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!?

My understanding however is that women fare worse than men financially after divorce and that in large part this is due to decisions around childcare and careers.

Of course. ". The incomes of ex-husbands rose by 25 per cent immediately after the split, but women saw a sharp fall in their finances, which rarely regained pre-divorce levels.

Some 27 per cent of women ended up living in poverty as a result – and only 31 per cent received maintenance payments from ex-husbands for their children."

www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/why-divorce-makes-women-the-poorer-sex-1515463.html

Did his fair share for 12 years until DD came along
reading that I get a sense of someone just quietly biding his time, being fair, doing the right thing, and then there's this opportunity for him to get in the driving seat

he takes it without a second thought

Wordthe quite possibly. I of course ended in the no win situation that if I did not pick up the slack DD would suffer. And now I'm bringing her up alone - the ultimate facilitation.

The ultimate facilitation
yes they understand that once children come along they have you in a bind
he has the whip hand and there is no way for you to stop him without hurting the children

It's just a long chess game to him

Well this thread went a little south. I personally haven’t seen anything that I think is anything other than healthy (heated) debate. .

MRA? I had to google that. Men’s rights activist? If someone said that to me I’m not sure if I’d be offended or not. I like to think of myself as a PRA. Peoples rights activist.

Lots of interesting discussion. I still think there is more to this than is being explained.
Let me ask this, when I had my DC, if I had said to my then DH, I don’t want to return to work and I want to be a SAHM, are we saying that my rights as a mother (because I carried that child and gave birth) superceded those of my DH? Even though I took 10 months ML and had long stopped BF’ing? Or as a father, does he have rights that have a place too? Is the expectation here, well I’m a woman and I’m biologically programmed to do this better, the trump card that gets pulled?

Because if it is, I whole heartedly disagree. Both parents should have a say and a right on how they split childcare. Otherwise you are simply in gatekeeper parenting territory.

@TooSassy
Let me ask this, when I had my DC, if I had said to my then DH, I don’t want to return to work and I want to be a SAHM, are we saying that my rights as a mother (because I carried that child and gave birth) superceded those of my DH? Even though I took 10 months ML and had long stopped BF’ing? Or as a father, does he have rights that have a place too? Is the expectation here, well I’m a woman and I’m biologically programmed to do this better, the trump card that gets pulled?
My perspective would be that in the scenario you describe then it would be preferable if you and your DH could come to an agreement about how you would care for your child after your ML finished. Ideally this should be agreed before a baby is even conceived and any decision made should be subject to frequent review to make sure both partners are still happy with the arrangement. If you couldn't reach an agreement then realistically this could be pretty damaging for a relationship as your DH has no obligation to support your desire to be a SAHP but you could harbour resentment that your desire to be a SAHP had not been supported.

The importance of the biological element in my view is about how we frame a woman's decisions and choices. If women as a class are biologically driven to be the primary carer and shoulder the financial and practical burdens that this places on her then you could argue that it's unfair for society to advocate that the only way to achieve equality is to abandon this role. If it is something that is a fundamental trait of our sex and not something that arises from socialisation and other cultural factors them to discriminate against women for making these choices is a form of sex discrimination.

This is why I focussed in on the concept of choice because I really think this is critical. Currently I believe the generally accepted view is that women should not be recompensed for taking on the primary carer role as this was a choice and they could have chosen to not be a SAHP/work PT/BF/take the mummy track career wise like so many other women do. However, if you say that at a population level women are biologically driven to make these choices then this challenges the accepted view as you are effectively penalising a woman for their different biology.

That’s a really interesting point to consider. Thank you. I’ve never thought of it that way.

Personally speaking someone would have had to pay me more to stay at home with my DC FT. I say that semi tongue in cheek but I had no biological sway to staying at home.

My current DP at one point raised us having a child together and I categorically told him that we had to talk about a lot but the one thing I was clear on was that I would not be the person doing the bulk of childcare and if he was prepared to be the primary carer, put his career on hold/ on the back burner whilst the child was young then I would consider it. The topic never got raised again. Funny that.

Nature has primed the DM to be the primary carer, so I do think its a lot harder, to walk away, go to work, pump away from baby (not every woman can, even if desperate to do so), nature intends that its an uncsonscious release of hormones triggered by baby to let-down, so anything else that's highly artificial is a challenge and often upsetting for a DM who finds themselves unsuccessful at it, and feels guilt. All that is alien to a df, no matter how great they are. The roles are unequal, by design.

