What do men even do?

[dohdohdoh]

Since having kids I look at men and think what do you even do?!

What hurdles do they have in their life?

I have a great partner and we try to make things 50:50 but I hate that:

• Despite being in similar lines of work he earns more than me
• I have had to take maternity leave because financially he earns more than me and it "makes sense" (so hasn't had to look after 2 under 3 for the last year, while he's at work)
• That raising my children is literally worth no money in return (I don't get anything for the last 12 weeks of my 1 year of mat leave - yes I'm "lucky" to get something for the first 9 months)

And basically all the other minor and major injustices of being a woman!

I just can't help but think if once women give birth and society deemed men should then look after a baby for the next 12 months, they'd instantly demand full pay for the whole period and everyone would think, yes that's reasonable. But as women we should just be grateful for any morsels we can get.

Sorry this is just a rant I guess but I can't believe its the 21st century and we are still screwed over. And now when I look at men I just think what do you even do? How much do you pull your weight at home? Who have you trampled on to get to where you are professionally? I judge them, I judge them harshly.

Did you ever think that you were extremely fortunate to be able to spend time bonding with your baby and nurturing them? I expect your partner would have loved the chance too

Would they though? With the resulting hit to their career, with the lack of income, with having to rely mainly on their wife's money?

@sociallydistained

I feel you, OP. I’ve been an independent woman who never wanted to marry or have kids and be in control of all my own finances and never share. Well I got knocked up didnt I… (again contraception is all on the woman and I came off of the pill as it was ruining me!…I slipped up). I am now pregnant and want to become a mother despite it not being in my plan. When I looked at maternity I weeped! I have my own home but I cannot afford it on stat maternity pay. I have to move in with my partner (which is fine I want him to be very involved and share the nights!) but I now have to take that cut from work, sell my home because we can’t live here, and rely on him for income then go back part time cause With childcare costs it’s not financially viable for me to work full time.

I’m honestly completely depressed and worried sick about my financial independence.

Nailed it. It shouldn't be like this. Can you rent out your property? Good luck with your baby x

@Aspiringmatriarch

You could have split parental leave, you could have adopted or used a surrogate so you had no need for you to take leave at all.

It's hilarious that you think adopting a child and taking zero leave to help them adjust to being part of a new family, is in any way a viable or humane option. I'm not even going to go there with the surrogacy idea. What could be simpler, eh?

Or would even be allowed! The vetting on adoption is extreme and I can imagine how this plan would go down with those doing it. You're right, utterly clueless comment.

I don't feel like this and it's sad how many women do.
I earn more than my other half. I manage several men, they earn less than me and thankfully I haven't experienced any sexism in my career.
I own half my own house. My partner does just as much childcare and domestic chores as I do.
We have 3 children and I took 6 months mat leave with each (statutory pay). My other half could have taken leave but I wanted the time off. I could have taken longer but I wanted to get back to my career.
I do think a lot of what you say is due to women accepting things should be a certain way. Remaining financially independent is important and I'm always surprised by how many women aren't.
My mum was a stay at home mum, completely reliant on my very useless dad. She didn't have the means or ability to get herself or her 4 kids out of poverty. I always knew that wasn't what I wanted.

@Draineddraineddrained make sure you come back as an Asian elephant. Elephants generally a have a life expectancy of up to 70 years if not shot by poachers etc, but African elephants are apparently predicted to be extinct by 2040.

Things won't change fast enough because you cannot turn an oil tanker on a sixpence like you can turn a bicycle.

To answer OP's post directly, the 'hurdles' and 'trampling upon people' is rooted in thousands of years of war. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_by_death_toll

Men are more genetically programmed to compete and to win. To grab power and to grab land. It is going to take more than 100 years to change that black landscape.

Until men stop fighting each other, women will never be equal.

I'd have hated to be a man years ago when they had to go off fighting in wars, dying in trenches. Some countries still have call up too. It's not always the man who gets it easy.

Not really applicable to today though is it, the trenches, although awful.
As for conscription in some countries I think that also applies to women

@Katekarate

Did you ever think that you were extremely fortunate to be able to spend time bonding with your baby and nurturing them? I expect your partner would have loved the chance too

Would they though? With the resulting hit to their career, with the lack of income, with having to rely mainly on their wife's money?

If they would love it so much surely more of them would be pressuring for better paternity leave/ pay? Funny how that doesn't happen.

@Doona

And yes, if I'm absolutely honest, the older I get the more I think men are by far the weaker sex

I have always thought this, it seems so obviously true. It always astonishes me that people think otherwise and lengths society will go to to create circumstances in which men will shine. Football, for example. Or workplaces completely separated from family life.

