To want to live with women platonically in a sort of shared house/ estate and raise kids?

[cultkid]

See partners on weekend?

Live with the women otherwise share childcare etc
Always have female companions around to hang out with?

The place would be sooo tidy and smell so good

@TatianaBis - not my experience. Judgemental, backbiting, bitchy types are quite happy to be so, I’ve never heard them complain about this behaviour, only ever to indulge in it liberally! Then there are their hangers on, who don’t call them on it, because they do not want to be at the sharp end of it. Then there are those who make a fuss about it, because they are being picked on and don’t understand how to put a stop to it or rise above it. Then there are those who ignore it completely. Judging by your own bitchy comment, you are not a member of the last group!

What's natural is being friends with "people", gender and sex are completely irrelevant.

Deciding that only one half of the population is suitable to live with is weird.. and clearly "women" are in no way superior. Why on earth would they!

Of course I have, and I went to a girls’ school until 6th form.

Having also worked in a male-dominated environments I know men behave exactly the same if not worse than women.

Social media is a vipers’s nest as much male as female. The male dominated forums I’ve posted on make MN look like cupcakes.

Yep totally agree. The difference is when men are being "bitchy" it's passed off as them being like women instead of - Oh actually men do this as well, it must be that some people are like this and some are not, regardless of sex

@Saltyauntiepoop

I would love the separation between sex/romance and childcare and chores.. clutter, housework and childcare really kill my libido.

Totally agree with this.

TBH this would be my perfect way to live. I love my boyfriend to bits but I never want to live with a man again. I loathe the drudgery of cohabitation with a man, the growing contempt for one another, the way you always end up doing everything for them, the decline of your interest in each other, the lack of consideration, the lack of sex. I also like bringing my daughter up by my rules and not having to compromise at all.

Not going to be a popular view here but I think only a minority of men are actually that well-adapted for family life. Most of them subconsciously want a domestic servant and can't stop themselves defaulting to that template when they share a home with a woman. I actually think in most cases children are better off brought up in a woman-only home. I think they need some men to be permanent in their lives but ideally not living with them.

My ideal set-up would be a joint mortgage with my (platonic) best friend and a pied-a-terre with my boyfriend for weekends. Not going to happen but a girl can dream.

[quote Walkaround]@TatianaBis - not my experience. Judgemental, backbiting, bitchy types are quite happy to be so, I’ve never heard them complain about this behaviour, only ever to indulge in it liberally! Then there are their hangers on, who don’t call them on it, because they do not want to be at the sharp end of it. Then there are those who make a fuss about it, because they are being picked on and don’t understand how to put a stop to it or rise above it. Then there are those who ignore it completely. Judging by your own bitchy comment, you are not a member of the last group![/quote]
It speaks volumes that you mischaracterise my comment as ‘bitchy’ when it’s a neutral observation from experience.

Yet your negative comments about women prove my point.

Most of them subconsciously want a domestic servant and can't stop themselves defaulting to that template when they share a home with a woman. I actually think in most cases children are better off brought up in a woman-only home. I think they need some men to be permanent in their lives but ideally not living with them.

that makes 0 sense at all.

If any of what you wrote was actually accurate, you would actively encourage it by showing to your own kids that only women are "domesticated"!

SOME women should stop trying to mother their partners, and then complain that it's their job.

I am SO messy!!

Poor children, not a balanced living environment. Do I assume that you would expect their fathers to chip in to your fantasy, even though you seem to despise their existance?

@TatianaBis - funny how you conveniently fail to notice the fact I said that the comment about women being tidy and making the place smell nice was sexist and that I was raising that with other sexist comments about women in general.... And your comment was in no way whatsoever neutral, because if your experience is that 100% of women of women who think that other women are capable of being backbiting, bitchy and judgemental are very much that way inclined themselves, there is no way that perception is “neutral.” A neutral perception would be that some people are like that. You are clearly exceptionally biased.

@SantaClaritaDiet

Most of them subconsciously want a domestic servant and can't stop themselves defaulting to that template when they share a home with a woman. I actually think in most cases children are better off brought up in a woman-only home. I think they need some men to be permanent in their lives but ideally not living with them.

that makes 0 sense at all.

If any of what you wrote was actually accurate, you would actively encourage it by showing to your own kids that only women are "domesticated"!

SOME women should stop trying to mother their partners, and then complain that it's their job.

SantaClaritaDiet I understand the theory of what you're saying but in practice I have yet to meet a man who could contribute enough domestically to make his living under the same roof worthwhile.

