to feel mystified by martyrdom on mumsnet?

[Vacua]

am not unsympathetic to demands of parenthood, running a house and bringing up children - lone parent, unsupported by ex husband and with only a little extra domestic help by way of various unreliable cleaners, so I know whereof I speak - but have seen LOADS of threads recently by mums running themselves ragged while their husbands/partners appear to do nothing and there are several things I just don't get:

1. why do people allow this to happen to them?

1. don't they realise we alone are responsible for the way others treat us, particularly in this sort of situation?

1. doesn't sympathy for something that is arguably wholly (or at very least to a pretty large extent) self-inflicted only exacerbate the problem long term?

1. isn't it a bit embarrassing to sound so martyred?

is possible as long term confirmed singleton I am missing some vital point here, am happy to be enlightened

(post and run as about 87 hours late for appointment)

there was a thread the other day that I got involved in about a dh who hadn't bought a very good present for his dw. one poster actually suggested that she rebook the short break, she arrange a little present for her dh to make up for the fact that she didn't like her present, that she approach him diplomatically and respect his feelings..... basically she had to bend over backwards for a her present. You see this all the time. Dh goes on the internet, spends all of 45 seconds booking the first thing that pops up on a search engine and suddenly it's all about respecting his feelings and making sure he doesn't get hurt.

ridiculous. Western men need a kick up the arse.

bit of an aside really, but there is definately a tendancy among "middle class" people to look down on people less well off/educated/qualified than themselves. I have experienced it many times.

I am pretty scruffy (shop in charity shops - CHOICE!) i am educated to PhD level, however i have worked in my local vets (post degree) as a general dogs body and receptionist. I worked as a vet nurse, however certain things i wasnt allowed to do by law as i wasnt officially qualified. However, i had an excellent knowledge and was more than capable of handling most queeries etc, I often had clients ask me what was going on, after not being able to understand the vet.

When i was on reception, people would be indifferent towards me, assuming i had little or no knowledge. I remember once my boss explaining a new wormer to a client, i didnt even know we stocked it as i had been away for some time (over a year) The WOMAN said, well it is easy for our brains to switch off when we have a baby - my boss just said, well actually LEM did have maternity leave, but not from this job, she only works here one afternoon a week for a break - her maternity leave was from her PhD! The woman didnt know where to put her face!!

I have had clients talk to me like i am nothing, then they find out i am more qualified than the vets (something i take great pleasure in teasing my friend about, she passed her 11+ and i didnt, so i tell her i only did my PhD so i could go one better than her degree!) then suddenly their attitude changes, it is embarrasingly obvious. Most times i never say anything about my PhD, its not relevant so why would i, and i just think, yeah yeah, you stand there and talk to me like im stupid love, it goes over my head

Absolutely Anna888. In general, I agree with that (although many people, owing to family circumstances or lack of education, are forced to take a job way below their ability or level of intelligence).

I just wanted to make the point that having a fulfilling career and fulfilling yourself as a modern woman isn't always quite as easy as some make out and for many women (single-parents on the bread line for example) these arguments are spurious because they simply don't have the same choices available to them.

But hey, I'm feeling ratty today because my cleaner is away ...

ooh daddycool, if i werent with THE most wonderful man in the planet, id marry you

Countingthegreyhairs - OK .

I wanted to clarify. Sometimes I feel that some posters are so caught up with worrying about inequality that they would prefer not give someone who needs it a job than have someone working in their home who was less well off than them .

i once had the misfortune to be talking to a "middle class" woman who, not realising who i was, described the "little man" who did some work in her house as really very good. I said to her, i can assure you, there is nothing LITTLE about my DP!! She again didnt know where to look - i just laughed it off, and thought, if you want to make yourself feel better about yourself than considering yourself better than the highly skilled tradesman who actually nigh on performs miracles in peoples houses then, you do that, you clearly need to.

See how im turning this debate into "posh bashing" Im just bitter cos i cant afford a cleaner and my little man never does any building work in my hhouse!!

sorry .. continuing digression ..

... Have similar experience LucyEllensmum now that I sort out admin in the business dh and I have set up. I use my maiden name and it has certainly been an eye-opener how people treat you if you happen to be sitting behind the reception desk when they come in ... and the differences in the way they speak to me and dh is almost funny if it weren't so downright snobbish ...

that too is a good point Anna, quite a few of my friends have cleaners - i would hope they treat them with respect. Also, to be fair, both my mum and MIL are/were cleaners and are just the sort of women who like to fuss around other people and quite enjoy their jobs. MIL says she would like to give up, um, she doesnt though - methinks she rather enjoys it more than she lets on

lucy - indeed

And would your MIL be better off if all their clients suddenly decided in the name of equality or some other political conviction that they weren't going to employ a cleaner any more?

Absolutely nothing wrong with employing a cleaner if the employer is happy with the service and the employee with the conditions.

more importantly though - does ANYONE know what i have done with my moblie phone>????????

it's under the sofa.

no, it isnt first place i looked

Call it???

