To think some men just can’t handle family life

[Dylaninthemovies1]

Over the past few years I’ve noticed quite a few friends and aquaintainces with young children split up with their husband/partner.

In nearly all scenarios the woman is literally left holding the baby. The man will only see the child(ren) when it suits them (once a week), keep changing the day they take the child, expect the mother to do all the parenting, avoid paying maintenance and try their best to make the mother’s life difficult.

I’ve noticed all the men seemed to have been very crap at being a dad even when they were with the mum; she’s left doing most of the childcare and housework even when working outside of the home too.

Am not saying all men are the same. But it just seems that so many men can’t handle family life

@Aquamarine1029

My belief is that most of these men gave off plenty of red flags before the children were even born, and their partners chose to ignore them, believing he would magically grow up and change once a baby arrived. Of course, they rarely ever do.

This. And have more than one baby; easier I guess than finding another sperm donor.

@ivfgottostaypositive

I suspect it's 99% of the time when the man is the "partner" and not the "husband" - too many people have children with each other after being together 5 minutes having previously shown little commitment to anything or anyone before

This, too. And then give up work FT to enable the laziness. Then get stuck with nothing.

our patriarchal society provides boys with the expectation that as men they are entering a world in which they are superior to women, they see domestic work as menial and expect it to be done by the subordinates

@TheFormidableMrsC

Hey gorgeous, hope its going ok. We need to chat! Sorry to hear that he is still being that useless cockwomble he always was and sad to hear that The Bitch still hasnt had her comeuppance

Two estimates from my experience...

Would say 90% of failed dads were shit partners from an early stage. The couples hadn’t been together more than two or three years so didn’t have a well tested relationship before making the biggest change in their lives See loads of this at home and work

Then the rest of failed dads are the massive disappointments which is a shock. Eg one friend with her bloke 12 years, he’s pushing for a big wedding when she falls pregnant...
He pushes for the baby and guess what happens when it arrives. Now she’s got a baby and no emotional or financial support and been dumped basically by her long term partner

What shocks me about failed dads is when the couple double down. He’s clearly a shit dad but for some reason they go for a second kid and even a third. I was raised in an unstable household and my parents had too many kids.... a two part combo that locks you into poverty and a shit childhood. But loads of couples do this! See it all the time on MN. So weird to compromise your security and that of your kid, to have more kids with a shit dad. Spoiler alert: your kids realise pretty early on that he’s a shit dad, and it’s a lifelong feeling of rejection and hurt. Having siblings in a shared prison doesn’t make it any happier.

I take it pretty seriously thanks to crap childhood. People are so blasé about having kids with crap dads, I guess they didn’t have crap childhoods to realise what they’re creating.

When I began to seriously think about what having children involves I realised that the day to day reality of raising kids just wasn't for me.

It has certainly made my love life more difficult but I do suspect I might have ended up as a bit of a shit dad or at least an unhappy one.

Didn’t mean to sound so depressing! Even where a partner has been bad before, it’s easy to think they’ll change with a kid. Credit to all the people trying to co-parent with a shitbag. You’ll be doing a lot better than you know - you’ll be the one absorbing a lot of the crap so be kind to yourself

Dumb decisions women make contribute to this pattern. Moving in too quickly. Not requiring commitment before moving in. Not requiring marriage before babies. Surrendering to a full time stay at home role. Not surrendering to letting him do tasks his own way. Not asserting their own interests when it comes to sport, socialising and time alone. Basically acting weak and vulnerable instead of having some guts and sticking up for themselves.

Basically, girls, know your own power.

Maybe it's more that some people can't handle family life, but one sex is "allowed" to leave in a way that the other isn't.

I think there is a lot of truth in this. It is totally unacceptable and shameful for a woman to be anything less than a doting, glowing mother hen, and she must meet impossibly high standards to be considered a good mother. Men are expected to not be abusive, although this doesn't always preclude them from being an alright dad, and when they did a nappy change that one time it was because they were trying really hard and being a brilliant dad by getting involved in something that the woman should have been doing herself.

Guineapig I think women are wising up....aren't they?
Or are people just getting locked in the same old dysfunctional cycles in the same numbers?
Are men worse as fathers now than they have been in previous generations?
What can be done?
we need good fathers just as much as we need good mothers!

Parenting is often a boring annoying frustrating thankless task, it's just a case of buckling down and getting on with it.
Men managed to buckle down and do other unpleasant kinds of work don't they?
I'm not sure that men are inherently worse perhaps it's more that they are afforded more pathways to get away with taking the piss 🤔

Mars/Venus. Can we ever escape our prehistoric biology? Do women feel the pain of infertility more acutely than men due to conditioning, or biology? We'd like men to
biologically evolve to become more nurturing, but we don't appear to want women to become less so. Someone has to hunt. Someone has to gather. I say this as the habitual female breadwinner. Was never going to gift my or my son's independence to someone else. I'm a bit odd

A good proportion of men don’t really want to be fathers, are too selfish and lazy for the reality of parenthood and still believe children are really women’s work.

I hope every single or abandoned mum is teaching her children not to be such worthless, self centred weasels.

contraceptive implants for 16yo males would also be a very good idea. Too many men rely on women & girls to manage contraception and it needs to stop.