In the situation where the choice is to have a man living with you who just adds to your workload or live without one I'd choose the latter option. I've never been one for mothering men, have just observed that none of the ones I've lived with have brought enough to the table domestically to make living with them worthwhile.

thepeopleversuswork

I don't know what is happening behind close doors obviously, but pretty much every couple I know seem to share more or less equally in the say it suits them.

I know I can see my female friends for example because their husbands are picking up the slack and doing their share. Pretty sure there's someone at home feeding or dealing with the kids when they are at work themselves.

What I have noticed a lot on MN is women complaining they have more work, but only because the way their partner would live is not satisfactory to them, and it has to be their way without any discussion allowed.

Some of my friends have also decided to take on all the housework, but refuse to lift a finger in diy/garden/car maintenance etc.. . Whatever works for them!

Me too. I wish I was gay.

Maybe I can live in the house and I can just have Jon Hamm visit once a week?

@thepeopleversuswork - If women still do most of the domestic work and child rearing, but fail to teach their boys how to grow up to be of much use domestically, do you think they are partially to blame for that themselves, or that men are somehow incapable of learning, or that women are still cowed into not daring to involve their boy children too much in domestic matters? Or do some women just not want men getting involved in something they want to control the standards for? Would you say living with another woman would be better, or that you favour not having to share your domestic space and decision-making with anyone?

[quote Walkaround]@TatianaBis - funny how you conveniently fail to notice the fact I said that the comment about women being tidy and making the place smell nice was sexist and that I was raising that with other sexist comments about women in general.... And your comment was in no way whatsoever neutral, because if your experience is that 100% of women of women who think that other women are capable of being backbiting, bitchy and judgemental are very much that way inclined themselves, there is no way that perception is “neutral.” A neutral perception would be that some people are like that. You are clearly exceptionally biased.[/quote]
Unfortunately your comments about women don’t cover up for your negative comments about women.

I never said anything about 100%. Indeed I rarely meet women who have the kind of trouble getting along with other women as you claim to.

Walkaround

I think its a toxic combination of many factors:

• Most men (not all) having been raised in families where the woman did all or most of the domestic labour and subconsciously assuming this as a psychological template for how things should be in their own marriage/set-up.
• Some men thinking that because they are the breadwinner they are entitled to do less at home.
• Many men secretly knowing they ought to do more at home but also knowing they can get away with it, in part on the grounds that they work outside the home
• Some women defaulting to the same template as the men in point A and subconsciously copying their mums and doing everything
• Many women feeling that because they are at home all or more of the time its "their" job
• Some women actively enjoying feeling the home is "their domain" and pushing their partners away from involvement in the home.
• Some women being so desperate to keep a man that they don't make enough of a fuss as they should.

I think attitudes are changing but its very slow. It will be interesting to see how the boys who are primary school age now adapt to this model -- given that a much greater proportion of their mothers will be working than 30 years previously.

I think there's a lag between theory and instinctive practice as well which accounts for the "mental load" phenomenon. Only very backwards looking men actively think they shouldn't be doing anything at home: most will say if you ask them that they are happy to help out. But not many of them will proactively do it without being asked because they still haven't hard-wired it into their world view of what's asked of them and if it doesn't get done they don't really sweat it.

I wanted my mum and me to run away to Greenham Common when I was little. Still would. I totally get you.

@lockdownbreakdown having worked in refuges, I couldn't agree more!

@TatianaBis - I have a lot of women friends. Where on earth have I said I have trouble getting in with women?!

And, @TatianaBis - you didn’t need to say 100% to mean it. You didn’t refer to most women or some women, you said women. That means all women unless you specify otherwise, does it not?

Sounds like my idea of hell

@thepeopleversuswork - I think I agree with that analysis.

I don't have a man in my life but I would hate that.

Tbh, when I read the thread title, I thought it was by a male poster who wanted men and women to live in communities together platonically, except at the weekends, when their sexual partners would come to stay. I was a bit disappointed the reality was the suggestion that men should just be for sex and weekend entertainment.

In fact, I can’t think of anything more sexist than the notion that the opposite sex is only of any value sexually.

I'm a lesbian and I live with my wife and our 5 year old daughter. We share domestic labour, childcare and paid work broadly equally. We completely share the mental load of knowing what needs doing at home and for our daughter/school. We shared getting up in the night for our daughter, we share responsibility for taking time off when she is sick and when school is closed. We both have a career and try to support the other in her career.

I know this happens in straight households too. But I think when you are both women, socialised to expect to do domestic tasks and not socialised to expect anyone to look after your domestic needs, there might be a better chance of this working out.

Whether you could run a household like this on a platonic basis? I think you probably could.