To think that lots of men think this way

[Flynnshine]

Recently a good friend of my partners has split from his wife of 15 years, they have two young children between 10 and 13.
The husband has decided he isn't happy and wants to end the relationship.

Last week he came over to our house in the evening and I left him and my husband chatting in the living room. I wasn't eavesdropping but I was only in the next room so could hear their conversation. Basically the husband has been planning this split for a while, 6 months before he announced he wanted to end things he sold their beautiful big house and they moved into their much smaller starter home which they had out on rent - they moved the kids out of their private school education and into a state school local to their new home.

They've always had a very comfortable life, beautiful house, nice cars and very fancy holidays a few times a year. They both had good jobs when they first met but when the children came along the wife stopped work and dedicated her life to them. They've done amazingly well at school, both top of their classes, sporty and do two sports for their local borough. They are polite and thoughtful and genuinely lovely children.

The conversation I overheard was the husband complaining that even though the wife hasn't paid towards the mortgage for over 10 years she will still be entitled to half of what the house is worth - he seemed bitter and angry and said he'd been hiding money for ages so she wouldn't get anything when they divorce. He's even planning on quitting his job and becoming self employed so he can fudge his earnings so his maintenance payments could be less. My husband was agreeing with him, I don't know if just to placate him or if that's really how he feels!

This man honestly thinks that because he has been working and paying a mortgage that his worth is so much more. He thinks he has enabled her to not work for over 10 years and that she has been having a jolly all that time. It's like he gives zero shits that he has two wonderful children that he has never had to lift a finger for and she has given her all to those children while he reaps the rewards of that.

Do all men deep down think like this, even if they won't openly admit it? Is money really the be all and end all of everything!?

yes @missillusioned wrt your last paragraph, fathers can literally STEAL a woman's freedom in that way, and it is the most horrendous form of theft imo. I know so many women who've lost a decade + to the frugal drudgery of 100% responsibility. Lives that would have been rewarding and fun if the responsibility had been shared but it was 95-100% responsibility and they hadn't three buttons to rub together either. They literally had to wait for their kids to be old enough to leave them alone.

I think all too many people - both men and women think this way.

This is why giving up work is such a dangerous prospect for women.

The trouble is that you only find out this stuff when it's too late - when you're already a boiled frog, burning out from looking after the kids and trying to keep your career going.

Do WOHP REALLY bring their children up? Parents who leave the house as their kids are getting up and come home when they are in bed!? 5 sometimes 6 or 7 days a week.

I disagree, sorry. Someone else is!

OP....Your comments about not wanting to have children only to hand them over to paid childcare, and about how the dh wouldn’t have had the two ‘wonderful’ children without a SAHM quite frankly sound goady.

If this isn’t you, and you’re really describing another woman, then if she’s really said these things then it sounds like she’s created a situation that worked for her, because she has her own strong feelings about having to be home (even though the kids are now 10 and older!)
It sounds like the husband was probably never as invested in this decision but went along with it (wrong - he should have spoken up if he disagreed.)

Wonderful, happy, successful children are raised in all sorts of families whether single parent, two parent, both working, one working, neither working.

I agree OP, so many men try to weasel out of paying maintenance for their children and the men around them tell them they're right for doing so and give them tips on how to do it. The system also allows them to. We have a real problem in this country with that.

The unpaid and paid work that women typically do is so undervalued. You only have to look at the pay that carers, teaching assistances, nursery nurses and secretaries get paid to see this. Compare that pay to the semi-skilled work of plumbers or HGV drivers.

Women are becoming poorer and poorer which means our children are too and this can only have a very negative effect on our future.

My DH would never have sat and just agreed through a conversation like that. Why on earth didn't your DH challenge him

Your friend probably thought the same thing, you can't be sure what your husband would do!

I think both of you should ditch this lowlife and be clear your loyalties lie with the woman.

Ah cross post there.
You’ve just confirmed my suspicions. Goady OP.
Sorry to disappoint you but many of us have raised wonderful, happy children who are now successful adults and we’ve retained our own careers too.

Sounds like your lifestyle has backfired on you OP

@flynnshine I can't speak for anyone else but I certainly bring my children up in partnership with my DH - it's a very ignorant assumption of how working parents structure family life if you think others do the parenting

And yes, you can never really be sure what anyone else would do until they are faced with a situation. Of all the marriage break ups I've seen it's been very 50/50 with who was in the wrong but EVERY time it's been the husband bitching about the wife earning less and therefore being entitled to less EVEN if children are involved as she has been the one to take a step back and devote a little more time to them.

Yet men still get paid more than their women counterparts so I feel we are always on the back foot.

I am a WOHP so is DH. On what planet do you think working couples have the childcare and lack of interest to leave the house before the children get up and come home after they've gone to bed.