Another observation is that the man earning more thing is a lie. When women earn more, they also stay home or manage more of the home stuff. They're just quieter about it when they do. Not sure why

Completely agree with you, I have no idea why people say women are the weaker sex, I've never believed that for many reasons, lots of which have been said on this thread!

*And yes, if I'm absolutely honest, the older I get the more I think men are by far the weaker sex - less adaptable, less resourceful, less articulate, less perceptive, less collaborative, less loving, lower pain thresholds, more selfish. And absolutely crippled by their own emotional illiteracy, which turns any complex emotions they can't handle into the blunt instrument that is anger

@Draineddraineddrained I do think you have nailed it.

@ScaredNotAnxious

If you're doing the same job for the same employer with the same qualifications and experience and you're earning less then that's illegal - if not, you're not earning less because you're a woman, you're earning less because you're less qualified or less experienced or doing a less valuable job. You chose to have children, you chose to take maternity leave and, by your own admission, the decision for you to take leave is because you earn less, not because you have a vagina. So, again, nothing actually to do with being a woman. You could have split parental leave, you could have adopted or used a surrogate so you had no need for you to take leave at all. This is a choice you made. Furthermore, you didn't need to stay off work for a full year - another choice you made. You're not being screwed over for being a woman, you've just made choices and are somehow pissed off and determined to pretend to be a victim. It undermines actual sexism that happens when you prattle on about how "men don't do anything" because you're not being paid for three months of the maternity leave you chose to take from the job you chose to do after having the baby you chose to have. Stop blaming men for your life choices.

Yep, you've nailed it !

@PutBabyInTheCorner

I don't feel like this and it's sad how many women do. I earn more than my other half. I manage several men, they earn less than me and thankfully I haven't experienced any sexism in my career. I own half my own house. My partner does just as much childcare and domestic chores as I do. We have 3 children and I took 6 months mat leave with each (statutory pay). My other half could have taken leave but I wanted the time off. I could have taken longer but I wanted to get back to my career. I do think a lot of what you say is due to women accepting things should be a certain way. Remaining financially independent is important and I'm always surprised by how many women aren't. My mum was a stay at home mum, completely reliant on my very useless dad. She didn't have the means or ability to get herself or her 4 kids out of poverty. I always knew that wasn't what I wanted.

This is so judgemental. People's circumstances are different for a myriad of reasons. They haven't deliberately got themselves into a mess, in most cases!

I own my whole house not half of it. Always out-earned my ex-husband and now do by far more than when we were together.

Did it stop me being treated differently as a woman, to if I'd been a man? No. Just because you have been lucky (as I am, in different ways) does not mean that others have "chosen" the problems they're contending with which are largely caused by social conditioning, financial structures and cultural expectations that are not in their control.

It isn't popular to say that women's choices are contributing to the ongoing inequalities, but I think we need to be honest about this if we really want change. Nothing is going to change unless we make it happen. Our kids will repeat these same cycles unless we encourage them to do things differently.

I agree with much of this. But those choices are not made in a vacuum per my previous posts.

In situations like this it's useful to think back to the idea of making a "social contract" blind to who in society you will be, e.g. in John Rawls work. If you had no idea if you'd be a man or a woman, what terms would you be prepared to accept for how society is structured, before you find out who you will be born as? Also true for social spending/ taxation: if you had no idea if you'd be rich or poor, what would you agree? It's a good lens for identifying where the selfish biases based on self interest are coming from, now that the decisions are not blind.

I have a great and supportive DH but I totally agree, even the best men have it easy by comparison.
For anyone claiming @dohdohdoh made choices read ‘ Motherhood: a manifesto ‘. We have the illusion of choices but society has set things up in a certain way that limits our choices significantly.

@CassandraTrotter

I have had to take maternity leave because financially he earns more than me and it "makes sense" (so hasn't had to look after 2 under 3 for the last year, while he's at work) You could have made cuts and shared leave.

That raising my children is literally worth no money in return all money should be family money, so you should both be feeling the extra cost of raising children.

All the above, additionally I see having the opportunity to raise ones children as a privilege, one that many women and men are unable to have.

@HelloBunny

I always thought that female multitasking was a myth / stereotype.

Until we had our baby, and I realised that DH can’t do two things at the same time. He’s hands-on but only for the task at hand. And once that’s done he doesn’t automatically move in to the next thing.

He also expects a Blue Peter badge every time! Today he was unable to push the pram & watch out for dog shite at the same time...

Drives him mad that I get “distracted” from what I was doing, but he can’t see that I’m spinning plates. And that his life would be chaos if I wasn’t always doing something.

And yet butlers and head chefs are traditionally men - two professions requiring a fuckload of multitasking, mental load, admin and repeated consecutive jobs. Quelle surprise! Amazingly, they can do it when it's prestigious enough.