@Smother, you talk about nature's intentions.
Who is this 'nature' person/entity, and how do you know what his or her intentions are?

Wordthe not being funny, but are you being serious?
Nature - blanket term (survival/evolution/biology) there's no who or him/her and the best intention is survival, or actually only those survived that had these adaptions.

...but were you serious?

There's a whole range of evolutions, not one overarching 'nature' which is shared by all women and a different one shared by all men. It is general traits which have evolved to stop a species dying out.

It doesn't mean all women are programmed to want to stay at home for the first 18 years of their children's lives, and if they don't want to, they're not proper women.

Nature does not have intentions, only conscious beings can have intentions

Wordthe, stop being obtuse- it's a turn of phrase- 'the way nature intended.'

if nature is a conscious being with intentions then I would make the following inferences about those intentions, she or he has given humans amazing brains so obviously intends us to come up with solutions and invent things and do all kinds of things which wouldn't be possible without those brains

You can't get ought from is
that's another turn of phrase

Well everyone/animal/life force is dead [that didn't have adaptions for survival]. So no intention, its basically what's left as a result of being well adapted to deal with environmental factors.

So noons is saying nature is a being with conscious intentions, if you,re not well adapted you are extinct.

@MissBartlettsconscience
*There's a whole range of evolutions, not one overarching 'nature' which is shared by all women and a different one shared by all men. It is general traits which have evolved to stop a species dying out.

It doesn't mean all women are programmed to want to stay at home for the first 18 years of their children's lives, and if they don't want to, they're not proper women*
The sexes have evolved at a population level to have different physical and psychological attributes. Of course there are massive areas of overlap as ultimately we are part of the same species and there will be occasions where people at an individual level buck the trends e.g. a specific woman can be taller, stronger or be more aggressive than a specific man, but class analysis would indicate that the trend generally goes the other way.

I would argue that the combination of women's physical and psychological biology means that they are more likely to become the primary carer for their offspring and actually they may on the whole be better suited to it. That doesn't mean that men are terrible parents or that they are abdicated of any parenting responsibility, it is just an acknowledgement that the odds of who becomes the primary carer may be biologically stacked.

Of course all women aren't "programmed" to stay at home with their children for 18 years and choosing not to do so doesn't make you any less of a mother or woman. As mentioned above, talk of biological differences are at a population level so if I was to say that more men than women tend to be diagnosed with autism, this doesn't mean that a man that hasn't been diagnosed is any less of a man than one that has a diagnosis. It's just recognising an observable difference which may allow us as a society to put in place appropriate support and provisions to support our population better. In my view the same kind of approach would be helpful for women. If women as a class are more biologically driven to be the primary carer then I don't see why as a society we shouldn't be looking to support women in a way that makes sure that any detriment incurred through adopting this role is minimised, rather than insisting there is absolutely no reason why equal numbers of men and women can't be primary carers and hanging our hopes of equality on this.

We haven't really given men being equal parents much of a go, though, have we? People have said throughout history that things were due to biology that turned out to be societal - remember when people thought women were better typists due to their small hands (that went away when using a computer became part of good jobs, not just menial ones) or when they said women just weren't suited to voting?

lisa I completely agree with you. No we haven’t.
I was talking to this with some of DC’s friends mums from school over dinner last night (belated Xmas night out for the mums). All women. I’d say 3/4 are SAHM and the rest of us WOHM.

Want to know the SAHM mums blunt response after a few glasses of vino? They sort of collectively looked at me (and we are year 6 mums so our DC have come up together for a long time) and said we feel sorry for you and x (another mum in a job just as demanding as mine). You drop the kids as soon as you can, dash to work, are never able to join us for coffee mornings and whilst you make some of the school events, you don’t make them all. You have your DC, your house and a full time job and quite frankly we have no interest in having that lifestyle.

I asked them what their typical days were. And they pretty much existed of dropping kids off, maybe heading for a coffee with other mums. Or going to the gym / sauna. Which would be followed by lunch with another mum (not fancy but at someone’s house). Then they’d head home for a few hours of housework, start on supper. Pick kids up etc....

They love their lifestyles and have no interest in getting any sort of paid work. I asked how they would feel about sharing childcare with their DH’s (if their DH’s wanted to) and they laughed off the suggestion as preposterous. Firstly saying their DH’s wouldn’t want to but following it with, no, that’s my job.

