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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Do all dad's not cope with their children?

482 replies

Dizzynic101 · 03/02/2020 10:29

I have 2 year and 4 month old girls, I went out Saturday night, leaving my partner, my kids dad, with the kids for 3 hours. I went out for dinner and a few drinks, he text me most of the night saying I needed to go home because the kids wouldn't settle, were being naughty, wouldn't stop crying. It made me feel so guilty for leaving them, but I just needed a little bit of a break. He tells me he can't cope looking after the kids on his own. We had a huge argument yesterday because I've told him he being extremely unreasonable, I never go out and leave him with the kids. I've told him he needs to get over himself and deal with it, they are his kids too, somehow he turns it around on me and I end up feeling sorry for him! I've tried explaining to him how it makes me feel. He just doesn't listen.
I don't think going out for a few hours and leaving the children with their dad is a bad thing. He is also upset because he read my text message to my friend calling him a shithead for his behaviour on Saturday night. Now he's upset with me. I feel guilty for that too.

OP posts:
Lweji · 04/02/2020 10:46

I agree that many men hold that view even if they conceal it. My question is why women marry them and have kids with them knowing their views.

How are women to know their views if they conceal it?

BTW, surely you can tell kids not to clamber all over their dad. Or stick to the bedroom and close the door. :)

Lweji · 04/02/2020 10:49

Women should wait until they meet someone decent.

We'll be waiting forever, because most men would rather do as little as possible.

So would women, in fact, but most will step up because kids need support. You only hear of men feeding themselves and not the children. (disclaimer: the vast majority is not like that - some may feed them pizza at worst)

UYScuti · 04/02/2020 10:51

A lot of them if push comes to shove would not have children
I think there's a lot of truth in there but I would like to rephrase this to 'men only want children whilst they think they will not be required to step up and do a fair share of the work involved'
Menial boring tasks, those are the things that you can leave to your wife, if he has to do the menial boring tasks that makes him a wife😲
He doesn't want that!!!
He wants to be the alpha, not the menial person

IntermittentParps · 04/02/2020 10:53

Do you not think there is some onus on the adult to screen their partner beforehand?

Should men not screen too, so they have some hope of filtering out all these women with unreasonable Hmm demands? Or, as CalishataFolkart says, do you feel that this is all women's responsibility?

Yesterdayforgotten · 04/02/2020 10:54

@YouDoYou18 I completely agree with your comment. Small children are difficult for anybody to cope with. There has been days where they have both been crying and I find myself struggling. It is tough for anybody man or woman especially when the fog hasnt yet lifted and you're literally getting no sleep.

lottiegarbanzo · 04/02/2020 10:58

OP was he selfish, lazy and manipulative before you had children?

My main comment to you is, stop dancing to his tune and allowing yourself to be manipulated into feeling 'guilty' to order. He's pulling your strings very deliberately, very selfishly, to generate guilt and upset at his convenience, to get what he wants. Not the actions, or the thought processes, of a nice man.

Many people 'grow up' when they become parents and learn to be selfless for the first time. Some people don't and they often take advantage of the ones who do.

Then there's the powerful idea, embedded at the back of some people's minds, depending on their upbringing, of 'mother as mother to the household'.

So, all can be equal as young adults living together, even married. You might both pull your weight domestically. The moment you have a child though, the man casts the new mother as 'mother to the household', drawing upon deeply held but hidden beliefs about what a 'mother' is; suddenly expecting her to take on responsibility for all domestic tasks, thought and childcare, including being default 24/7 child-carer and often, in many ways, parent to him too.

You can't always see those ones coming. They're not always aware of it themselves, if they're not the type to question their own thinking. It's a cognitive dissonance between what they've learnt and say they believe as young adults and what they've internalised in childhood.

Yesterdayforgotten · 04/02/2020 11:02

Yes lottie that's exactly it; its not evident in advance in a lot of cases unless the crystal ball is working!

UYScuti · 04/02/2020 11:06

Mother to the household
Great post Lottie, imo you are spot-on with this!!

YouDoYou18 · 04/02/2020 11:07

@Yesterdayforgotten Yes! Exactly this! If I struggle when I deal with it pretty much every day then I can’t expect him to not struggle when he doesn’t have to do it very often! My husband definitely isn’t trying to be manipulative as some have put it, he just gets panicked and can’t stop them from crying, then worries that he’s a bad dad, and calls me because he knows I’ll be able to sort it! Although I maintain that I can only sort it because I’m not stressed, some days when he comes in from work and we’ve had a long day he’s the only one that can settle them because he’s got a clear head and more patience!

Lweji · 04/02/2020 11:10

My husband definitely isn’t trying to be manipulative as some have put it, he just gets panicked and can’t stop them from crying, then worries that he’s a bad dad, and calls me because he knows I’ll be able to sort it!

No, he's just passing on the responsibility instead of dealing with it.
How did you deal with it the first times?