When you look at different countries there's a strong correlation between numbers of children per woman and levels of education/job opportunities for women
This suggests that the maternal 'instinct' is in fact contingent upon what other opportunities are available, if there are better options than being a mother then women will tend to take them

@Mintjulia I'd be all in favour of more contraceptive options for men.

Do you think that parents should also be trying to teach their kids about the reality of parenthood and that if that doesn't appeal then it's perfectly ok not to have kids?

Agree with @AgeLikeWine

I'm 52, and of all the male friends that I've asked (which is most of them, because I'm that annoying childfree woman who asks people why they had children) having known most of them nearly 30 years now, I'd say a good 90% of them have said if they had their time over again they wouldn't have had children.

And these aren't horrible men. 99% of them are still with their wives, and the few that had early marriages fail are happily remarried. But the most common thing I've heard is that they had children because 'their wife wanted to'...there wasn't actually much serious thought about what having a child/children would entail. They also said they were too young and wish they'd enjoyed more time with just their wives when first married.

They love their kids, are have been good fathers. They just didn't enjoy being parents as much as they thought they would. My late MIL didn't. Her and FIL had been married 5 years and were both in their early 30s when H was born. She was a very good mother but freely admitted she had zero maternal instinct and was 'persuaded' into parenthood by FIL. H is an only child (who never wanted children). I'm sure there is plenty of women who don't like family life either...but of course as a woman there's no easy way you can express that sentiment without getting ripped to shreds.

@B1rdbra1n

Yes, but it's more the case that they mother fewer children rather than choosing not to be a mother at all.

I agree that parenting is work and it's important to teach our children that if they decide to have their own kids, there'll be boring, expensive and thankless periods!

It's equally important to emphasise that once you have a child, they're your responsibility until they grow up - and if you don't want that, don't have one. DH and I have explained that to our DC (15 & 11) and I hope they've taken it on board. I couldn't respect them if they abandoned their DC.

For me, the joy of raising two new people has outweighed the frustrations... and even the expense.

@theprincessmittens

In the case of all of my close friends, it was their wives that instigated the decision to have children.

@Flamemenot

I think men also need to be more upfront about what their feelings are regarding parenthood...too many times you read on here 'he said he was undecided, we got married and now he's saying he doesn't want them' If you really aren't sure of how you feel - don't get married until you are. I also think a lot of men use 'undecided' when at heart they mean 'no'...because they know most women aren't going to like that.

I never wanted children and never pretended that I did. Until I was in my mid 40s I was treated as a freak and had the full bingo card of comments thrown at me (mainly by women, sad to say). I haven't regretted my decision for one moment. It would have been far more selfish to have children that I wasn't a 100% sure I wanted.

Surely the multiple children with a proven useless man is because a lot of women decide that ultimately they want more children and as they are doing it all anyway what difference will it make.

Additionally I think SOME woman still fall into the trap of trying to fill the loveless void created by a relationship failing with a baby.

In reality you only have to spend a weekend with a baby to know this is madness, but for any woman who has felt the deep urge to have another baby rational analysis of the man you're with often goes out the window. Much in the way I know of many women, myself included, who get pregnant under not great circumstances with a terrible father to be and are so fearful they will never get the opportunity again sacrifice all other current options to have said baby and make their life totally fucking difficult. Better opportunities can minimise this but much of it seems innate to us.

@theprincessmittens

I agree that men should be more upfront but I'd also say that if you want children and your partner says they are undecided then getting married is probably not the best decision for either of you.

Sad (but unsurprised) to hear about all the bingoing you were subjected to. I'll never understand the arrogance that leads some people to involve themselves in the reproductive choices of others.

I left my partner of 15 yrs, 2 DC for this very reason.
I felt like a single parent and that as the yrs went on, he had no interest in us, his family.
So I left.
Best decision because he stepped up and is now a great Dad, he apologised for ruining our family life when I did nothing but support the family and him.

@sussexmum exactly that. Think back to the last 100 years. Have you ever read a book on being a housewife from the 1940’s? It’s stuff that will blow your mind- full of ‘when the man comes home, look pretty, don’t bother him with your worries, listens to his problems, make the children smart and clean, let them say hello but do not let them bother him, have a clean and tidy house with slippers warming by the fire and the evening meal ready to serve’
This is literally how things were. Men through recent history have not had to deal with family life in any way! Their job was to earn money and not have to deal with the children unless they wanted to. Children were to be seen and not heard especially around the hard working man!
The man got the best cut of meat above the children, he got the first clean bath (With the rest of the family bathing in the same water afterwards) and the best of everything.
Whilst we have come a fair way from that, we are nowhere near men and women having similar attitudes and responsibilities for children and family life (in general)
It’s often how men have been raised. Have they been made to feel entitled growing up? What attitudes to women have they witnessed? Men in their 30’s and 40’s will have grown up with parents who are in their 60’s and 70’s. This generation 40 years ago was in the main still fairly traditional. The woman was expected to change the nappies, feed the baby, push the pram. The mother 40 years ago took on the large bulk of not all the child care and cooking. This was often because many women who had kids didn’t work and looking after the children fell to them.
Now in 2020 views have changed but often if a man cooks, cleans or looks after the kids people will say ‘oh he’s good!’ Why? Because he’s doing the job a woman would normally do?
Men sitting back and women running the home has been the status quo for centuries / Millennia and it’s going to take many generations to change this completely (if ever!!)