fuckwit.

I think those of us born in the 70s and 80s may have parents who were born in the 50s. My grandparents - grandmother never worked or drove a car. Grandad didn't stay in the room for the births. My mum worked and drives but stayed at home with me for 5 years then went part time. I'm pregnant and DH works flexibly from home so I will go back to work after a year. The attitudes towards men and home/childcare are gradually diluting.

Not in every case but I mean when I am a MIL I won't be congratulating my son for changing a nappy as his dad will have done it every day!