Spudlet · 04/02/2020 11:17

Isn’t it odd how when women have a bad day with the children we’re expected to get on with it, but men are allowed to throw their hands up in the air and give up at the drop of a hat, and we’re meant to pat them on the head and go ‘There there, poor darling, he’s only a man and it’s too haaaaard’. Hmm

UYScuti · 04/02/2020 11:21

The panicking and worrying?
it's just a smoke screen to disguise the fact that they just don't want to do this boring annoying task

lottiegarbanzo · 04/02/2020 11:22

So, the only way anyone could effectively 'screen' someone else, as a young adult, would be if that person agreed to some in depth social and psychological analysis and shared a summary of the results.

It would be like that brief, failed experiment when the government tried to get sellers to produce a home information pack, so every buyer didn't need to pay for a separate survey. (Failed because it wasn't detailed and demanding enough to do that job, so people had get surveys in addition).

Hmm, Partner Information Packs could be appended to people's dating profiles. Here's who I say I am. But here's who I really am.

Not everything is perfectly predictable, so there could be stats on likelihood and confidence margins around each prediction. 'Likelihood of retaining juvenile selfish outlook post-DCs, 85% (+ or -5%)' etc.

Why wouldn't everyone be willing to subject themselves to that eh?

It would be useful to them too, highlighting areas for improvement and indicating which are most susceptible to change. There could be 5-yearly MOT-type updates, at which personal growth and change could be demonstrated.

Excellent. Then we'll all know where we stand.

Tsubasa1 · 04/02/2020 11:23

People say SAHP aren't valued in society anymore and judging from this thread taking care of two kids is easy and anyone who cant do it is a pathetic whimp right!?

UYScuti · 04/02/2020 11:28

My husband definitely isn't trying to be manipulative
Maybe but my money's on 'your husband knows how to manipulate you without you realising you're being manipulated'
manipulation=exploiting someone without them realising it, this is done by maneuvering them into to doing what you want them to do whilst tricking them into thinking that it was their idea/what they wanted to do anyway.
The puppet thinks it has free will, the puppet master knows differently

mumto2teenagers · 04/02/2020 11:28

Not all men are like this, my DH would have the children when they were younger and I would go out, he also changed his job to work shifts so that he could do some of the school drop offs and picks ups.

Lweji · 04/02/2020 11:29

People say SAHP aren't valued in society anymore and judging from this thread taking care of two kids is easy and anyone who cant do it is a pathetic whimp right!?

Do you realise that WOH parents also have to deal with their 1, 2, or more kids?
SAHP are not heroes for caring for their children either. It's not specialised work only accomplished by a few gifted people.

Spudlet · 04/02/2020 11:30

No, it’s not always easy - and I am a SAHM, thank you very much. But throwing your hands up and not being able to cope for a couple of hours, with your own children, when you and they are healthy, is pathetic. Especially when you’re then stopping your partner from having a break. You suck it up for a couple of hours for the sake of the other person - that’s what adults have to do sometimes.

And if you want to see some vitriol, try being a SAHM and posting about wanting your partner to come home because you’re ill... endless competitive posts about how the poster coped with 14 children while they were dying from Ebola because their partner had to be at his Very Important Job... the double are strong with this issue.

Spudlet · 04/02/2020 11:31

double standards, obvs.

UYScuti · 04/02/2020 11:32

In order to screen someone before you marry and have children with them you need to be able to out think them, see through them, think above them, excetera
This is why predators select victims who are in some way compromised or vulnerable unable to see through person who wants to exploit them.

Drabarni · 04/02/2020 11:36

If women are stupid enough to not see the red flags before they have dc then of course they'll end up with tossers.
Why be with a man who refuses to parent, it must be the money they earn.
That must be the attraction, how vacuous. As long as he's rich he can treat me and the kids like shit.
It's no better than prostitution .

highlyunreasonable · 04/02/2020 11:39

My partner isn't my children's father and he copes just fine.... as does their real father. Your husband is being ridiculous. He's their father, he's more than capable.
Sounds like a lazy cop-out to me. Get some more nights out arranged and buy him a parenting book to read.

Coyoacan · 04/02/2020 12:55

It's not specialised work only accomplished by a few gifted people

Well I was a working mother and I have great admiration for my friends who were SAHP. As a working parent you do not spend the same amount of time with your children as a SAHP, it is not the same.

Elbeagle · 04/02/2020 13:03

The reason being a SAHM can be hard is because of the relentlessness of it. The fact that it can often feel like drudgery, for little reward.
That is not relevant to a man looking after his own children for 3 hours.

Lweji · 04/02/2020 13:03

As a working parent you do not spend the same amount of time with your children as a SAHP, it is not the same.

And? It doesn't make you particularly expert on taking care of 2 or more children. And it means even less that it's very hard.

The point is not that it's that easy, but that any normal person should be able to cope and learn.

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