Now I’m not saying that a group of 10/12 women is clear sample demographic and I only got to speak to the table I was sat at and not the other one. But I did find their responses interesting.

Biology did not come up once. This was simply a lifestyle they wanted, that they viewed as what was right. Man goes out to work, they take care of the home and DC. Societal expectations or biology?

When I say 3/4 I meant three quarters of the table are SAHM

@LisaSimpsonsbff
We haven't really given men being equal parents much of a go, though, have we? People have said throughout history that things were due to biology that turned out to be societal - remember when people thought women were better typists due to their small hands (that went away when using a computer became part of good jobs, not just menial ones) or when they said women just weren't suited to voting?
I agree with you that the differences between the biological sexes can be exaggerated or misinterpreted in order to exclude and pigeon hole people (predominantly women). It has been proven for example that women DO have superior fine motor skills and men DO have superior gross motor skills, especially where there is a dependence on strength. You could extrapolate from this that women should therefore be better typists but actually there are many other elements that play into whether an individual will be a good typist or not.

I do think the difference between typing/ voting versus parenting is that the former are all activities that humans have developed themselves and then sought to apply their understanding and views of biological difference to decide who would be best suited to the activity. Childrearing is completely different and the sex based roles have been in place for as long as our species has existed with the female being the primary carer across almost all civilisations and cultures. Not only do women obviously have the physical attributes to carry a baby, give birth and sustain a baby but I think we also as a class have psychological traits that are useful in this role.

Men have had opportunity over the millennia we have existed as a species to be equal primary carers, especially as they have been in a position in most societies and cultures where they could call the shots and take on any role they liked. They have emphatically chosen not to do this. Why do you think modern men as a class are so keen and suited to being the primary carers when history and what we know about the biological difference between the sexes would suggest otherwise? Genuine question.

That sounds like a very odd thing for these women to have said though Sassy - “We feel sorry for you women who have to work.” Really? How rude and obtuse.

The flip side to that would be to ask their DH’s if they’d be happy to live the lives of their wives. In most cases, the answers would probably be no.

So why is it that more women are content with that lifestyle than men? I would say it’s partly due to social factors, but also biological.

Oh 1ndgi0 I genuinely didn’t mind it. We’ve gotten to know each other for years and they’re a fab set of women whom I will miss. I like the fact that they felt comfortable enough to be honest, knowing that I both wouldn’t be offended or think their comments off. I can see it from their viewpoint, I completely can. Myself and this other mum look fairly preoccupied most mornings, drop and run. No time for chit chat. I imagine we also look incredibly stressed at times because it is really hard.

What none of them know is the divorce that on the surface that looks perfectly amicable started incredibly antagonistically when I found out about my EXdH’s affairs. They don’t know because my Dc don’t know and people talk, so I’ve kept that under wraps. If it wasn’t for the fact that I worked and had my own income I would not have been able to get out of my marriage. I filed for divorce and pushed it through. My ex would have fought tooth and nail. My financial independance gave me the footing I needed.

So that’s why I work. And will always be why I work. And they’re right. It’s hard, at times I cry with exhaustion. But, I still stand by the fact that I am no more biologically programmed to have their lifestyles

I’m sorry to hear about your divorce circumstances Sassy, but I’m even more amazed, in that case, that these women would make those cmoments to you - as a single mum!

I think if our financial situation was different, or I had any doubts that my DH wouldn’t act honourably in the event of divorce, I would have gone back to work before now. Also, if I had had a career that was more “contained” or flexible, I might have gone back sooner as well. DH went to boarding school when he was quite young, so he’s very much of the opinion that he wants his kids to have a mum at home because he really missed his mum full stop, plus he’s aware of what he’s like and that he’s not the type to work for someone else or do a defined job.

I really don't think modern, western parenting is as 'natural' an activity as you think - and nor do I think childcare is one, distinct skill. I think it's lots of them, some of them maybe gendered, others very much not. For instance, I was surprised at how physically knackering I found carrying and lifting DS around all day, especially as he got nearer six months (and 20 pounds!). I asked DH if his back had been hurting since he'd been home and he looked surprised and said no. Arguably, as the physically stronger one he's better suited to that - but no one ever considers childcare, or adult care work, or cleaning, as physical labour because we code that as male.