Men don't even seem to have to worry about childcare. My DH just knows the childminder / my parents will be with them. I could be dropping them off at the zoo to be looked after by the lions for all he knows. He just has to get up and go to work (admittedly he starts earlier) but I can't start earlier because I have the kids to sort out first.

Just to be the 'straw man' in the old 'why didn't you go back to work and DH stay at home'? argument - when I had DC1 in my early 20s, I was the higher earner and we split parental leave exactly in half, I did the first 5 months and DH did the second. When the 10 months was up, we both went part time on the same hours, in the same general field of work. By the time I had DC2, 3 years later, DH was earning slightly more than me, childcare cost had shot up and house prices were rocketing, we genuinely could not afford for DH to take equal time off - he took the last 2 months and we both stayed part time. When I had DC3 2 years ago, DH was earning 25% more than me (same field of work, same qualifications...) and we couldn't split any of the leave for financial reasons. After starting out with the absolute best intentions 10 years ago, we have slid into the standard pattern of care, partly due to DH having pay rises when I haven't (hello, glass ceiling) and even though we are both part time and DH is genuinely very hands on, and even though I conciously try really hard to adjust the balance, I am just 'in charge' of so much more than he is, because he just, genuinely, can't seem to manage as much.

If anyone wants a depressing read Who Cooked The Last Supper is a brilliant book about the history of patriarchy.

For what it's worth, I think even though most men would agree that parenting and relationships should be 50:50, there aren't really any models or incentives for them to follow through. If every man in your department works 50 hours a week you aren't going to be asking for flexible working, etc. They do it much better in Scandinavian countries because they've made shared parental leave and cheap nurseries a legal requirement. Our government has put a lot of effort into convincing us that every awful thing that happens to women is 'our choice' and that you could have it better if you hadn't have been so silly, and made better choices.
To the poster who asked 'why should the government pay you to look after your child?' The answer is because we live in a society ffs!

@16SunflowerGiraffe
What problems are they contending with though? I disagree that social conditioning, financial structures and cultural expectations are to blame, unless you let them be.

[quote PutBabyInTheCorner]@16SunflowerGiraffe
What problems are they contending with though? I disagree that social conditioning, financial structures and cultural expectations are to blame, unless you let them be.[/quote]
Ah I see. Well, it's pretty difficult to explain the reasons (backed up by many academic studies on the subject) given you've just dismissed even the few that I've listed and described in more detail above, without offering any counter-evidence as to why you "disagree" with well-researched and documented facts.

So the government are just like any other gaslighting abuser then, making out that everything women do is their "choice" whilst simultaneously making all the other "choices " unbearable or non-viable.

It's not even that much of a choice to have DC or not, we're genetically programmed to breed, same as any other species. Telling a woman to choose not to have DC when she's genetically programmed to want them is like telling her she should be a snail because that would make life easier for herself. As if she has some sort of choice in being born a woman, with all that entails. As if everything in her life is her own fault simply because she exists.

@ThedaBara

If anyone wants a depressing read Who Cooked The Last Supper is a brilliant book about the history of patriarchy.

For what it's worth, I think even though most men would agree that parenting and relationships should be 50:50, there aren't really any models or incentives for them to follow through. If every man in your department works 50 hours a week you aren't going to be asking for flexible working, etc. They do it much better in Scandinavian countries because they've made shared parental leave and cheap nurseries a legal requirement. Our government has put a lot of effort into convincing us that every awful thing that happens to women is 'our choice' and that you could have it better if you hadn't have been so silly, and made better choices.
To the poster who asked 'why should the government pay you to look after your child?' The answer is because we live in a society ffs!

Yep!!! 👏👏👏

I'd love all of the deniers here of the influence of social values and societal structures to explain to us why it is that Swedish men and women for example make such different choices. If it's inherent in women to choose to earn less money and be primary caregivers genetically then why is this not the same elsewhere where more options are available?

Choices are not made in a vacuum.

Lalala, may I, slightly facetiously, point out that for every single mum, there is a single dad too... All those absent fathers are still fathers who are, perhaps, single.

PutBaby, how are you financially independent? Your spouse or the bank own half your house. Maybe you earn your own money, and pay your own way, but as long as you depend on the good will of another to have a roof over your head, it's not independence. If it's your spouse, that's all well and good until it isn't. Could you afford to buy him out? I wouldn't normally pick on a thing like this, but your general attitude to other women's experiences seems simplistic and lacking in nuance.

This will probably be an unpopular opinion but you could look at it as being the lucky one who gets to be there for your baby’s first year instead of working. It doesn’t last forever, so make the most of it.