I don't think there's anything wrong with my cleaner cleaning here and then going home to deal with her family. I think she's been given great opportunities and it is very hard to find work that fits around school collection time. I let her go abroad every summer for at least 4 weeks. She has a very good deal. I have given her references for the other work she does. My sister did cleaning for a bit with her Oxbridge degree... nothing wrong with it it's just deadly dull so most people who can afford it choose to pay someone else to do it or marry a housewife who if she doesn't earn enough to pay a cleaner does it for them.

it's a very socialist concept to say you cannot stomach someone doing your menial chores (but you're happy for someone to do surgery on you). I don't really follow the logic of that. Even those of us with cleaners presumably every day are cleaning up mess, sick, dirt. I certainly have spent a good part of the last 23 years dealing with that stuff when the cleaner isn't around and all those years we couldn't afford one.

Xenia - When I think about it, I don't even understand how socialists can justify it actually. I could see how socialists might want cleaners to have better pay and conditions relative to other jobs... but to basically outlaw menial jobs? I think that's just highly misguided thinking.

Lots of jobs are much more unpleasant than cleaning a nicely furnished heated middle-class home. Pooper-scooping... yuck. Rubbish collection... even more yuck.

In fact in today's Times is an article about the decision to classify dustmen and cleaners at the same level which I think is correct so they are entitled to equal pay. Very very over due of course - the male dustmen got high pay and the female local authority cleaners low pay. It's taken since our 1970 equal pay act to start to get proper parity between these male and female jobs.

interesting point xenia, but i hope that the bin men havent had to take a drop in pay, that would kind of defeat the object really.

It is also worth noting that many people make quite alot of money from cleaning, it is quite a lucrative business by all accounts.

but i STILL havent found my mobile phone and i would appreciate it if you guys would stop this pointless socio-econimic bullshit and HELP ME FIND MY PHONE!!

My cleaner gets paid substantially more than minimum wage, holiday and sick pay and works around school hours and English lessons. She can also swap the days a week she comes to me if she likes so I don't feel like I'm doing her a big disservice.

Back to the topic at hand - I agree with you wholeheartedly daddycool. How refreshing to hear a man saying it

"it's just deadly dull so most people who can afford it choose to pay someone else to do it or marry a housewife who if she doesn't earn enough to pay a cleaner does it for them."

How do women marry housewives, Xenia? It seems that when you are talking about "people" you really mean men, which of course is my point - all these rationalisations are about letting lazy men off the hook. DaddyCool spelled it out very well.

Anna rather than your cleaner being grateful that you employ her on a low wage, you need to be grateful that we live in an unequal society where there is a class of poor unskilled people who can be exploited by the well-off to do their shit-work for them. I don't know if it's a socialist idea to think that able-bodied adults should be able to clean up after their own mess in their own homes, more basic humanity I think.

So Elizabetth do you believe that you should do all jobs yourself that you're capable of doing? Painting and decorating, basic plumbing, car maintenance? Because I don't get how cleaning is somehow special and different.

Cleaning is different because it's unskilled and ongoing, and there is a huge sexist division where it is almost always women cleaning up after men. Car maintenance and plumbing are usually one offs and they also pay a lot better, they aren't comparable to cleaning.

I'm not really having a go at people who have cleaners, just the smuggery that the cleaner should somehow be grateful for the job she's been given which is frankly obnoxious.

I wrote a post yesterday about all the people I had outsourced domestic tasks to in the past month and all bar one was a man. So I don't think it is all women at all.

And yes, my cleaner is very grateful for the job - she'd much rather work in nice apartments in the warm where people treat her kindly than work in a factory.

Really, some people need to wake up to the real shit jobs out there before condemning cleaning.

I'm not condemning cleaning Anna, I'm pointing out that your idea of where gratitude should lie is the wrong way round. Once again, you and your DP/DH should be grateful that those shit jobs exist because if they didn't, it would be hard to find someone from the exploitable classes to clean up after you.

As for the jobs you mentioned, all of them apart from cleaning are well-paid one-offs, and almost completely sex-segregated with the men getting the highly skilled well-paid jobs and the women being left with the low wage, low skill jobs.

Also since when did management speak bollocks enter the domestic realm? "Outsourcing"

Of course if you're paying your cleaner £240 an hour I'll probably have less problem with it.

I pay my cleaner a fuck of a lot more than her husband gets paid. I don't think cleaning is an unskilled job actually - I think that's really demeaning. I don't think she should be grateful to me like some cap-doffing serf, I was just pointing out that it's not vile exploitation. She gets paid a lot more than the nursery nurses get paid at the nursery my son goes to.

And incidentally, I've been a cleaner and there's a lot worse jobs, believe me. Or maybe you've never been a supermarket cleaner, hospital catering staff or any of the other shit jobs I've done to pay the bills?