Two professional jobs here. 40hr week each. Some international travel for work. Some late nights now and then. Our children were definitely NOT brought up by their childminder who had them 7.45 to 8.45 am and 3.30 to 6pm. FFS.

She saw no point in having children to pay someone else to bring them up while she worked

Presumably she home schooled then, can't have those teachers bring them up can we. Or never used a sitter etc.

As for your comment that WOHPs don't bring their children up, of course they do. Working to provide is a part of that, they need financial support as a basic. It also shows them a work ethic, they are more likely to go onto having their own good careers or jobs.

We just don't know what men say when there are no women around.

I suspect we'd often be horrified.

I advise all women to be financially stable independently from a man, and if you have a baby be prepared for the possibility of bringing it up alone.

It breaks my heart to say that.

Goady? It's not my family I'm talking about! I'm not saying that the children would not have been wonderful without their mum being at home. My point is and always will be that a decision they BOTH made about her stepping out of work to be a SAHP will now have a massive impact on her life. My suspicions are that he would have behaved this way even if she had have been in work because his earnings were much much higher than hers.

Marriage vows mean fuck all when money is involved.

Many many people, men and women go into marriage/partnership and having children woefully unprepared for the dynamics that emerge later on.
I guess the many threads on MN discussing issues like this must help in getting the potential pitfalls known about.
To answer your original question, yes I believe many men think this way.

I do hope you are going to tell the woman in this scenario what you've heard so she may inform her solicitor - forewarned is forearmed and if you feel for her as much as you say you do you should give her the heads up on what her dickhead husband is planning.

Wow so working parents don’t bring up their children?! Most parents manage both - after all when kids go to school what is all this fantastic work that women do for their children between 9-3? Tbh if she decided to sit back and not earn her own money she was taking a big risk. Why should she be entitled to half of everything?

EVERY time it's been the husband bitching about the wife earning less and therefore being entitled to less

Use advance search to read Xenia's bitter rants about her exH getting a lot of her money. She spent at least her first 2 yrs on MN in a rage about it. I've seen some other female posters (not Xenia) making similar point, when their stbxHs didn't earn much.

It's a higher earners bias, not simply male-female.
I am not sure if I know ANYONE in/soon after a divorce who didn't feel the other party put in much less yet got a hugely better deal, and more than they possibly ever deserved.
Brexit is going exact same way(!)

Forget men, a lot of women think like that. They crawl out of the woodwork whenever threads about SAHP/WOHP crop up.

I advise all women to be financially stable independently from a man, and if you have a baby be prepared for the possibility of bringing it up alone

It's good advice Likewise I'd advise all men to be responsible for their own contraception and to ensure they pick an equal partner that will share everything not just take. Less room for things to go wrong then through resentment.

Of course he would have been able to have a career and a house without her being at home but certainly not two wonderful children

How do you think working parents get two children then children of working parents don't grow up to become non wonderful criminals you know

Not all men, but some of them. He was particularly vile in that he planned the breakup to impact harshly on her and the kids. Your husband was a cunt to agree with him too.
Anyway, taking bets in til the other woman appears? Because betcha life she's there.

@RedDogsBeg yes I will be. The fact he's been planning all of this for 6 months to screw her and essentially his kids over is enough for me to forfeit my relationship with him.

I'm not here to cause an argument, be goady or to suggest that working parents or SAHP are wrong. I just hate that as a woman you are expected to do it all and I'm sorry, being a mother and seeing all of my friends in a whole range of situations it's the full time 40+ hour a week working ones who struggle the most trying to be the perfect employee and the perfect mother. Because 9 times out of 10 they are the ones who have to make sacrifices when the children are on school holidays (13+ weeks a year) and sick.

Do WOHP REALLY bring their children up?

Fuck me! No OP that’s not goady in the ducking slightest!

Men whose wives have never worked a FT job after children often don't realise how much easier life is if you don't have negotiate the childcare pick up / drop off, don't have to leave an important crisis meeting at work because you have to do pick up today, tell someone you have to consult your wife to see if you can do that late / early meeting, work some short days to do both ends of pick up when your wife is away for work / has a big deadline / a training event, doing the morning run and having to pack the bags, make the lunches, remember the PE kit, get their bloody shoes on or have to cook the dinner and get the damn homework done if you are the one doing the pick up.

It is easy for men to take it for granted because that's how it was before they had children. It seems like they stayed the same. She didn't enable his career before children ergo she isn't now. He thinks getting dressed and out of the house for school is nothing, we all get up, get our gear and leave, right? She's not actually doing anything special for your career. She just fancied not working and playing cup cake mummy. That's the fucked up logic I see from men. I don't see it from men whose wives work FT so much.